Hello pilots!

Today we are incredibly excited to welcome our new community of Vive players to EVE: Valkyrie. Our goal of creating the first cross-platform, multiplayer VR game has now become a reality, and our gaming experience just got a whole lot more epic in the process! Welcome to the ranks of the Valkyrie! May your aim be true, and your thrusters speedy.



As part of the Vive Founders Pack, pilots will be gain access to some amazing platform-exclusive content to help you stand out in battle and look sharp in those post-battle scoreboards. The Founders pack includes:

• Legendary 'Mark V Wraith' Fighter. Pre-upgraded and combat ready!
  
• Exclusive 'Vanquish' pilot suit
  
• Limited Edition ‘Vive Founder's Pilot’ Forum Tag
  
• 2,500 Gold Bonds

Valkyrie on Vive also has full achievement support via Steam. So in addition to carving your name into the leaderboards you can also showcase your expertise by unlocking 33 achievements based on a wide range of gameplay objectives and progression milestones.

We are recommending the use of a gamepad or HOTAS (hands-on-throttle-and-stick) flight stick for the best enjoyment of Valkyrie. Over the past year we have experimented with, and playtested, a number of different key mapping based on motion controllers. While some versions provided an exotic method of input, none succeeded in matching the intuitive, immediacy of a gamepad or flight stick.

We are not ruling out motion control support in the future, but right now we have to complement the strengths of our game. Valkyrie was always designed to be played in a seated position, throttle in hand, with strong mechanics that encourage players to use the movement of their heads (rather than hands) to take full advantage of our VR combat.


It’s a great time to be joining the action in Valkyrie. Since our launch earlier this year the game has benefited from regular patches to fine tune, bug-fix, balance, and improve the gameplay and systems. We have also launched two major free game updates (Carrier Assault and Joint Strike) which included a range of new features and game modes. This is all part of our commitment to running Valkyrie as a service.

We will continue to listen to our community and add amazing new content to our already strong foundations. December will see the launch of our third major game update. I’ll have more exciting details to share on that very soon.


As a final bit of awesome news I’d like to announce that anyone who purchases EVE: Valkyrie via Steam during our launch week (Nov 17th – 24th) will also get a copy of Gunjack for free! Double the shooting, double the action, all in our epic EVE universe.

We'll also be running a double XP weekend all launch weekend starting at 9:00 GMT on Friday 18 November and ending at 9:00 GMT on Monday 21 November.



That just about wraps it up from me. I’d recommend any new pilots stop by our website www.evevalkyrie.com where you’ll find lots of useful guides, tips and videos to give you the full rundown on what it takes to become a legendary dogfighter, flying tank or savior with a repair beam. You can also dive into the forums.evevalkyrie.com and contribute to our active community of veterans and new recruits alike.
Helping us to shape the roadmap ahead, improve features and organizing meetings outside and inside our virtual universe.

It’s going to be an explosive winter season as Valkyrie gets a whole lot more epic.

I’m looking forward to seeing those new suits light up in the clone vats!


Lock, load and get out there!


CCP Roo

We all like to think we’ll be instantly great at anything we turn our hand to. It’s an arrogance inbuilt to human nature. Ask us to build a life-sized replica of the Statue of Liberty out of LEGO blocks from memory? We could do it with our eyes shut. Given the chance to try out one of those wing suits having never previously done so, we’d definitely give it a bash, right?

But no. The reality is somewhat different. Sometimes, unless we take the time to read the manual, study the detail and properly prepare for what lies ahead, we are going to burn. And in the case of EVE: Valkyrie you’ll probably burn, then freeze, then die. Then all three again… repeatedly. Not the best outcome.

As a rookie Valkyrie pilot you need to realize your ship is not just your hot set of space wheels… it’s your second skin, and the more you know about its instrumentation and the data it constantly feeds you, the more likely you are to survive.

MAYDAY! MAYDAY!



Nooooo! You weren’t listening and rushed straight in. If you see this, it’s already too late. You have experienced death by abnormally low temperatures. We told you not to take your ship for granted. Let’s try again.

The Cockpit

This is your life support unit. It’s a lovely little place to spend your time and it contains all the instruments and widgets you need to do your job as a Valkyrie pilot (although we have to admit, it is a little short on cup holders).

Let’s take a look around.

Basic Instruments



Health – It's the vertical bar top left. This shows the integrity of your hull, or armor. It’s your last line of defense so if this gauge gets low, it’s time to hot-foot it out of there and hide out or get yourself some healing from a support craft.

Shields – And the vertical bar top right is your shield status. Your shields are your first line of defense. As you unlock new ships and ship classes you will notice how much they differ in terms of shields and armor. Heavy class ships, for example, are well armored so you can take the risk of sitting there and soaking up enemy firepower. Here, though, we’re talking about the Wraith, your first ship. It’s well-balanced and relatively robust but keep your eye on your gauges.

Radar



This handy little hologram gives you a quick visual idea of what is around you. Blue dots are friendlies, red dots are enemies, yellow dots are missiles and so on. However, don’t become too reliant on it. This is VR folks, so by all means glance down at your radar once in a while to see how busy it’s getting out there, but for the most part, just look around outside your cockpit.

Capacitor and Velocity



Take a look at the yellow incremental bars on the bottom left and the right of your cockpit. These two indicators are inextricably linked. The capacitor on the left shows you how much stored energy you have and the velocity indicator on the right shows how fast you’re going. The more you boost around, the more you deplete the capacitor. In light of this it’s best to use your boost in short bursts rather than constantly thrusting around. And in fact, this is exactly the advice you’ll get from experienced pilots because using short bursts of boost coupled with random changes of direction is the most effective way of staying safe when pursued.

Multi-purpose Displays



This panel display to your left won’t always look exactly like it does in this picture as the information it contains will change according to your circumstances. Here it shows the status of three control points, the number of clones remaining for each team, and the time remaining in the match.

Control Points

In control matches, this panel also shows you the status of the control points that your team has to capture. If the points are white in color then no one has control. When drones are deployed you will see the circle around the indicator gradually coloring in to indicate that the control point is in the process of being captured. The color of the control point indicator will change completely when that point is captured and a little icon appears to show which team has captured it.

If you look outside the window, you can see that there are floating control point indicators so if you see a particular target under attack, you can race over there to take out the enemy drone and recapture it.

Clone Vats

The blue bar shows you the current status of your clone vat or, put another way, the amount of lives your team has left. The orange bar is the opposing team’s remaining clones. Just below that is an indicator of the time remaining. Remember, in team deathmatch, if the battle ends and you have fewer remaining clones than your enemy you’ll lose. So if these indicators are showing you at a disadvantage it’s time to up your game a little.

Carrier Health



Exclusive to the multi-player Carrier Assault mode, this indicator has multiple functions, one of which is showing the carrier’s remaining health as seen here. Also, during Carrier Assault games a virtual image of the carrier is displayed and you’ll notice that it is marked with white dots. These are the remaining cooling nodes, which is incredibly useful as it marks their exact location meaning you don’t have to keep scouting around to find them.

Com Alerts



A relatively new feature in the game, Com Alerts enable you to send quick messages to the rest of your team. Push down on the D-pad to bring up the alerts menu, use the right stick to select the desired message, then release the D-pad to send the message. As well as hearing the alert, a list of recent alerts also appears as text on the right of the cockpit.

Now you are more familiar with your surroundings all that remains is for you to buckle up, get your game face on and show the galaxy who’s boss!

Listen up rookie! Your career as a pilot in Valkyrie will bring a great many varied and testing challenges whether playing alone, or with a bunch of other would-be flying legends. Here's a handy guide to our solo and multiplayer modes:

The Joys of Going (Han) Solo




TRAINING

The solo section of Valkyrie, or ‘Chronicles’ as it’s known, is a story-driven affair with each challenge representing the recovered memories of a fallen pilot. There are training modules available to enable prospective pilots to learn the basics of flying and weapons systems and more of these modules open up as players make progress and unlock additional ship classes. You start with the Fighter Class Wraith then gain access to Heavy and Support ships as you level up. Aside from the training modules, there are four main gameplay categories that Chronicles missions fall into.



Recall

These memories provide some insight into the game’s backstory while also familiarizing players with the various play mechanics they will encounter when they enter into multi-player combat. As pilots fly around they can collect audio logs called “Echoes” recorded by key characters in the EVE universe.

Scout

In this mode are no enemy ships allowing pilots to freely explore each of the maps in detail and get to know the layout in advance of any full-blown combat. Scattered around the map are Echoes which when collected relate more of the backstory and there are also salvage containers for you to collect. Scout is incredibly useful as the maps can be quite complex and full of useful shortcuts and areas of cover that the experienced pilot can exploit to his or her advantage.

Survival

Here, you are pitted against wave after wave of enemy AI-controlled ships with the dual purpose of setting a high score and getting to know the various ship classes and squad combinations. There are two skill levels, Novice and Pro, and you can take on survival challenges on all of Valkyrie’s available maps.

Test Arena

The fourth and newest gameplay mode featured in EVE: Valkyrie is dubbed Test Arena, a virtual environment for testing out any ship you want without having to worry about taking enemy damage or running out of time. You can also freely explore your environment, though you can still collide with objects so don’t fly recklessly.



The More the Merrier

Multiplayer combat is really what Valkyrie is all about. By taking part in battles with other players you can earn XP, rise up through the pilot ranks on the official EVE: Valkyrie leaderboards and unlock additional ships and upgrades. There are three ways to play online with other flesh and blood Valkyrie fans.

Team Deathmatch

Each of the two teams involved in a Deathmatch has a pool of available pilot clones. Each time you or a teammate dies and respawns, a clone is removed from the remaining total. If you manage to wipe out the opposing team’s clone pool or have more clones left when the timer runs out you claim victory.

Control



The basic premise of Control mode is the same as Team Deathmatch, each team having a finite pool of clones and each trying to deplete the enemy’s supply. However, the difference here is that the map also contains three control points. By deploying a drone near a control point, it’s possible to drain power from the enemy carrier and reduce their clone pool more rapidly. The more of these objectives you control, the faster your enemy’s resources will be depleted and the more swiftly you can achieve victory.



Carrier Assault



This is one of the newer gameplay modes to be added to Valkyrie and it’s the most explosive yet. There are three distinct stages to a Carrier Assault battle as well as a brand new co-op mode.

First, your team has to locate and take down two out of three power relay switches located around the map in order to disable the enemy carrier’s shield for a limited time.

Having done so, your team then has to attack the enemy carrier by targeting cooling nodes which will severely compromise the carrier’s defence systems. Be warned, though, you will still have to deal with the carrier’s active defence turrets and the pilots on the opposing team who will arrive to defend their carrier. Conversely, if your own carrier is compromised, you will need to rush to its defence. There’s a lot of back and forth action in Carrier Assault as the balance of power shifts so it’s crucial to have a well-balanced and well-coordinated team.

Thirdly, once the Carrier’s Core is exposed the attacking team has to access it through a trench and focus all their firepower on the Core inflicting critical damage, at which point they have a brief period in which to get away from the carrier before it explodes in spectacular fashion. The experience of flying through the perilous trenches of a sprawling space station for an attack on its core is reminiscent of a famous scene from another popular sci-fi franchise.

As you can probably gather the life of the Valkyrie is not an easy one but the rewards are immense. Good luck on your journey, pilots.

Buckle up pilot! Commit the following advice to memory and you’ll be able to hold your own

Your First Ship – The Wraith



You never forget your first love and this is also true of the first ship you get to fly in EVE: Valkyrie. In fact, the Wraith fighter is such a good all-rounder that even the expert pilots tend to make it their ship of choice.

The Wraith is the perfect balance of speed, durability and agility, making it not only good for rookies, but it can really shine when in the hands of a pro.

The ship’s primary weapons are its Gatling Guns. These are fixed, forward-facing guns and while you will need to be fairly accurate when firing them, they pack quite a punch and are great against shields, armor and indeed anything you point your nose at. The Gatling Guns have two stages of heating up, so the longer you fire them, the hotter they get, and at each stage of heating up the fire rate decreases. Want one piece of good advice? If you reach the highest level of heating up, it’s best to lay off the trigger as the guns cool down pretty quickly and you can resume again at a higher rate of fire. Don’t just persevere with a sluggish rate of fire.

Your secondary weapons are head-tracked missiles. Simply press and hold the secondary trigger, look at an enemy and you will achieve missile lock-on. This means you can be concentrating your Gatling Guns on a target directly ahead of you, while simultaneously dishing out damage to support ships in the area.

When playing in a team, it’s best to use the Wraith to take out the enemy’s support ships. This makes their other craft more vulnerable and ideally placed for your teammates to take out. The Wraith’s versatility means you can pretty much flip from an attacking stance to a defensive one at will, so be sure to practice a combination of attacking, evasion and re-engagement.

Heavy and Support Class Roles



Once you achieve Rank 5 (which takes very little time) you will find you have unlocked the other two classes of ship, heavies and support.

Fun though the fighter class is, particularly The Wraith, you should take the time to experiment with the other classes at your earliest possible convenience. They offer a significantly different type of play and might even suit your flying style better.

Heavies are slow but heavily armored. They also pack some pretty devastating weaponry. If you’re a contact sport sort of person, then heavies enable you to park yourself in the thick of the action, drawing fire from enemy ships, which you can, to a degree, soak up. This will leave your teammates free to support, heal you and take out the enemy more easily. Heavies for the most part also boast a MWD (Micro Warp Drive) that after a five second charging up period, transports you several kilometres away from your current position.

This can be used effectively to either escape a battle that is going south, or warp to where you are needed most. Remember, always make sure your path is clear when warping. Hitting friendlies will drop you out of warp, while smashing headlong into an enemy will seriously damage you.

Support craft are the swiftest, but the weakest ships in the game. That said, they perform a pivotal role in any team’s success. Support craft do have offensive weapons, but relatively speaking, they are not that effective. That is unless you decide to concentrate on destroying drones. Generally avoid going fully into the heat of battle with a support ship. You are there to provide aid. So use your ship’s Buff Beam to heal other players.

Target them for long enough and you’ll heal them completely, but best practice, especially in a particularly fierce battle, is to use your speed and agility to zip between your teammates offering a little medical top-up as needed. Or ‘triage’, as experienced EVE: Valkyrie pilots call it.

What to do First




Tempting though it is to dive straight into battling, we would strongly advise that you take some time out to thoroughly explore the single-player Scout Mode. This gives fresh players access to all of the game’s maps with the added bonus that there aren’t any enemies around. You’ll have plenty of time to explore the maps, discovering defensive points and short cuts and the like. You can also find ‘echoes’ here, which when collected, fill you in on some of the game’s backstory. Keep your eyes open for free salvage floating too, hoover it up for use later when crafting.Now you can move onto the other single-player modes: Recall and Survival. In Recall missions you will learn all about the history of the Valkyrie while getting to take part in historic battles plucked from the memories of dead pilots. It’s also an opportunity to hone the skills you will later need for multi-player dogfighting.

Survival missions are a test of endurance pitting you against wave after wave of enemies in a bid to score as high as possible and show off your achievements.

It’s worth noting that to coincide with the release of EVE: Valkyrie on PlayStation VR, a major new update is coming online that includes a Test Arena for rookies. It’s a big virtual playground in which you can take on enemy ships that have been ordered not to fight back giving you ample opportunity to try out some fancy new moves without getting killed in the process.

The Basics of Dogfighting

When you enter into full-on battling at the early stages of your career you may find the experience bewildering and the frequency of your demise quite alarming. Keep these three top tips in mind and it should give you an advantage over the other rookies out there.

Don’t be afraid to run and hide. If you took our earlier advice and spent a bit of time in Scout mode getting to know the maps, you will already have an understanding of the structures and space debris such as asteroids you will come across. When being pursued, try to tightly turn around an object to lose the enemy or cause them to crash. Also, finding a narrow place to hide means that heavy class ships in particular won’t be able to follow you.

Don’t be too gung-ho when entering into a fight. If you announce your arrival with all guns blazing you will soon become the object of your enemies’ desire and as a rookie, you won’t last long. Scope out the environment, identify the more vulnerable ships and surprise them. If an experienced pilot is already aware of your presence, he or she will have no trouble evading your attack no matter how many missiles and primary shots you let off.

Never try to simply boost your way out of trouble. Even if you’re boosting and turning, you will offer an experienced pursuer a very predictable trajectory. You need to practice using your boost and brake in short bursts, rolling and constantly adjusting your direction of travel in unexpected ways, while also plotting a course in the general direction of cover. When rolling, your ship plots a corkscrew trajectory so learning to exploit this with variations in speed and direction should keep you out of trouble.

Go See the Quartermaster



The Quartermaster, a friendly in-game shopkeeper, is your key to progression in the game. By bringing him the spoils of battle he can provide you with a whole range of goods and services.

A priority purchase, when possible, should be the acquisition of additional launch tubes. The more tubes and craft you own, the more tactical options you have for any given battle.

When you have them, you can hand over blueprints, salvage and silver to the Quartermaster and he will be able to craft new ships and ship upgrades, again increasing your effectiveness.

He can also offer a range of customization options so you can bling up your ship and more practically, you can purchase implants that will boost the amount of XP you can earn in battle.

As an aside, when we referred to the Quartermaster as a shopkeeper, that was selling his importance to the game somewhat short. With October’s Joint Strike update, players are now able to access two new Recall missions that begin to paint a picture of an altogether more enigmatic character whose role in the war of the Valkyrie is pivotal, so be sure to check those out.

Got all that? Good! Armed with the information above your career as a pilot should be, if not plain-sailing, then certainly a little less bumpy than it would have been.

Well, the winners are you…. all of you. And by ‘all of you’ we mean anyone who’s a fan of EVE: Valkyrie. This year’s event at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino has drawn to a close and we think it was the best yet, not least because as well as all the cool EVE Online stuff going on, there was also a stack of great Valkyrie entertainment to be had.

Fortunately, contrary to the popular phrase “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” you can still check out what went down in Nevada, so let’s take a look.

Full Steam Ahead



As had been recently teased, it was confirmed at the show that EVE: Valkyrie would indeed be landing on Steam and the HTC VIVE VR platform in November. It’s a source of great excitement to us that within weeks we will be welcoming yet another group of VR gaming enthusiasts into the ranks of the Valkyrie.

Be sure to check back regularly with us in the days and weeks leading up to the launch for updates on this exciting development.

If you want to check out the HTC VIVE announcement for yourself, it was part of a larger presentation from Andrew Willans, Lead Game Designer on EVE: Valkyrie. Over the course of an hour Andrew took us through the fascinating journey of bringing our deep-space dogfighting experience to Sony’s new VR platform. It’s no easy feat to create an immersive galactic combat shooter in the first place, and to do it on two different platforms allowing cross-play between the two brings even more challenges so it’s well worth hearing from Andy how it came about. Footage from the event is still available on the CCP Twitch channel and you can find Andy’s segment at 38 minutes in.

The Tournament of Champions



The main event for Valkyrie players was the EVE: Valkyrie Tournament of Champions. Running over two days, the first day saw 64 ace Valkyrie pilots coalescing into teams and facing off in a clash of galactic proportions.



After three rounds of brilliantly bruising battling, the final shakedown featured teams Banshee and Phantom. It was a bravely fought contest but in the end the fearsome Phantom pilots couldn’t quite overcome the might of Banshee.

None of the finalists left the arena empty-handed though. Each of the runners-up got a fantastic goodie bag containing, among other treats, a Samsung Gear VR headset and a stunning signed and framed piece of Valkyrie key art.

The winning members of team Banshee – namely Cordell Volante, Durand Severasse, Leehams DaWildabeast and Lysus – similarly got a goodie bag and the opportunity to return on day two to take on the champions from the Rumble in Reykjavik tournament at EVE Fanfest held earlier this year.

Sunday’s face-off was to be a fiercely competitive battle of wits but in the end, the strategy, quick thinking and exemplary teamwork of Fanfest winners, the Invaders, meant that they once more lifted the trophy. So, massive big-up to Invaders teammates Ladel, Tern, Wan5 and Frag Solo. They each waltzed off with a Geforce Titan X for a prize. Not a bad day’s work, then.



Thanks also to the runners-up, team Banshee, who gave us so much great entertainment. We hope you all enjoy your Geforce GTX 1070 GPUs!



No doubt more footage and reactions from the event will emerge over the coming days so we’ll endeavor to feed that through to you when we can.

At EVE Vegas, hidden amongst all the hubbub and noise are some really exciting developments for EVE: Valkyrie. Lead Game Designer Andy Willans (CCP Roo) took to the stage to announce two massive bits of news that, for Valkyrie pilots, are the most important things to have come out of the whole weekend.

Firstly, we can confirm that HTC Vive pilots can finally join the fight amongst the stars - EVE: Valkyrie is coming to Steam this November. We’ve also got some big celebrations planned for that weekend; all pilots on all platforms are invited.

Full details – and the exact date – will be released soon, but rest assured that you don’t have long to wait.The other bit of news is something you’ll need to wait a little longer for, but it’s something that we think pilots are going to love. Andy left us this cryptic teaser image.



And a recommendation to watch the livestream from Sony’ PlayStation Experience event on December 4th.

What could it all mean? We’ll have to wait a few weeks to find out.