Flying Solo In EVE: Prep For Cradle Of War

The new EVE Online expansion, Cradle of War, launched yesterday. My prep for the expansion wasn't to position myself in the most favorable situation to take advantage of the new EVE content. Instead, I spent last weekend grinding out all of my Cosmic Tools in Final Fantasy XIV to max level so I could spend more time playing EVE. Of course, Cloud Imperium chose Monday to release its months-late accounting for 2024, meaning another night spent blogging instead of flying around New Eden. But I'm caught up now and ready for adventure.

Honestly, I think a lot of players took care of outside business in preparation for CoW. The average number of players logged in for last week fell from 26,000 to 24,000 according to EVE-Offline.net. Since the ACU line is +/- 500 accounts I doubt the decline was a full 2,000 accounts. Still, the decline was noticeable.

Some of the decline in activity was reflected on the global PLEX market. Both the amount of PLEX traded and the amount of ISK spent in those trades declined by 7.7% and 7.5% respectively. The average price rose slightly, from 4,525,000 ISK to 4,558,000 ISK per PLEX.

With the launch of Cradle of War yesterday I spent quite a bit of time preparing the alt character I've been training to fly the Sacrilege, the missile firing Amar heavy assault cruiser. That's my own fault because I forgot deleting a character in EVE Online takes 10 hours. So while I was waiting to create a character to fly into Exordium I spent some ISK in Hek and bought a Sacrilege and all the fittings. I only need to learn one more skill to achieve Mastery V as a Sacrilege pilot. The skill needs another 14 days to learn but the MCT time doesn't end until July 2nd.

Hek seems a good location to base out of in the new world of military campaigns, at least if one is Minmatar. Two systems away is the system of Amo, home to the main War HQ for the Minmatar Republic. And for new players wanting to jump into the action, Amo is also the destination system for the Minmatar shipcaster in Exordium.

I should add that for players interested in Sisters of EVE loyalty points, Amo is four jumps from Lanngisi, the home of a level 4 SoE security agent. Due to the presence of the Sisters in Exordium, Lanngisi may wind up as an attraction for new players.

According to the FAQ for the expansion, these are the shipcaster routes leading out of Exordium.

• Tatrys to Onnamon (Caldari)
• Mondaekus to Intaki (Gallente)
• Dettisolin to Amo (Minmatar)
• Ichorah to Mehatoor (Amarr)

Just remember that after using a shipcaster, one has to fly to Yulai in Genesis to get back into Exordium. The Yulai gate leads to and from Manifest.

For those interested in the shipcasters, they first became available in May 2023 and were designed to get players to the factional warfare zones faster. Having shipcasters send new players to the war headquarters of each empire definitely qualifies as speeding up the process.

Tonight I plan on spending some quality time on a new character in EVE. Something I haven't done in years. I'll take lots of screenshots as people may actually find the new region interesting.