Daily Archives: October 5, 2023

Crimson Harvest 2023 Arrives in EVE Online – Now Featuring Twitch Drops

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The annual spooky season space event, Crimson Harvest, went live in EVE Online this morning after downtime and is set to run all the way out until November 6th.

Crimson Harvest 2023

Crimson Harvest 2023 brings with it many of the old favorite things, along with something new… well… Twitch Drops.  CCP enabled Twitch Drops for EVE Online events at Fanfest and they’re going to ride that promotional option for all it is worth.

The Event

The main Crimson Harvest activity is in The Agency, which is probably pinned to your Neocom… the bar with all the icons.  However, in a typical CCP oversight, the hot new event is NOT featured on the front page of the UI.  Your only clue is that “new” tag on Encounters.

Where is my Crimson Harvest event?

If you click on Encounters you get the Crimson Harvest option.

The Crimson Harvest revealed

When you click on that you get to pick a side to support… Blood Raiders or Amarr… I know, pirates or slave holders, no safe choice there… and then you can track your progress as you do encounters, complete tasks, and earn points towards rewards… which look to be all SKINs this year.

When you want ALL the SKINs

Running the event sites brings its own rewards, but you might as well collect the points and get the SKINs while you’re at it.

PvP Trick or Treat Drops

As is tradition for the Crimson Harvest event, the drop rate for modules and cargo will be 90%, up from the default 50%, for PvP ship kills.  Pirates and suicide gankers rejoice!  Your ventures will be more profitable… even when killing ventures.

Login Rewards

The Crimson Harvest features 33 days of login rewards.  There are no slack days for this event.  You must log into the game and press the button every day starting today and ending on November 6th.

Crimson Harvest Login Rewards

On the flip side, the last nine days look to be filler days, with boosters that are nice but also easy enough to skip.  Most of the boosters I collect as login rewards expire before I use them.  The last big login reward is on day 25, which is 325K skill points if you’re redeeming on an Omega subscribed account.

As always, Omega subscribers get more than Alpha free to play players, though if you subscribe part way through the event you can go back and collect the rewards you missed.  You could probably wait until the last day, get that three day Weekend Fleet Pack Omega pack, and collect all those extra rewards.

Twitch Drops

And then there is the latest tool in CCP’s promotional tool box.  Once you hook up your Twitch account to your EVE Online account… and there are instructions for this in the announcement linked below… you go to a participating stream and watch until you hit the time.

Once you have hit the mark, you get a notification and have to click a button.  You can check up on what you have collected so far, or how your progress is going, on the Twitch drops inventory page. (That is a generic URL that should bring you to YOUR page.)

Twitch drops in progress

CCP has some streams listed that have drops enabled.  You can also usually find participating streams by searching on “EVE Online Drops” or something like that.  I, personally, will be putting Mind1 and his Twitch stream up in a tab in the background until I collect all the drops.

I am still not entirely clear if drops are worth the effort for a company.  I get that it incentivized streamers to stream your title and that gets your game more visibility on Twitch, and maybe that is enough.  But most games are fairly judicious in doing drops events.  CCP, on the other hand, looks like they are going to “TWITCH DROPS!!1” all the things.  We shall see.

Anyway, Crimson Harvest is up and going.  I already have my Twitch drop for the day earned.  Maybe I’ll put New World up on Twitch to earn those drops.  I might go back and play some day.

Oh, and there are also special sales in the web and in-game store.  But CCP will be promoting that in the launcher I am sure.

Related Links

Expansions Coming for EverQuest, EverQuest II, and LOTRO

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Something of a Friday bullet points post on Thursday with an expansion theme as we have had all sorts of updates on that front from Daybreak.

We’ll go from oldest to youngest title.  Or newest announcement to oldest.  Pick your sorting option so long as it goes in the order below.  All I know is that all the links are at the end of the post.

  • EverQuest – Laurion’s Song

EverQuest will be launching its 30th expansion this winter with Laurion’s Song.

Laurion’s Song

Laurion’s Song is not yet up for pre-order, so you still have some time to purchase last year’s Night of Shadows expansion at a discount.  That means, until the pre-orders show up, we just know what was in the Producer’s Letter, which includes reference to all the usual ingreadients of an EQ expansion… new zones, new raids, new missions, and a new feature called “Alternate Personas” that lets you swap classes.   I’ll have to read the full details when they arrive.

We do know that they will be raising the level cap to 125… and that pre-orders will be available next week on October 10th.

  • EverQuest II – Ballads of Zimara

Keeping with the musical theme, EverQuest II has announced its 20th expansion, which will be Ballads of Zimara.

Ballads of Zimara

As with the EQ expansion, many of the familiar ingredients… new lands, new quests, new raids, upgraded trade skills… as well as a level cap increase, bring it to 130.

Ballads of Zimara is currently available for pre-order and comes in the now traditional four tiers offered by Daybreak.

  • Standard Edition – $35
  • Collector’s Edition – $70
  • Premium Edition – $140
  • Family and Friends – $250

As always, that family and friends price seems a bit crazy, it does come with a series of in-game tradable items, including a full copy of the expansion.  So you’re buying the expansion more than once with that plan.  And, if nobody was buying that version Daybreak wouldn’t be offering it up again this year.

  • LOTRO – Corsairs of Umbar

And Lord of the Rings Online has its own expansion coming up, the Corsairs of Umbar.  Though that was announced previously, it is now up for pre-order on the LOTRO site.

Corsairs of Umbar

The expansion includes a level cap increase from 140 to 150 and the new Mariner class.  And, naturally, there will be new areas to explore, including the tropical city of Umbar.  I mean, they have palm trees on the splash screen!

The expansion is available for pre-order with the following options available.

  • Standard Edition – $40
  • Collector’s Edition – $80
  • Ultimate Fan Edition – $130

And, while you will have to wait for the expansion to drop on November 1st, you will get access to the new Mariner class right away, so you can start leveling up and learning how to play the Mariner.

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