Enemies of The Imperium destroyed nearly 120 Excavator mining drones in Delve on January 7, which is the highest one-day total in the region for at least a month.
The drones are used to churn out massive amounts of ore by Eve Online’s largest mining ship, the Rorqual. At the time of writing, Excavators are valued at about 1.3 billion ISK inside the high-sec trade hub of Jita.
Most of the kills can be attributed to a handful of pilots from Pandemic Legion, who used stealth bombers with shrapnel bombs to eviscerate the expensive drones. The day’s tally was also bolstered by other hunters, including The Free Folk, a corporation that has camped Goonswarm Federation systems in recent weeks and focused on drones. Curiously, three drones were destroyed by Blood Raider NPCs, indicating a lack of attention from some Goonswarm pilots.
Various null-sec entities have placed a bounty on Excavator drones in recent weeks. The onslaught has helped drive the price upward nearly 32 percent in just one month. Despite these bounties often being spread across multiple regions, just 17 Excavator mining drones were destroyed outside of Delve on the same day.
