The December EVE Online Monthly Economic Report and How the Holidays Fared in New Eden

We’re into the new year so it is time for a look back at what happened in December in New Eden with the Monthly Economic Report.

EVE Online nerds harder

This time around I am once again going to dive straight into ISK because that is the most interesting section of the MER.

ISK Faucets

October saw CCP relent on the dynamic bounty system, raising the floor on bounty amounts to 100%.  That seemed likely to get more people undocked and shooting rats in null sec… thus providing more targets for wandering gangs… and the November numbers seemed to bear that out.  But now we have another month to look at to see if the draw of improve bounties would hold.

So we’ll start right away with the big Sinks and Faucets chart.

December 2022 – Faucet end of the chart big chart

As usual, for those who cannot read those tiny numbers:

• Commodity – 55 trillion (up 5 trillion)
• Bounty Prizes – 35 trillion (up 1.1 trillion)
• ESS Bounty Payouts – 16.1 trillion (down 1.2 trillion)
• Incursion Payouts – 11.3 trillion (up 0.2 trillion)
• Trig Invasion Payouts – 8.2 trillion (down 7.2 trillion)
• Agent Mission Rewards 3.2 trillion (down 0.3 trillion)

Perhaps surprisingly to some, commodities are still up at the top of the list.  Null sec ratting, while up a bit, was about on par with November, so it seems like the number of people drawn to the higher payouts is somewhat consistent.  (I was responsible for about 500 million of those bounties in December.)  ESS payouts were down a bit, but that may be due to the fact that, with the change to bounties, CCP initially put the floor at 110% as a draw, then dropped it down to 100%.  Maybe?

So, bounties and ESS payouts combined added up to 51.1 trillion ISK on the big chart.

When it comes to the regional data, the number is only 45.72 trillion ISK, up just a bit from the 44.8 trillion recorded in November.  That number is supposed to be combined bounties and ESS payouts, but there are always discrepancies between the different data sources.

The top ten regions for bounties were:

1. Vale of the Silent – 4.98 trillion (Fraternity)
2. Delve – 3.12 trillion (Imperium)
3. Perrigen Falls – 3.11 trillion (PanFam)
4. Fountain – 2.49 trillion (Imperium)
5. Querious – 2.16 trillion (Imperium)
6. The Kalevala Expanse – 2.15 trillion (PanFam)
7. Tribute – 1.78 trillion (Fraternity)
8. Malpais – 1.29 trillion (PanFam)
9. Branch – 1.19 trillion (Fraternity)
10. Tenerifis – 1.16 trillion (FI.RE)

Those ten add up to almost 21 of the 45.72 trillion ISK collected in December.

That is NPC bounties, and what seems to be the new normal for them for now.  On to commodities, which remained the largest faucet and which saw something of a jump in December.

December 2022 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

You can see that commodities, the blue line, were up quite a bit after a decline. (You can also see where the nerf to Trig invasions occurred with the yellow line, but that is another story.)  And it was one type in particular.

December 2022 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

Here are the totals for each of those lines for the month of December and how much they changed compared to November:

• Sleeper Components – 20.35 trillion (down 1.09 trillion)
• Overseer Personal Effects – 19.26 trillion (up 9.79 trillion)
• Bounty Encrypted Bonds – 6.94 trillion (down 0.61 trillion)
• Triglavian Data – 5.05 trillion (down 1.05 trillion)
• Rogue Drone Analysis Data – 2.24 trillion (up .03 trillion)
• Miscellaneous – 645 billion (down 2.23 trillion)

Those all add up to about 54.5 trillion of the 55 trillion recorded.

You can’t take small changes to seriously.  All of these are a tally of drops people have turned in, and sometimes they sit on them for a while before doing so.  But drastic changes, those generally mean something.

As it turns out, as with last year, Overseer Personal Effects were a drop in the Winter Nexus sites.  Generally something you get as a drop from incursions, they almost doubled in pay outs due to the holiday event.

Miscellaneous, on the other hand… I really don’t know why that fell off almost 78%.

And with all of that… the money supply fell off in New Eden across the month of December.

December 2022 – Money Supply

We can see a little more detail from the ISK balance statement.

December 2022 ISK balance

Once again, the starting number doesn’t match last month’s ending number.  But the total of faucets for December were actually almost three trillion ISK from November while sinks were about a half a trillion higher.

But the active ISK delta, which counts ISK coming and going from the the economy due to GM confiscations or accounts going dormant is hugely off.  In November the active ISK delta was +74.5 trillion as people came back to the game for the expansion and the offer of seven days free Omega time.  People who didn’t stay faded quickly and now those accounts are on the other side of the balance sheet.

So December saw a drop in total ISK in the economy.

Trade

In December on of the key indicators of trade activity, the velocity of ISK, actually went up.

December 2022 – Velocity of ISK

That probably isn’t surprising in a month where the total ISK in the economy went down.  The same volume of trade would see the velocity go up is the ISK total went down.  And how did trade do overall?

The regional stats show that trade rang in at 696.19 trillion, up from 683 trillion in November.  More trade, less ISK, greater ISK velocity.  It is nice when the number support the theory.

As for where trade was going on, the region stats show the usual suspects on the list.

1. The Forge – 504.88 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 44.86 trillion (Amarr)
3. Lonetrek – 20.71 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
4. Delve – 17.89 trillion (Imperium)
5. Sinq Laison – 16.7 trillion (Dodixie)
6. Perrigen Falls – 14.22 (PanFam)
7. Metropolis – 12.85 trillion (Hek)
8. Heimatar – 8.61 trillion (Rens)
9. Vale of the Silent – 5.9 trillion (Fraternity)
10. The Citadel – 5.22 trillion (Caldari High Sec)

Everybody comes to Jita, with it and Perimeter making up more than 70% of the trade value in New Eden in December.

Production

Industry is the engine of the economy, the thing that provides most of the hulls and modules that player use and lose every day.

December 2022 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

The red production line is down in December, and the data that drives that chart indicates that total production rang in at 102.98 trillion ISK in value, down from 138 trillion ISK in November.

But the regional data tells a different story, adding up to a total of Total 152.94 trillion in ISK value produced, up from 138.28 trillion in November.

That is quite a gap.  Production was either down almost 36 trillion ISK in December or up about 15 trillion ISK.  I am use to different data sets diverging, even having wide gaps in values, but having one set go down while the other goes up by that much… I don’t know which side to believe.

As for where things were produced, the region data gives the following as the top ten:

1. The Forge – 24.44 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 17.04 trillion (Imperium)
3. Vale of the Silent – 15.36 trillion (Fraternity)
4. Lonetrek – 7.72 trillion (High Sec)
5. The Citadel – 7.10 trillion (High Sec)
6. Heimatar – 6.87 trillion (High Sec)
7. Cloud Ring – 5.66 trillion (Imperium)
8. Fountain – 5.64 trillion (Imperium)
9. Tribute – 5.60 trillion (Fraternity)
10. Perrigen Falls – 5.06 trillion (PanFam)

Those numbers are all steady or up for December, coming from the regional stats.  It does feel like something is very much amiss between these two sets of data.

Destruction

Meanwhile, the data from that chart above shows destruction was at 36.92 trillion ISK, up from 31.96 trillion ISK in November.  This closely tracks the regional data, which pegged destruction at 38.8 trillion ISK, up from the 32.01 trillion reported in November.

So those two data sets seem in alignment.

The top ten regions for destruction were:

1. The Forge – 2.32 trillion (High Sec)
2. The Citadel – 2.08 trillion (High Sec)
3. Lonetrek – 1,69 trillion (High Sec)
4. Delve – 1.66 trillion (Imperium)
5. Sinq Laison – 1.41 trillion (High Sec)
6. Vale of the Silent – 1.38 trillion (Fraternity)
7. Placid – 1.34 trillion (Low Sec)
8. Domain – 1.10 trillion (High Sec)
9. Black Rise – 1.07 trillion (Low Sec)
10. Pochven – 989 billion (Triglavian)

The biggest change there is Pochven, which had been riding in the top half of the list for a while.  But since it was nerfed a bit as an income source, only the more dedicated triangle heads are hanging out and blowing each other up.

For where things are happening overall, we have the break out of the security band chart above.

December 2022 – Destruction by Security Band

While null sec is still the largest area of destruction, low sec continues to rise.

Mining

Then there is resource gathering, which is still having an inflationary impact on the economy according to the mineral price index as it continues its climb to challenge the previous all time high recorded during CCP’s economic starvation phase.

December 2022 – Economic Indices

While CCP has attempted to ease that by creating new ore, the price of Isogen and Nocxium still remain high, pushing up the price of just about everything, all the way down to T1 frigate hulls.

Once again, we have some discrepancy between data sets, though this might be more explicable.  The data from the prosecution/destruction/mined chart above indicates that the value of all things mined in December was 29.94 trillion ISK, up from 23.97 trillion in November.

However, the regional stats show a downturn in mining, hitting just 17.51 trillion ISK in value, down from 20.25 trillion recorded in November.  The first set of stats does at least include wormhole space, while the regional data doesn’t, so it should be larger.  Whether the gap should be that big and whether one should be trending up while the other down… once more, I do not know the answer to that one.

As for where mining happened, the regional data shows these as the top ten areas:

1. Delve – 1.05 trillion (Imperium)
2. Vale of the Silent 949 billion (Fraternity)
3. The Forge – 855 billion (High Sec)
4. The Kalevala Expanse – 795 billion (PanFam)
5. Metropolis – 670 billion (High Sec)
6. Lonetrek – 670 billion (High Sec)
7. Perrigen Falls – 654 billion (PanFam)
8. Domain – 607 billion (High Sec)
9. Sinq Laison – 567 billion (High Sec)
10. Malpais – 516 billion (PanFam)

High sec remains in the mix, but null sec is back at the top of the list.  I do wonder how much of that is happening in systems with blue stars, where the new ore spawns.

Loyalty Points

Finally, I just like to track loyalty points.  Loyalty points are earned by running missions for various factions.  In high sec there are a wide range of different corporations that you can run missions for.  Out in NPC null sec, and pockets of sov null, there are some very specific factions you earn loyalty points with that offer ship BPCs and implants as rewards.

The top ten regions for them were:

1. Venal – 1,363,505,939 (NPC Null – Gurristas)
2. Metropolis – 1,245,354,804 (High Sec)
3. Placid – 964,350,323 (Low Sec)
4. Lonetrek – 928,507,865 (High Sec)
5. Delve – 480,195,793 (Sov Null – Blood Raiders)
6. Stain – 456,100,603 (NPC Null – Sansha)
7. Curse – 333,542,273 (NPC Null – Angel Cartel)
8. Molden Heath – 325,317,103 (Low Sec)
9. Essence – 309,681,426 (High Sec)
10. Pure Blind – 305,661,070 (Sov Null – SOE and Mordu’s Legion)

Total LP earned was 9,122,942,360, down from 9,654,442,272 in November.  People were probably running the lucrative Winter Nexus event sites instead.

Related:

• CCP – December 2022 Monthly Economic Report
• CCP – December 2022 MER Forum Thread
• Reddit – December 2022 MER thread
• TAGN – Last month’s MER Post

Advertisement