Dire Maul Warm Up before Burning Crusade Classic

With the Burning Crusade Classic pre-patch on us, it was time to go figure out how to play our characters with the changes to our specs.  That seems to suggest an easier dungeon, something we had run before, so we wouldn’t be getting used to a new rotation while learning new fights.

My suggestion was Dire Maul East.  We had done it before, even doing a three person exploration the week before the patch.  We could get in, get the update for Ula’s spell, get a couple of quest updates for my pally, including one with a serious shield upgrade, all while getting into the swing of things.

I got on first last weekend and got myself out to Feathermoon to pick up an additional quests that might be laying about, noticing the elven ship model had replaced the old standard model ship on the run off the Feralas coast.

Skronk got on next and headed out the same way, followed by Moronae.  We all moved on over to Dire Maul to meet up at the summoning stone.  On the long list of things that changed with the pre-patch, the summoning stones are now that rather than being just meeting stones.  Ula was running late, but once she was online we would be able to bring her to us as you can summon party members so long as you can get three people to summon.

Doing a practice summon, just to remember how to even do that

Coincidentally, with the release of the patch a post I wrote back in 2011 that included mention of the Dire Maul summoning stone has suddenly become popular again.  Now that it can summon, people want to use it I guess.  So, just as a reminder:

Dire Maul Summoning Stone Pictured

Approximate location on the map

When Ula did get on and I told her the plan, we found out that with the pre-patch her final conjured water recipe no longer needed a quest, she was able to just get the skill from her class trainer.

Still, since we were already set up and because the run would net the tank a nice new shield, we opted to go forward with the plan.  Our group was:

• Wilhelm – level 60 human paladin
• Moronae – level 60 night elf druid
• Ula – level 60 gnome mage
• Skronk – level 60 dwarf priest

And once we got ourselves together outside of Dire Maul we pushed on to the eastern entrance.

Everybody is here

Another change with the pre-patch is that most, if not all, of the formerly elite open world mobs appear to have been downgraded to normal mobs, so getting into the instance was pretty easy.

As we started up I will say that I was pretty happy with the changes the pre-patch brought to the protection paladin lineup.  I probably wasted some gold re-speccing before the patch, but at least I got a feel for the before/after.

Righteous Defense, a direct taunt that grabs up to three mobs was a good start, and then Avenger’s Shield, a ranged attack for pulling, made me pretty happy as well.  The shield does hit three mobs, so it isn’t as precise as Viniki’s gun, but it is still better than having to run up and shake hands with every mob in order to pull.

Once inside I was able to get going, with consecrate, holy shield, and retribution aura able to hold groups of non-elite mobs on me even as Ula and Moronae did their AOE attacks to burn them down, a noticeable improvement over my experience with Viniki.

We did get into a bit of trouble early on when, being a bit complacent about aggro radius, we managed to get two single mobs, a threesome, and a pack of non-elites all on us at once.  Even being a bit over level, that came apart… sort of.  I went down, then Skronk did when he inherited the aggro from healing.

Our group in the corner of the first area getting beat down

You can see Ula running for the exit on the right.  Once dead I actually remembered that Moronae had a combat ress, and called for him to use it.  The first thought was to put it on Skronk, but then I called for it to hit the pally as I still had lay hands and a few other tricks that I had forgotten about in the flash of action.  And, of course, I could also ress once we were done.

Once I was back up, Moronae and I finished off the remaining mobs… we had actually killed most of them as the group before the wheels came off… then I ressed Skronk then found Ula, who hadn’t quite made it to he zone line and ressed her.

That was the big dramatic event of the run, and it wasn’t even a wipe.  Moronae lived and his combat ress got us back on track.

After that we were a little more careful about aggro radius and, thus, had few issues.  We managed to do Pusillin in one round, a fight we managed to wipe on both times we did it previously.  Paladin fire resist aura helped out there.

We made it back and around through the satyrs, collecting a few felcloth along the way, past the next few bosses, and into Ironbark’s room in the conservatory.

Just within our draw distance

Thanks to our last run here, we had gotten a feel for getting through the room without having to take on every single group.  You just have to time your advance between the roaming groups.

Ironbark broke down the door for us and cleared the way to the final boss.  There we had another fight where consecrate, holy shield, and retribution aura kept the adds on me.

Lighting up the group with damage

That got us through the instance.  We posed for a victory shot, then I collected my quest item and Ula opened a portal to Darnassus so I could fly from there to Moonglade to turn in the quest.

Done with Dire Maul East again

That got done quickly enough that we decided to go do one of the pre-patch events.  You can see Ula and I are wearing tabards.  Those come from a quest out at the Blasted Lands at the Dark Portal.  All you have to do is kill six invading fel reavers and that is the reward.  So we went out and did that and got one more screen shot with us all in matching tabards, like we are in a guild or something.

Before the Dark Portal

Overall, three of us seemed good with our classes post-patch.  Moronae though, he was feeling like feral druids had taken a hit.  He may revert to form and boost a warlock to swap out into the group for next time.  We’ll lose a combat ress but gain soul stones along with some other options.

The April MER and Mining and Ratting

CCP got us the Monthly Economic Report for April 2020.  These seem to be dropping later in the month this year, but at least we’re still getting them.

EVE Online nerds harder

This was a report I was waiting for as it will show us the impact of the last round of mining changes, the removal of common ore and mineral types from moon mining.  That change went in at the end of March, so April is the first time we will be able to see any repercussions.

April also saw the Surgical Strike update, which made super carrier ratting less viable, so we can see if that had an impact on NPC bounty numbers as well.

But mining first.

All that scarcity appears to be working, at least when it comes to mineral prices.  Those continued a sharp rise in April.

April 2020 – Economic Indices

That continued rise in prices is now looks like it could reach an all time high, as the long term chart shows.

April 2020 – Economic Indices – All Time

The all time peaks look like they hit in 2012… I am not sure what was going on at those two moments… but the trend looks like we are heading there again.

Interestingly, not all of the indices are following the mineral price spike.  The primary producer price index (PPPI) is climbing somewhat with the mineral spike.  But the PPPI has ore prices as one of its components.  Here is what makes up the PPPI:

• Ore
• Planetary Processed Materials
• Planetary Refined Commodities
• Planetary Specialized Commodities

The consumer price index (CPI) however has remained flat.  Here is what makes up the CPI:

• Ammo
• Commodities
• Drones
• Implants
• Skills
• Starbase structures
• Tech I modules
• Tech I ships
• Tech II modules

That list feels like it needs to be updated as there are some items with very little price variation there.  While there are a few skills that are drops, the influence of those outliers no doubt gets hidden by the vast sea of skills with very static pricing.  You can buy most skills straight from your character sheet so you cannot even get gouged on standard skills any more unless you really want to be.

The flat line of the CPI also seems to indicate that maybe we’re working off supply further down the production pipeline.  Realistically, if mineral prices are going up, ship and module prices should be as well… people are complaining that tech II guns are tough to find in Jita, so those prices should be spiking… but the line remains flat.  Perhaps the CPI going up is what CCP is waiting for.

And then there is the secondary producer price index (SPPI), which is trending on an almost reciprocal line to mineral prices.  The SPPI is made up of:

• Blueprints
• Commodity
• Planetary Commodities
• Planetary Refined Commodities
• Planetary Specialized Commodities

That is mostly planetary interaction output, which hasn’t been touched by CCP recently.  Demand there appears to be going down as the mineral drought throttles production.

Going as planned?  We shall see.

Meanwhile, looking at the mining numbers by region, it is starting to look like a high sec activity.

April 2020 – Mining Value by Region – Bar Graph

The total mined overall was 31.58 trillion ISK worth (a number inflated by the rise in mineral prices), with the  top ten regions by value mined in April being:

1. Delve – 1.81 trillion
2. Domain – 1.64 trillion
3. The Forge – 1.59 trillion
4. Oasa – 1.35 trillion
5. Sinq Laison – 1.34 trillion
6. Lonetrek – 1.15 trillion
7. Fountain – 911 billion
8. Metropolis – 888 billion
9. Genesis – 878 billion
10. Tash-Murkon – 869 billion

That list is three null sec regions Delve, Fountain, and Oasa (2x Imperium and 1x PandaFam), and seven high sec regions. (Those seven are also close to trade hubs.)

If you go back to November of last year, six months back, before all of this kicked off and after the Chaos Era had ended, the top ten regions for mining were flipped the other way around, with seven null sec regions and three high sec regions.

1. Delve – 4.55 trillion
2. Esoteria – 2.43 trillion
3. Outer Passage – 2.00 trillion
4. Querious – 1.39 trillion
5. Domain – 1.14 trillion
6. The Forge – 993 billion
7. Malpais – 953 billion
8. The Kalevala Expanse – 910 billion
9. Feythabolis – 781 billion
10. Sinq Laison – 737 billion

So the mineral squeeze, the starvation diet, the diminution of asteroid yields, and the removal of common ore and minerals from null sec seems to be having an effect.  And CCP is still looking for loopholes.  Earlier this week they removed asteroids from combat anomalies, just in case you were tempted to rat and mine at the same time.

Which brings us to ratting and NPC bounties.  As mentioned above, April saw the Surgical Strike update launched, which reduced the effectiveness of shield and armor resistance modules.  This was ostensibly put in place to make more capital ships explode… there were additional nerfs aimed straight at supers and titans… but which also had an impact on PvE as well.  Your mission running, abyssal pocket, and ratting fits all took a hit, and so NPC bounties fell.

April 2020 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

A total of 50.46 trillion ISK in NPC bounties were collected in April, with the top ten regions being:

1. Delve – 5.79 trillion
2. Oasa – 4.47 trillion
3. Perrigen Falls – 3.02 trillion
4. Fountain – 2.54 trillion
5. Cobalt Edge – 2.50 trillion
6. Branch – 1.91 trillion
7. Esoteria – 1.90 trillion
8. Omist – 1.87 trillion
9. Tenal – 1.62 trillion
10. Malpais – 1.58 trillion

Compare that to March, where 58.26 trillion ISK in NPC bounties were paid out.  The top ten regions for March were:

1. Delve – 7.91 trillion
2. Oasa – 7.14 trillion
3. Perrigen Falls – 3.71 trillion
4. Cobalt Edge – 3.07 trillion
5. Omist – 2.93 trillion
6. Tenal – 2.84 trillion
7. Esoteria – 2.11 trillion
8. Fountain – 2.09 trillion
9. Feythabolis – 1.92 trillion
10. Branch – 1.80 trillion

Every region on the April list is down compared to their March numbers.  This was likely due to fewer super carriers out ratting after the update.  Super carriers had long been pretty much invulnerable to subcaps, requiring a dreadnought fleet to take one down reliably. (The dreadbomb.)  Now, with the resistance changes and fighters applying less effectively to subcaps, they are now vulnerable.

While the dip in NPC bounties doesn’t seem that big, it only represents a partial month of change.  I expect that the May numbers will show a further decline as the state of NPC bounties and ratting adjusts to the new normal.  There is a lot of that going around.

So it goes.

As always, the full monthly economic report has a lot more data and many more charts than what I post here, so if you are interested in the details you can dig into it.

Finding the Pillagers

I mentioned at the end of the last Minecraft post, where I was searching for freshly generated villages, that there was something interesting on the map I rendered with Minecraft Overviewer.

What I saw was a tower.

From the map

Naturally I was keen to run out and check out that tower in person, unconcerned about what function the tower might serve.  So I got on my horse and rode out to see what I could see.

As I got within sight of the tower I noticed that there were a few pillagers in the way.  I had seen pillagers wandering about already, so this was nothing new.  I had slain some before, avoided others.  Just another hostile mob.

I dismounted and left the horse to wander… we’ll get to that… to go pick off the pillagers.

The tower is just over yonder, a pillager band in between

I stormed in and started killing off the pillagers only to find more arriving.  I ran towards the tower when things started to get a little overwhelming, finding even more pillagers as I got closer.

I ran in one of the openings in the base of the tower and quickly filled it up with some cobble stone to keep the pillagers out.  The I ran to the far side and did the same to the other opening, then filled in the window opening along the other two sides of the base to stop the crossbow wielding pillagers from shooting me.

I used to be an adventurer like you…

So for the moment I was safe, but I seemed to be in deep with the pillagers.  It was about then that I went to the wiki to see what might be up with this tower only to find that it was a Pillager Outpost, literally the place where pillagers spawn.

I went up through the tower, checking out each level.  There was a chest up at the top with a few items in it, but not much else.  Night was also falling, so I went to one of the lower levels that was enclosed… exposing yourself only draws more arrows from the pillagers… and built myself a bed.

However, it was already night and there were already zombies and skeletons spawning around the place, so I spent the night awake and sniping at the pillagers.  Come the morning I was still firing away at pillagers whose numbers seemed to replenish and remain above my ability to run out and solo.

And they all had eyes for me

In my inventory I have a stack of a dozen units of TNT.  I considered how best to use this to cover my escape.  I leaned out the second floor and placed some above where the pillagers were congregating, then some more lower down, and one right in the center where the door was.  I then hit one of them with a fire arrow to detonate them while opening up a hole on the other side of the building through which to make my escape.

I did seem to have thinned out their ranks as I ran to where I left my horse.  However, try to form, it had wandered off beyond line of sight.  Meanwhile, the remaining hostile pillagers were giving chase, so I headed back north to the village, turning to fight… or to drop a block of TNT to detonate amongst them… every so often.

The pillagers are persistent and would not give up the chase, but I was able to knock off the last of them by the time I got back to the village.  However, on entering the village I learned about the bad omen curse.

When you kill the pillager captains, the guys with the banners, you get the bad omen and as soon as you walk into a village it triggers a raid.  The bad omen effect stacks, and the more you have the more waves you get in your raid.

So it was a further fight, during which most of my villagers were wiped out.  Pillages go straight for them if they can.  They also open normal doors, so just being inside is no safety.  That also introduced me to the ravager, the pillage beast/mount, which has a lot of hit points and hits like a truck.  Fortunately it is too big to fit through a single door, so I was able to find a spot from which to fire away at the one that spawned during one of the raid waves.

Eventually I prevailed, though I was close to death a few times… and, as I said, most of my villagers died.  But I got the achievement for defeating a raid.

Hero of the Village also gets you a discount on buying items from villagers and makes giving them things to increase their level more effective.  This would have been useful had I had many villagers left.

Meanwhile, there were still pillagers lurking about on the route to the pillager camp, though no captains, so I could knock them down without having another raid hit.

Pillager lurking by my village – Also, Hero of the Village effect icon at upper right

That done I headed back to find my damn horse.  I found him up the hill overlooking the pillager camp.

The horse could pretty much see me the whole time

From up there I could also move around to get a look into how much damage I had done.

The tower after my first run

I blew a pretty big chunk out of the side of the tower, and a tree that was there, against which I had placed some of the TNT, had gone completely missing.  But I saw that at least one block of TNT remained.  That seemed like an invite to return.  So I went back in, placed the last of my TNT at various points around the tower, all while avoiding pillagers who began to chase me yet again, and started blowing things up.  Releasing the iron golem they had caged up helped some, as they fought with him for a while.

Then I set the tower on fire, just for good measure before running off again.  Again, a bunch of pillagers were following me.

Not happy with me

I managed to kill off the followers and avoid the captains, leading them into the ocean and out swimming them.  No bad omen this time.

Then it was back to the village to start fortifying it against pillagers, first by building a wall around it.  I also found a few of the pillager banners in my inventory from my fights.

Banners of my defeated foes

I decided to hang some of those up on my defensive structures.

Fortifying my village

Later, I went and rendered a fresh copy of the map to see what was left of the tower.

Tower after the TNT and burning

There are still two blocks of unexploded TNT around the tower, so I might have to go back.  We’ll see if pillagers stop spawning there if I tear the whole thing down.

Find Your Own Private Abyss in New Eden

The EVE Online expansion Into the Abyss went live earlier today.

Into the Abyss

Announced at EVE Fanfest last month, the expansion is centered on new PvE content for the game in the form of abyssal pockets.  These are solo PvE encounters.  However, you need to take care.  Once you start one of these encounters you have 20 minutes to complete it and come out the far end.  If you fail, the pocket will collapse and you will lose your ship and your pod, ending back up where ever you have your death clone set.

A new way to stimulate the market?

The pockets come in multiple flavors (5) and levels of difficulty (also 5), but you can only get into one if you have an abyssal filament.  You can find those at data sites or, likely, on the market.  I am sure enterprising explorers will be happy to see some.

In the pocket you will face three encounters with Sleepers or the new Triglavians.  But when you go into a pocket a marker is left that lets people scan down where you will re-appear once you are done.  And if you do level 4 or 5 difficulty pockets you will also have a suspect timer when you exit, so anybody can shoot your likely damage ship and take your stuff.  Fun fun!

So why, given the drawbacks, would anybody bother with abyssal pockets?

Well, loot of course!

Rewards include blueprint copies for one of the three new Triglavian ships, entropic disintegrators and related modules, the hot new weapon system the Trigglavians bring to the game, or those Mutaplasmids, special items that can mutate the stats of current modules in New Eden, making them better… or worse… or just different.  For the new ships and modules there are new skills you’ll need to train up… because of course there are.  For the Mutaplasmids though no special skill is required, just a willingness to gamble with modules.

Or maybe you will want to go just for some screen shots.  Those abyssal pockets are pretty.

Eagle in a pocket

Just don’t go out of bounds in search of a good screen shot, that’ll blow you up as well.

Maybe try abyssal pockets out on the test server first.  That’s what I did.

That is the big anchor feature of this expansion, solo PvE death dungeons… in space!

But that isn’t all there is to the expansion.  Also announced at EVE Fanfest was the fact that somebody at CCP actually tried Planetary Interaction and found out that the interface was confused shit.  So they decided to try and fix that.  The feature’s only been around for eight years, coming in with the Tyrannis expansion back in May 2010, so it was about due for a pass.  There is a whole dev blog about how CCP plans to make things better.

Of course, if you’ve grown used to the unintuitive psycho-clicky interface over the last eight years, I am sure the new one will seem a burden, at least for a while.  Time to re-learn.

Aside from that, you can no longer have a warp core scrambler fit if you want to use a Factional Warfare acceleration gate.  Unless you have a mobile depot out and quickly refit after activating the gate… or so I hear.  CCP was going to fix that by not allowing people to refit while aligning for or in warp, but it turns out capital pilots use that feature pretty often.  After dismissing the capital pilot outcry for about a day by pointing out that this was an unintended feature they had been using for years, CCP relented and left things as they were.

There is also the usual range of big fixes and the like.

And then there was one more item.  CCP also updated the recommended computer specifications for playing EVE Online.  Those are now:

Windows:

• OS: Windows 10
• CPU: Intel i7-7700 or AMD Ryzen 7 1700 @ 3.6 GHz or greater
• RAM: 16GB or higher
• VIDEO: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060, AMD Radeon RX 580 or better with at least 4 GB VRAM

Mac:

• OS: Mac 10.13
• CPU: Intel i5 Series @ 3.8 GHz or greater
• RAM: 16 GB or higher
• VIDEO: AMD Radeon Pro 580 or better with at least 4 GB VRAM

That came as a bit of a shock.  CCP defended this move by pointing out that they haven’t updated the specs since 2013, but in the world of video games, where “recommended” often really means “minimum” and where “minimum” usually means “the publisher wouldn’t let us ship if they knew how demanding our game really was, so theoretically you can play with this config, but it will likely be frustrating” that seems like a pretty high bar to set.  People may assume that they shouldn’t bother if they don’t have the recommended config.

However, the minimum specs didn’t change, so I guess we’re all still okay with this update.  I assume I’ll still be able to carry on running two clients with graphics turned up, in the manner to which I have grown accustomed.   But I am now fairly far behind the recommended spec with the following:

• OS: Windows 7 64-bit
• CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Processor
• RAM: 12GB of RAM
• VIDEO: nVidia GeForce GTX 960 video card with 4GB of VRAM

Oh well, we shall see.

The expansion has been successfully deployed.  Details are available in the Patch Notes and on the Updates Page.  There is also the Known Issues post about what has been found so far with the expansion.

The next big update will be coming next week when, on June 5th, CCP retires all of the null sec outposts, converting them into faction citadels.  At that point all of the lost goods, trapped in hostiles stations, will go into asset safety, leading to… I am not sure what.  INN has some speculation on that front.

Memorial Day 2017

Wait For Me

to Valentina Serova

Wait for me, and I’ll come back!
Wait with all you’ve got!
Wait, when dreary yellow rains
Tell you, you should not.
Wait when snow is falling fast,
Wait when summer’s hot,
Wait when yesterdays are past,
Others are forgot.
Wait, when from that far-off place,
Letters don’t arrive.
Wait, when those with whom you wait
Doubt if I’m alive.

Wait for me, and I’ll come back!
Wait in patience yet
When they tell you off by heart
That you should forget.
Even when my dearest ones
Say that I am lost,
Even when my friends give up,
Sit and count the cost,
Drink a glass of bitter wine
To the fallen friend –
Wait! And do not drink with them!
Wait until the end!

Wait for me and I’ll come back,
Dodging every fate!
“What a bit of luck!” they’ll say,
Those that would not  wait.
They will never understand
How amidst the strife,
By your waiting for me, dear,
You had saved my life.
Only you and I will know
How you got me through.
Simply – you knew how to wait –
No one else but you.

–Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov, 1941

DUST 514 Goes Offline Tomorrow

And so it goes.

As CCP announced back in February, tomorrow their FPS link to the EVE Online universe goes dark.

Normally I would make a point of posting something like this on the actual date, but tomorrow is Memorial Day in the US and I wouldn’t want anybody to think I am using that day to memorialize a freakin’ video game.  Memorial Day is for more important things, like remembering those who have fallen in service to the nation, mattress sales, and pissing off living veterans by wishing them a happy Memorial Day.

Anyway, the game will soon be gone, with Tuesday’s patch to EVE Online removing the last bits and pieces from New Eden.

Miscellaneous:
DUST514 items will no longer appear in the market.

And that will be that.

I know some will mourn the game’s passing, but not many.  It was an odd game on what remains a foreign platform for a lot of EVE players.  Its spiritual successor, Project Nova, carries on, and what it needs to do to succeed was the topic of the most recent Blog Banter.