EVE Online’s fifth mini-expansion – which doesn’t sound all that mini – launched today. Phoebe’s arrival marks the halfway point in the first year of CCP’s new expansion model, where it will release 10 expansions annually.
Phoebe’s biggest changes affect travel and supply lines thanks to the introduction of jump fatigue. After making a jump, ships will need to wait for a timer before they can jump again, discouraging long-distance jump travel. It’s the first phase in CCP’s attempt to rejuvenate Nullsec.
“The constant evolution in the universe and the collaboration between players are what makes EVE truly unique,” said Andie Nordgren, executive producer for EVE Online. “With Phoebe we have purposefully started to make changes where we don’t necessarily know the outcome, making it an exciting time to play EVE.”
What are those changes? Well, on top of the jump fatigue system, Phoebe introduces a bunch of quality of life improvements, a new module, tweaks to the character skill queue and a slew of other things. Here’s the highlights:
- A lifting of the 24-hour start time limitation for the character skill queue, which allows players to map out and train skills for months and years and evolve their gameplay experience how they want
- Consolidation of the entire Invention and Reverse-Engineering systems with improvements to each and a more intuitive progression for industrialists
- Multisell: The ability to create multiple market sell orders for EVE’s sophisticated and much-studied player-run markets
- Updated escalation sites, data sites and reward scaling for missions and low-end wormholes
- An upgraded sensor overlay brings more life to space including player bookmarks and better orientation
- A new notification system that’s completely configurable to help each player quickly identify the information that’s important to them.
- Higgs Anchor: A new module that should prove useful to low-end wormhole usage and miners
- Rebalancing of stealth bombers and heavy interdictors
And you can check out the full patch notes, over 20 pages worth, here.