EVE Online: Revenant's Unannounced Pochven Patch Notes

Yesterday CCP pushed a patch aimed squarely at Pochven to Tranquility. Believe it or not, the region was introduced over 4 years ago in October 2020. Frankly, I know absolutely nothing about the gameplay in Pochven except it has its own special mechanics. I took a look at what the EVE Online sub-Reddit had to say and, as always, I found negativity, which claims the changes will just favor multi-boxers. Knowing that the sub-Reddit is an extremely unreliable source of misinformation, I searched YouTube for opinions. Sure enough, I found someone who lives in Pochven stating how multi-boxers will hate the changes.

So who should I believe? Let's take a quick look.

The first changes involve Observatory Flashpoints. According to the EVE University wiki:

The Observatory Flashpoint is a combat anomaly that can be found in Pochven, intended to be run with a fleet of up to 15 ships. It is functionally unchanged from the Observatory Flashpoints found during Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of the Triglavian Invasion. Whenever a site is completed, a new site will spawn immediately in another part of Pochven, with a hard limit of three sites in the region at a time.

And the rewards are interesting, with a downscaling function similar to those in incursions.

The site pays a considerable sum of ISK that varies with fleet size, ranging from around 520 million ISK per pilot for a fleet of 5, to around 230 million ISK per pilot for a fleet of 15. Including more than 15 pilots in the payout will greatly reduce total site rewards. In order to be included in the payout, pilots must be in the site, not cloaked, and either apply damage to the Observatory structure or apply remote repairs to another ship which has damaged the structure.

The loot cache can contain skillbooks for Precursor Dreadnought or Capital Precursor Weapon. It can also contain a Zirnitra BPC, Supratidal Entropic Disintegrator BPC, XL Exotic Plasma Charge BPC, or capital component BPC.

So, in theory, a small gang running an Observatory Flashpoint is easy meat if a gang of 30 or so ships sweeps through a system. This is where the patch notes come in.

Observatory Flashpoints:

The following changes aim to counteract the efficiency of over-filling a site by adding a net loss when more than 15 characters are present. The payouts for the site have been adjusted to offset the additional setup time and risk.

• Assault Vector gates now require the use of Observatory Resonance Keys:
  
  
• Each character will need their own key to unlock the gate.
• A key is consumed on use.
• Keys can be bought via NPC sell orders within Pochven stations for 30m ISK each.
• 15x Keys will drop as loot from CONCORD Stellar Observatories.
• Note: Spare keys cannot be sold to NPCs, but can be sold or traded to other characters.
• Gates will become unlocked for all characters 60 seconds after a site is complete.
  
  
• Payouts have been adjusted:
  
  
• The total optimal payout of the site has been increased to 3.3b ISK (from 3b ISK).
• Stellar Surveillance Data will now make up 30% of the optimal reward (from 40%).
• Stellar Surveillance Data now belongs to the new EDENCOM data item group.
• Greatly increased the number of NPC buy orders for Stellar Surveillance Data.
  
  
• Threshold Werposts will now have a significantly longer cooldown between target switches.
• Threshold Werposts will now always attack the same target as each other.

Next come changes to standings requirements. Probably the biggest reason I don't play in Pochven is the standings requirements. They've changed, but not enough for me. Those who actually play in the Triglavian region may have different results.

Standings:

To help make Pochven more accessible, the minimum standings requirements for certain actions have been reduced.

• Fitting and Repair requirements have been reduced to -0.05 (from 1.00 and 2.00, respectively).
• Manufacturing and Corporation Office requirements have been reduced to 3.00 (from 4.00).
• Home system stargate requirements have been reduced to 6.00 (from 7.00).
• Standings will no longer be gained or lost when destroying either type of EDENCOM GunStar.
• Standings will no longer be gained or lost when destroying a Stellar Observation Post site’s Stellar Observatory structure.

The Dazh Liminality Locus is a structure located inside Stellar Fleet Deployment Sites. Apparently CCP made a change that broke some things and needed to correct the site.

System-Wide Effects:

Last month's change to the Dazh Liminality Locus negatively impacted some playstyles in unintended ways, and as such has been softened significantly. The change also incentivized removing system effects which help make Pochven feel unique, so these have now been split off from the structure.

• The Dazh Liminality Locus structure has been reworked:
  
  
• Increased the decloaking pulse cooldown timer to 60 minutes (from 6 minutes).
• Increased the decloaking pulse chance to 60% (from 30%).
• Removed the system-wide buffs and penalties.
  
  
• Added the removed buffs and penalties as permanent system-wide effects within Pochven:
  
  
• Increased the remote repair bonuses to 30% (from 25%).
  
  
• Added a lesser version of the Pochven system-wide effects to Triglavian Minor Victory systems:
  
  
• Reduced the remote repair bonuses to 15%.
• Removed the warp speed penalty.

Looking at the PvE section, I wish I could say I was amazed at all the PvPers interested in doing PvE. But I think we all know that's not what is going on. If CCP makes a change that makes ganking PvE players harder, complaints will result. Which makes determining if a change truly is bad or not.

PVE:

All Acceleration Gates which consume a key per character activating it have been improved:

• When a key is consumed, the gate will remain unlocked for that character for the duration of the site.
  
  
• Note: This persists when a character leaves the location or logs out, but resets after a downtime.
  
  
• No keys will be consumed when activating a gate already unlocked for that character.

Finally comes a couple of changes concerning those who like to bring out capital ships to run PvE content.

Wormhole Capital Escalations:

The following changes hope to refine last November's changes to capital escalation rules.

• A combat site can now escalate at any time before the second wave spawns.
• A combat site will only de-escalate if there is no capital within range after the second wave spawns.

In summary, a combat site will escalate if a capital ship enters within a 100km range of the warp-in point before the second wave spawns. After that spawn, the site will deescalate if no capital is within range. The Drifter Response Battleship will spawn if the site is escalated when the Decloaked Transmission Relay is attacked. Otherwise, the Drifter Recon Battleship will spawn. A beacon appears while the site is escalated to help players keep track of that state.

And a final note. Once again I was blindsided a bit. I didn't look for patch notes yesterday until I went to log in and saw them on the launcher. I guess a win for the launcher team?