Over the Christmas event period, CCP introduced the “Reindeer filaments”, which quickly became one of the most popular items released in years. Loosely styled after Abyssal PvE filaments, these Reindeer variants would instead instantly transport groups of players to a random point in NullSec space. The group sizes ranged from three to twenty-five players per filament jump, and the higher-end filaments would also focus the transfers on more populated Null regions, such as Delve, Geminate, and Esoteria, increasing the chances of these groups finding a fight.
Despite being a limited time event, the collective use of Reindeer filaments was into the tens of thousands of activations after two weeks, alongside an outpouring of comments from the community that could be summarised very briefly as ‘we love these things, they’re so much fun, please give us more CCP’. This recieved a quick response from Team Talos in their Christmas Update, which stated that “[the event] would not be the last [players] see of these”.
As of downtime today (February 27), the filaments have returned as “Needlejack filaments“. They come in two forms, “Signal” and “Noise” filaments, and each subset has a five, fifteen and twenty-five player variant for all the small gang you need. These items have been introduced to New Eden by the Outer Ring Excavations (ORE) faction, and can be acquired in one of two ways.
First up, the Noise filaments are more basic and can be found in the containers of many data and relic sites around the galaxy, so any explorers out there might find themselves with a great way to get out of that wormhole they’re exploring when their probes expire! The second variety, “Signal”, are higher-end filaments of the sort that will cannon you into more populated Null regions once more, and these are exclusively introduced to the game via the ORE Loyalty Point schemes.
In other news from the February 27 update to Tranquility comes news that the controversial High-Angle Weapon systems (more commonly known as HAWs) has now been restricted to use by dreadnoughts only. Previously, these high-tracking turrets and launchers could be fitted to dreadnoughts and titans, and they were considered by many to be particularly overbearing when fitted to titans especially. Alongside this change, the Siege module has had the additional HAW damage bonus of the module removed, reducing the potential damage of the weapons when fitted to sieged dreadnoughts. This change is part of CCP’s ongoing efforts to rebalance the capital ship situation in New Eden and provide all capital ships with a more clearly defined role.
Are you hyped for Yeeting Fleets again? Do you think the HAW changes are a positive thing, or are they disappointing to you? Let us know in the comments below!
