THE DEMONS WHICH LURK IN THE ABYSS
Excellent article by Suitonia..
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Enter the Abyss is coming may 29th, and with it, new solo PVE content that is procedurally generated. With the expansion coming, I thought I’d delve into helping you be able to deal with the new NPC threats in these sites. If you’re not familiar with the abyss then I recommend you check out some streams, or jump on SISI and play for yourself, or just jump right in on TQ.
There are a few different group of enemies you can encounter, the new triglavians, rogue drones and Drifters, backed up by sleepers and seekers of their own. Just mastering these NPCs is only half the battle though, you’ll still need to watch out for the clouds, weather effect, triglavian structures and potentially other players on your return to known space if you’re successful.
Rogue Drones
The Rogue Drones have been busy in the Abyss, harvesting unique materials and producing new rogue drone varieties. Rogue drones in the Abyss tend to favor a single damage type and form swarms of the same damage type. There are three varieties of damage drone, and a set for each of the four damage types in eve online
Spark: EM Damage
Ember: Thermal Damage
Strike: Kinetic Damage
Blast: Explosive Damage
Needle: This is the ‘weak’ frigate damage drone.
Lance: This is the ‘strong’ frigate damage drone.
Grip: This is a battlecruiser version of the previous damage drones, they have much more HP and very high damage but move much slower with lower optimals too. You will want to kite these out. Despite being a battlecruiser it tracks just as well as the frigates.
Unlike the rogue drones in NPC space, these drones have damage resistances on shield and armor identical to capsuleer ships. Strike and Blast have a slight lean towards shield tanking, where as Ember and Spark are more geared towards armor tanking. The exception is Grips, which all have omni resistances of 60% EM/Explosive, 70% Thermal/Kinetic.
Needles deal 25 DPS or 50 damage of their type every 2 seconds;
Lances deal 50 DPS or 100 damage of their type every 2 seconds with additional HP and range over Needles.
Grips deal 200 DPS or 1000 damage of their type every 5 seconds with BC HP. They have low optimal however.
In addition to these, there are also logistic drones. They have Destroyer sig (75m) with 0% resists and frigate level HP so they are not very good at repairing eachother, but they can make grips and rogue drone battleships surprisingly durable, you’re on a 20 minute timer and every second counts.
Fieldweaver: Remote Shield Logi
Plateweaver: Remote Armor Logi
Each of these repairs 20 Flat HP to shield or armor respectively every 2 seconds.
Next, let’s cover the ewar drones. It should be noted that while weak, these drones deal omni damage, if you’re relying on an active armor hardener to tank the DPS drones you may want to consider clearing these out first even if their ewar is ineffective! 10 DPS of omni damage each.
Snarecaster: Webbing
Fogcaster: Tracking and Missile Disruption
Gazedimmer: Sensor Dampener
Spotlighter: Target Painting
Finally, there are Abyssal Drone Overlord Battleships that can spawn. These do a mix of Thermal and Kinetic damage. The best damage type to deal to them is usually Thermal, followed by Explosive. They have fairly bad tracking so getting under their guns can result in a lot of damage mitigation, they also have varying optimals but usually it’s between 30-40km before they’re firing in falloff, so you can kite them out if you can’t tank them. beware of them around drifter tracking pylons!
The Twilit has uncharacteristic significantly higher armor kinetic resistances than the other drone battleships, so beware. The Benthic also has a 15km 55% web.
| Prefix | Tier | Shield HP | Armor HP | Hull HP | Shield Resists (Em/Th/Kn/Ex) | Armor Resists (Em/Th/Kn/Ex) | Hull Resists | Kinetic DPS | Thermal DPS | Total DPS | Damage (Em/Th/Kn/Ex) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Photic | 1 | 9000 | 10625 | 10625 | (0/20/40/50) | (62.5/51.25/51.25/32.5) | 33 | 68.10 | 40.09 | 108.19 | (–/37/63/–) |
| Twilit | 2 | 9000 | 10000 | 10625 | (12.5/30/48.5/56.2) | (68/59/78/59) | 60 | 171.43 | 106.84 | 278.27 | (–/38/62/–) |
| Bathyic | 3 | 9000 | 20000 | 10625 | (12.5/30/48.5/56.2) | (68/59/59/68) | 60 | 225.70 | 161.21 | 386.92 | (–/42/58/–) |
| Hadal | 4 | 11875 | 22500 | 13750 | (12.5/30/48.5/56.2) | (77/70/70/68) | 60 | 275.46 | 196.76 | 472.21 | (–/42/58/–) |
| Benthic | 5 | 11875 | 25760 | 13750 | (21/37/53/61) | (76/68/68/70) | 68 | 405.53 | 289.67 | 695.20 | (–/42/58/–) |
The Triglavian Collective
The Triglavians are masters of their domain, using the new disintegrator precursor weapon, they ramp up damage overtime, becoming increasingly more dangerous the longer an encounter with them goes on, they also can sport remote armor repairers, making them tough to dispatch in groups, they deal thermal and explosive damage, with more of a thermal slant. In additional to these capabilities, there are several variations of triglavian ships specializing in a role.
Striking: Generic Triglavians, they deal the same DPS as the special ones.
Ghosting: Tracking and Missile Disruption
Starving: Energy Neutralizers, no RR on Starving Vedmaks and Damaviks.
Tangling: Stasis Webifiers
Anchoring: Warp Scramblers
Harrowing: Target Painter
Renewing: Double RR Rep Amount.
Blinding: Sensor Dampeners.
Warding: As far as I can tell this is identical to striking, but has more hull damage on it.
Shining: Unknown at this time.
All of these Frigate and Cruiser have a damage cap of 100% for their weapon, and gain 5% more damage each shot, although BS only gain 2% per shot, with the BS/Cruiser having a rate of fire of 5 seconds, and the frigate of 3.5.
In addition to these prefixes, there is also an additional group ‘Vila’, ‘Vila’ gain the ability to spawn ‘Vila’ Swarmers which are weak npc drones which deal low amounts of omni damage, which can be annoying if you are relying on a reactive armor hardener. ‘Vila’ all lose their RR capabilities however, Vila also lose DPS, with ‘Vila’ Damaviks doing 1/5th the damage of regular Damaviks, and ‘Vila’ Vedmaks doing 2/5ths of the damage of regular Vedmaks. They also ramp slower at 1% per cycle instead of 5% like normal, but weirdly can stack up to 150% extra damage. Vila swarmers do not need to be killed to complete the site and will deactivate when the ‘Vila’ Triglavian that spawned them dies, so you should usually not waste your time on them. They can be easily disposed by the suppressor structures. Remember to check your drones because they like to waste time shooting swarmers.
All Triglavians have the same resistances, shields are identical to capsuleer, armor is 60% EM, 48% Thermal, 53% Kinetic, 36% Explosive. Given how much more armor they have than shields, it goes without saying that you should ideally be shooting them with explosive damage if you have the option available.
| Name | Shield Resists (Em/Th/Kn/Ex) | Armor Reists (Em/Th/Kn/Ex) | Intial DPS | Max DPS | Ramp Time | Damage (Em/Th/Kn/Ex) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Damavik | (0/20/40/50) | (60/48/53/36) | 30 | 60 | 70s | (–/68.5/–/31.5) |
| Vedmak | (0/20/40/50) | (60/48/53/36) | 198 | 396 | 100s | (–/68.5/–/31.5) |
| Leshak | (0/20/40/50) | (60/48/53/36) | 123.2 | 356.4 | 250s | (–/68.5/–/31.5) |
| VilaDamavik | (0/20/40/50) | (60/48/53/36) | 8 | 20 | 525s | (–/68.5/–/31.5) |
| VilaVedmak | (0/20/40/50) | (60/48/53/36) | 79.2 | 198 | 750s | (–/68.5/–/31.5) |
It’s worth mentioning that due to Vedmaks having a much higher damage modifier (10x instead of 1x on the Damavik and Leshak) that it actually deals more DPS than the Leshak and ramps up faster. Leshaks take significantly longer to kill however with their higher HP totals, stronger neuts and stronger RR.
ECM drones can be useful at resetting triglavian ramp, as well as distracting them with drones and going outside their optimal ranges.
The Drifters
Arch-enemies of the triglavians, and capsuleers, Drifters are engaged in a bitter war with the Triglavian collective for occupancy in the abyss pockets. Drifters have different Battleship sized options, Ewar Cruisers, Seekers and Sleepers that will assist them in claiming whatever it is they want in the Abyss!
I’ll start with the Drifters as they are the easiest to explain. Drifters all have 50% Omni Resistances and do Omni damage, so you should always use your highest damage type against them, or whatever damage is reduced by the weather effect if you’re running a non dark filament. Drifter Ships start out as missing chunks of armor, shield and hull, presumably having successfully crushed a triglavian fleet before you arrived.
Drifter BS track worse than rogue drone BS, but have higher optimal ranges. Drifters also sport 500 sensor strength so you’re not going to jam them.
| Name | Tier | Shield HP | Armor HP | Hull HP | Shield/Armor Resists (Em/Th/Kn/Ex) | DPS | Damage (Em/Th/Kn/Ex) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foothold | 1 | 3356 | 431 | 10710 | (50/50/50/50) | 100 | (25/25/25/25) |
| Rearguard | 2 | 9112 | 1617 | 9982 | (50/50/50/50) | 200 | (25/25/25/25) |
| Frontline | 3 | 16704 | 2472 | 9168 | (50/50/50/50) | 300 | (25/25/25/25) |
| Vanguard | 4 | 25016 | 3770 | 8356 | (50/50/50/50) | 400 | (25/25/25/25) |
| Assault | 5 | 31904 | 5596 | 7776 | (50/50/50/50) | 500 | (25/25/25/25) |
In addition to these Battleships, there are also Drifter Cruisers. All of these have some kind of ewar effect while also dealing 50 Omni DPS. Despite being called cruisers they have big signature radius of 400m.
Entanglement: Drifter Cruiser that has a 50% web.
Nullwarp: Drifter Cruiser that will warp scramble you.
Nullcharge: Drifter Cruiser that will energy neut you
Sleepers
Next on the list is Seekers, these little pests have cruiser sigs and other abilities. Like Drifters, they have omni resistances, although only 10% resists, and deal mostly Omni damage, although its obfuscated slightly due to the fact that they use turrets and missiles. The turrets deal em and thermal, while the missiles deal explosive and kinetic. They deal much higher em/thermal than kinetic/explosive because the missiles are a much lower factor of DPS
Lancer: No Special abilities. Deals more DPS than the other Seekers with missiles and turrets.
Entangler: Stasis Web
Spearfisher: Warp Scrambler
Illuminator: Target Painter
Dissipator: Energy Neuts
Obfuscator: Remote Sensor Dampeners.
Confuser: Tracking and Guidance Disruptors.
The special ability seekers deal 20 turret DPS each (Split between EM/Thermal), and 4.5 missile DPS (split between Explosive and Kinetic), where as the Lancers deal 30 turret DPS each. 6 missile DPS.
Finally, we have the sleepers. These ships all pack remote armor repairers, have omni armor resistances, but of varying strengths, and come in different sizes. Unlike anything else, they also have active tanks.
Destroyers: (50% Resists, 70m Sig)
Escort: No Special Abilities, 24 DPS turrets, 4.16 DPS light missiles.
Aegis: No Special Abilities, 36 DPS turrets, 6.25 light missiles.
Warden: Webs. 20 DPS turrets, 3.75 DPS light missiles.
Firewatcher: Neuts. 30 DPS turrets 3.75 DPS light missiles.
Cruisers: (60% Resists, 150m sig)
Watchman: No Special Abilities, 50 DPS turrets 10.7 DPS heavy missiles.
Upholder: Webs. 40 DPS turrets, 9.3 DPS heavy missiles.
Sentinel: Neuts. 40 DPS turrets, 9.3 DPS heavy missiles.
Logistics: (20% resists, 100m sig)
Preserver: No DPS, fast RR, reps close to 3x normal sleepers in RR on others. Low HP.
Battleship (70% Resists, 400m sig)
Deepwatcher: Target Painter. 160 DPS turrets, 188 DPS cruise missiles.
Make sure you keep moving against this guy because if you sit still his cruise missiles will hurt.