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Eve Online: Odyssey is out now; shifting the power balance in New Eden

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This morning saw CCP release Eve’s latest free expansion, Odyssey. The update is focussed on exploration but also brings with it massive changes to resource distribution and a host of visual and aural upgrades.

The major new exploration features are a new scanning system and an archeology minigame. The former is a scanner sweep that reveals locations of interest in each system. It also looks lovely, a great blue grid that sweeps across your vision whenever you activate it. The latter is a hacking game that you play whenever you discover a wrecked hulk in space. The minigame is quite simple, currently: it has you attempt to plot a path through a node map, if done successfully you’re rewarded with a burst of cargo containers to open and salvage, do it wrong and you’ll lose all the loot left in the hulk.

Resource changes see a significant reduction in the amount of ice available in the galaxy. Ice is the fuel driving supercarriers and the largest of Eve’s ships, armies are dependent on the stuff. This change will make any systems containing ice belts hotly contested.

Finally, CCP have worked to improve transition animations, effectively removing a large number of the loadings screens in the game. Now, when you die, undock, warp, or jump between systems you’re treated to glorious special effects. The hangar interiors have been overhauled, too. A source of particular delight is the work that’s been done on Eve’s soundscapes, a large number of locations in the game have now got their own soundtrack – scores written to reflect the interior of a wormhole or the danger of nullsec.

Here’s a link to the full patch notes for your own perusal. Warning, they’re lengthy.