Abyssal Deadspace
Abyssal Deadspace is an area of isolated space. It was added to the game in the Into The Abyss expansion that went live on May 29th 2018. It was further expanded in the Onslaught expansion that was released on the 13th November 2018.
It is accessible only with the use of filaments and even then only limited pockets are accessible for a limited time. The abyssal deadspace is filled with dangerous localized space effects and any ship that ventures away from the stable pocket or stays in for too long will be destroyed by these effects.
Site Basics
A new type of space can be accessed using filaments obtained from data sites and from abyssal deadspace. Five tiers of increasing difficulty exists. The Abyss is limited to a single Tech I, Tech II, Navy Faction or Pirate Faction cruiser and is accessed by activating a filament in space. When activated, a combat-probable beacon (named Abyssal trace) is created at your entry location that allows others to await your return from the pocket.
Activation can be anywhere in space, as long as the following conditions are satisfied:
- No Gates, Stations or mobile depots at less than 100 km.
- No other Abyssal trace at less than 1000 km.
An Abyssal Deadspace instance is composed of three pockets. Each pocket must be cleared of enemies for a gate to open to the next pocket. In addition to Triglavians, you may find rogue drones under their command. Drifters (without doomsday and rarely with overshield) may appear as well, accompanied by sleeper drones, engaged in combat with the Triglavians. However, no one will help you. You must fight your way out.
Within the Abyss, in each pocket is a structure called the "Triglavian Bioadaptive Cache" which has a scant 300 hit points and contains some of the loot for that pocket. There are also "Triglavian Extraction Nodes" which also contain loot.
The deadspace instance is stable for only 20 minutes. If you are still in the pocket after 20 minutes your ship and your pod will be immediately destroyed. Essentially, you must clear the three pockets and exit with the allocated time, or you will lose both your ship and your pod. The third pocket gate returns you to the location in space you activated the filament from.
Further site restrictions: you can not be warped to within the Abyss, nor can you warp out of it. You can not cloak nor deploy a mobile depot. There is no local. Core Probes and Combat probes launched will be removed from space shortly after launching and cannot be recovered. The Directional Scanner will not work. The map does not work. At the present moment, if a player is in Abyssal Deadspace when server downtime occurs, the player will return to the solar system they entered from.
Quick recap:
- There are 5 tiers of Abyssal Deadspace combat sites.
- There are 5 different types of weather effects in the sites, each with their own site bonus and weakness.
- The NPCs you face inside the Abyssal Deadspace are random.
- Once you enter an Abyssal Deadspace, a 20 minute timer begins. If the site is not completed within that time limit, you lose your ship and pod.
- Loot is found in Triglavian Bioadaptive Cache (main loot for cruiser sites), Triglavian Biocombinative Cache (main loot for frigate sites), and Triglavian Extraction Nodes and SubNodes. NPCs leave no wrecks to loot or salvage, although cache wrecks can be salvaged for Triglavian materials.
- With the Onslaught expansion, a player-versus-player element was added to Abyssal Deadspace, accessed optionally through a second exit gate (named Triglavian Proving Conduit)in the final room of Tier 3 sites and higher.
- The Onslaught expansion also released 3 player co-op frigate Abyssal Deadspace pockets.
WARNING: Any ship and capsule should be considered lost the moment a player enters Abyssal Deadspace. The atmosphere is rather unforgiving to inexperienced, ill-equipped or unfamiliar pilots. If your ship is lost inside the site, you will lose your capsule, clone, and implants (if equipped) as well. Do not run Abyssal Deadspace complexes with a ship or with implants that you cannot afford to lose. |
Enviromental Effects
Abyssal deadspace has several enviromental effects that will all apply to both the player ship and to the NPC ships. These effects will neutralize unprepared ships but they can also be taken advantage of. All effects applied to your ship will be shown in same location as EWAR effects. Hover your mouse over the icon to see what effect is applied to your ship.
Weather Effects
Each Abyssal Deadspace instance will have a weather effect that spans over all three pockets of the instance. Five types of environmental weather effects exist affecting both player and NPCs. The type is identified on the info of the filament and can be countered if desired by fitting choices. The name of the filament itself gives clues as to what tier and difficulty it is. A Raging Exotic Filament means that it is a Tier 4 site with Exotic Particle Storm effect. A Fierce Dark Filament is a Tier 3 site with Dark Matter Field effect.
The bonus modifier of the weather is always 50% but the strength of the penalty varies by the level of the instance.
Level | Filament Name | Filament Appearance | Penalty Amount |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Calm | -30% | |
2 | Agitated | -30% | |
3 | Fierce | -30% or -50%, random per room | |
4 | Raging | -50% | |
5 | Chaotic | -50% or -70%, random per room |
The level of the filament can also be identified by the number of glowing stripes on the icon.
The five Abyss-wide environmental effects are outlined in this table below:
When selecting ship you must consider the weather effect of the instance you are entering. For example using a turret ship or drone boat in dark matter field (range penalty) is very bad idea as you would likely not be able to hit anything.
The weather bonuses and penalties apply to all entities within the abyssal deadspace. This includes your ship, rats, missiles and drones. The environmental effects are stacking penalized.
As the resist penalty will apply to the rats too you should pick your damage type to match the resist weakness. How negative resist bonus is applied to a ship may seem confusing. The easiest way to think of it is that a -50% resist penalty means the ship will take 50% more damage. For more in depth explanation see negative resists on tanking page.
Localized Effects
The pockets will also contain clouds and Triglavian towers that will apply effects to player and NPC ships in their immediate vicinity.
Localized Clouds:
- Filament Cloud (orange): Penalty to Shield Booster boosting (-40%) and reduction to shield booster duration (-40%). If using a conventional (not Ancillary) shield booster, in effect this does not weaken your shield booster, it increases its capacitor cost/second by 66%. If you rely on a shield booster to survive, you should avoid entering these.
- Bioluminescence Cloud (light blue): +300% Signature Radius (4.0x signature radius multiplier). Entering this cloud will make your ship easier target to hit but it will also make all rats easier to hit. If fighting small but accurate enemies like Damaviks, this cloud can actually be helpful to pull enemies through.
- Caustic Cloud (yellow): Penalty to local and remote Armor Repair (-80%). If you are armor tanked, entering these clouds can be a death sentence. - Note: This cloud is rarely if ever seen, and is likely not implemented in the game.
Triglavian Towers:
- Deviant Automata Suppressor: Damages all missiles, drones, and rogue drone frigates within it area of effect. The larger does about the same damage to drones as a single medium smartbomb; the smaller does more than double that. Flying into the range of this Suppressor can help you take out pirate drones.
- Short-Range Deviant Suppressor will attack all drones, missiles and rogue drone frigates within 15 KM
- Medium-Range Deviant Suppressor will attack all drones, missiles, and rogue drone frigates within 40 KM
- Multibody Tracking Pylon: +60% or +80% tracking to all ships in its area of effect.
Rat info
The Abyssal Deadspace contains variety of different kind of rats. Each rat will behave differently and taking the right approach in different situations is important. For a quick overview of which group of rats you can face go to the Possible rooms in Abyssal Deadspace page.
Rogue Drones
Rogue Drones are perhaps the most common type of rats encountered in Abyssal Deadspace. The sub battleship rats deal single damage type or EWAR based on their name. The battlecruiser-sized rats are notable for having very high damage combined with very short range and incredible tracking, they will easily be able to track and hit medium drones that are attacking them. If you can keep them at over 10 km from your ship they will deal very little damage.
The best strategy is to start out by killing EWAR rats that pose threat to your ship. Depending on your fit, this means webs, tracking/missile disruptors and, if the pocket has battleships, target painters. You should also pay attention on whether logistic rats are on grid. If you can't kill other frigates before repairs land, prioritize killing logistic rats first. After the dangerous EWAR and logistic rats are dead you can focus on the damage dealers in your preferred order.
The rogue drone frigates are susceptible to automata suppressors. Multibody tracking pylons and bioluminescent clouds will also help greatly when trying to hit small frigate swarms.
The Rogue Drone battleship found in Tier 5 sites, known as the Benthic Abyssal Overmind has a stasis webifier, making it difficult to maneuver around this enemy.
Drifters and Seekers
Drifters and seekers are sometimes encountered together but they can appear on their own too. They all deal omni-damage types and have flat omni-resist profiles.
Drifter ships most often start with damaged shields and armor. The battleship deals heavy damage but a cruiser can get under its guns to avoid taking hits. The battleship will also fly away from the player ship at a speed of around 300m/second and will try to drag the player to the boundary. The drifter cruisers all use some form of EWAR in addition to dealing damage.
Drifter Cruiser | |
---|---|
Cruiser Name | Weapon |
Entanglement | Webbing |
Nullwarp | Warp Scramblers |
Nullcharge | Energy Neutralizers |
Sleeper Drones
Every Sleeper drone is equipped with remote repairers so it is best to kill smaller ships first as they die before repairs land. In addition to damage, they will also use webs and energy neutralizer. The Sleeper drone battleship(Lucid Deepwatcher) deals rather high omni damage but cannot hit ships if they are around 10 km from it.
Sleeper Drone Frigates | |
---|---|
Name | Weapon |
Escort | Generic Damage Dealer |
Aegis | Higher Damage Dealer |
Warden | Webbing |
Firewatcher | Energy Neutralizers |
Preserver | Strong remote repairs |
Sleeper Drone Cruisers | |
---|---|
Name | Weapon |
Watchman | Generic Damage Dealer |
Upholder | Webbing |
Sentinel | Energy Neutralizers |
Sleeper Drone Battleship | |
---|---|
Name | Weapon |
Deepwatcher | Target painting |
Triglavian Collective
Triglavian ships can appear in any pocket and regardless of size will have remote armor repair capability along side their unique Entropic Disintegrator weapon system. Their weapons deal Explosive and Thermal damage, and their dps can be very high. They will also use drones as supplemental weapon system. All Triglavian ships will also use remote repairs.
Vila Swarm Drones - Can be combined with any of the above. The Vila drones deactivate when the ship they are linked to is destroyed so you shouldn't waste time killing them. Focusing on these may cause you to run out of time. Warding Leshak - Similar to regular Striking Leshak but has more hull damage. Shining Vila Damavik - Similar to Harrowing variants but is only present for Vila Damaviks.
Best damage to deal
The Abyssal Deadspace resist penalties apply to both the player ship and to the rats inside Abyssal Deadspace. Due to how resist penalties are calculated this means that damage matching with the penalized resist will effectively receive damage bonus equal to the resist penalty (smaller damage increase if the target has too low resist). So in general you should select your damage to match the weather. But sometimes the natural resist hole of the rat is equal or even greater than the resist hole caused by the weather. In level 1-3 electric storm pockets the weather induced resist hole is equal to explosive resist hole. In all other pockets the weather induced weakness is greater.
Drifter ships, seeker drones and sleepers have uniform resists.
Damage to deal to Triglavian ships | |||
---|---|---|---|
Weakest | Strongest | ||
Explosive | Kinetic | Thermal | EM |
The rogue drone ships have wildy varying resists. Generally the weather induced weakness is the greatest resist hole to hit. Hitting natural resist hole of the battleship drone deals approximately 10%-20% more damage than not hitting any weakness. Rogue drone battleship weaknesses are:
Abyssal Deadspace proving grounds (PvP)
When all pockets are cleared in a filament Fierce (Tier 3) level or above, there will be two gates to choose from: the normal Triglavian Origin Conduit, and an alternate Triglavian Proving Conduit. Taking the Proving Conduit will send your ship into a 1v1 combat arena against another capsuleer ship. The Proving Conduit contains an additional reward cache with greater value than the normal caches, along with any loot dropped by your opponent's ship.
Entering the Proving Conduit ends the original 20-minute abyssal timer and starts a new timer for the fight. The Origin Conduit within the Proving Grounds will not unlock until one of the two ships inside has been destroyed. After half of the Proving Grounds timer has elapsed, both ships will receive a 25% penalty to all damage resistances. If the Proving Grounds timer expires, both ships inside will be destroyed.
Absyssal Deadspace Co-op for frigate fleets
Co-op frigate Abyssal Deadspace can be run by a group of up to 3 T1/T2 frigates. This requires three of the appropriate filaments of the same type the fleet desires to run, which all need to be in a single ship's cargo hold. The pilot can then activate a fleet abyssal site by right clicking on the stack of filaments selecting and then selecting "Activate For Fleet" in the window that pops up. Once activated an acceleration gate will appear in space and each member of the fleet (up to three T1/T2 frigates) can each activate the gate and enter the deadspace pocket to run the sites as described above.
Abyssal Deadspace from the outside
- As of August 14th, 2018, the suspect timer given upon exiting T4 and T5 Abyssal Deadspace has been "temporarily" removed.
When you enter the Abyssal Deadspace, you will be removed from local and from directional scanner. You cannot see who is in the system outside the deadspace, and they cannot see who is inside or in what ship. But that does not mean you are safe. Once the filament has been used, a rift appears that can be combat scanned by anyone in the system and can be warped to. It also appears on the directional scanner of anyone who has not filtered it out. This makes it easy for people to camp the exit and shoot whoever comes out.
This means that you have to consider where you use the filament, especially in low security and null security space. But even in high-security space you are not safe. It used to be the case that Tier 4 and 5 filaments would give you suspect timer, but that has been "temporarily" disabled as of August 14th, 2018.
You will be invulnerable for a short time, so be patient if you leave the rift and find yourself being camped. A survival tactic could be to quickly activate a new filament - especially a tier 1-3 filament that you run in order to run down a suspect timer in hisec - but beware, many players have now got wise to this and will anchor a mobile depot which will prevent you activating another filament.
Rewards
Abyssal Deadspace is dangerous, but the rewards can be worthwhile for those who can complete the sites. Abyssal Deadspace is the only source for many valuable items, which are found in the Caches and Extraction Nodes/SubNodes. No wrecks are left behind by any NPCs, all drops come from these two listed cans. Rewards are as follows:
- Mutaplasmids that can be used to change the stats of certain modules. Which mutaplasmids are able to drop depends on the weather selected:
- Gamma sites can drop shield related mutaplasmids - S/M/L Shield Extender, S/M/L/XL Shield Booster
- Dark sites can drop propulsion module mutaplasmids - 1/10/100MN Afterburner, 5/50/500MN Microwarpdrive
- Firestorm sites can drop armor related mutaplasmids - S/M/L Armor Plate, S/M/L Armor Repairer
- Electrical sites can drop capacitor related mutaplasmids - S/M/L Cap Battery, S/M/L Energy Neutralizer, S/M/L Energy Nosferatu
- Exotic sites can drop tackle related mutaplasmids - Stasis Webifier, Warp Disruptor, Warp Scrambler
- All weathers can drop damage module mutaplasmids - Heat Sink, Gyrostabilizer, Magnetic Field Stabilizer, Ballistic Control System, Entropic Radiation Sink
- Precursor ship and weapon skill books, disintegrator specialization skill books.
- Blueprint copies required for the production of Triglavian hulls, weapon systems, and ammunition:
- Triglavian ship hulls
- Entropic Disintegrators: Weapons with unique properties and only usable by the Triglavian ships
- [Exotic Plasma ammunition]: Ammunition used by Entropic Disintegrators
- Mutadaptive Remote Armor Repairer: A special remote armor repairer module used by the Triglavian Rodiva and Zarmazd logistics cruisers
- Production materials required for the production of Triglavian hulls, weapon systems, and ammunition:
- Crystalline Isogen-10
- Zero-Point Condensate
- Modules
- Compact Entropic Radiation Sink - a compact (low-fitting) version of the Entropic Radiation Sink
- Perun Heavy Mutadaptive Remote Armor Repairer - a faction version of the Mutadaptive Remote Armor Repairer
- Triglavian Survey Database: Often referred to as "red loot", this item is an ISK token item similar to Sleeper "blue loot" and Overseer's Personal Effects in that it can be sold to unlimited NPC buy orders for a fixed price, in this case, 100,000 ISK/ea
- Abyssal Filaments: While data hacking sites are the only source for Abyssal Filaments outside of Abyssal Deadspace, and they only provide Calm (Tier 1) filaments, the Bioadaptive/Biocombinative Cache in Abyssal Deadspace can drop filaments of all tiers, allowing us to access the higher tiers of this content. These filaments can also be sold on the open market to other players.