The Catalyst Expansion dropped on November 18th, and most things were expected. A new epic arc to some (but not all) of the ships was also released. Sky-high prices for those who have the new shiny things moments after they came off the production lines.

While the biggest thing the expansion has been highlighting is mining. So, I first jumped into the new epic arc that was out. The starting location was three jumps from Jita, and it took me a while to get there. It’s a shame everything has to be around there these days.

Funny enough, like a few things, it seems the game was not quite ready. Even by the time I got there, lots of players were jumping back and forth to run the new epic arc mission that had three parts to it.

So much so that the system was in tidi (time dilation). For those that don’t know, that is how Eve Online handles systems that have more activities going on in them than the server it’s on can handle by slowing down in-game time and limiting how quickly actions are processed. The issue was resolved after a GM showed up in chat and started chatting for a bit in the main system.

For the epic arc itself, I brought along a Venture fitted for mining. To get the first mission, I discovered I also needed a data analyzer. It’s a good thing the mission takes you through Jita so you can get the needed supplies.

I am rather glad I fitted a micro warp drive to my ship. Not only was the gate in the mission quite far away. I’d be going 100km or even greater to get mission objectives. Thankfully, the Venture is quite a speedy ship, and it became quite clear that this was what the starting mission was decided for.

With the epic arc only having three missions, I was expecting it to be a lot quicker than it was. Maybe an hour and a half or a bit longer. It, however, did highlight some cool stuff that I'll never experience myself. As the new mining site they showcase is for large alliances to farm. It’s their new “end game” for mining, if you could even call it that.

After I spent a lot of time zooming around with an MWD in the mission. I mined out the 15 asteroids that the mission required of me. Along with hacking the data, Can. It was then time for a couple of jumps back to get the second mission.

The great thing is the first mission that gave you the new Pioneer ship. I feel this was a great way for the developers to ensure this ship is more for alpha, and newer players to get seeded quickly. While people were asking for almost 40 million ISK for the ship and the new BPO to craft them by the time I made it to Jita. Prices continued to crash as expected. The market was getting flooded with these new ships long before the first one could be manufactured.

It will also be a little while before the T2 and faction variant of the ship will be seen more commonly. It was kind of funny seeing just about everyone flying around in a Pioneer.

The second mission required you to use the Pioneer. Since it can use three mining lasers, I'm glad I brought an extra along with me to fit onto the ship itself. As the next mission was all about using the ship and getting used to the new mining UI. I’ll be talking a bit more about the mining UI in just a little bit.

The old way of mining was to use an active module to see how much ore was remaining in any asteroid. Many of us lazy miners used this to quickly pick off higher-value asteroids that were within range. There is no longer a window that pops up showing you the distance or how much remains of an asteroid.

The last mission had you dodge some mines that would explode and hack one final Can. I think my mission bugged out as I was told to “wait,” and after waiting 10 minutes, nothing happened. I felt that was a proper amount of time. So, I just hacked the Can I knew I needed and was told that I made a poor choice, but I had finished the final mission.

It seems the new epic arc has some issues. Many reported in chat not being able to finish the first mission. It also seems the last mission is either missing a text to pop up, or maybe it’s just bugging out for some. I’m just glad I was able to finish it all and get far away from such busy systems that are around Jita.

Once I was back home and had the new mining ship. I went out into my own asteroid belts to see what the ship could do. Along with taking a closer look at the UI changes. Some are great, but I really want that pop-up window with asteroids being broken down into categories.

The new mining UI has provided some nice quality of life and cool things. As long as you or someone in the fleet has the chipset module for mining, you can see how much life is left on an asteroid without having to scan. It also displays information like total amount, value, and so forth.

They also sadly dumped down the naming of ores. Instead of saying mining dense Veldspar, you are now mining veldspar II grade. This not only looks like a display bug, but just sounds awful and boring.

While this expansion now adds mining crits. I still don’t see for most people that it is worth just doing so on a single account. Unless you are going after some rather high-risk ore found in LS, NS, or Wormhole space.

The good news is that for those of us not that are not a massive null sec alliance, the Pioneer could open some doors. It’s a quick little ship. I can see once the price comes down a lot that people will want to use it in LS or wormhole space in a small group setting, and bailing out of the site the moment there is any possible danger.

While I won’t be training the skills for a Pioneer that high. So far, with my skills, it’s not that much better before any buffs than a Venture ship. A Venture ship with the skills I have mined 8.2 m3 a sec. The Pioneer with my current skills mines 9.3 m3 per sec. As you can see, not a huge difference. The Pioneer also only has an ore hold of 8k m3. So, you really can’t mine much solo or in a small group unless you have someone running ore compression.

Now compare those numbers to see a Covetor mining ship that I sometimes run with. It mines 36.2 m3 a sec. Now I am using strip miners II’s with B crystals. That also means for me to be able to mine that much, I need to be mining ore types I have trained crystals.

The rarer ores I never trained the skills required to run those kinds of crystals. Along with the cost of replacing a Covetor. Along with how slow it is. I just have zero reason to be mining better ore types in high-risk areas.

While the Pioneer will have a lot lower risk-to-reward ratio. The number of ore I'd be able to mine before having to haul back in a risky area. Along with it having such a low rate of mining. It kind of negates its value for me. Other than, let's go get blown up mining some ores in wormhole space.

There are also some new mining sites and escalations possible even in high sec. I myself did not find any. A lot of my attention was on moving assets around to take advantage of different items spiking in price. I ended up selling quite a few things at 200-500% what I usually sell them for. While all that insane fun was mostly done by the end of the day. It’s what I prepared for, and many that I just lucked out having stockpiles of stuff to offload.

While some of the mining changes are cool and all that. I did not care much for them. I’d even rather have the old UI back if I could get back to being able to get that window that showed information the way I wanted to see it. Instead of me having to check each single asteroid manually.

Many of us did not care too much about all the mining stuff. You might also wonder why I've not talked about the real ship I was interested in, at least till they killed it for me. I’m talking about the new exploration ship, the Odysseus.

A couple of days before launch, they announced a much higher loyalty and ISK cost to not only get a single run BPC of the ship to craft. But all the new modules you would want with this thing as well being way overpriced.

You could also tell with the pricing of the BPC and the meme the developers made about Odysseus on social media. That’s what they were hoping the bigger variant ship the Nestor battleship would have been. Expect now it’s battleship pricing for a battlecruiser.

In my eyes, for this ship to be worth it solo in high-risk areas of the game to be flying around in. It needed to be like 1 billion to 1.5 billion ISK. I can only tell you just based on the blueprint cost alone for the modules and the ship. That's not happening.

What is not going to happen is me going around in an 8 billion ISK ship to go make 10 million ISK and get ganked in a high-risk area of space like a wormhole in a slow ship. Now, to be fair, that 8 billion is what someone is offering right now to buy the ship for. There is just one massive issue.

Now you might also notice zero of them are for sale. Naturally, it takes a little time for anyone to manufacture them. I’m sure the 8 billion is nowhere near what they will be going for at a later date. We, however, won’t know. The BPC to craft them is broken. Zero players on the first day could manufacture a single Odysseus.

I would not be shocked if they had to disable players' ability to make them. As the ship's cargo hold while space is currently broken. The new Odysseus comes with a new kind of cargo hold. It would make sense if that is the culprit.

Final Thoughts

While there are still some things I'll be able to experience about the new expansion regarding mining in the coming days and weeks. I feel a lot of the hype is going to be gone before the week is over.

Most people see mining as a semi-AFK thing to do. It scales really well, or it did if you have multiple accounts. However, with the UI change, boxing is not going to be so quick to do now for easy targeting of ores within range that you wanted, like it was before, or managing your fleet.

Since mining is also a semi-AFK thing. Most people are not going to really notice if they got a “mining crit.” A mining crit once in a while is also just over double what that single module that got the crit on would have normally acquired. It’s not like you just got some massive critical hit and your entire mining cargo hold that was empty is now full. It’s a little more over the long run if you train the new skills. I don’t see it solving mining being so below average for those that are not mining, only moon goo that massive alliances farm.

I’m sure in the coming weeks and months, the new mining stuff will grow on me. I’ll get some mining escalations and maybe even scan down a decent, harder-to-get asteroid belt. I kind of knew going into it that my first impressions were not going to be that great. This was also not an expansion that anyone was expecting to be mined, blown away about with how the development cycle for this game is. They put out a couple of expansions a year, with most of them just refreshing something in the game with a couple of new ships, if that. Eve Online already has such an insane amount of content; you don’t need more than that.

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Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Online.