The October Update Expands the Triglavian Invasion of New Eden

We are into October and it is time for another update to EVE Online.  Probably the biggest thing on the agenda for the patch is a new stage to the Triglavian invasion.

The Triglavian Menace Continues

There isn’t much in the way of details however, with the only line about it being:

The Triglavian Collective has been spotted deploying what appear to be system-altering structures across invaded locations.

What these structures are and how they may be altering systems remains to be discovered.  Let’s just hope that CCP can keep them out of the new player starter systems this time around.

There are also a new Triglavian implants with the mid-grade Mimesis set being introduced.  The low grade set came in with last month’s update.  These are available at LP store at DED stations.

CCP has modified the market so that players do not need to manually repackage items in order to list them on the market.  If a player attempts to list an item now it will be automatically repackaged.  Given that what can be listed on the market and the state it needs to be in (repaired and repackaged) has always been a bit of a pain, this is probably a good change.

The UI has been updated so that players can distinguish between the different cyno types that were introduced with the September update.

Another item from the September update that has seen some revision is the tutorial part of the new player experience.  Given that the recent CSM Summit Minutes indicated that CCP would be putting 80% of dev resources on new player retention, I suppose the only surprise here is that there were not more changes.

The tutorial got the following changes:

• Improvements made to the text Aura displays throughout the Tutorial.
• Added shortcuts to the Tutorial Instructions.
• Improved the flow for claiming rewards during the Tutorial.
• Removed the civilian mining laser from the starter corvettes (not other versions of the corvettes) to help new players.
• Improved the hiding behavior for the Aura Conversation window
• Updated the rewards to the tutorial to be ISK, modules, or ammunition.

In addition there was a wave of UI changes to various aspects of the game that very much feel like an attempt to make the UI less obstinate in the face of player needs.  Whether or not the notoriously balky interface that has seemed at times to almost resent telling you what you need to know can be improved enough to keep it from scaring off or scarring new players remains to be seen.  I have heard the phrase “lipstick on a pig” bandied about, but CCP isn’t done yet.

My own favorite item from the patch notes was a fix to a situation where mobile tractor units were causing scooped items to go missing:

Mobile Tractor Units would occasionally not eject their contents when being scooped from space, leading to the apparent loss of some items. (This was caused by the MTU being too greedy and scooping back up its own jet-can at the same time as a ship is picking up the MTU!) The auto-looter behavior will now shut down earlier during the scoop-to-ship process.

As I have been known to say, timing is everything.

There are, as always, lots of other small fixes and tweaks in the update.  You can find details in the patch notes  No updates page entry for this patch (so far).  Word is that the update has been deployed successfully.