Flying Solo In EVE: Exordium

This past week EVE Online experienced a yearly event: EVE Fanfest. I didn't go this year but found my EVE activity disrupted anyway. Between the management buyout of CCP Games from Pearl Abyss and rebranding to Fenris Creations, the release of the 2025 financials as well as announcements of the future of EVE, I had a lot to keep me occupied. But what about the rest of the game?

Active concurrent users from EVE-Offline.net

Last week the average number of accounts logged in at any one time dropped back down to 25,000 +/- 500 accounts. An expected development as I don't think the Capsuleer Day event was as captivating as the previous Gallente election event. The reason I credit Fanfest with causing a decline in my EVE playtime is I also didn't do my usual daily activity grind last week either. But with the final week of Capsuleer Day coming up I really do need to prepare to push the one character I ran the event with to the finish line.

Global PLEX market activity spiked during Fanfest

Fanfest usually involves commerce and 2026 was no exception. In addition to physical item sales at Harpa Fenris Creations ran two digital sales that are still ongoing. The first, running from May 15-24, involves between 20-23% off PLEX packages of 1000 PLEX and up. The next, in the New Eden Store and also running to the 24th, involves 20% off the PLEX price of 1-3 months of Omega time. And sure enough, the volume of PLEX sold from Friday to Sunday spiked to an average of 1.9 million PLEX sold per day. And with the amount of PLEX sold, the price also dropped down for the same three days.

Selected stats for the week through 17 May 2026

The news today is the new starting region, Exordium, is now accessible to players. New players will not automatically start the game in the region until the launch of Cradle of War on 9 June, but players can poke around now by accessing the region using the Manifest gate in Yulai. 

Here are today's patch notes on the new region.

As discussed back in April, Exordium is a dedicated new-player region designed to provide a safer introduction to EVE Online while still introducing players to the game’s core systems, progression paths, and faction identities before they move into the wider cluster. We are opening up Exordium and its features in stages ahead of the Cradle of War expansion.

This deployment introduces the first iteration of the new starter space security class (1.0), along with several pieces of new content aimed at newer players.

At this time Exordium is still in a “work in progress” state, and the new AIR Trade Center station in Manifest can be seen in its partially-constructed form. New players will not be sent to Exordium until the Cradle of War expansion releases on June 9th.

Elevated Security

Systems within Exordium now use a dedicated 1.0 security class designed to prevent all forms of PvP.

As part of this update:

• All Exordium systems have been set to security class 1.0
• Existing 1.0 systems across New Eden have been adjusted to 0.9
• This does not meaningfully impact CONCORD response times in those systems.
• Security tooltips and the starmap now support the new security tier classification.

Within Exordium:

• Safety settings are permanently locked to green
• War Declarations and Factional Warfare combat are disabled
• Duels cannot be initiated
• Killrights cannot be activated
• Characters with combat flags such as suspect, criminal, and limited engagements cannot jump into Exordium or undock within the region until their timer expires
• Players cannot freely attack other capsuleers
• Upwell Structures cannot be deployed
• Deployables and anchored containers cannot be placed

Starter Space Economic Balancing

Exordium is intended as a starting environment for new capsuleers. Economy activity within the region has been adjusted to have reduced payouts compared to standard highsec space.

• Mission ISK rewards, LP rewards, and NPC bounties reduced by 20%
• Additional 5% market fees added to non-instant orders.
• Industry installation fees increased by 5% for manufacturing , material efficiency research, time efficiency research and invention

Additional balancing changes now active within Exordium include:

• Ores found within Exordium are new “Grade 0” versions with lower mineral yield than their standard variants.
• Exploration sites within Exordium contain distinct loot tables with lower value loot and items optimized for new players.
• Homefront Operations within Exordium have reduced difficulty, as well as reduced rewards.

Agents & Mission Content within Exordium

Exordium now includes a broad range of empire-aligned agents designed to introduce new players to mission running, mining, security gameplay, and faction identity.

The following agents are now available for interactions:

• Level 1 and Level 2 Security agents
• Level 1 and Level 2 Mining agents
• Sisters of EVE agents
• Paragon agents