The humble ‘cerebral booster’ has come a long way from its first iteration as a training booster for low skill point characters to the versions we get almost every month now to feed our addiction for faster skill training. The current iteration, not including bonuses from skills, provide:
+6 for 24 hours
+10 for 24 hours
+12 for 24 hours
+10 for 72 hours
At level 5 Biology this doubles the time, reducing the need for as many boosters and giving players the option to use an extended booster just before downtime on the last day to maximize skill training.
The latest Live event giving boosters is the Crimson Harvest, which started October 23rd and runs until November 5th. This event pits players against the Blood Raiders as they carry out mining operations and experiments on new boosters. Luckily for you, your objective is to assault the sites, kill the Blood Raiders and leave with new boosters, blueprints, and skins. Yes, you read that right, the boosters don’t drop ready to eat: for this event you need to build them using BPCs for all 4 types. Each booster needs the same materials, apart from a new refined mineral in amount which vary per booster type. As you might have guessed it, this means that mining is very much part of this event and apparently yes, you can use your Rorqual – but this may be subject to change.
The event consists of two sites: the gauntlet, and the mining fields. The gauntlet is the tried and tested format of sites with a continuous wave of rats warping until the boss spawns. Upon his death the site despawns and reappears elsewhere in the system soon after. These sites are just like the other events sites before it and allow any ship to warp in. In highsec they will likely be mainly run by Gilas and other PVE ships. Being an open site as well, players can fight over the boss loot.
The new mining fields site is gated, with three containers in a small asteroid field about 100km long from the warp in point. To trigger the spawn, players blow up the silos, which drop a small amount of the new material needed for booster construction. This also triggers a spawn of Blood Raiders. If you’re confident, you can blow up the three containers and then headshot the boss, using an MTU to scoop up the loot. Again, the standard passive Gila fits work fine but the mining field sites are designed more to be mined to provide the minerals needed.
The Agency rewards have 3 quest lines:
10 points for killing 10 blood raiders
10 points for mining 500 units of ore
10 points for killing the boss (scaling up from killing one boss to two, three, etc.)
It should be noted that the quests don’t roll over, so if you are at 490/500 for mining and then mine 50 units, you will complete the quest and make no progress on the new quest. As soon as you can claim the reward you should do so.
The Agency rewards are the four “Deathglow” skins and a booster, with the Avatar skin as the 1,000 point payout.
To make the most of the mining sites as well as being able to complete the sites if the Blood Raiders have not been killed, my recommendation for the site is a special one:
[Orca, Orca] Damage Control IIReinforced Bulkheads II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Booster II
500MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
EM Ward Amplifier II
Thermal Dissipation Amplifier II
Shield Command Burst II
Drone Link Augmentor II
Drone Link Augmentor II
Small Tractor Beam II
Mining Foreman Burst II
Mining Foreman Burst II
Large Ancillary Current Router I
Large Core Defense Field Extender II
Large Core Defense Field Extender II
Mining Drone II x5
Praetor II x4
Acolyte II x2
Infiltrator II x2
Shield Extension Charge x300
Mining Laser Field Enhancement Charge x300
Mining Laser Optimization Charge x300
The fit is strong enough to tank and kill the rats as well as being able to mine all the ore in the site and fit it within the hull. The rigs can be downgraded to T1. The boosters allow you to boost any fellow miners that you bring in to help mine the site.
A week into the event we’ve experienced a few interesting things. To start off, the rats dropped Blood Raider loot like candy. Players were earning around 150m of loot in 10 mins. This caused a major crash in the market as buy orders were completed in major trade hubs before players were able to adjust their orders. This allowed for the early adopters to earn an extreme level of ISK in the first few hours. The drop rate was later heavily nerfed to less than the cost of ammo but fixed itself after downtime and is operating at the intended levels.
Also, on the first day of the event, players were unable to refine the ore. A fix was put in place to update the client and fix this the following downtime, and this meant that boosters where hard to produce in the first 24 hours, allowing those who farmed the sites for the refined ore to produce some of the limited boosters that made the market in the first 24 hours.
The issue about the loot drop tables was a known issue on the test server SISI for weeks before the event. That this then made it to the live server and then had to be hot-fixed shows a lack of attention to quality. But it’s a hard balancing act. CCP does not want players to gain a full understanding of events before launch, while also making sure that features have been tested and bugs are found and addressed before launch.
During Eve Vegas it was hinted that we are due another event in November. I’m hoping that any issues found on SISI are addressed and fixed before launch.
