A bit part of wanting to come back to Eve Online was to check out Abyssal. While these things can be great ISK makers, they are also quite high risk in ways one would not normally consider. They are also quite a lot harder than I was expecting.

Running Abyssal ended up being a bit more interesting than I was expecting. To be able to run one you need a special kind of filament. I ended up going around to exploration sites hoping to loot some tier 0 Tranquil filaments out of data sites.

Sadly, the drop rate was quite low when trying to find them that way. You can also only get rather low tier 0 or tier 1 filaments. After quite a few sites I ended up only finding one filament and it was the wrong type for my type of ship.

The type of filaments you use determines the type of penalty and bonus that Abyssal sites will end up having. These effects are also quite massive which is why it’s important to run the right kind for your setup.

The types are four kinds of resistance in the game. That is EM (electrical), thermal (firestorm), kinetic (exotic), and explosive (gamma) damage. There is also a fifth type that affects the fall out range which is called dark filament.

For the lower tiers of 0 to 3, you get a –30 to -50% to that resistance for the type of filament you are running. The higher-tier filaments go as high as –70% resistance.

On top of that, each type also gives a 50% bonus. Electrical reduces capacitator recharge time. Firestorm increases armor HP. Exotic gives scan resolution. Gamma gives shield HP. Finally, dark gives an increased max velocity.

You also don’t know the type of enemies you will encounter inside the Abyssal. While there is a known pool of possible encounters you can work out over the long run. It’s not like mission running where you know what types of resistance to fit beforehand. Other than knowing which resistance is going to have a massive negative penalty applied to it.

This is not everything either that is going on inside the Abyssal sites. You can’t just warp out of them if things go sideways. You either have to beat them or both your ship and pod get destroyed. There is also a twenty-minute time limit or you go boom as well.

There is even a boundary within the pocket that you can’t leave. So, while you can kite around them if you end up going long-range with the quick ship. You only have so much room.

I’m rather glad I eased into these things. I would at one point be losing a ship learning some hard lesions inside of the Abyssal. For now, I'd just be flying a mostly cheap Punisher to get the hang of things.

Since I was flying a Punisher, I would be using lasers to start with. The best type of filament for me to run starting was Tier 0 Tranquil Electrical. This would give me a 50% capacitor rechange bonus making quite a high damage setup cap stable. I also had some EM resistance to take on the –30% to –50% penalty.

The more interesting thing is that you are not the only one being affected by the bonus and penalty in these types of encounters. So are the enemies inside. So, picking one that my damage types with lasers such as EM or Thermal works out rather well for me.

I also picked up some Tranquil Firestorm filaments. Since that gave a 50% to amour with a penalty to thermal. Since I felt those would be the second-best type I could do with my weapon type and tanking setup.

To be able to run an Abyssal I picked a 0.5 System. While I could go as high as a 0.8 system and not have any issues running these lower-tier Abyssal sites. I already had a perfect little place in mind to play around with them.

I then warped around creating some safe spot bookmarks in the system I planned to run a few of these in. The nice thing is once you enter into an Abyssal no one else can just randomly pop in. Players can however still can you down. Players then wait for the runner to pop out of an Abyssal to gank them.

Since I'm running quite cheap setups and just doing lower-tier Abyssal. I don’t expect to run into any issues with other players. Some players will however spend insane amounts on ships, fittings, and implants. Those kinds of setups get a gankers attention.

As after all Abyssal sites can only be run with frigates, destroyers, or cruisers. The interesting thing here is if you are in a frigate, it costs three filaments to enter but you can have up to three people total. The loot also has three times multiple.

Meanwhile, I could be running these tier-0 Abyssal sites in a cruiser. However, only one person can enter and it only costs one filament. That also means I'm just getting the base loot and no multiplier.

So, in theory, if I can run an abyssal site fast enough, I can be earning more than someone on average who is running the same tier in a curser. Now, there does come a point where a frigate is just not going to survive or have the damage output to take on the higher-tier abyssal sites. For the time being, running tier 0 was not going to be an issue.

Each one of these sites has three rooms you need to clear out before you can activate the gate. Any ships you take out are empty. There are however two things that tend to drop the bulk of the loot while inside an Abyssal site.

The biggest loot tends to be in Biocombinative Cache. At the lowest Abyssal tiers, I found these to be the only one worth going after. There are also Extraction nodes but most times when opening up one of these I get just junk.

On top of all of this, there is also all kinds of other stuff going on inside an abyssal site. Since I was just running a tier 0 with a punisher, I just had to be careful to not go zooming into a white cloud that gives you 300% in case speed and reduces your ability to turn.

I’ve been told a few players have lost their ships while running fast ships with micro-warp drives. They hit a white cloud and they just go zooming past the boundary line for each site’s room and explode.

There are also in some rooms weapon platforms that love to target drones. While I'd fully ignore them while running tier 0’s. They would end up teaching me a lesson later on when running some higher-tier Abyssal sites on a ship that has drones.

Final Thoughts

Like so many things in Eve Online. Everything has a high learning curve and messing up gets you killed. These Abyssal sites ended up being quite entertaining for some time while I was running them. More on that in a future post.

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