The latest patch from CCP was deployed on Tranquility on February 11. As well as the expected Guardian’s Gala event and increased connections in Wormholes, there were some surprise additions. While the full notes can be found here (they will be updated throughout the month as further patches are made), there are some key changes to be aware of.
INN will have analysis of the largest of these changes shortly, so this is just an overview of what exactly is going on.
The Savior implants, which Arrendis wrote about when they were on SiSi recently, have appeared in game. These implants reduce subcap remote rep cycle and are available in the usual Low, Mid and High-grade variants. The Savior implants can be found in the Wormhole sites in the Guardian’s Gala.
The ‘Nirvana’ and ‘Amulet’ implants have been added to the Sansha and Bloodraider LP stores respectively.
Tiericide got round to the Remote Cap Transfer modules this time. Unlike tiericides of previous years, the three recent ones (remote armor, shield and cap modules respectively) have not had a major impact on the functionality of the modules beyond having to switch out which ones are used due to removal or name changes.
The user interface had some changes applied, most notably the currently infamous “Red Dot” which appears on your Inventory icon like an unread Discord message whenever a new item is placed in there from looting, buying from the market etc. PLEX is now placed directly into the PLEX Vault whenever it is purchased in-game instead of going to your hanger. PLEX purchased from CCP has appeared in the Vault for some time now.
There were updates to the number entry fields to add ‘thousand’ separators, which led to a few days of teething problems, especially for those using Euro formatting. These issues, which should now be resolved, involved contracts multiplying the price by 10 if “Estimated Price” was used, and the inability to copy and paste a price into the buy or sell window.
The Hypernet had some quality of life improvements made to it, although activity there has heavily dropped off since launch, and it is primarily now used for people wanting a shot at a cheap injector. The changes made include improved filtering (although the search method is unchanged so it still finds the letters anywhere in any item when applying filters), an orange colour has been applied for offers that are above average market price on the regional market, and the blueprint offers should now show whether they are a BPO or a BPC in the title of the offer.
The main changes in this patch are, of course, the mining changes. These comprise ‘step two’ out of three to five steps in the first phase of CCP’s mineral redistribution plan. The changes implemented on Tuesday impact every region of space apart from Wormholes.
High Sec saw the quantities of Pyroxeres, Omber and Kernite reduced. Low Sec took a hit to quantities of Veldspar, Scordite, Pyroxeres, Plagioclase, Jaspet, Hemorphite and Hedbergite. Nullsec miners will see fewer quantities of Scordite, Omber, Kernite, Jaspet, Hemorphite, Gneiss, Dark Ochre, Crokite and Arkonor. They will, however, see more Bistot in the belts.
Nullsec anomalies have had a increase in the respawn timers for Level 1, 2, and 3 anomalies, and miners will find that Crokite in these has been switched out with Kernite. Gneiss, Ochre and Spodumain quantities have been reduced as well.
How these changes play out over the long term depends on a number of factors, primarily what CCP do next in their mineral distribution changes. There is a depletion phase which we are in now, where they say they are gathering data, followed by a redistribution phase and finally a dynamic distribution will come into effect. Another factor playing into long-term pricing of minerals is how large the stockpiles are on hangar floors. We saw with the moon mining changes in Winter 2017 that there were massive stockpiles in player hangars which maintained pricing for over a year after the changes were implemented. Finally, how players react to the changes will impact on long-term pricing of both minerals and industrial products.
All-in-all there were a decent amount of changes this month, with more mining changes due to hit in the March patch. We will be keeping an eye on the MER over the coming months to see how these changes play out and will as always, keep you updated as the mineral distribution plan develops.
