The Final Week Of EVE Online's 2026 Gallente Elections

Today marks the beginning of the final week of the Gallente elections in EVE Online. The developers have learned that player engagement with an event does not have to decline to near zero at the end of events. The solution? Extend the rewards in the final week.

The reward track after downtime today

The rewards are a nice selection of items. Here are the prizes per goal achieved.

• 1075 pts - 75,000 skill points
• 1150 pts - 75 political favors
• 1225 pts - 2 x Diverse Unakite Matte - Limited
• 1300 pts - 150 political favor
• 1500 pts - 4 Presidential Candidate Favor

Remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned I probably wouldn't get the probe launcher available from the event? The final reward is enough for a player to get one of the new officer modules. So everyone get one of the modules on a single character. I had my four, but in the final week I could receive 8 more.

In addition to my high sec content, the developers added a new escalation to Rampant Drone Fabricator sites making them more lucrative (and more dangerous) to those who bring a capital to run a site.

I plan on completing the event track on at least one of the two characters with which I've engaged the event so far. The determining factor is my available time. In the meantime, I've included the patch notes below.

Seasonal Tracks:

• The seasonal point cap has been increased to 1,500 for the final week of the election, giving players more opportunity to support their candidates.
• New rewards have been added to the seasonal reward track, with the capstone reward being Presidential Candidate Favors, which can be traded for officer modules at candidates’ Capsuleer Outreach Centers.

Rampant Drone Fabricator:

• Rampant Drone Fabricator sites have been upgraded with a Capital escalation!
  
  
• The difficulty of the site will be ramped up significantly, but so too are the rewards
• This escalation is unlocked by having any Capital ship, excluding the Rorqual, present at the start of a wave.
• All Capitals, excluding the Rorqual, are now considered valid by the site's perimeter.
• NPCs will deal additional damage when attacking a Capital ship:
• +50% damage to Carriers.
• +100% damage to other Capitals.
• NPCs will no longer attack Fighters.
• Space Superiority Fighters will now deal their full damage to NPCs, Nanoswarms, and the Fabricator itself.

The Capital escalation provides extremely rewarding content that pushes even the most powerful ships in EVE to their limits! More ISK, more hybrid drones, and vastly more enemies await you within.

Several tweaks have also been made to ensure Carriers are a viable option, even giving Dreadnoughts a run for their money. Do not sleep on Space Superiority Fighters. This should hopefully give Carrier pilots a fun and lucrative content source within wormhole space.

• NPCs within Rampant Drone Fabricator sites will now scale their damage based on the system's reward tier:
  
  
• NPCs will deal less damage in C1-C3 systems.
• NPCs will deal additional damage in C5/C6 systems.

The rewards found within these sites varied by system type, though the difficulty did not. This was intended to reflect additional risk, but failed to provide an on-ramp for those wanting to try the content. Now, players running sites in lower-tier systems can practice mechanics with difficulty better matching the potential rewards.

EVE Online: Catalyst Patch Notes - Control Access For Freelance Jobs

I went to log into EVE Online this morning and noticed a new patch download. Two weeks after the launch of Catalyst came the first patch, concerning controlling access to freelance jobs. The news article describing the patch was pretty short.

The first update to Catalyst is here, bringing Access Control List restrictions to Freelance Jobs.

This allows project creators to decide who can and cannot see the listed job.

Want to blacklist your rival alliance? Done.

Want to make sure only members of a certain corporation see your posting? You got it.

Want to put out a hit on a rival capsuleer or corporation and make sure the target remains unaware? Mum’s the word.

A new Freelancing skill has also been added, allowing capsuleers to accept more than three Freelance Jobs at a time. Explore available Freelance Jobs via the AIR Opportunities interface.

At the same time, the costs associated with Freelance Jobs have been reduced. The duration fee is down by 25%, and the Broadcasting Fee is being cut by a third.

Basically a TL,DR for the patch notes. I was interested in the new skill, Freelancing, so I took a couple of extra minutes to gather some information.

I tried to find out what the market price is with no luck. Of course, I didn't have much time to search. Players can click on the blue "+" button to purchase the book remotely for 1.3 million ISK. I have the feeling that's how the skill will become available as the developers will want to place as few barriers to obtaining Freelancing as possible.

Below I'll include the full patch notes covering the updates to accessing freelance jobs. I have the feeling players interested in the feature will want to dig into the details.

Freelance Job Access Lists (ACLs)

Freelance Jobs now support Access Lists (ACLs), giving corporations and job creators the ability to define exactly who can view and accept the job postings. This update provides better control and privacy and a more tailored collaboration for corporations.

• ACLs allow visibility restrictions at three identity levels:
• Character – specific characters.
• Corporation – all members of selected corporations.
• Alliance – all members of corporations within selected alliances.

• Creating Jobs with ACL:
• You can select which ACL to use during job creation, and once assigned, a job’s ACL cannot be swapped, but the contents of the ACL may be edited at any time.
• Changes to ACL affect job visibility and participation but will not remove existing participants.
• If an ACL that’s attached to a freelance job is deleted, only the active participants of the job are able to contribute. No other capsuleers can accept the job.
• Blocked characters can’t see or access relevant job listings, even with a direct link.
• The job creator and corporation project managers always retain full access regardless of restrictions.

New Skill: Freelancing

• A new Freelancing skill has been introduced.
• Each level increases the number of concurrent Freelance Jobs a character can accept, up to maximum of 11.

Freelance Job Cost Adjusted

To make the job creation more sustainable, two cost reductions have been applied:

• Duration fee reduced by 25%.
• Broadcasting Fee reduced by 33%.

Freelance Job : Alliance Column in Participant view

A new Alliance column has been added to the Participant view for Freelance Jobs. Project managers will now be able to view and sort participants by alliance membership.

• Clicking the Alliance column header sorts the participants alphabetically by alliance name and clicking again reverses the order.
• If a participant does not belong to an alliance, a “-” symbol will be shown.