Apparently it is the newest “Trig” feature.
Every system will now get an “Emerging Conduit” anomaly in system as well as the Recon fleets.
And I mean every system. I just did about 60+ jumps (on 2 different toons) through 6 or so regions and every system had an “Emerging Conduit” in it.
What is an “Emerging Conduit” you ask ?
Well, it’s basically a Triglavian Combat site. Don’t need to probe it down.
When you warp to it, there is nothing but a bit of a cloud in a 3 prong “Triglavian” shape. Even if you are cloaked, warping to it (at any range) initiates the “Conduit”. A message appears in local and within a couple minutes a wave of Trig ships appears (frigates and destroyers of various types).
(It seems that if you just ignore the anomaly, it won’t do anything. Just sit there - probably forever.)
The first one we did had a butt load of ships in the first wave. That’s right, there’s more than 1 wave. 3 in fact.
All the colours of the rainbow were present. Renewing, Harrowing, Ghosting, Tangling, Blinding, Starving and “normal” Raznaborgs.
Some were Damaviks, some were Kikimoras.
Killed the first wave and a 2nd spawned immediately. They will close on you real fast. As in at up to 2,500 m/s in some cases.
2nd wave was much like the first. Had an additional type (Zorya) Kikimora.
3rd wave also had an additional ship - a Vedmak.
We killed all the smaller ships and saved the Vedmak for last but it warped off !!
Looted the field - meh - the usual junk. Another Emerging Conduit spawned within a couple minutes.
It appears theses sites are meant to be “farmed”.
Oh yeah, you get DED LPs and an ISK reward for completing the site. 2 guys did 4 sites, they each got 4.5 mil isk and 300 DED Loyalty Points per site.
After a few hours we decided to do another site. Much fewer ships in each wave this time. Not sure if the numbers keep going down by design or if CCP is “tweaking” the sites to make them easier (for the farmers).
The current “Conduit” in system only has 4 ships in the initial wave.
Can’t “kill” the Conduit. The only thing you can shoot is the Trig ships.
Loot is the usual, though we did score 1 Gravid Mutaplasmid - Damage Control and one Triglavian Quantum Engineering" skill book.
You can solo the sites if you fit your ship right. Remember you are shooting 98% frigs and destroyers and the ocassional cruiser, they do Omni damage, they WILL neut/web/target paint/weapon and missile disrupt you while hitting you with some pretty heavy DPS.
And being CCP, they KNOW which ship (if you have more than one) is the weakest and will even bypass a closer ship to get at the weaker one.
We had 2 guys in identical HACs. One guy was in his “missile clone” and the other was in his Hiwall mining clone. The ships were fitted identically but of course the “miner” wasn’t putting out the same damage due to having different implants.
Guess who the Trigs targeted - every time.
In one site they burned right past the HAC with the missile master pilot and zeroed in on the other HAC - 20 kms further way.
In another site, the guys warped to 100 from the beacon. The Trigs were a little over 130km away. Within seconds they were all targetting the “miner” and not one of them was locking on to the “missile” guy.
We put the “miner” pilot into a Drake instead of the HAC. A little more DPS and EHP.
Oddly enough, the Trigs still go after him instead of the the guy in the HAC.
The sites are easy to do, the isk ain’t great, you might get some loot/Trig salvage (or not) and you get the LP.
Oh, and for some STUPID reason, it takes 30 SECONDS to lock a Trig wreck now, even using a pilot with maxed skills.
THAT only started happening after the last DT update. Prior to that, locking Trig wrecks was no different than any other wrecks.
Our “scanner” guy was bangjng his head because he KNEW he had maxed skills but every single wreck took 30 SECONDS to lock. (He thought it was something to do with his toon.)
We got our “master salvager” back in system, he took the Noctis and sure enough, it took 30 seconds for him to lock each wreck as well.
(And the wrecks show attributes of 27,500m3 so it’s not like they are little wisps of twisted metal with nothing to lock onto.)
Plus, as mentioned, before the last “update” all the other Trig wrecks locked up normally just like any other wreck.
(Now even the “Recon Fleet” wrecks take 30 seconds to lock for some stupid reason.)
So, we have the roaming Recon Fleets and now the “Emerging Conduits”. Would be nice to know if this is going to be a permanent feature or if there is a “kill enough of them and they’ll stop spawning” kind of endgame to this (because farming them will be as tedious as mining, especially with the PITA that salvaging them is now).
(I do find it hilarious to watch as the average number of pilots logged in keeps dropping. Yesterday I saw it was down to just over 11,000 when there used to be 18,000 and now we are at around 15,000 when there used to be 20-22,000.
Hmmmm, I wonder why…)
