The Winter Nexus event in EVE Online wound down yesterday, so it is time for my usual follow up on how things went.

As always, I compare it to the Crimson Harvest event, if only because CCP only has two holiday events it runs now, and the two of them overlap on content.

I favor the Winter Nexus event primarily because it still has the mining challenge aspect… something the Crimson Harvest event had at one point as well.

Mining is a rather relaxed way to do the reward track in The Agency, enough so that, like last year, I did it twice.  Twice was enough.

All the way to 1,350 points

The key for me is to find a nice quiet corner of high sec and setup shop in the storm and go mining at off peak times.  All aspects of the event have a competitive edge to it.  There is no “personalize loot” in New Eden.  If you can do it there will be somebody there looking either to beat you to it or take it away from you.

The combat site favor those who get in and get the kills fastest.  The exploration sites go to those with the highest proficiency in probing things down.  And the mining sites go to… that person who shows up with three exhumers and a porpoise to boost them.

But in the quiet of the evening… or the early morning when I am just doing the daily routine things for work… it was quite possible to find an event anomaly that had just couple other people in it.  Once in a while I could have one to myself for a bit.

This level of competition wasn’t so bad

And a couple of times I got the dream situation; an anomaly that had been mostly mined out, enough to drop off the scanner view, but which was still respawning rocks.  You bookmark one of those and you can just idle in your  Endurance mining away.

Out in my old Endurance

They rocks stop spawning eventually, but that is about as peaceful as it gets in New Eden.

I was far enough out that I did the event on my main and an alt this time.  Why not?  I did it all on lowest difficulty, but I was only interested in the reward track items.  Not that I didn’t make a bit of ISK turning in loads of ice for the event.  But the payout is better in low or null sec space.  And while the acceleration gate keeps out combat ships, in low sec somebody will be camping the gate waiting to grab you.

Though if you look at the Perseverance losses, as an example, high sec ganking seemed to be the primary cause of death.  This is what comes from hanging out too close to Jita.

On my main I just mined, but on my alt I did some of the exploration sites as well.  Again, finding some quiet space helps.  There is nothing more exasperating that being in system with a couple other people also scanning sites.  Being first to a site occasionally doesn’t offset the times you don’t make the cut.

A Winter Nexus data site

I did not, however, bother with the combat sites.  In high sec that is where the griefing happens.  One evening I was mining away happily while watching two people in in local taunting people who were trying to run combat sites but were having their goal snatched by this pair who were not running the event but just trying to spoil it for others.  That is the price of running a PvP sandbox; it attracts griefers.

The 2025 edition of the event saw a bit of a change up from the previous year, proof I suppose that CCP hasn’t totally given up on events in New Eden or the need to put in some effort to keep them feeling, if not fresh, at least worthwhile.

This year saw the addition of the Logistical Automated Delivery (LADS) vessels, which you could probe down and destroy… if you remembered to put them on your overview… to get Verity Cryo Tech.

I did not actually do any of that, though I did run into the fact that the event data sites had a second node that required something from the LADS in order to complete.

CCP also chose to introduce the Perseverance, the ice mining variant of the mining destroyers introduced with the Catalyst expansion.  Granted, you had to do the main run of the event to get one.

Earned myself two BPCs

But the other expected twist, the pattern established with the Crimson Harvest earlier a month or so earlier, was the extension of the reward track late in the event.

Winter Nexus extension

That gave me a chance to run out and give the new hull a try.  As I noted in my post about the event extension, the hull is a bit of a compromise.  I mean, sure, I liked when I got one of the mining crits that also came in with the Catalyst expansion.

A mining crit yielding 3 extra units of ice

Those extra units come out of thin air and do not deplete from the rock.  And if you’re in a quiet site and can lock onto three rocks and get a crit once in a while, the Perseverance has an edge over the Endurance.

The Perseverance headed out for more ice

But if it is a busy night and somebody in an Endurance latches onto one of your rocks, their one minute cycle time is going to pull the rug on you.  I split the difference for the event extension, running the Endurance on my main and the Perseverance on my alt.

I think I prefer the Endurance.  It is just easier to manage.  But I also like to do the event semi-AFK while writing.  The Perseverance doesn’t offer enough of an advantage to top that unequivocally.

Through the event, I could feel the effects of the mining changes that came in with the Catalyst expansion.  And not just the mining crits.  But I have another post queued up to dig into that.

Now the event is over and my Endurance and Perseverance are docked back up out in a quiet corner of Amarr space, waiting for next year.

Related: