Three Fraternity Keepstars Down in Pure Blind

The fallout from the weekend clash, where more than 6K capsuleers clashed carried on into the week.  Fraternity chose to defend only their Keepstar in X47, which meant that the other three Keepstars advanced to the hull timer, the final step before destruction.  Meanwhile, B2 and the Imperium went back and set the armor timer for the X47 Keepstar again.

So, come the morning of the 15th, there were more timers to fight over.

Fraternity and its allies in PanFam were clearly split over what to do.  Previously, with four equal choices, X47 was their answer, it being their primary staging base, the location with the most member stuff to, if not lose, at least get sent awkwardly to asset safety.

This time, there were three final timers that would end up with structures being destroyed, which is never a good look, and their most valued structure at risk of being put into its final timer.  Fraternity was not helped by the fact that two of the timers, the X47 timer and the final timer for the 5ZXX-K Keepstar coincided.

The Imperium and B2 chose to exploit the issue by pushing some fleets into X47 to keep that timer in play while throwing the hard hitting Leshaks at the 5ZXX target, making the defenders choose between the two.  This let the Leshaks tear through a good chunk of the hull hit points.

A Leshak on the 5ZXX Keepstar

That image is from CCP who is, surprisingly, sitting up and taking notice of the war.

The defenders managed to win the timer in X47 and started to pile into 5ZXX in order to try and save that Keepstar, leading to another savage tidi slugfest.

Frat and PanFam even dropped capitals into the morass, and it was said to be touch and go because the server performance was so bad that the Entropic Disintegrators weapons that the Leshaks use would fail to cycle and have to be constantly restarted.  The real damage from a Leshak builds up over time, but that build up is cancelled if the weapon does not cycle, forcing it to start over again.

However, the Imperium had other choice on the field and were able to keep the timer from counting down long enough that the defenders, fearing they would end up losing the structure and be stuck in the middle of angry hostiles, began to extract.  This led to the Imperium and B2 tearing apart the defenders and they tried to get away.

The battle report shows that across the four systems in play the defenders lost more than a trillion ISK in ships and structures.

Battle Report Header

That battle report is broken out into four groups, with Team B representing Faternity, PanFam, and allies, and Team C representing the combined forces of the Imperium and the B2 Coalition.

More than 600 billion in losses were in the form of structures, as three Keepstars total were destroyed, the later pair with minimal defense.

Keepstars destroyed

The kill reports:

• 5ZXX-K
• ROIR-Y
• F-NMX6

Meanwhile, another two Fortizars were also destroyed, all with considerably less in losses for the attackers this time around. (Plus, Snuffed Out used this distraction to put PanFam’s Pochven Fortizar, the one we took a shot at back in January, into hull timer again.)

Unfortunately, I missed the whole thing, so this is a second hand report.  It wasn’t just that, once again, a timer was coming when I have no business being anything but asleep, and doubly so on a work night.  The weather was against me as well.  Tuesday saw a strong storm hit Nothrern California, dropping lots of much needed rain, but the high winds knocked down a tree that took out an electrical transmission tower that was key to my end of Silicon Valley.

So the power was out and isn’t expected to be restored until Saturday.  That explains the rather bland post I put up yesterday… I had a lot more I wanted to get into it… but the power was down and I ended up wrapping it up on my iPad tethered to my phone.  (Of course, that post got nine comments, which is a lot more than usual lately, proving once again what I want to write and what people like are clearly different things.)  Now I’m on a short trip for work, so in a motel room with power and Wi-Fi.

However, it wasn’t difficult to find sources.  There was a nice post by Kunmi on the Imperium internal news site. (Why it doesn’t get posted to INN I do not know, but there is some rumor that INN is still controlled by The Mittani and that limits it to a few Twitch shows.  I don’t know, it is just a rumor.)

And, of course, there was r/eve.  After the weekend battles partisans of Fraternity and PanFam were working hard to spin a narrative of a fatal loss by B2 and the Imperium.  Like we haven’t thrown away way more than 300 billion ISK on risky experiments before.  So the B2 and Imperium posters were ready to remind them of their smugness of just a few days ago and how they were promising their line members another big Goon feed.

All of which puts the focus back on X47.  That is the linchpin  of Fraternity’s position in Pure Blind.  Again, this isn’t the first time we’ve been in the north battling over a critical Keepstar in that system.  The question is if there is a way around it that can force Fraternity to fall back, or will they evacuate on their own if we keep putting pressure on it?

Addendum:

Images of the fight from CCP Aperture.

A video of some of the fight.

Another epic night in New Eden.

Setup for Conflict in Pure Blind

In Reavers Asher used to always talk about “putting money in the bank” for our preparatory operations.  We would spend evenings flying around, shooting structures, setting timers, and laying the groundwork for potential battles.

And, of course, having deployed to Fade to bring war to Fraternity and its WinterCo allies, we were clearly going to be out putting money in the bank on a lot of structures in Pure Blind and Tribute.  So I was right there and ready to go when Asher wanted to take out some fleets for that purpose.

There were a couple of fleets going out, but I went with the Leshak fleet that Asher was leading.  It is a sign of Asher’s reign that we’re getting some interesting and expensive doctrines in the mainstream of the Imperium.  Leshak’s were once something that were tolerated in a couple of fleet comps, then became a SIG specific fleet comp for structure bashes, and now it is open to everybody who has the ISK.

Leshak fleet on the way

I do not have that much ISK to spend, so I joined up on the logi side of things.  A tech II logistics cruiser is more in my price range.

The Leshak is fun to watch.  Triglavian ships have a single beam weapon that spools up damage over time.  Asher warped us in a wall formation to our first target, a Fraternity Keepstar, and I tried to capture what it looked like with a host of red beams reaching out to hit the structure.

Red beams reaching out

Unlike lasers, the beams are on all the time, so there is a convergence of them on the target all the time.  Because of the way EVE Online targeting works, you quickly get a sense of the points on a hull or structure that weapons are allowed to hit.

Or everybody is just aiming for that one spot

And the damage output from a wall of Leshaks is pretty fierce.  We burned through the shield timer on two Keepstars in record time.

We also spent a little bit of time reinforcing a Fortizar or two.

Brackets on, walls of battleships hitting a Fortizar

We spent some time traveling around to our targets, setting up timers that will come up deep in alarm clock time for those of us in the US.

Leshaks moving again

The locals did a little to respond to our efforts.  They were waylaying some stragglers who fell behind at one point and Vily was out with some bombers trying to catch us on gates with a bomb run.

Bombs landing as a fleet gates away

We made our rounds, did our shoots, then got a ride back towards home on a titan.

Sending us home

We happened to arrive back at the same time that some titans from The Initiative were landing back on our staging Keepstar as well.

Everybody landing between the uprights

They had been out doing their own reinforcement ops.  All told, we set armor timers on four Keepstars in Pure Blind along with a series of smaller structures.

But the big newsworth item that got pinged out for our op was that we somehow managed to ALL be aligned for a warp.

Asher lets everybody know about our achievement

This seems like trivia, and it certainly isn’t the FIRST perfect fleet warp I have been a part of, but when you have a full 255 member fleet with a battleship doctrine in time dilation… because pushing a few full fleets around Pure Blind was dragging the servers down… and having everybody actually paying attention and doing the right thing at the right time, that is a rare event.  There is almost always somebody who didn’t hear or had to step away or for whom the UI failed to register the align command.

Of course there was the ping and now a Reddit thread, which includes an image from the internal new post about the miracle warp.  It was an event.

Somebody also happened to catch a screen shot of our fleet ball in the Cloud Ring nebula looking like a menacing eye.

The Leshaks are watching

Now we just have to get back online for the next timers which will be around 10:00 UTC on the day most of the US leaps forward into Daylight Savings Time.  That means… it will be either a really early morning or a really late night for those of us in the US.

We will see who shows up to fight over the timers soon enough though.

Addendum:

Somebody put together a quick video of some of the structure shoot ops.

You can, if you look carefully and the quick camera moves haven’t made you ill, spot Asher leading the Leshaks, and a couple of the battleship walls including the one I have a screen shot of above around the Fortizar.

The Long March Northward to War

We’re going to go live in interesting times.

-Asher Elias, State of the Goonion

If you are one of those people who hate it when r/eve gets taken over by null sec bloc propaganda wars, I have some bad news for you; war were declared.

This is no surprise to those who were paying attention, and even some who were not.  As I noted last week, the Imperium had not been coy about what Saturday’s State of the Goonion was generally about, telling members to be ready for move ops immediately following the address, listing out doctrines that will be used, and generally ramping everybody up to be ready for war.

Asher, sounding somewhat subdued to getting over a cold, gave the traditional short address that has become the format of choice over the years.  His words were broadcast both on Mumble and over the Imperium News Twitch channel.

Waiting for Asher to speak

We are headed north to link up with B2 Coalition, which has been defending itself from Fraternity for many months now, to push back on WinterCo and PanFam.  Pretty much what I guessed last week, it being the obvious choice.  The war is being framed, once again, as a battle against the landlord alliances represented by WinterCo and PanFam.  Not a new spin, but a solid one.  The Imperium and B2 Coalition both stand against rental empires… we’ll ignore the former FI.RE alliances now in B2 that were landlords up until fairly recently… so that is the dividing line between the two factions.

The only detail left was where we would be staging.  For the answer to that it was time for a move op.

Move op fleets were put up shortly after the SotG ended, with three capital move fleets being announced.  Those quickly filled up… I managed to get in one… and two more were announced in order to find space for those headed north.

Unlike a lot of past move ops, where I have just gone out in a single sub cap, the advance notice of doctrines and such allowed me to get ready.  I had my Ninazu packed and fueled up, the fleet bay packed with sub cap hulls… this was so much easier due to changes that allow refit modules to be in the cargo of ships being carried… and I was in a move fleet and ready to go.

But these things take time.  We were pushing close to 1,500 ships through the pipe that leads from Delve up to Fade.  While that is only 18 jumps with Ansiblex connections… something you could do in about 20 minutes in an interceptor… getting all of us through in ships from shuttles and frigates all the way up to titans was going to take more time.

We waited for our fleets to be called so we could move by groups, making each hop and gate jump along the way in our turn.  As it so happened, the fleet I chose was the last of the group to be told to undock, but we were all ready when the word finally came.

Capitals undocking from the Keepstar

Then it was on to the well trod route between Delve and Fade, one I have taken many times in the last dozen years, such that I know the system names and can remember events that occurred in most of them.  The first jump was to the boarder between Delve and Fountain, and the through the regional gate.

Pushing through the regional gate to Fountain while sub caps cover

Then there are the traditional four systems in Fountain, Y-2ANO, KVN-36, C-N4OD, and J5A-IX.  In a sub cap that is quick set of systems.  With capital fleets it can been fairly rapid, because they can take the Ansiblex jump gates, so don’t have to worry about jump timers and such.  But when you have supers and titans, too large for the Ansiblex system, there is a jump and then a wait, and then another jump.

But the waits were not too long, the timers ran down quickly enough, and we were soon at the far end of Fountain, pushing through into Cloud Ring, the nebula for which it was named being obvious in the sky around us.

Last exit from Fountain

In Cloud Ring things get a little more difficult.  While the region is now held by an Imperium Alliance, Shadow Ultimatum, it is also an easy region to slip into and there are a couple of groups who love to camp the Ansiblex route, looking for easy prey.

My Ninazu making a warp seemingly alone

And, of course, the jump timers started getting longer and longer with every jump.  We had enough fleet mass to push through.

So many caps to draw that the Fortizar took a minute to appear

By then we were pretty close, though the last jump timer was about 30 minutes for many of us.  It wasn’t much longer until we were in Fade and landing at our destination, the last system in Face, on the boarder with both Pure Blind and Deklein, where an Imperium Keepstar was ready for us.  That puts us within easy reach of those two regions and Tribute as well.

The operational tempo has yet to really kick off, though I did jump into a fleet that reinforced a Fraternity Fortizar that was close by.  First shots fired and all of that.

Structure Shoots are our bread and butter

I did go along with a later move op to get an alt on a second account up north.  I activated a second account for the war and have my main combat alt up there now who can fly most of ships I brought up.  I just brought him up in a bomber in the sub cap fleet that was covering the next surge of capitals northward.

Once again at the sun

This became important because our staging system is within jump range of where Reavers had staged a few months back.  Not much came of that deployment, but I had moved ships up to that in an Apostle, so I wanted to get it and all of my ships there jumped to the new location and then have my alt to hand because I now had two capitals deployed and will eventually need him to fly one of them home.

So now I have two faxes and 20 sub caps deployed, and I don’t want to have to bring them all home.

So we are off and running.  We are settling in at the front and now two pairs of blocs, the major powers in null sec, are squared off in a somewhat more even match up when compared to World War Bee, where it was the Imperium versus just about everybody.

I am not sure what the war is going to be called, but we all seem to be ready for it.

There is a video of some of the first move op, with music and some of Asher’s address overlayed, that gives a sense of what a move op can be like.

Now to see how this plays out.  EVE had 31,329 on at prime time during the move op, the highest point since the launch of Uprising.  A good war could bring more life to the game… and destruction always stimulates the economy.

Related:

• Reddit – The top comment of this post is a good summary of the situation
• Reddit – Brave video about the war

Pax Dei offers a Vision of EVE Online in a Medieval Setting

Earlier this week a studio named Mainframe, staffed by some former CCP, Blizzard, and UbiSoft developers, revealed their first game.  Called Pax Dei it, as the headline says, it will attempt to bring the player interactions of EVE Online into a medieval setting.

Pax Dei with farms and fields

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… because that has been the premise of a few titles up to now, including Crowfall and Albion Online.

Okay, that is unfair, but it was the first place my thoughts went when I first saw this announcement… that and do we need another PvP gank box, which is what trying to turn New Eden into a fantasy setting tends to yield? (I am working on a theory about how being able to escape more easily in EVE Online makes it feel less oppressive that avatar PvP where you tend to be stuck… but I’ll get to that on another day.)

However, their announcement is surprisingly unhyped about the whole PvP aspect of the game. PvP is planned to be opt-in, as opposed to the usual game killing full loot PvP that such titles often pursue.  Instead it will focus on things that make it some more like an open world survival title, perhaps more along the lines of what New World started out looking to be or what Valheim does, but on a larger scale.

Not having the place kick off as a murder simulator from the moment you log in actually makes it sound somewhat interesting.  This grabs me in a way that some of the other “let’s make fantasy EVE” projects have completely failed at.

But I also have a reasonably reliable track record for liking these sorts of sims.

Of course, I still have questions.  The terms “sandbox” and “player driven economy” get tossed around a lot and there are many open questions in my mind.  The whole player drive economy makes me go “hrmmm…” due to how the lack of destruction often impedes MMO economies leading to massive wealth accumulation and the price inflation that goes along with it.

But the game has just been announced, so there is time to get to all of that.  There is even a trailer which, honestly, doesn’t say much either.

It does look pretty however.

Anyway, I have put this on my list to watch and pipped the announcement channel from their Discord server into the MMO News channel of the TAGN Discord.  I think three people show up there.

Related:

• Mainframe – Pax Dei web site
• Mainframe – Pax Dei Discord server
• Mainframe – Studio web site
• Steam – Pax Dei store page
• PC Gamer – Former EVE Online developers announce fantasy sandbox MMO Pax Dei
• MMO Games – Pax Dei – An Exciting New Fantasy MMO From CCP and Blizzard Devs

Fortizar Fight in a Wine Dark Pochven

Pochven is the region created at the end of the Triglavian when 27 systems were ripped out of empire space, including Niarja, a key system in the old shape of high sec shipping.  There was a big fight over that system before it fell.

The map triangle

That is a nice logical map of Pochven.  Actually in the star map it is a little more confused.

The route between the stars in the new region

Pochven is like wormhole space, in that you cannot get there via gates and local chat only displays those who actively say something, and like null sec space in that it is a region with gates between its systems where there is no CONCORD or other empire space rules.

I’ve been to Pochven three times.  The first time was when the Triglavian change over took place.  It was the creation of Pochven.  I Ieft a character there in a ship that was blown up not too much later due to carelessness.

The second time was a few weeks back.  I was fiddling with the Imperium wormhole tracking app and was out in my Buzzard scanning down holes and just traveling around to see what I could find when I decided I wanted to see how to get to Pochven.  Most people use special filaments to get there, but I didn’t have any of those and thought I remember something about wormholes being used to get there.

I ended up finding the Pochven Entry Guide, a web site put together by a couple of people, including Debes Sparre (who has left a comment or two here and who I met in person at EVE Vegas) that helped guide me and my Buzzard into the region.

A Buzzard in Pochven

But I didn’t have anything to do there besides explore, so I left and found my way back to Delve via other wormhole connections.  I had learned I could get there, get back, and that the whole place was dark… much darker than null sec… and tinted red, just the way the Triglavians like it I guess.

And the third time, well that was last week and it was for a structure fight.  Pandemic Horde has a Fortizar in Skarkon, one of the Pochven systems, and a ping went out alerting us to be ready to go to a fight over the armor timer.

A Fortizar in the dark red space of Pochven

Pochven is also special in that you can’t drop structures there.  The only player structures in the region are legacy ones, deployed before Pochven was formed.  So killing this structure would be kind of a big deal.  So I was in for that sort of event.

We formed up in 1DQ1-A in Delve.  I ended up in Mike Flood’s fleet, which was our Sacrilege doctrine.  I nearly jumped out to join up when Asher put up a Stormbringer fleet, but decided to stick with the tough HACs.  (Also, they were asking people not to jump ship.)  So we had 250 people in fleet ready to go, we just had to get there.

Getting there was a task in and of itself.

The easiest way into Pochven is filaments, but you can’t filament a 250 ship fleet.  So we had to break up into fleets of 15 players each, fly off into a safe because you cannot be close to a structure or a celestial when you filament, and teleported into Pochven.  We landed in Senda, which happened to be where I ended up in my Buzzard a few weeks back.  Then the fleets had to reform and travel to Skarkon.

Sacs taking a Trig gate in Pochven

We were being joined by some other parties, like Brave and WE FORM BL0B, who were also keen to see if we could bring down Horde’s special Fortizar.  Because of this we had to be careful who we shot.  As it turned out, our FC would be calling enough targets to keep us busy so we didn’t have a lot of time to get into trouble shooting temporary allies by mistake.

The timer counted down and we were soon pretty heavily engaged with Horde and their allies.  While they brought a lot of people to defend this valuable asset, they also called in friends, so it was a fairly large fight.  Of course, there being wormhole style local means I can’t tell you how many people were in the system at any given time, but the battle report, which I will link later, put the participant count at 1,485.

Sacs flying across the battlefield

For us it was quite a busy time.  The battle only lasted a couple of hours, which was a good thing on a weekday evening, but we made the most of it.  Mike led us against a Horde Sleipner fleet that seemed to pose the greatest risk to us.

Following the FC through the wine dark sky

We were locking up targets, firing a single volley, then moving on to the next, having enough firepower to pop ships that way.

We went on like that for quite a while, not sustaining much in losses as the many fleets on the field sought their own targets.  The Stormbringers seems to drawn more attention to us, being annoying pests with their bouncing lighting firepower and their expensive hulls.  Eventually though we attracted enough attention to start taking some hits.

A Sac blowing up in the middle of the formation

Horde has some bombers around and they lined up on us and hit us with electron bombs, which drained our capacitors, turning off our armor hardeners, our tracking disruptors (which we had been harassing the Horde Paladin fleet with), and our MWDs, which made us slower and more vulnerable.  Losses began to mount.

Another explosion in the fleet

The fleets were so intent on each other that we ignored the structure after a while, each side concentrating on blowing up ships.

In the end, the Fortizar repaired itself.  Horde won the armor timer.  Their structure was preserved this time around.

Meanwhile, we hit a point where the odds were growing against us.  Getting back into the fight was easy for our foes… or at least the ones that remembered to set their home in the Fortizar.  We had to make our way back from Delve.  And it was late and the objective had been decided, so people started calling it a night.

We set about trying to disengage, which can be a tricky thing to do.  Getting away can be fraught with danger, and I have been on fleets that have hazed a retreating foe, inflicting more losses every time they made a mistake.

With the help of some sacrificial interdictors, we managed to get some distance from the enemy and get ourselves to a rally point.

Gating away from the fight

Then came the chore of getting back home.  You can filament straight TO Pochven, but when you filament out you go where the filament takes you, which for us wasn’t going to be anywhere close to Delve.

I figured, but Buzzard bravado still lingering, that if somebody could just get us to the hole out of Senda I could find my way home.  But we had some exit filaments, which meant breaking up into 15 ship fleets again and finding the right system in Pochven for the optimum jump out.

Our group got out okay, though we were delayed because the FC left our filament in the station where it had been traded to him.  People were already forming up into groups, taking a path up through Cloud Ring to the Eye of Terror Ansiblex highway which would lead them home to Delve.

Feeling a bit left behind, I got out the Imperium wormhole tracking app again and found the that there was a Thera hole not too far away and another that would drop me in Aridia, not too far from home.  So I ran that route, in the main fleet but taking a different path.  That cut off enough jumps that I ended up catching up to them back in Delve as they were arriving.  I was home again, ship intact, only minus some ammunition and most of my drones.  That happens.

The fight was one of those battles that both sides enjoy, somewhat even in outcome, but with enough kills that everybody felt like they got a piece.  Somebody put together a battle report that separated out the two main parties from the third party locals who showed up.

Battle Report Header

The third parties are Team A, we are Team B, and the defenders Team C.   A pretty close fight.  I ended up on another 52 kill mails according to zKillboard.  Somebody also posted a video of the battle, if you want a closer look at the action from the PanFam side of things

 

After the fight Asher, who had led the fleet that set the timer initially, said we would be headed back.  So we shall see if I get into Pochven for a fourth time.

Related:

• Reddit – Battle Report and fight description
• Reddit – Video post and fight details

Honest Game Trailers does Pokemon Violet and Scarlet

There is now a pretty long tradition of Honest Game Trailers doing videos about the latest Pokemon title, with a review of the game and then a listing out of all of the Pokemon available in the title with alternate names.  So here we are again, now featuring Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.

This video is also of interest to be because I was given a copy of Pokemon Scarlet for Christmas and I have been wondering whether I should start playing.

Pokemon Scarlet & Violet

On the one hand, I do have a long history with Pokemon titles by this point.  I may have started in the Nintendo DS era with Pokemon Diamond & Pearl, but I have played most everything since then and have even gone back and played some of the original titles in emulated mode from Nintendo.

On the other hand, I don’t like playing games on the Switch Lite.  There are a number of reasons for that, but I have never really enjoyed the controller with a screen in the middle concept.  I was much more at home with the old DS/3DS dual screen hardware format which is now history.

I could managed it for the remake of Diamond & Pearl, but never really got very far with Sword & Shield or Pokemon Legends: Arceus.

It is, of course, quite possible that the Switch Lite isn’t the problem, that the series evolving, which it needs to do to stay at least a bit fresh with every iteration, has left me behind.  I do have something of a fondness for titles of a certain era and it is always a bit strange when I play something new and it actually appeals to me.

Anyway, I enjoyed the video and it made me think again about playing, but I have not yet taken the plunge.

My Year in EVE Online 2022

It has become something of a tradition for CCP to offer up some sort of summation of player activity at year’s end.  For the last three years they have done it in video form, which has been a pretty cool end of year feature, enough so that I saved off mine and uploaded them to my YouTube channel in order to preserve them.

This year though, the whole video thing didn’t make it into the budget I guess, because we got am email summary instead.  Still, that is more than I get from other titles most years.

So what did CCP tell me about my time in 2022?

2022 is what we get

Well, to start with, they went for a single character rather than trying to tie everything together in accounts.  They also only looked at characters on accounts that were Omega somewhat recently, so I only got a report on my main and the one account that got some Omega time when I used the ability to refer myself to some skill points.  I could have been more strategic with that, but whatever.

So, the totals for Wilhelm Arcturus:

• HOURS PLAYED: 158
• MOST FLOWN: Megathron

The hours lines up with my own count from ManicTime.  ManicTime shows fewer hours, but EVE Online is one of those games you spend time tabbed out of to look up things on the web… or to watch YouTube when you’re waiting for something to happen.

That total is a lot less than 2021 where my summary reported that I spent 982 hours just in fleets.  That was largely the M2-XFE hell camp, and the count was across multiple characters, but still, that is quite a gap.

Megathron as my most flown ship… maybe?  It is hard to say, but I guess we had those out during the early campaign against FI.RE.

• SYSTEMS VISITED: 191
• STARGATE JUMPS: 553
• WORMHOLE SYSTEMS VISITED: 2

Again, that is way down from 2021 when I recorded 539 systems visited and 1,860 stargate jumps.  But there was no null sec-wide war going on in 2022.  There was no count of wormhole systems visited last time, but I am sure it was more than 2.

Then there is combat.

• KILLS: 6
• RATS KILLED: 34
• MOST EXPENSIVE KILL: 366,521,129
• ISK DESTROYED: 1,008,530,672

The total number of kills is way, way down relative to 2021, where I was on 902 kill mails.  I know that we are not comparing apples and oranges here because even zKillboard, which doesn’t catch everything, says I was on about 250 kill mails in 2022.

The difference is that for 2022 CCP decided to only count the kills where I got the final blow.  And, if I compare that number to the list of final blows shown in game, that totals out to 6.

My in-game total for 2022

At least I think those are the six.  It depends on when they cut off the date for this report, something not mentioned, though I suspect it was later than the November 30th cut off they did last year.

As for why only six, when you fly in larger fleets it can be pretty rare to get the final blow while still getting yourself on a lot of kill mails.

As for the most expensive kill, they don’t say what it is, but I suspect it was that Tengu in Feythabolis, and I guess that all six of those add up to 1 billion.  I could look that up on zKillboard, but the numbers might not match and I am kind of lazy.

In 2021 though my total killed was a bit over 2 trillion, though as I noted, that count included all kill mails I was on rather than just final blows.

Ship kills and value back in 2021

My top value kill mail in 2021 was a titan that rang in at over 100 billion ISK.

There was also something about a nemesis.  CCP’s attempt to build some story or tension in to the stats.  However, my nemesis and I only crossed paths once, the kill being that last one on the screen shot of final blows I included above.  Not much of an adversarial relationship in that.

And the final stats are for market activity.

• MARKET TRANSACTIONS: 324
• VALUE OF SALES: 4,797,421,823
• NET ISK GAINED: 4,641,194,826

I am trying to remember what I might have sold that could have added up to almost 5 billion ISK… though it does just say “market transactions.”  However, since the net ISK gain was 4.6 billion, it has to be sales.  I think I sold some PLEX I had on me… maybe 100 or so… when we had the big PLEX spike at the end of September.

But the in game transaction record doesn’t go back that far and all I can recall selling was a few ships left over from the war and my regular Planetary Industry output.  The latter, mostly just mechanical parts, can add up to 400 million a month if I am diligent, so maybe that was it.

And that is about it.  It was a quiet year in New Eden for me… and for others.  There were no huge wars, though there are always some conflicts going on in null sec somewhere, and the economy was in a bad state for much of the year.  Things are better now, but it took a while to get there.

CCP did produce a video however, and put together a dev blog about 2022, that wraps up the more meta achievements of the community in 2022.

As with things of this sort, I do find some of the numbers meaningless without any context.  It is cool that, for example, 810 trillion ISK in value was destroyed in game in 2022.  But is that more than usual?  Less than usual?  And is 9 million “visits to Jita” down from past years or a new record?  I suspect I know, but I just get a bit irked when people trot out numbers without any anchor to what they really mean.

One slide that was pretty funny was the most popular ships in null sec based on the number of undocks.

We’re all a bunch of krabs out here

The Epithal is the planetary commodity hauling industrial.  Most of my characters have at least one of those.  The Hulk is the champion mining ship for throughput, especially if you have a Rorqual boosting your mining op.  And then there is the Ishtar, which has fallen out of favor as a fleet doctrine heavy assault cruiser, but which remains the AFK anomaly ratting ship of choice for many due to tech II materials being cheap, making it a hull that is not too expensive to replace if you get caught.

A few years ago you would get mocked for ratting in a spendy ship like an Ishtar when the Myrmidon and the Dominix.  Then CCP threw the economy into disarray and while Myrms are still a cheap ratting staple, the Dominix, a tech I battleship, is too expensive to run for ratting.

Related:

• CCP – 2022 Year in EVE dev blog
• CCP – Forum Post: What to do if you did not get your summary
• Reddit – The discussion thread about the dev blog
• Reddit – The discussion thread about the video
• TAGN – My Year in EVE 2021
• TAGN – My Year in EVE 2020
• TAGN – My Year in EVE 2019

Honest Game Trailers takes on Wrath of the Lich King Classic

We’ve been at Wrath of the Lich King Classic for… wow, has it been two months already?  It doesn’t feel like that long at all.

The classic comes to classic

Of course, anything that Blizzard does it news, so naturally Honest Game Trailers got out there and took a run at it, and I was eager to see where they went.

And… I feel a little called out by that video.  I mean, I laughed, but I also went, “hrmmmmm.”

I am on record here as saying how happy I am with how well my classes play and the story and seeing Arthas in Dragonblight and following his tale and that I am on board with achievements again despite having done them all before.

Look, I am down with playing through the MMO version of Warcraft III

And then the video hits me with everything is OP and too easy and achievements and the fact that holy paladins don’t completely suck anymore… and we have a holy paladin as our group healer.

But, you know what?  I don’t care.  I am fourteen years older, slower, and less capable, so the whole thing is just about my speed.  I am happy playing Wrath Classic.  I am glad I play a protection paladin tank that is pretty much all about AOE’ing all the things… because that is what makes the damage meter pop, and that is what it is all about, right?

You kids, get off my lawn.  I’m having fun here!

Mistlands Available for Testing in Valheim

It has been almost two years since Valheim showed up and became a minor sensation, and in that time there has always been the promise of more biomes and, thus, more vertical progress to come.

Valheim on Steam

The Valheim team hasn’t been idle and they have provided quite a few good updates to the game since launch.  They also launched the game on XBox.  But game play has stopped in the plains since the first day it was available to us, and the hunger for MORE content in the game is real.

And the next biome on the list has been the Mistlands.

We’ve had hints and images of a possible future for that biome, but nothing really to raise much beyond curiosity until last week.  Last week we got a Mistlands game play trailer on YouTube, with a timer on it set to become available today.  And so we have it, our first minute or so glimpse into the new biome.

But that is not all.

In addition to that short video peak, the new biome is now available for public test.  There is an announcement about what it contains and how to access it.

Highlights of the update include:

• New biome – Mistlands:
  • New mechanics
  • 9 new creatures + Mistlands boss
  • More than 20 new crafting materials
  • 2 new crafting stations, 3 crafting station extensions, and 3 other resource/crafting constructions
  • 15 new food items
  • 3 new potions
  • More than 25 new craftable items (weapons, armours & tools)
  • More than 35 new building/furniture pieces for building, decorating and defending your base
  • New type of dungeon
  • New lore stones
  • New dreams
  • New music

Some of that is unremarkable when listed out, things that you expect to find whenever you advance to the next biome in the game.  That is the progress template for the game.

What those items are, how they look, how you use them, and what the new biome will be like, that is the exciting bit.

Of course, if you stop and wonder what a “public test” of content in an “early access” game entails, you might start to doubt words have meaning anymore… so maybe don’t do that.

And remember the caveat as to how games like Valheim work with content updates.  Already explored areas will not generate the new content.  Also, be wary of mods.

An important thing to note is that the Mistlands biome will only generate in areas you have not yet discovered. Therefore, if you have explored a lot of your world, you might be better off starting a new one in order to actually be able to travel to the Mistlands. As per usual, mods will also most likely cause the game not to launch, as they are only compatible with the Live version of the game. If you have mods, you will either need to remove them or wait for the mod to be updated before you can play.

As for diving in, our group is pretty invested in Wrath of the Lich King Classic, so we are not in a rush to find something new to play.  We can wait for the Mistlands update to hit the main release of Valheim.  When we need another break from Azeroth, it will likely be there waiting for us, and those who rushed in early will have found the bugs for us!

A Week before the Uprising Expansion Launch CCP Reveals the Full List of New Ships

As has been often repeated, one thing EVE Online players like in their internet spaceship game is new spaceships.  It is one of the direct, positive ways that CCP can change, or at least shake up, the meta. (As opposed to wielding the nerf bat over and over.)

With the coming Uprising expansion, launching on November 8th, we are getting 16 new ships.

Uprising – Coming Soon

Or, new-ish ships, really.  CCP has chosen to expand on the list of Navy/Fleet issue hulls available in the game.  Those are more potent versions of standard hulls, costing more to produce and requiring faction loyalty points to obtain the blueprints.

Information about the frigates and has been out and about for a while now, and the battlecruisers were easy enough to guess at due to them being in the Uprising graphic above.  The destroyers were a new turn.

But the dreadnoughts… well, that is going to be interesting.  Dreads are the staple of capital warfare, usually the first escalation in a fight and often sacrificed in order to bring down super captials.  The effect on these new Navy/Fleet versions on the capital meta will be interesting to watch.

The Uprising graphic with the dreads revealed

CCP has a video highlighting the dreads and destroyers.

The full list of ships, broken out by hull class, coming with uprising:

• FRIGATES
  • Probe Fleet Issue
  • Heron Navy Issue
  • Magnate Navy Issue
  • Imicus Navy Issue
• DESTROYERS
  • Thrasher Fleet Issue
  • Cormorant Navy Issue
  • Coercer Navy Issue
  • Catalyst Navy Issue
• BATTLECRUISERS
  • Cyclone Fleet Issue
  • Ferox Navy Issue
  • Prophecy Navy Issue
  • Myrmidon Navy Issue
• DREADNOUGHTS
  • Naglfar Fleet Issue
  • Phoenix Navy Issue
  • Revelation Navy Issue
  • Moros Navy Issue

Related:

• CCP – Uprising – Landing 8 November
• CCP – Uprising – A Major New Expansion
• CCP – Fittings Thread in the Forums