Revenant: Expansion Notes

Hello expansion enjoyers!

The Revenant expansion is arriving next week at 11:00 UTC 12 November! As has become tradition now, we are delivering the patch notes early so you can absorb everything that's coming. We invite you to join the player discussion about the content of this release on the EVE Online Discord and the EVE Online Forums.

Expansion Notes 22.02 - EVE Online: Revenant

Mercenary Dens

The mercenary den is a brand-new deployable structure anchorable at skyhooks on temperate planets. Blueprints to build the mercenary den can be purchased in Zarzakh from the market in the Fulcrum. To deploy one, you’ll need to train the new mercenary den management skill, which allows a character to control 1 mercenary den per level, for a total of 5 per character with max skills. Only 1 mercenary den can be at the same skyhook at a time.

Once a mercenary den has been successfully placed, it will passively generate encrypted infomorphs every hour. These items can either be sold on the market to other players or taken to Zarzakh to exchange for rewards with the deathless item traders. Those include the new deathless ships, breacher pod launchers, breacher pods, skillbooks and exclusive SKINR components.

Mercenary dens can only be accessed by the character which owns them; however, they are vulnerable to attack. Mercenary dens have a single 24h reinforcement timer with a 6-hour jitter which the owner has no control over. While reinforced, mercenary dens will continue to produce infomorphs, but they won’t be able to be removed from the mercenary den until it leaves reinforced mode and has been repaired above 50% shields. Note that it automatically regenerates shields over a long time if no one comes to finish it off, but it can also be manually repaired to full. If a mercenary den is destroyed, it has a 50% chance to drop the encrypted infomorphs inside.

Additional Features coming after Revenant - Planned for 26 November

Mercenary Tactical Operations (MTOs)

• Mercenary dens will occasionally give their owners the opportunity to run MTOs, which are similar to existing PVE content such as missions/escalations. MTOs are aimed for a solo player in a cruiser and successfully completing them will give rewards and also increase the development and decrease the anarchy levels of the associated mercenary den.

• Shortly after Revenant, mercenary dens will have 2 parameters, Development and Anarchy.

  • Development is generated over time, and when successfully completing mercenary den tactical operations. Higher Development levels will cause the mercenary den to increase production yield of infomorphs over time.

  • Anarchy is also generated over time and decreased when successfully completing mercenary den tactical operations. Higher Anarchy levels will cause the Skyhook it’s placed on to siphon workforce production, preventing the workforce from being used by the sov owner.

Deathless Ships

Two new deathless ships are being released with the Revenant expansion. Deathless ships are exclusively able to fit the new breacher pod launcher damage over time weapons, they also feature high amounts of mid-slots for extensive utility and flexibility, active shield tanking bonuses, average speed but have powerful web resistance bonuses, large drone bays for their class and damage bonuses to both projectile weapons and close range missiles allowing them to do extensive DPS up close even without the breacher pod weapon, and finally the ability to fit covert ops cloaking devices.

Tholos

Cenotaph

The Deathless ships are available exclusively as blueprint copies from Deathless item traders, which can be found in Zarzakh. Players can turn in Atavums found in exploration sites, and Encrypted Infomorphs from mercenary dens to purchase them.

Breacher Pod Launchers - Damage Over Time Weapons

Revenant brings an exciting brand-new weapon system and the first instance of a damage over time effect in EVE Online! Breacher Pod Launchers come in two sizes, small and medium, and can only be fitted on the new deathless ships - the Tholos and Cenotaph. Breacher Pod Launchers do not consume a launcher or turret hardpoint, and fire SCARAB breacher pods at their targets. If a breacher pod hits a ship, then it’ll apply a damage over time effect. The Scarab Breacher pods are similar to missiles, they will not affect their target unless they actually reach and hit, and can be killed with smartbombs before they arrive. Breacher Pods can only be used on player ships and NPCs, they cannot be used against targets such as capsules, structures, stargates etc.

The damage over time effect from breacher pods does not use signature radius or tracking like other weapon systems in the game, instead, they apply damage every second based on the targets total hitpoints (raw Shield, Armor and Hull HP combined) or a flat damage cap number, whichever one of those two is lower. This means that a ship with incredibly high hitpoints like a Titan will always take the flat damage cap, but a ship with low hitpoints like a Corvette would always take the % HP damage instead.

The damage over time effect lasts between 50 and 75 seconds depending on the users skill level, and once hit, it will not clear until a player leaves the solarsystem or docks up. It can continue doing damage while the player is in warp or while the player is tethered. The damage over time effect also completely ignores resistances, which means the effect will apply full damage to ships which have used modules like the Assault Damage Control and the Emergency damage Control. It also can apply damage to Rorquals and ships under the effect of the PANIC module.

A player ship can only be affected by one damage over time effect at once. Getting hit with additional breacher pods will just add another effect which will take over when the previous one expires. Much like Command Bursts, if two players shoot the same target with breacher pods, then the player who has the strongest breacher pod effect will deal damage to the target, and the other one will remain inert unless the stronger effect expires.

SCARAB Breacher Pod S

• Max Range: 4km (6km with max skills)

• HP Damage per second: 0.60% (0.75% with max skills)

• Maximum Damage per second: 160 (200 with max skills)

SCARAB Breacher Pod M

• Max Range: 8km (12km with max skills)

• HP Damage per second: 0.60% (1% with max skills)

• Maximum Damage per second: 800 (1000 with max skills)

Small Breacher Pod Launcher

• Rate of Fire: 24 seconds (12 seconds with max skills)

Medium Breacher Pod Launcher

• Rate of Fire: 20 seconds (10 seconds with max skills)

It should be noted that while only one target can take damage from a damage over time effect at any time, you can place several damage over time effects on different player ships concurrently. For example, the Medium Breacher Pod Launcher has a rate of fire of 10 seconds with max skills, and DoTs that it applies will last 75 seconds with max skills, this means that a Cenotaph using the Breacher Pod Launcher could potentially have 7 DoTs applied to 7 different ships at once.

Much like the Deathless Ships, blueprint copies for Breacher Pod Launchers and SCARAB breacher pod ammo can be obtained by trading Atavums, found from exploration, or Encrypted Infomorphs, generated from Mercenary Dens, in Zarzakh.

Skills

5 new skillbooks are avaliable to improve the effectiveness of breacher pod launchers, and can be obtained by trading in Zarzakh.

• Breacher Pod Launcher Operation - Operation of breacher pod launchers. +5% to the maximum percentage of target HP damaged per second per skill level. 3x training time multiplier.

• Breacher Pod Clone Efficacity - Specialist combat training of Breacher Pod clones. +5% to the maximum damage per second cap per skill level. 5x training time multiplier.

• Breacher Pod Projection - Specialist training in the operation of Breacher Pod Launchers. +10% to Breacher Pod maximum velocity per skill level. 5x training time multiplier.

• Breacher Pod Rapid Firing - Specialist training in the preparation of Breacher Pods. -10% to Breacher Pod Launcher cycle time per skill level. 5x training time multiplier.

• Breacher Pod Clone Longevity - Specialist research on extending the short lifespans of Breacher Pod clones. +10% to damage effect duration per skill level. 7x training time multiplier.

SKINR Paragon Updates

Corporation Skins & Targeted Listings

Paragon is proud to announce that capsuleers can now target skin listings to specific characters, corporations, or alliances when creating a public or private listings.

• New filter options allow you to search for SKIN listings targeted at:

  • Your Character: Listings that are directly aimed at you.

  • Your Corporation and Alliance:

    • Listings from any player.

    • Listings from members of your corporation or alliance.

    • Listings from any Brand Manager within your corporation or alliance.

User Interface Updates

• Create SKIN Listing Window: A new availability dropdown has been added, allowing you to specify which character, corporation, or alliance your listing is aimed at.

• My Own Listings Section: Now displays your public and targeted listings in a more organized fashion.

• SKIN Listing Cards: Updated with relevant targeting information to clarify who can view and purchase the SKIN.

• New Categories in the Paragon Hub

  • SKINS for Current ship

  • All SKINs

  • Corporation SKINs

  • Alliance SKINs

  • SKINs listed at you

  • My Own Listings

Branded Listings for Brand Managers

• Creation of Branded Listings:

  • If the listing is targeted at your own corporation or your own alliance and the seller has the Brand Manager role, no SKINR Service Fee or HUB Listing Fee will be applied.

  • The listing will be marked as a Branded Listing.

• Purchasing Branded Listings:

  • Buyers will not have to pay any SKINR Service Fees on a Branded Listing. However, an EverMark fee will be charged per SKIN, based on the SKIN tier.

• Loss of Brand Manager Role:

  • If a seller loses their Brand Manager role for any reason, all of their branded listings targeted to their corporation or alliance will be automatically cancelled and licenses returned to the seller’s Collection.

Secondary and Nested Patterns

Elevate Your SKIN Designs

Enjoying your personal SKIN creations, but wishing it could just have a little more? Bring that inspiration and enhance your designs or create new ones with the new SKINR additions.

The new SKINR additions introduce the use of a second pattern as well as new pattern controls and modifications. Each SKIN design will now include 2 new customizations slots: secondary pattern and Nanocoatings for it.

Design Element Controls and Modifications

• Second pattern modifications:

  • Blend modes: modify the layering effect between patterns

  • Switch: modify the patterns hierarchy

• Design element controls:

  • Reset pattern: Reset pattern modifications to its default value

    • Done through a Right Mouse click menu

  • Reset all slots: Remove selected design elements from all slots

    • Done through a Right Mouse click menu

Randomize

Don't know where to start? Feeling lost in the vast space of SKIN designs? Fret no more and make use of the Randomizer. Paint your empty ship into a masterpiece within seconds or find inspiration with the many combinations and make it into your own.

New patterns for SKINR

• To celebrate the expansion, over 40 new patterns have been added. These can be found through gameplay in various locations around New Eden.

Revenant Daily Login Rewards

• Until November 26th a special set of Revenant Expansion login rewards will be available for players who log on. Rewards include Expert Systems for Deathless ships, Patterns and Nanocoatings for SKINR Ship Personalization, up to 450K skill points, 10K of EverMarks, and Boosters.

Reduced sequencing time for new SKINs by 50%

• To celebrate the new additions to the SKINR tool, Paragon has reduced the Sequencing time for new SKINs by 50%. (Until Tuesday November 26th)

Skills

• Added new skill Executive Paragon Partnership for reducing Paragon HUB Vendor Fees when selling SKINs by 1% per level.

Corporation Projects Improvements

For Revenant, we are continuing the improvements on the Corporation Projects system to enable corporation leadership to have a more active corporation and achieve more ambitious goals.

Expanded Project Parameter

• With the launch of Revenant, project creators can now author the Mine Materials, Damage Capsuleers, Destroy Capsuleer’s Ship and Earn Loyality Points Contribution Methods with Expanded Project Parameters functionality.

• Expanded Project Parameters functionality enables:

  • Multi-value parameters: Project creators can select up to ten values per supported parameter.

    • Locations (Mine Materials, Damage Capsuleers, Destroy Capsuleer’s Ship)

    • Ship Types or Groups (Damage Capsuleers, Destroy Capsuleer’s Ship)

    • Material Types or Groups (Mine Materials)

    • Capsuleers or Organizations (Damage Capsuleers, Destroy Capsuleer’s Ship)

    • Organizations (Earn Loyalty Points)

  • Mixed-hierarchy parameters: Project creators can now also select parameter groups that span different hierarchies. Up to ten values supported.

    • Locations parameter: Solar Systems, Constellations, and Regions.

    • Ship Types or Groups parameter : Ship Types (e.g. Rifter, Raven) and Ship Groups (e.g. Frigates, Battleships, Logistic Cruisers)

    • Material Types or Groups: Asteroid Types (e.g. Veldspar, Dense Veldspar, Kernite, Fiery Kernite, Clear Icicle) and Asteroid Groups (e.g. Veldspar, Kernite, Ice)

We aim to bring Expanded Project Parameter functionality to all contribution methods currently supported.

Project Deadline

• Project creators can now set deadlines for their projects. This improves communication of the project timeline to the corporation members and encourage timely participation.

Project Participation Limit

• Project creators can now set limits on contributions per contributor, preventing any single player from completing the majority of a project alone allowing everyone a chance to contribute.

Ship Information Window

The information window for ships has been redesigned to both emphasize the hull's uniqueness while improving usability. With a more streamlined layout, players will be able to find the information they need in a more intuitive and immersive form.

The window retains all the old window´s functionality while adding the following:

• Ship Display: The selected ship is always at the forefront of this design. A player can take in a 360° look at the hull in all its glory.

• Compact Mode: The window can now be re-sized to be smaller than the previous version. This allows a player to maximize information density without sacrificing usability.

• Immersive Additions: In-universe information on the ship's designer and attributed quotes related to the hull have been added to flesh out its place in New Eden.

• Overview Tab: The Traits and Description tabs have been combined along with the previous header information to create the Overview tab. This provides all the most basic information for the ship in one place. In addition, you can view accrued killmarks for your ship within this tab.

• Attribute Tab: The information within this tab has been reorganized to help players navigate it more easily. In addition, derived values such as EHP and align time are displayed here to help provide context to related attributes.

• Skills Tab: The Skill Requirements and Masteries tabs have been combined. Any skill a player might need to fly a ship effectively can be found here.

• Fittings Tab: A shortcut has been added which opens the Fitting window in simulation mode, showing the ship and its applied fitting.

• Variations Tab: Variants within this tab now have links that open that hull within the Ship Tree.

• SKINs Tab: Players are now able to preview and apply SKINs directly from this tab. In addition, a shortcut has been added to open that ship's SKINR Paragon Hub page.

Glorified Mutaplasmids and Mutaplasmid Residue

All abyssal modules can now be reprocessed into mutaplasmid residue - this means that modules that you mutate that don’t have the results that you were hoping for or aren’t able to sell are still useful! Mutaplasmid residue can then be used in new blueprints found in regular abyssal content and from CONCORD Rogue Analysis Beacons to create 169 new, improved, glorified abyssal mutaplasmids, which are more powerful versions of the existing mutaplasmids found in the game. Just Keep Rolling!

Balance Changes

Marauders

• 100% bonus to Shield Extender hitpoints removed

• 50% bonus to Armor Plate hitpoints removed

• 5% additional bonus to Reinforced Bulkhead hitpoints removed

Marauders continue to be incredibly dominant in all areas of space, so we’re removing the bonuses which provide additional hitpoints to buffer modules fit to them. The intention here is to focus them more around their specialization of large bonuses to active tanking. Since active tanking requires capacitor, heat and module management, the hope is that this will increase their skill floor and make them harder to use as ships of the line and be more difficult to multibox efficiently.

Vargur

• Falloff Bonus reduced from 10% per level to 7.5% per level.

• CPU output Reduced from 625 to 600

Even with the above adjustment to all Marauders, the Vargur still stands out as the worst offender amongst them, it currently is the #1 highest damaging ship on average for all killmails in null security and wormhole space. So we’re cutting back a bit of the falloff bonus to reduce projection with AutoCannons and also reducing the CPU output. In the Viridian expansion, we added a 6th lowslot to the Vargur which actually increased its fitting ability by allowing it to fit additional co-processor modules which inadvertently made fitting multiple XLASBs much easier and viable despite us reducing the shield boost bonus per level it had.

Absolution

• 10% bonus to energy turret damage increased to 20%

• 5% rate of fire bonus for energy turrets removed

The Absolution is struggling a little with usage so we’re giving it a bit of QoL. This change keeps the overall damage per second of the Absolution the same as before, but now that the rate of fire bonus is baked into the damage bonus, it no longer consumes as much capacitor as before to fire which should make it feel better.

Myrmidon Navy Issue

• Armor Repairer amount per level increased from 7.5% to 10%

• Base velocity increased from 155 m/s to 160 m/s

• Agility improved from 0.7x to 0.67x

The Myrmidon Navy Issue is currently the least used Combat Battlecruiser in the game, so we’re making some improvements to its mobility and repair amount to help it out. Many players doing PVE do not feel like the Myrmidon Navy Issue is worth upgrading to from the Myrmidon, since the stasis webifier drone bonus isn’t very valuable in PVE and if they only use drones and don’t rely on its higher damage hybrid weapons it’s not as attractive of an upgrade, and in PVP it’s fairly slow so can be difficult to use blasters so we’re hoping that the increased repair amount and speed will help it stand out more for both PVE and PVP.

Harbinger Navy Issue

• Powergrid increased from 1,495 MW to 1,550 MW

The Harbinger Navy currently has low usage, so we’re increasing its base powergrid amount up to the same as the regular Harbinger hull, which was buffed in an earlier balance pass which the HNI missed out on.

Cyclone Fleet Issue

• Powergrid reduced from 1,215 MW to 1100 MW

• Rate of fire bonus for missiles reduced from 9% to 7.5% per level

The Cyclone Fleet Issue is incredibly dominant right now, so we’re making some adjustments to bring it back in line. We’re reducing the powergrid on it so it will have a harder time fitting 100mn afterburners or large cap battery modules for fleet fits, and we’re also lowering the rate of fire bonus to tone down the damage it can put out.

Exequror Navy Issue

• Medium Hybrid Falloff Bonus reduced from 10% per level to 7.5% per level

• Base velocity reduced from 280 m/s to 270 m/s

• Agility nerfed from 0.4x to 0.44x

• Signature Radius increased from 110m to 120m

The Exequror Navy is still incredibly dominant and the most used navy ship in the game, so we’re making a small suite of changes, reducing the falloff bonus and then hitting it’s mobility slightly and increasing the signature radius, so it’ll be worse at mitigating damage and can’t project as far as before.

Stabber Fleet Issue

• New Bonus Added: 5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret Falloff per level

The SFI can sometimes feel awkward when upgrading from the regular Stabber by losing the falloff bonus, and the SFI could also use some love! So we’re extending the smaller falloff bonus we added to the Republic Fleet Firetail last winter onto the Stabber Fleet Issue to improve its versatility.

Distinct Module Icons

The following module types have been given unique icons to help differentiate them:

• Heat Sinks, Gyrostabilizers, Entropic Radiation Sinks, and Magnetic Field Stabilizers

• Capacitor Rechargers, Capacitor Flux Coils, and Capacitor Power Relays

• Shield Rechargers, Shield Flux Coils, and Shield Power Relays

Biochemical Material Icons

All biochemical materials now have unique icons. The icons match the color and tier of the booster that they relate to.

Nullsec Combat Anomaly Graphics and Gameplay Overhaul

Several Combat Anomaly sites in nullsec have been renovated.

• All variations of the Forsaken Sanctums, Sanctums, Havens, Patrol and Horde sites have had full art and asset renovations

• Over 100 different nullsec anomaly sites now have an objectives panel. So you can now easily see what wave you are on and how many NPCs remain at a glance!

• Several NPC groups now warp in instead of spawning in place where appropriate.

Since volumetric clouds are part of the graphical updates, please note that they can potentially impact performance when multi-boxing. To mitigate this, we’ve added a setting that disables clouds when low shader quality is selected.

New Rogue Drone relic sites have been added.

• 4 new relic sites have been added in rogue drone nullsec, allowing intrepid explorers the opportunity to find and discover ancient salvage materials and other valuable rewards.

Pochven

A series of changes have been made to Observatory Flashpoint sites:

• The optimal total value of the site has been reduced from 3.5b to an average of 3b ISK

• On average, 40% of the site’s total value will now be given in the form of new Stellar Surveillance Data commodities

  • These commodities can be looted from Stellar Observatory wrecks

  • NPC buy orders for these commodities can be found in CONCORD, DED, and Secure Commerce Commission stations

• Only capsuleers within 50km of the Stellar Observatory are considered eligible for payouts

• The minimum amount of contribution to be eligible for payouts has been increased

• New Threshold Werpost sentry guns will aggress any capsuleer who goes beyond 50km from the Stellar Observatory

• Once within the main combat area, capsuleers will now only have 30 minutes to complete the site

• Any EDENCOM faction can now appear within the site (weighted toward the empire that owned the system before Pochven’s formation)

• NPCs will now behave more intelligently within the site

  • Specific EDENCOM NPCs will prioritize attacking drones

  • EDENCOM NPCs will remember which capsuleers have engaged their faction between areas and waves

  • Triglavian NPCs will only be hostile to capsuleers who have attacked them or their fleet

  • NPCs will now orbit at ranges more suited to their weaponry

• Sites are now visible within the Combat Anomalies section of both the AIR Opportunities and Agency windows

• Info Panel objectives will now appear to help players keep track of the site’s current state

• The activation range of the Assault Vector gate has been slightly increased

• EDENCOM NPCs will now significantly outnumber Triglavians within the Assault Vector area

• Cloaking is disabled while within proximity of a Stellar Observatory

• Micro Jump Drives and Micro Jump Field Generators are disabled while within proximity of a Stellar Observatory

• Warp drives are disabled while within proximity of a Stellar Observatory wreck

• Pop-up and local chat messages have been replaced with one-time transmission conversations

Audio

Station Atmosphere Update

• A new controller has been added that plays atmo for the station based on race. New atmo plays on Amarr, Gallente, Caldari and Minmatar small, medium and large stations.

We're excited to see what you do with the updates coming in the Revenant expansion, and we'd love for you to get involved with the discussion on the EVE Online Discord and the EVE Online Forums.

o7