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Thursday, February 11, 2021

Guardian's Gala 2021 - Introducing The Event

CCP launched the latest iteration of Guardian's Gala today. Those who bother to look at the launcher could click on a news article and get a short description.

Gatecrashing Capsuleers,

As part of the new Reign Quadrant, the notorious Guardian's Gala event returns to New Eden, and you are once again invited to disrupt the annual Serpentis pirates and Angel Cartel celebrations! There are event sites in known space and wormhole space, daily login rewards, plus 90% PvP loot drops and an increase to warp speed in wormhole space until 11:00 UTC on 23 February.

Guardian's Gala sites in wormhole space offer greater challenges, and contain more lucrative rewards. Valuable loot up for grabs includes Serpentis and Domination faction items, ship SKINs, limited time Skill Point boosters, and Overseers' Effects which can be sold for ISK.

As well as the Guardian's Gala event sites, you can also claim free gifts through the daily login event until 11:00 UTC on 23 February, including Spirit SKINs available for Serpentis ships for the first time, and thousands of Skill Points to help boost your skill training.

I was curious to see how much information CCP provided in the game client about the event. The answer was quite a bit. The information flow begins at the character select screen.

First, the player learns Guardian's Gala is running and for how much longer. Logging in for the first day, players learn that the event runs for 12 days and that players are only required to log in for 7 of those 12 days to earn all of the log in rewards. The maximum amount of skill points players can receive is 55,000 for Alpha (non-subscribed) players and 150,000 for Omega (subscribed) players. Alpha players who play for 6 of the 12 days will also receive Spirit SKINs for the three Serpentis faction sub-capital ships: Daredevil (frigate), Vigilant (cruiser), and Vindicator (battleship). In addition to the Serpentis ship SKINs, Omega players will also receive SKINs for the three Minmatar battleships, with the Tempest receiving an Amaranthine Mantle SKIN instead of a Spirt SKIN.

Once I selected my character, a screen popped up announcing the event. At this point, I don't think a player can state he didn't know the event exists. Once closing the pop-up, The Agency then shows a section for the event.

Upon clicking on the Guardian's Gala panel, the information for the event displays.

This screen displays a lot of information. The big one for me is that one doesn't have to have good combat skills to participate. Halfway decent exploration skills with probing and hacking will also allow a player to participate. At first glance, players will have the option of doing two different types of challenge, running a standard "shoot NPC" site and running a data or relic site. The introduction challenge is a data site, but I imagine that is due to RNG. 

The other useful information is how many points is required to get all the prizes for the event. And of course, a list of more rewards for activity. They are:

  • 50 points: Rifter Amaranthine Mantle SKIN
  • 100 points: 1 Agency Support Drop (usually boosters)
  • 150 points: Cynabal Serpentis SKIN
  • 200 points: Macharial Serpentis SKIN

If all of the challenges earn 5 points, then all a player needs to do is complete 40 challenges to earn all the event prizes.

Of course, CCP didn't give out all the relevant information about the event in the client. The big one, of course, is how good the drops from NPCs are. The other are the other challenges. I already guess that the exploration challenges will differ between data and relic sites. With the combat challenge displaying "1/3", does that mean three different challenges exist? Or does it mean players can only do 3 combat and 2 exploration challenges each day?

My plan is to write something about Guardian's Gala each day of the event. I'm not sure if 12 days of content exist, but I did the same for FFXIV's Ishgard Restoration event, so why not Guardian's Gala? Tomorrow, I hope to report back on the answers to the above questions.

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