The Wolves of Mordor

The fine print says if you pre-order you’ll get your stuff by November 20, 2026 at the latest while they are posting launch date advisements in the forums, the most recent of which says:

We are writing today to update our guidance on release timing for our upcoming expansion The Wolves of Mordor. We currently expect to release The Wolves of Mordor on Wednesday, October 28th, 2026. Thank you!

That does not have any scent of desperation about it at all.  But SSG has been weird about this whole expansion cycle, going out and announcing features of the expansion, like automated nosy hobbit neighbors, before announcing the expansion.

So it goes.

The expansion itself is billed as follows:

Answer the call of the hunt by traveling to Draugardh, a distant corner of Mordor where the Free Peoples’ victory proves far from complete. Not every shadow fled when Mordor’s fires dimmed, and some of the Dark Lord’s oldest servants issue forth to threaten those who caused their master to fall. As terrible howls pierce the night, will you stand against the were-wolves of Mordor, or fall prey to the evil that stirs there?

Done farming the brief bits of the deep appendix about distant Harad, SSG has turned its eyes back towards Mordor where there still lingers a bit of the IP they have yet to exploit.

That may sound a bit cynical, but I am torn on the subject.  I want LOTRO to survive, to remain available, which necessitates selling more content every year.  That is the business model.  On the other hand, even the mighty appendix at the end of Return of the King only has so much in it and some day we might end up in with content answering questions nobody cares about, like a Middle-earth version of the movie Solo.

I know, given a world where Christopher Tolkien made a bunch of money hawking his father’s notebooks, doodles, correspondences, bar tabs, and shopping lists in a seemingly unending series of “unfinished tales” books, who am I to suggest that there is any limit to the thirst for just a bit more of Middle-earth?  But SSG doesn’t have access to all of that, so we’ll never get the expansion where Strider is a hobbit and everybody’s name is a slightly different spelling.

We’re going to be going to the Grey Havens some day!  We’d better!

Anyway, that day isn’t today.  Today we’re being asked to pre-order something happening in one of the back aisles of Mordor.  In fact, we’re being incentivized to pre-order, given the rather tentative state of the launch date by having the Curse of the Valar thrown at those who buy in before the fateful day, which will give you a level 160 player boost.

For pre-order we have the usual suspects.

• Standard Edition – $40
  • The Wolves of Mordor Content (available at launch)
  • Instance Cluster & Raid Content (available some day after launch)
  • 160 level-up package (1/account)
  • Standard Neighbour Package (Select 2 Neighbors Account-Wide)
  • Title: “Were-hunter” (prefix)

This is the usual “give me the expansion and let me get on with my life” option for those of us not made of money.

But there is always a step up.

• Collector’s Edition – $80
  • The Wolves of Mordor Content (available at launch)
  • Instance Cluster & Raid Content (available some day after launch)
  • 160 level-up package (1/account)
  • Standard Neighbour Package (Select 2 Neighbors Account-Wide)
  • Collectors Neighbour Package (Select 1 Additional Neighbour Account-Wide)
  • Title: “, the Dauntless”
  • Armour of the Dauntless Commander
  • Steed of the Dauntless Commander
  • War-steed of the Dauntless Commander
  • Improved Expedition Supplies

The eternal middle child of Middle-earth.  Who is into the game enough to pay double for some fluff but not into it enough to go all the way to the next tier?

• Ultimate Fan Bundle – $130
  • The Wolves of Mordor Content (available at launch)
  • Instance Cluster & Raid Content (available some day after launch)
  • Level 160 Valar Package (1/account)
  • Ultimate Neighbour Package (All 4 Neighbours Unlocked Account-wide)
  • Title: “, Stalks the Shadows”
  • Were-wolf Hunter Ultimate Armour
  • Were-wolf Hunter’s Steed
  • Were-wolf Hunter’s War-steed
  • ‘Scar’ The Hunter’s Hound Pet
  • Were-wolf Hunter’s Eclipse Milestone Style
  • Were-wolf Hunter’s Weapon Aura (Glows in the presence of Ancient Evil)
  • Ultimate Expedition Supplies
  • Extra Shared Bank Storage (10 slots)
  • Housing Teleport Item (available at launch)
  • The Wolves of Mordor Ultimate Fan Bundle – Monsterplay Appearance
  • Were-wolf Hunter’s Earring (XP boost until 160)
  • And more!

Always love me some vague “and more!” at the end of a list.  Did they run out of space, time, or just imagination?

Anyway, we’ll see when the expansion actually goes live.  But if you want the “free” level 160 character boost you will need to pre-order The Wolves of Mordor.  That bit will go away once it launches.

Related:

• LOTRO – The Wolves of Mordor expansion page
• LOTRO – The Wolves of Mordor Frequently Asked Questions
• LOTRO – Addition to The Wolves of Mordor Expansion Pre-purchase
• LOTRO – Expansions Purchase Page

Crimson Harvest 2026 – Open the Bloodgates

The event runs from today, October 6th, through until downtime on November 3rd, and brings with it most of the expected activities along with a couple of new items.  New on the list for 2026 is that the Blood Raiders have found their way into Pochven.  Even now somebody is probably losing their mind over on r/eve about how Pochven is even a bigger ISK printing machine with this event.

The headlines for the event are as follows, selected by the company and sorted by me:

• Align with Blood Raiders or the Order of St. Tetrimon and earn rewards.
• Accessible sites for capsuleers of all experience levels.
• New Triglavian challenges and encounters across New Eden and Pochven.
• Earn a blueprint copy for the new Akoman Blood Raider attack battlecruiser.
• 90% PvP loot drops return outside highsec, with a 50% implant drop chance on pod kills.
• Crimson Harvest escalates in the final week and the reward track gets extended.
• Daily login rewards unlock Skill Points, boosters, SKINs & more.

So let’s go down the list.

As has become the custom, you have to pick a faction to represent; you either fight for the Blood Raiders or the Order of St. Tetrimon.

You must pick in order to participate

As I have no doubt said before, while I appreciate the role play possibilities this choice provides, it does mean that half the event sites will not be for you, and the least likely complaint about this event is that there are too many event sites.

Once you have gone into The Agency, found the event… which is NOT featured on the main page of The Agency because CCP/Fenris remain amateurs… and had chosen a side, then half the event sites are accessible to you.  Actually, all of the sites are, but you only make progress towards the rewards track by running sites for the faction you chose.

In The Agency under Encounters

There are both combat and hacking sites for the event, though combat makes up most of the activities for the event.

How “accessible” they are for players of all experience levels is debatable however.  In past iterations the hacking sites were level IV, which is likely too much for a new player in the Heron they got from the career agent.  We’ll see if that changes this year.

And the combat sites… well, they are doable with the right fits, but they are open to all comers, so the common high sec experience is running a site and having somebody else drop in and steal the kill you need in a highly optimized ship.  In low sec, by contrast, the experience is generally somebody dropping into your site to kill you instead.

The work around is generally to wait a week until the high achievers are done and maybe play at off hours to simply avoid other people.  This is an MMORPG after all, the point is to avoid other people right?

As for the Pochven stuff… well, there will be new wormholes to get you there.  But it is also a PvP arena and it is dangerous to go alone.  Your mileage may vary.

The reward track for the event looks fairly modest.  More SKINS, more SKINR elements, and more boosters you’ll likely forget to use so they’ll expire.

Crimson Harvest 2026 rewards track

The tease/temptation is at the end of the reward track, a single run blueprint copy that will let you build the new Bloodraiders battlecruiser, the Akoman.

The end blueprint copy

This too has become a feature of New Eden events, getting people an early look at a new ship that is coming with the next expansion.  That it is a Blood Raiders ship raises the question, “Are the Blood Raiders coming to Faction Warfare?”  The next two expansions are low sec focused, by which CCP/Fenris generally means Faction Warfare because they want to make a small gang version of null sec… so maybe?

We shall see.

Also, there are Twitch drops for the event and, if I am seeing this correctly, it looks like the company handed out some of the new battlecruisers to streamers.  Or maybe the BPCs.  I don’t know, but CCP/Fenris is taking care of their favorites once more.

Oh, and in an attempt to get back on track with the bullet points, there is this standard feature of the event.

• 90% PvP loot drops return outside highsec, with a 50% implant drop chance on pod kills.

Its a thing.  Go crazy.  Everybody is a loot pinata for Halloween.  Expect a rise in suicide ganks in high sec as they are now even more profitable, and a corresponding rise in complaints about suicide ganking.  Some things never change.

Also on the list of things that are now routine part of events, for the last week of the Crimson Harvest there will be an additional event track with more rewards to get people back to doing sites again because most people were done in the first two weeks.

And then, finally, there are login rewards.  It wouldn’t be any sort of event if the company wasn’t trying to bribe you to at least log into the game to inflate their MAU stats just a bit.

Crimson Harvest 2026 Login Rewards

There are 28 days of rewards, made up of all the usual things.  Yay, more expiring boosters and EverMarks!  But there are also a pile of skill points to be had, with the big payout coming at day 21 which will get your Omega account 325K skill points.

As usual, Alpha clone accounts only get the top reward track, but if you decide to go Omega, which the company dearly hopes you will, then you get all of the bottom track rewards, even those for past days.

So it goes.  As I have said in the past, I tend to prefer the Winter Nexus event as it has a chill mining aspect to it.  I tire of the competitive combat sites which are either easy to the point of tedious if people leave you alone or super frustrating when somebody drops in and snipes the item you need.  I’ll take the login rewards and might do some exploration content once the initial rush settles down.

But it does answer the question, “Who are the real space monsters?”

It sure isn’t the NPCs.

Related:

• CCP/Fenris – Crimson Harvest: Open the Bloodgates
• CCP/Fenris – Crimson Harvest: The Bloodgates Are Open
• CCP/Fenris – Blood Raiders Invade Unstable Pochven
• CCP/Fenris – Patch Notes for Crimson Harvest
• EVE University – Crimson Harvest 2026 (in progress)

No Man’s Sky – Cosmos

As I noted at the time, the expedition starts off with the usual expedition trope, which is you waking up as a fresh character with just basic equipment and a ship that needs repair.

Another broken ship to repair

Beyond that, this expedition was different.  Expeditions are often focused on exploring the features delivered with a recent update.  For example, after the Voyagers update we got the Corvette expedition which was focused on building and using the new corvette class ship system.

Likewise, after the Remnant update we got the Remnant expedition which was… well… alien world trucking simulator… with cargo hold physics.

The Colossus cargo goes into the hole… oh the memories

This time around the expedition, called Our Journey Continues, was an exploration of where the game has gone in the ten years since launch as the team at Hello Games sought to improve and expand No Man’s Sky.

This involved an expedition with five phases and 43 milestones… which is kind of a lot.

The Five Expedition Phases

That said, a lot of the milestone were fairly easy, geared to give you a taste or quick sample of what an update brought to the game.  Often the game handed you the stuff for to accomplish one milestone when you finished the previous one.

So, if you did things in order, when you hit the Voyagers milestone you had just received a pack of corvette parts.  You just had to go find a station that had corvette assembly facilities… which could be a trick if you were like me and bouncing back and forth on the expedition waypoints.  The old style stations do not have that ability so I had to go find one.  Easy enough, but it wasn’t a complete gimme.

Likewise, when you got to Remnant you didn’t have to go truck space garbage, you just had to equip the gravitino coil, for which you had been handed plans and the parts, and then go find some garbage to play with.

The interesting bit is that at the conclusion of each milestone you get a bit of insight from the team about what was going on.  For example, why is the expedition trope the fresh start on a strange planet with a broken ship?

From the Expeditions update summary

And they are not wrong.  I am mostly “done” with No Man’s Sky in general, but I come back for the expeditions because, in part, they represent a bit of a fresh start.

Some of them tell you things you may have already known, like the popularity of the Voyagers expansion.

Voyagers was indeed popular and unlocked player creativity

Others just gave a bit of the team’s mind set or how they approached things.  A couple sounded more like hagiography, a bit of team mythology they tell themselves to paper over the rough patches.  But most of it was interesting.

A number of times they referenced how they used their procedural generation tech to solve a problem.  For example, the huge number of moves they needed for their Pokemon knock-off update, the Xeno Arena, was a problem solved by procedural generation.

That made me suspect that if they were making the game today they would call it AI, because every algorithm over a modest amount of complexity seems to be getting highlighted as AI these days.  So let’s just be happy they aren’t jumping on that garbage bandwagon I suppose.

As for the milestones themselves, there were a few that required a bit of work.  At one point I had to upgrade a building at a settlement and found that the one I chose needed nitrogen, which I did not have.  I had to go to the anomaly and get the plans for a gas extractor then go find a toxic planet to set it up on in order to extract the nitrogen I needed.

Getting my daily dose of nitrogen

Then when I got back to the settlement the upgrade itself took 90 minutes.  Fortunately the clock on upgrades keeps running when you’ve logged off, so I logged off and did something else for a bit.

The toughest milestone for me personally was for the Sentinels milestone, which required you to find a sentinel pillar, something you can do by fighting through five waves of sentinels.  But I hate fighting sentinels and have never successfully defeated all five waves of a sentinel encounter.   Just not my thing.  I prefer to just get out the terrain manipulator, dig a hole, and hide in it until they get bored and go away.

Fortunately, the community had me covered.  While I had turned off multiplayer you still play in the same universe as everybody else and see all their stuff, including a handy base built at a sentinel pillar.

Finding the sentinel pillar the easy way

That let me go turn off the sentinels on the planet… which is one of my favorite things to do… again, do not like sentinels… and complete the milestone.

The community is also pretty good at highlighting other things, like runaway mould sites, which you can harvest and process into nanites.

Money in ball form

There were a few nice items to be had during the expedition.  I had been somewhat dissatisfied with the initial ship we received, mostly because it had too few upgrade slots and I didn’t have the nanites on had to upgrade it.  But I got the vintage interceptor and that became my default ship for the expedition.

The vintage interceptor on a landing pad

That was some fun.  I rode that along to the end of the expedition.

The last milestone was the one I was a bit worried about, as it would require me to win a holo battle in the Xeno Arena update.  I had not bothered with that, not being keen for another Pokemon variation in my life.  So I was wondering how I would do with three animals I had tamed along the way.

Holo Arena match up

It wasn’t a walk over, but I did manage to knock out the other team with one pet left standing on my side.  A bit of Pokemon battle strategy knowledge probably helped, but this was likely an easy round.  I had no coordinated plan and was simply lucky that I had a couple of attacks that were super effective against… ice type?  Were those ice type?

After that, it was off to see Atlas, which took a few jumps.  But once there it was the usual routine of docking up.

Arrival at the Atlas Station

There things ran to the usual plan.  I asked questions, got no answers, gave my own responses, and learned very little.  Atlas is not in the business of keeping us informed of the details.  And then Atlas launched me into a new galaxy.

What is the Hilbert Dimension?

There I found myself on a strange planet, my suits systems coming back online, and my ship broken… my poor vintage interceptor, every single module on it non-functional.  A real “Look how they massacred my boy!” moment.  I wasn’t flying off in that.

And I wasn’t going to go down that path again.  One expedition trope per expedition please.

So I summoned my original ship, headed into space, summoned the anomaly, and docked up to finish the expedition.  After two weeks of chipping away at it I was ready to wrap things up.

I collected quite a bit of stuff in the final totals.

The expedition summary

22 million units, 21.5K nanites… all that runaway mould helped… and 656 quicksilver.

Then it was time to press the button and finish the expedition.

Expedition complete

Then I was back on my main save and could head on over to the vendor who hands out the rewards.

The rewards claim list

I collected all the plans for the artwork and posters and what not… and the astronaut figurine, which you can stick on the control panel of your ship.

The astronaut bobble head in the vintage interceptor

It kind of just sits there, seeming to be floating, on some of the cockpits, but it is kind of neat.  Something for the corvette I am sure.

And then, once that had been settled and I had put away my rewards, it was back to my exploration ship and the loneliness of the vast universe.  Some day I will find my motivation and reach the center of the galaxy.

Related:

• Hello Games – Expedition 23: Our Journey Continues
• Reddit – NMS Our Journey Continues Expedition 23 In 4 HOURS
• TAGN – No Man’s Sky and the Cosmos Update
• TAGN – Starting Off with Our Journey Continues
• Hello Games – Cosmos: Introducing Update 7.0
• Hello Games – Cosmos 7.01 Update
• Hello Games – Cosmos 7.02 Update
• Hello Games – Cosmos 7.03 Update
• Hello Games – Cosmos 7.03.1 Update
• Hello Games – Cosmos 7.04 Update
• Hello Games – Cosmos 7.05 Update

Fantasy Critic League – Like Fantasy Football, but for Video Games

That seemed to give week forty the potential to really run up the scores overall, if only everything gets enough reviews.  But first off, we need to see where we left off last time.

Week 39 Scores

That baseline set, we started out on Monday with Toem 2.

Toem 2

It managed to grab enough reviews to get a score before it had released.

• Toem 2
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
  • Now has a score of 83.3

This sequel to the 2021 “explore and photograph” title  received a solid score, straddling the “true to the original” and “expanded the concept” expectations successfully.

It was not too far ahead of its  moment in getting a score as three of the week’s four titles were set to launch on Tuesday.

• Toem 2 has released!
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
• Nivalis Nights has released!
  • [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered has released!
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]

That gave Ula a leg up while the other titles waited for scores to come in.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Anthania Interactive (Ula)
    • Score has gone UP from 89.0 to 103.3
    • Moved from 5th place to 2nd place
  • Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)
    • Moved from 2nd place to 3rd place
  • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
    • Moved from 3rd place to 4th place
  • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)
    • Moved from 4th place to 5th place

The next morning there was some minor shift in the scores that pushed Bhagpuss ahead of Shilgrod once more.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)
    • Moved from 10th place to 9th place
  • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
    • Moved from 9th place to 10th place

That move was improved when one of last week’s titles, Nighthawks, finally hit the review threshold and got a score on the board.

• Nighthawks
  • [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
  • Now has a score of 79.7

Not the best score for the week, but better than no score.  That pushed Bhagpuss up two more spots on the board.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)
    • Score has gone UP from 44.2 to 53.9
    • Moved from 9th place to 7th place
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Moved from 7th place to 8th place
  • Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)
    • Moved from 8th place to 9th place

Thursday rolled in and brought us another score for the week, this time for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

This remaster of the 2015 titled impressed reviewers and brought in a big score.

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Now has a score of 89.6

That took Arhanta all the way to the top of the board, starting me on my inevitable journey down the rankings.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)
    • Score has gone UP from 91.5 to 111.1
    • Moved from 5th place to 1st place
  • TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)
    • Moved from 1st place to 2nd place
  • Anthania Interactive (Ula)
    • Moved from 2nd place to 3rd place
  • Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)
    • Moved from 3rd place to 4th place
  • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
    • Moved from 4th place to 5th place

That leaves us to see who is going to end up at the top come the end of the league.

Meanwhile, Gears of War: E-Day, a week forty-one title, landed a score.

• Gears of War: E-Day
  • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
  • Now has a score of 87.2

I think it had one of those “buy the expensive deluxe edition and play early” things going on.  Either way, it is looking strong for next week.

As Thursday evening arrived Ace Combat 8 hit its release point.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve

It had already landed a score of 88 last week.

• Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve has released!
  • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]

While it dipped about a point in the mean time, that was still enough bump Archey up out of the cellar.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
    • Score has gone UP from 23.3 to 40.4
    • Moved from 13th place to 11th place
  • Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
    • Moved from 11th place to 12th place
  • Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)
    • Moved from 12th place to 13th place

We also had another score for week forty-one show up, so we’re on our way for that.

• Star Wars: Galactic Racer
  • [Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
  • Now has a score of 86.8

Then, as Friday drew towards a close there was a sudden burst of updates.

• Toem 2
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 83.8 to 82.7
• Big Walk
  • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
  • Score has gone UP from 87.6 to 89.1
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Score has gone UP from 90.7 to 92.2
• Control Resonant
  • [Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 84.0 to 82.7

None of those changed anybody’s place in the rankings, but The Witcher 3 suddenly looked like it might be the top pick in the league if it could hold onto that kind of score.

Meanwhile there was Nivalis Nights, the remaining title for this week, along with Nocturne from last week, both of which are awaiting enough top critic reviews to quality for a score.  It feels like there might be some things that are too indie to get reliably reviewed.

All of which left the scoreboard looking like this as the week came to a close.

Week 40 Scores

The big move was, of course, Arhanta jumping up to first place and now being projected to land within two points of Shintar, who is currently the league pick for coming in first.

We had one update on releases show up during the week.

• Kena: Scars of Kosmora
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Estimated release date changed from ‘2026’ to ‘2027’

So that is out of contention for this years league.  But Arhanta was paying attention, so the two bids this week were all theirs.

• Bids in TAGN League
  • Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen
    • Won by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta) with a bid of $1
    • Dropped game ‘Kena: Scars of Kosmora’ conditionally
  • Planet Zoo 2
    • Won by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta) with a bid of $1
    • Dropped game ‘Witchbrook’ conditionally

Arhanta had two titles still waiting to release and jettisoned both for fresh picks.

That left the next ten titles in the league looking like this.

Coming Up for Week 41

That gives us another four release week, and one of those is Arhanta’s next to last pick.  Meanwhile, Shintar still has three titles waiting for scores and we won’t see the first of those until week forty-two.  The other two on her list do not have ship dates.  Will Shintar hold out or go down the same path as Arhanta and drop those for fresh choices?

Related:

• TAGN Fantasy Critic League
• TAGN Discord Server
• Fantasy Critic Site
• Fantasy Critic How to Play
• Fantasy Critic FAQ
• Fantasy Critic Most Desired Reviews
• Open Critic Review Site

Welcome to a truly global video game.

This time around Fraternity and their Winter Coalition allies decided to push at our holdings in the Geminate region.  Those were a remnant of the Vexor War that ran from early April into middle May.  This is the history lesson, if you are interested:

• May 12, 2026 – Home From Geminate and the End of the Vexor War Campaign
• May 5, 2026 –  All Quiet on the Geminate Front
• Apr 29, 2026 – WinterCo Staging Keepstar in 4-HWWF Destroyed
• Apr 22, 2026 – CCP Reviews Atioth and Bungles B-R5RB
• Apr 20, 2026 – Notes from the War in the Geminate Flood Plain
• Apr 15, 2026 – Notes from the War in Geminate
• Apr 10, 2026 – The Imperium Picks Itself Up, Dusts Itself Off, and Drops Two More Keepstars
• Apr 7, 2026 – The Imperium Loses 33 Titans Battling WinterCo and the Server in Atioth
• Apr 4, 2026 – The Imperium Marches on Geminate
• Mar 14, 2026 – Ongoing Fighting in Southern Geminate (pre-war)

That left us in possession of three constellations in the region, giving us a direct connection to Fraternity space.

In anticipation of the potential push, GSF initiated an alliance job to pay some bonus ISK for killing rats in the three constellations in order to raise ADMs a bit.  I actually flew an Ishtar out there to collect a bit of extra ISK and raise my security status a bit after it took a huge hit in Amamake last week.

In a Guristas Forsaken Hub

I haven’t shot Guristas rats since 2016.  Delve is home to the Blood Raiders and Insmother and much of the southeast hosts the Angel Cartel.

Anyway, I am sure I didn’t help very much.  Fraternity did as expected and reinforce the sovereignty in our holdings, focusing mostly on the NK-AOZ constellation, the one closest to their space.

Geminate State of Play on October 1

This set a series of timers for a sovereignty contests, and the thing about timers is that they give a lot of warning to the defenders.  Also, the time zone for the timers are set by the defender.  When we went in and destroyed the WinterCo staging Keepstar… the one famously lacking armor plates… we had to fight in Chinese time, which meant fighting through downtime and in the very early early morning for me.

For these sovereignty contests WinterCo was going to have to fight in European time.  And while WinterCo has EUTZ allies… and it is a holiday week, so they can stay up late themselves… the Imperium also has a lot of Euros.  And with the promise of some action and a possible escalation to capital ships if things got spicy, the moment the timers were set move ops to pre-position caps started, jumping them to K-IYNW in the Great Wildlands region and then taking that long regional gate into Atioth, where they could dock up in our Keepstar, ready to jump into any battle.

Basically, it has been pretty quiet in null sec, with our primary foe being CCP/Fenris and their desire to inconvenience us until we quit (again, they clearly don’t bother to try and understand null sec), and a lot of people were hungry for a big fight, even if it was a sov contest, which themselves are another exhibit in the case of “CCP doesn’t understand how people play their game.”

The whole thing was set to kick off around 17:00 UTC on the first, which rather awkwardly for me is in the first half of my work day.  Being on the west coast of the US tends to put me in an awkward time slot for a lot of these things.  But I had jabber running and could see the fleets being called up.  Ravens, Maelstroms, Typhoons, dreadnoughts, all being collected into fleets and moving to the front line.

Then, as the fights started, the reinforcement fleets, bringing new people and people who lost ships into the fight.

When we hit lunch my time I saw a reinforcement fleet go up and I decided to jump in and see if I could get in on some of the fight.  I wasn’t ready, or in the mood, to commit to a battleship for the brawl, so I picked a Confessor, the Amarr T3 tactical destroyer, which is one of the support ships that fly with the Typhoon doctrine.

My Confessor undocked, with Ravens and a Maelstrom in frame

Being support means you have to stick with the fleet but you can also screw around a bit and find your own targets.  The default fit even came with a target painter and, in sharpshooter mode, could target out to nearly 120km with my skills, so it seemed likely I might even get on a couple of kill mails.  I could hit my quota of one on the first day of the month!

I was just in time.  As I got myself together, made sure to fit the rigs in my newly acquired ship, and undocked as the reinforcement fleet took a couple of gates to a waiting titan that sent us into the Great Wildlands.  We then gated into Atioth.

A mixed doctrine reinforcement fleet taking the gate

In Atioth we were warped to the Keepstar where another titan waited.  It opened up a bridge as shortly after we landed… kind of an optimistic move as we had bridged so recently, but my jump timer had run down and the FC was probably tracking that.

Getting the bridge into the fight

We were sent straight to 4VY-Y1, where the main battle in the sovereignty contest appeared to be happening.  It was full of capsuleers and time dilation was down to 10%, so things were moving slow.

Me and about 2,600 of my friends in 4VY-Y1

That is some serious tidi, but it wasn’t awful.  Everything was running at 10% of normal speed, but commands were being processed immediately from the queue.

I supposed I speak as a bit of a connoisseur of tidi.  I am one of those people who hits shift-alt-control-M to bring up the queue to see how things are really performing.  I have a sense of the dreaded “server weather” after a decade of half of dealing with its squalls and storms.

Some people see any sort of slow down of the game and throw themselves on the floor and have a tantrum about it.  They rage at CCP for bad code, they rage at them for not upgrading their servers (like they’re going to spend any money on us when they’ve fallen in love with their blockchain scam game), they range at the players for being eager to form up in huge numbers and throw themselves into what is obviously going to be a tidi traffic jam.  They treat it like we’re all conspiring to keep them from having fun.

But I’ve been around since tidi became a thing and have come to appreciate it as a game mechanic.  In my experience, this was “good” tidi.  It was not worth fretting about at all.

On landing in 4VY-Y1 we were told which fleet to join based on which doctrine they were flying… I was there for a Typhoon doctrine fleet… and was able to drop fleet, swap coms, and join the new fleet readily enough.  Then it was time to warp to the FC for the fight already in progress.  I had put myself into sharpshooter mode and was soon aligned and in warp to the Typhoon fleet.

The Typhoons are in there somewhere

The fleet ended up being strung out in a long line, the slow, armor tanked Typhoons running their microwarp drives and consuming cap boosters to try and catch up to the FC.

I landed in the scrum, caught up quickly enough in my zippy little destroyer, put my target painter on about half a dozen targets, shooting at a few more than were at close range, before the FC called for us to align to the O-VWPB.  The slugfest had been going on for about 90 minutes at that point and WinterCo had decided that they had had enough… how to use the word “had” four times in a single sentence there… and were looking to extract.

We, in turn, were going to do a bit of extracting ourselves, in the form of some targets of opportunity as they fled the battle.  Up to that point the scale of losses were about even, but once you start to retreat things are going to weigh against you.

The FC warped us to the gate, which had bubbles all over so nobody could simple land and jump.  Everybody had to slow boat to the gate from 20-50km out, so the FC was calling for support to get through and tackle what we could.

Racing to get to the gate

You can see in that image our Typhoons coming in at one angle with another stream of Ravens… ours and theirs intermixed… running for the gate along another axis.

Some of the battleships were not going to wait to get to the other side, sending volleys into hostiles still running for the exit.  Even as the gate pulled me through to the next system a large volley was hitting a hostile Raven

Somebody not willing to wait to fight on the other side

When I was through and on the other side we managed to catch a few.  Bubbles were up and I even tried to tackle, though with a 9km scram most stuff was dead before I could get within range.

Through the gate and in the mix

The hostiles were getting out of the bubbles and headed to the VSJ-PP gate.  We continued to give chase, popping into that system to grab a couple more stragglers.

But that was the end of things.  We were now into their space.  They warped off when they could and we went back to the gate and jumped through.  We paused there for a bit, more to let other fleets move ahead than to make sure the hostiles were not coming back… they were not, they were done… before starting our own run back to Atioth.  The tidi was subsiding a bit by that point, but still there due to us pushing multiple fleets through gates.

We grouped up in Atioth… sort of.  There was a change of instructions which ended up with half the fleet on the Keepstar aligned to the K-IYNW gate and the other half on the in gate, also aligned to the K-IYNW gate.  But when the FC said “take this warp” we were on the ball enough to all warp to the gate and go through.

From there it was another titan bridge and a couple gates and we were back home.

The battle report I am looking at put the price of the battle at 220 billion ISK.

Battle Report Header

While we dropped dreads… and even lost a couple… it was not a capital fight and you don’t get big big ISK numbers until you get capitals on grid and brawling.

Still, enough destruction to keep the economy of New Eden turning for another day.

And, in the end, the status quo was maintained.