Month: March 2024

There are 8 nullsec regions known as the drone regions or “dronelands”: Cobalt Edge, Etherium Reach, Malpais, Outer Passage, Perrigen Falls, The Kalevala Expanse, and The Spire. These regions are unique in that they don’t have any regular pirate data or relic sites outside of temporary content like metaliminal storms. They also don’t have Sleeper Caches. Instead, they have special drone data sites.

The Basics

Instead of armor plates or decryptors like regular exploration sites, drone data sites drop 2 kinds of loot: drone blueprint copies (BPCs) and assorted junk. Most of the junk is “drone poop” such as Drone Capillary Fluid. They can also drop filaments. 2 types of drone BPCs drop depending on the site: ‘Integrated’ drone BPCs and ‘Augmented’ drone BPCs. These BPCs drop in 10-run, 60-run, and 120-run variants. The drone poop’s used for manufacturing the drones, and isn’t very valuable. The blueprints, however, can be extremely valuable. We’re talking potentially billions of ISK.

In 2020, CCP introduced Metaliminal Storms: multi-system weather effects that roam nullsec and affect the stats of all player ships within them. These storms are considered annoying by many null residents, but they can also be immensely valuable with some understanding of how they work. How valuable? Over the course of 2 evenings, I yanked over 3 billion ISK out of an electrical storm in Insmother. I haven’t seen this kind of ISK/hr with non-combat exploration outside of getting lucky with quiet Sansha systems, drone data escalations, or wormhole Ghost Sites. And none of those are nearly as consistent or predictable.

To find a storm, just go to your ingame map and toggle the Metaliminal Storms filter. The map won’t tell you which storm is which, but Signal Cartel runs a public storm tracking service.

Basics

There are currently 4 types of metaliminal storms: Electrical, Exotic, Gamma, and Plasma. With 2 of each type existing simultaneously, that makes for 8 storms at a given time. Each storm’s effects are divided among “strong” and “weak” systems, with some additional hidden effects. Eve Uni has a wiki page covering the weather effects of each storm. There’s also a good visual guide in this Reddit post.