Delve – A Return to Ratting and Mining

CCP Quant was really on his game this past weekend as the Monthly Economic Report for September was already available yesterday morning.  So it is time again to see what was going on in Delve.

During much of August there was a full deployment out of the region for The Imperium, leaving miners and ratters unprotected, which led to a significant dip in those activities.  For September the coalition was mostly back home, with a Judgement Day diversion to camp the Keepstar at 68FT-6.

September 2017 – NPC Bounties by Region

NPC bounty payouts in Delve were back up, landing just shy of 7.9 trillion ISK.  That still puts them below the July number of 8.4 trillion ISK and well short of the pre-super nerf high of 8.8 trillion ISK.

Bounty payouts were also up in other regions, notably Branch and Deklein, where the Guardians of the Galaxy coalition lives.  That boosted bounties on the ISK sink/faucet chart to what seems to be the new normal.  It still seems too high, so I expect CCP will find another way to nerf things.

September 2017 – Top 8 ISK Sinks and Faucets

I am always interested to see how very steady the Agent Mission Rewards line is on that chart.  That seems to indicate a very stable and dedicated group of mission runners out there somewhere.

As with NPC bounties, mining was likewise back up in Delve.

September 2017 – Mining Value by Region

The miners were clearly more serious about getting back to work than the ratters, with 12 trillion ISK worth of value harvested compared to 10 trillion ISK in July and just over 2 trillion ISK for August.

Of course, mining value isn’t as straight up comparable month-to-month as bounties.  The problem is that the price of ore and minerals change, and if you look at the price indexes, you can see that mineral prices are on the rise.

September 2017 – Economic Indices

Since the mineral price index is up that much, the actual amount mined in Delve could have been less than July.  However, the output was almost assuredly more than August.

And then there is production.

September 2017 – Production Values by Region

As with ratting and mining, production jumped back up with our return home, with the value jumping up from 12 trillion ISK to almost 20 trillion ISK in value produced, putting the region just behind The Forge, the center of production for Jita sales. (Though you can add in Lonetrek and The Citadel when it comes to Jita production.)  While, if mining value is pegged to the market, then production is doubly so I suppose, but at least you can peg it to other regions.

Then there is the final chart I like, the regional summary, that puts a range of things side by side.

September 2017 – Regional Summary Stats

That stacks up Delve against other key regions in the game, where it ranks #3 for trade value and tops the chart for net imports.  For all that mining and production we do, apparently we still have to import a lot of stuff from Jita.

There are many more charts with the report covering a variety of aspects of the New Eden economy, which you can find here.