October Patch Notes - Ore Re-Distribution!

 A new patch has dropped, the notes of which can be found here:

https://www.eveonline.com/article/qi4t9e/patch-notes-for-version-18-10

I don't normally talk about patch notes, but these will have huge effects on the game as a whole.

First off, the big economic news. Ore re-distribution. Basically you will only be able to mine for Tritanium, Pyerite and Mexallon in High sec, Hedbergite has been massively increased in availability in Low sec, and the high sec minerals have been all but removed from Null Sec.

This is essentially undoing the "farms and fields" idea of Null where you could harvest all the resources you need and alliances could be self-sufficient without having to import goods and materials. I liked that idea initially, but it lead to huge alliances mining like crazy and compressing prices to the point where you can (allegedly) buy a supercarrier for 7Bn in Delve. When ISK is that meaningless it threatens the health of the game. 

This re-distribution and accompanying shortage will mean that players have to buy some materials in high sec, and risk moving them around the cluster, which will further add to the cost. You can see the effect of this on the Tritanium prices in Jita:

And people are also speculating that larger items that take a lot of trit will jump in price. For example here is the Orca:

The changes haven't been live long enough for this to be the actual build cost of an Orca, so this is definitely market panicking and predicting the future cost based on increased materials price. I realised this too late to invest in this, but for those who did you're looking at a good 40% profit per Orca you bought a couple of weeks ago.

The next big thing is the Triglavian Invasion. 27 systems that hit "final luminality" have had their stargates shut down and Triglavian gates installed, to create a new region called Pochven. This is the first change to the layout of the cluster since wormholes were released in Apocrypha in 2009! Crucially for us marketeers one of the systems moved is Niarja. So it seems the 47 jump route from Jita to Amarr is permanent! This adds a lot of flying time to people like myself, but might also allow Amarr to establish more as a hub as people won't simply bypass it for a quick run to Jita anymore. Amarr is now the furthest high sec hub from Jita, when it was the closest!

I'm a bit gutted I missed the boat on Trit speculation, but I'm intrigued to see how these changes will affect the market as a whole. I'm going to try and explore the new Trig region (probably on my null character) and try and grab some nice screenshots. Interesting times for all!