Spacejerk MMO EVE Online today launches its latest free expansion, named Into The Abyss, with a focus on PvE action. Capsuleers will get to venture into Abyssal Deadspace, a new form of spacedungeon, to fight a new faction of NPC enemies. As well as duffing up the mysterious Triglavian Collective, spacefolks will get to make and use their spaceships and new type of spacegun too.

Abyssal Deadspace is very much intended for solo play, which is a bit weird for the murderous MMO – as Matt Kamen got into when he talked to developers CCP about it.

So! Abyssal Deadspace offers short solo dungeons, lasting 20 minutes tops (you’ll die if you run over). Players who find or buy a ‘filament’ can use it to warp through wormholes into a chain of three bubbles within the Abyss, strange and doomy places where even the spaceweather can be against you. They’re partially procedurally-generated, so they’ll offer variety. And Abyssal Deadspace is home to the Triglavian Collective, a mysterious faction who seem to at least be human… ish.

Blueprints for three Triglavian ships can be found in the dungeons, ranging from a frigate to a Battleship and all looking like replacement heads for Blade Wolf in Metal Gear Rising. The spooky spacemen also offer the chance to get Entropic Disintegrators, a new beam weapon type which charge up and do more damage over time (a long time – 80-ish seconds for a frigate one to reach full charge, up to 140 seconds for a battleship). They’re also home to Mutaplasmid Colonies which can improve ship modules.

Read CCP’s broader overview of the update over here, and the patch notes this-a-way.



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EVE is free-to-play-ish these days, having introduced ‘Alpha Clone’-level accounts which can fly the first few tiers of ships and learn basic skills. Alpha Clone players won’t get to play with the fanciest toys but EVE is an MMO where low-level players can contribute meaningfully even to wars. Swing by EVE’s site or Steam to blast off.

I’ve reinstalled EVE since CCP launched Alpha Clones, though my old accounts have been lost to the ravages of inaccessible inboxes. I log in to queue skill training every now and then but my heart’s not in it; everyone I knew in space has left and EVE’s PvE isn’t great. I’ll have to see if Abyssal Deadspace is as neat as its name sounds.