Between pirates, scammers, alien invaders, and other players, one is never truly safe in EVE Online. Recently, a brand new threat has emerged, one with the ability to force players to change how they play the game: the weather.
Gigantic storms have begun to appear all across the game’s galaxy following a recent update. These phenomena, called Metalminal Storms, appear seemingly at random in different star systems and seem to have something to do with the chaotic energy being thrown around by the Triglavian invasion. The storms spread through the jump gate network that players use to travel the stars and reach out several light years in all directions from their origin, spreading their effects across massive regions of space. As they slowly move along the gate network over a period of days, they bring their game-warping effects with them to new areas before winding down and blinking out of existence.
Players who dare to venture into the systems affected by the core of the storms are rewarded with unique anomalies to explore. Some storms drag massive amounts of raw resources out of the depths of space for enterprising industrialists to mine, process, and turn into wealth. Others seem to weaken the veil between the known universe and the Abyssal space that the invading Triglavian faction comes from, allowing these NPCs to spawn in systems where they normally do not.
In addition to creating new opportunities for players to explore, the storms change the way combat works in systems they affect. There are currently eight different types of Metaliminal Storms, and each provides a unique combination of buffs and debuffs to starships caught inside of them. Some storms may increase your ship’s ability to withstand damage, while limiting its ability to receive repairs from allied ships. Other storms massively increase the amount of damage a ship’s guns are able to do, while rendering autonomous drone weapons weaker and less capable. Each storm drastically changes the rules and caters to a specific type of ship setup.
Some players have been trying to exploit the beneficial game changes under the storms’ influence, while others are trying to avoid them entirely. Some players are trying to keep others up to date about the weather. Former Council of Stellar Management member Dunk Dinkle posted a video with a current weather report informing the community of what to expect when flying around.
Dunk Dinkle’s video is relatively tongue in cheek, but there have been many players calling for someone to create a weather forecasting and reporting website to track the storms as they move around the galaxy. Based on everything else the EVE community has built around the game, it’s only a matter of time until a daily weather report podcast is available for everyone to consume.
It seems likely one of these Metaliminal Storms will intersect with the massive war currently being fought between two of the game’s biggest factions. When this happens, whichever side is able to more quickly adapt to the challenges presented by the space weather will almost assuredly come out on top.
Leave a Reply