The April Update Begins Seeding New Industry Materials in EVE Online

As expected, today saw the first update patch for April which included the initial round of materials in support of the controversial industry changes CCP has planned.

A Raitaru Engineering Complex

The changes have begun with the seeding of blueprints and reactions on the NPC market, under the following categories:

• Construction Components Blueprints
• Capital Construction Blueprints
• Advanced Capital Construction Blueprints
• Molecular-Forged Reaction Formulas
• Composite Reaction Formulas

The lists for each type under those categories is in the patch notes. (Some of them did not get seeded correctly, but an update will fix that soon according to the known issues thread.)  The following NPC corporations will be selling the blueprints and formulae, though each will only have a subset of the total.

• Amarr Navy
• Caldari Navy
• Federation Navy
• Republic Fleet
• Ytiri
• Propel Dynamics
• Eifyr and Co
• Freedom Extension
• Zoar and Sons
• Ducia Foundry
• Impetus
• Chemal Tech
• Modru’s Legion
• Outer Ring Excavations
• Intaki Bank

In addition, the following items, also part of the new industry plan, are now available from exploration sites:

• Counter-Subversion Sensor Array
• Nanoscale Filter Plate
• Electro-Neural Signaller
• Enhanced Electro-Neural Signaller
• Nano Regulation Gate
• Meta-Molecular Combiner
• Isotropic Deposition Guide
• LM-Composite Molecular Condenser
• AG-Composite Molecular Condenser
• CV-Composite Molecular Condenser
• AV-Composite Molecular Condenser

And Mykoserocin gas sites can now be found in low security solar systems and additional null security locations.

Industrialists will no doubt be working to research blueprints and build up supplies in anticipation of next step in the changes.

On the ISK sinks and faucets front CCP is tinkering with the Dynamic Bounty and Encounter Surveillance System settings once more.

• The autopay timer for the Main Bank increased from 2h to 2h:45m
• The intrusion time to the Main bank decreased from 6m 30s to 6m
• Equilibrium value increased from 135% to 150%
• The Maximum Output of the Dynamic Bounty System increased from 180% to 200%
• Adjusted Dynamic Bounty System threshold margins

After successfully curtailing bounties as the primary source of ISK into the economy, CCP continues to play with the values to try and make the ESS a conflict point.

CCP has also included a series of updates to landmarks in New Eden.  They include:

• The rare Children of Light phenomena in the Iyen-Oursta system has received a dramatic visual upgrade.
• New landmark locations can be found within the following systems:
  • New Eden
  • Gererique
  • D-B7YK
  • 6QBH-S
  • Old Man Star
  • Atioth
  • Mozzidit
• The names of the top 10 fastest Capsuleers for each of the three routes in this year’s Federation Grand Prix have been added to the description of the monument structure within the Federation Grand Prix Starting Line landmark site in Luminaire. Congratulations to the racers!
• A new hidden landmark location has been added to the game. The location of this landmark has previously been established in a piece of official EVE Online content, but has not been visible within the game until now.

In addition there were the usual host of small additions and fixes, a few of which jumped out when I scanned the list:

• Added the ability to Unlock all targets via Target List Anchor or shortcut (not bound by default).
• Added the option to ‘Include Jump Bridges in Route’ when using Autopilot, this can be toggled On/Off in the Autopilot options.
• Fixed a capitalization error on an ad in the Jita 4-4 station.
• Added a feature that shows the structure type in search results.
• Implemented survey integration with the character selection screen. Keep your eyes open for an exciting and rewarding survey opportunity launching soon!

Just waiting on that exciting and rewarding survey opportunity!

In addition CCP has announced a play test for the new native Mac client starting on Thursday.

Anyway, the patch has been deployed and the usual links are available:

• Patch Notes
• Known Issues Thread
• General Feedback Thread

Flying in Battle for Azeroth

I haven’t stopped playing WoW Classic as my main MMO, but I have been taking a little bit of a break over the last week or so.  My alts are sitting in that late 30s to mid 40s zone that can be tiring to cross.

The game that supplanted it for a while has been World of Warcraft and the Battle for Azeroth expansion.  I logged in to do the Darkmoon Faire trade skill quests with my main and noticed that there was a 50% boost to reputation earned from doing world quests in the expansion.  As it stood, I only needed to attain revered faction status with the Rustbolt Resistance and the Waveblade Ankoan in order to finish Part Two of the Battle for Azeroth Pathfinder achievement.  I was already honored with both factions, but needed about 10K more for each to get to revered.

The Rustbolt Resistance was pretty easy.  There is a daily world quest for the Mechagon zone where they live that rewards a good chunk of faction.  With the 50% boost on top of the usual human boost to rep gains, I was able to knock that out in just a few days.  Also it is a zone that is pretty fun for somebody with the engineering profession.  It is an engineering focused zone, so I piled on a little bit extra every day there.

The Waveblade Ankoan on the other hand, they were more of a chore.  Nazjatar is not my favorite zone, even though you get a helper when you’re there.

Farseer Ori and Fish Head Vikund

Nazjatar is also on the same world quest rotation as other major zones, which means it gets an emissary quest every few days.  That is where you get the big faction boost.  On off days though, world quests are kind of chintzy, handing out around 80 faction.

I lucked out a bit though.  The day I logged in to do Darkmoon Faire the Nazjatar emissary quest was on its last day, so I was able to do it knowing it would be back fairly soon in  the rotation.  I logged in to do a couple of world quests every day, just to move things forward ever so slowly, hoping that the next emissary quest would push me over the edge.  Instead, it showed up after the bonus time ended.  It got me close, but not quite there.

So close with the Waveblade Ankoan

There are also only so many world quests running at any given time, and of those only a few I wanted to run out and do.  So that 605 point gap took a couple of days to close.  I ended up getting it on a pet battle world quest, one I had not done before.  The first time you win one of those you get a bonus quest to turn in that gives you a bit more faction.  Back at the main camp I turned that in and hit the mark.

The Pathfinder Achievement and a new mount

My goal for Battle for Azeroth had been reached.  I immediately mounted up and flew around the zone to scout it from the air.

Nazjatar is pretty from the air

Things look much nicer when you’re not down on the ground.  That let me start a flying tour of the expansion to see all that ground I trekked over.

Heading out from Boralus

I have said before that Battle for Azeroth is a pretty expansion on the ground.  It is also such from the air.

So I have accomplished that baseline goal that comes with every expansion, to unlock flying, which always makes me consider the dichotomy of the whole thing.  I get why Blizz makes you earn it every expansion.  Once you get it you can bypass everything on the ground, swoop down to your destination, and generally avoid what one might describe as the game.  I definitely feel more of a sense of accomplishment when I have to walk or ride down in the mud.

On the other hand, once I have flying I never walk anywhere ever again if I don’t have to.  And with the pathfinder achievements done there will be no walking for any of my characters.

The achievements done

I don’t know what else I ought to do in Battle for Azeroth at this point.  I have, in the end, not done that much.  I haven’t touched an instance or done any of the other new items they added with the expansion.  But I don’t feel a need to go do anything else either.

Into the Abyss and Our Triglavian Future

The EVE Fanfest keynote yesterday was full of news, from the name and date of the next expansion to the fact that somebody at CCP finally tried doing Planetary Interaction and realized that they really need to fix that interface.  I’d actually like to re-watch it, but they haven’t gotten around to putting the replay up on Twitch or YouTube as I am writing this.  No doubt there is too much partying to be done at the moment.  Anyway, it will get posted eventually.

The next expansion will be Into the Abyss and will be coming out on May 29, 2018.

Into the Abyss

One of the big items coming with the expansion is a new type of PvE content which will involve cruiser class ships entering what are being called Abyssal Deadspace.  This appears to be instanced PvE, though your entry and exit point will be marked with an Abyssal Filament, the key to getting in and out of this content, and other players will be able to scan it down and surprise you as you emerge from the instanced pocket.

There you will encounter the Triglavian Collective, a faction newly discovered when one of their ships fell into CONCORD hands.  This ship itself was visible while under quarantine in the Youli system, as documented over at EVE Travel.

The Triglavian cruiser in Youli

I am not sure how they were named.  The “tri” part no doubt refers to the somewhat triangular symmetry of their ships, but the “glavin” part is a mystery.

Late one evening at CCP HQ… a whole post just to support this one joke

Or maybe it has something to do with the tallest mountain in Slovenia.  I don’t know.

Anyway, running Abyssal Deadspace sounds like it will have some scaling level of difficulty, with content getting harder the deeper you penetrate, as well as a time limit, after which time the pocket will collapse and evict you.  Sounds like a vaguely sexual metaphor.

The rewards for this effort will be access to Triglavian ships and technology.  There will be three new ships (frigate, cruiser, and battleship), and new powerful weapons technology, and what are called ”

A multiplasmid for a 50MN MWD

The multiplasmid drops will be specific for a type of module and will change its attributes when applied.  So, as a demonstration, CCP Rise showed the result when one of these was used.

A mutated 50MN MWD

CCP Rise said that the resulting Abyssal MWD was more powerful than any of that class currently in the game, and the only downside was a slight increase in CPU requirements for fitting.

And then he showed us another attempt where literally every attribute on the module was worse.  The module was essentially made, if not useless, useful only for comedic/ironic value.

So there we have it.  CCP is introducing instanced PvE and random number generator based module upgrades.  My prediction is that PvE players will reject this new content the way they seem to reject most new PvE content while contnuing to claim CCP never does anything for high sec, that bitter vets will get testy about the random aspect of this, /r/eve will be filled with threads featuring screen shots of comically ruined modules, and that the new ships and weapon systems will be overpowered and will need to be nerfed as soon as they fall within the price range of the average player.

Basically, an MMO expansion.

Anyway, there was only a preview of what was coming with the keynote.  I am sure we will get a lot more information as Fanfest goes on, so anything I said here might be superseded by reality.

Finishing the Mansion Road in Minecraft

I have finished the road north to the mansion at last.  I have been working on that since November in bursts, but now it is done.  I have linked the mansion up with the rail loop via a road that covers 20km as the crow flies and probably closer to 25km in actual travel due to zig-zagging around terrain obstacles.

More than a 20km gap

If you compare that to some of the earlier maps in this series, you will see that the route I took up was a very narrow path, but when building the road back I had to do quite a bit of exploring in order to find a path south that would not require too much effort to pave through.

The road itself is, much of the way, just a single thread of cobblestone, widening out when needed.  That was my goal, to have a one-block wide band of cobblestone that went unbroken all the was from the front of the mansion all the way to the great rail loop I built last year.

In crossing that last couple of kilometers I faced a fairly wide gap of water.  Rather than trying to find a way around, and creating yet another zig or zag to lengthen the road, I opted to just bridge the gap, using a couple of islands as anchors.

Bridging the last gap

While building that long bridge meant mining a lot of cobblestone and building a base nearby (mine and base are on the northern island) the actual work wasn’t a bother.  There is something relaxing about just doing essentially repetitive block placement at times.  I just turn on a podcast or an audio book to keep part of my brain occupied and start placing blocks.

This has led to some odd associations, where I will ride back up the road to get something or get to a portal and will recall what I was listening to as I pass certain landmarks.

The bridge itself is pretty plain, with the road bed three blocks wide and a cobblestone lip to either side, making the whole thing five blocks across most of the way.  However, it does have a couple of features.

Half way across the southern span there is an ocean monument.  It is nice and close to shore, so I may go back and clean it out.  There is plenty of sand close to hand to drop on it.  The bridge is tall enough that if you ride a horse across it, you won’t notice the monument, but if you are walking you will get a 5 minute mining debuff that will make breaking stone very annoying while it is on you.

I also lost two horses while working on the bridge, but not in the usual way.

One nice thing about working on a bridge is that it is pretty safe to work at night, so long as you light it up as you go.  So I let my horse wander, and it promptly fell off the bridge.  This was a new horse, one I had tamed and road up from the south, not the obstinate old horse I have been using most of the way. (I still have that horse.)

The a thunderstorm came up and, as far as I can tell, the horse got struck by lightening and spawned a skeleton trap, a troop of mounted skeletons.  This happened in the water down below where I was working, so I never saw the skeletons.  But later, when passing over in daylight, I saw the remains.  The skeletons fell by the wayside in daylight eventually, but their mounts are not harmed by the sun, and were bobbing in the water below the bridge.

Swimming skeleton horses

While I didn’t see any of this happen, I remember the thunderstorms while working on the bridge, I am missing two horses, and there are two groups of skeleton horses bobbing in the water under the bridge, so logic dictates what must have happened.

Now I just have to figure out how to tame them.  I read something about needing to hold a golden carrot while taming them, but it hasn’t worked yet.  I can’t tell if I am doing it wrong, being in the water is a complication, or if they are just stubborn and take a long time to tame.

So that is on my list of tasks.

Also on my list is to actually ride the road from end to end, mark down the actual distance, note how many bases I have made along the way, and ensure that I did not leave any gaps in the cobblestone along the way.  So I still have some tasks, but the main building aspect of the project is set for now… unless I decide I really need to run a rail line all the way north as well.

Meanwhile, the server itself has seen a bit more life of late.  The original crew has worn themselves out for the time being.  That happens.  But a couple of members of my corp in EVE Online have been building away and my daughter suddenly had the urge to get on and play a bit over the weekend, so things are still happening.

No Last Stand in VFK as War Comes to Deklein

I opined a couple weeks back that I had nailed my colors to the mast for this war and would go down with the metaphorical ship, ready for that last ditch fight at VFK-IV, the one-time center station of the CFC and still a location with historical weight to it.

Of course, that grand vision ended up being made moot as we abandoned all our null sec staging systems and fell back to the hills of low sec to conduct a guerilla war out of the Quafe Company Company Warehouse in Saranen where we cannot be bubbled or camped effectively and where, while we lack cloning services, we will have a nearly limitless supply of pretend carbonated beverages.

Effectively The Imperium logo now

What I am waiting for now is somebody to put together a picture of The Mittani with a Che Guevara beret holding a bottle of refreshing Quafe or Quafe Zero.

Meanwhile the Moneybadgers have finally turned their attention to the heart of Goon space, the region of Deklein.  Relatively peaceful up until earlier this week, leaving aside the botched attempt to take VFK-IV on April Fools Day and repeated attempts to hack that one TNT system in the region, the MBC chose to put its weight into the effort and first reinforced, then finally blockaded and took two key systems in the region, VFK-IV, which has symbolic value, and YA0-XJ, the previous staging system for the coalition and the one-time biggest market station in null sec by a significant margin.  (When I checked EVE Market Data rankings earlier, Provi Bloc’s station at F-YH5B had eclipsed the current YA0 market, while the market at our staging station in Saranen had pulled ahead.  That said, it would seem there is still a lot of stuff in YA0.  Not everybody shipped their stuff out when I did I guess.)

So the map of Deklein now has this on it:

VFK and YA0 in new hands

I would be interested to know how the MBC decided who got to take which system.  Certainly TEST and NCDot have suffered defeat at the hands of the CFC in the past, NCDot on repeated occasions after coming at the CFC.  Did TEST get VFK to make up for the fact that at the end of the Fountain War, their bitter rival from their own time in the CFC, Fatal Ascension, was allowed to take their capital at 6VDT-H?

Anyway, the oft stated slogan of “VFK by <date>,” first summed up after a White Noise pronouncement back in late 2011, has finally been achieved.

The war will continue in Deklein, however the numbers our foes can bring to bear and the distance from our staging system pretty much assures that we will lose the region sooner rather than later.  So we hole up in the back room of a soda pop warehouse and make our plans while The Mittani polishes his Goonhammer and talks about the wonder weapons that will send our foes fleeing before us.

I favor Vanilla Quafe myself… also, Caroline’s Star visible

Of course, with TMC having pissed off I Want ISK, causing them to vow to continue to fund the war forever if necessary (Casino War eternal), we may be here for a long time.  At least I have the appropriate skin for my Megathron.