As of downtime today the Interstellar Convergence is over, Daleks have been banished from New Eden once more, and the cluster has moved on to its usual daily business.
I suppose CCP can declare “op success” when it comes to me, as I logged in and ran through most of the event.
As I mentioned at the start of the event, I took a high sec PI alt on my only subscribed account to use. I had considered running an alpha clone as Yadot did. I actually have an unsubscribed account with two fully trained up scanning characters on it. But the restrictions on skill levels made that somewhat moot. I could get to level 3 skills on an untrained character pretty quickly.
The reason I considered Alpha… and even thought about a fresh character… was CCP asserting that at least some of the event was going to be accessible by new players.
This event includes significant elements designed to be accessible for new players
That is a theoretically true statement, but unlikely in the extreme. A new player entering the game and facing the training that CCP suggested one might need in order to participate would likely still be working on skills today… unless, of course, they bought one of the event packs that offered up skill points. But I suspect that was the point.
Anyway, I had a high sec alt with a million unallocated skill points, which I dumped into the suggested training plans in order to get him viable for scanning and manufacturing as well as the T1 Abyssal Caracal fit that was on the suggested list.
I ran ran the scanning and hacking missions from the career agent, which netted me a free Heron, probes, and a launcher, along with the relic analyzer I would need.
I got out there scanning right away and eventually found some of the event sites. I heard that they were much more plentiful in low sec, but I had no great ambition to provide easy kill mails for PvP prowlers, so I stuck in safer space. Jumping a few more systems is less inconvenient than having to go buy a new ship, as well as being considerably cheaper.
How did I do?
I finished the event, which proves that it was sticky enough, rewarding enough, or easy enough to keep me going.
I was actually going to stop at 800 because that was when the last event SKIN was awarded, but I was already out doing some filaments, so I carried on. Between that and cleaning up my hangar after I was done, I managed to get to 930 points, so once CCP fixed the event progression, it was very doable.
I also made some money.
My character started with 140 million ISK in the bank and ended up with 292 million ISK on hand, plus a fit T1 Abyssal Caracal in my hangar, worth approximately 24 million ISK.
Like all such events, the market for items was very pricey early on, then dropped dramatically as inventory flooded the market. My biggest sales score was a pair of Mysterious Filaments, which sold for a combined $80 million ISK in the early days of the event. Both of those sales were to fulfill event challenges, which required you to sell a filament. You could get maybe $30 million for two at the end, and now they have no value.
Once I was done with the event I emptied my hangar, selling off everything related to the event save for t special edition commodities. Most of the boosters were sitting in Jita 4-4 on a character that wouldn’t use them, and they all expire in a month, so I mass sold them for whatever somebody was willing to pay.
By the way, right now is the time to go to Jita and buy any of the event SKINs you want. They will never be cheaper than they are right now. I say thing having already gone shopping. You can probably also find all the collectible items for cheap now as well. I found the following during the event:
- Bag of Gelatinized Confectionery
- Biomechanical Armor Fragment
- Chrologically Curious Blue Diary
- Extendable Plunger Tool
- Fragment Inscribed with Odd Circular Text
- Inactive Sonic Multitool
- Neutron Flow Polarity Reverser
- Scale Model of a Blue Box
- Snow Globe with Peculiar Architecture
Those will no doubt rattle around in my hangar to be looked at occasionally until the game shuts down.
As for the mechanics of the event… well… it was very much an EVE Online event. It wasn’t bad, and clearly I finished it all, but it wasn’t the 2018 Crimson Harvest event, which I will declare to be the best event ever for a variety of reasons, including accessibility and rewards.
As I said when the event kicked off, if you enjoy the scanning and hacking game, this was probably a fun event. If you don’t like those aspects of the game, then it was never going to be a winner.
Oh, and if you were trying to find regular relic sites while the event was running, RIP your efforts as event relic sites probably spammed your efforts.
The high point was probably the graphics. The convergence pockets were stunning.
And the combat sites over Gallifrey were even more vibrant.
And I did see and shoot actual Daleks.
Combat itself was fine I suppose. The T1 Abyssal Caracal fit worked well enough for the level 1 combat sites, but I was quickly eaten alive in a T2 site with that same fit.
I am not into the fitting aspect of the game, so I left T2 sites alone after that. But I still came out ahead even losing a Caracal, insurance working out well enough. I did continue to run T1s in a second Caracal I bought when the event challenges were to apply so much damage to a saucer or some sue.
As for the how and they why of the event, CCP had an AMA over on Whovian Reddit to explain the event and how it came to be. It feels like the plan was less to attract players, new or old, and more just to do something cool.
Anyway, the event is done. We’ll see what else they can come up with.