Mercs of New Eden! Changes are coming to the DUST 514® skill system as we work to incorporate player requests and feedback. To make sure you can adapt to the altered systems, we’ll be offering the chance to request an optional, one-time skill respec via our support system.

Below is some basic information on how to request a skill respec. Please note:

All skill respec requests should be filed no later than 11:00 UTC (7:00 AM ET) on 31 May, 2013.

What is a skill respec?

A skill respec is a chance to redo your skill selections to better suit the changing systems.

How does a skill respec work?

Once a player requests a skill respec, all characters on that player's account will have their skill points refunded to their available skill pools. Characters will have their skill trees reset, just as when the character was brand new. We will also remove all purchased skill books, while refunding their ISK cost to your characters’ accounts. You can then re-train your characters’ skills as normal.

How do I request a skill respec?

To request a one-time skill respec, simply contact our support team online by logging in with your PSN® ID, and title your support ticket "Skill Respec”.

You can also email us at support@dust514.com, and title your email “Skill Respec”. Please be sure to use the email address registered to your DUST 514 account, so we can verify that you have one!

How long do I have to wait for my skill respec to apply?

We will be applying the first wave of skill respecs once we deploy the changes to the skill system. Respecs will be processed in batches and applied during daily downtimes on a first-come-first-served basis. Once we receive and process a request, we will respond to let players know they are currently in queue for a skill respec.

Please note that the closing date for requests is 11:00 UTC (7:00 AM ET) on 31 May, 2013, and that it may take a few days to process and apply your respec. We will implement all respecs requested before the deadline.

Great, but what about my Items and AUR?

Your PSN purchases such as item bundles and AUR will not be adjusted during a skill respec. Only your current skills and ISK costs for skill books will be refunded. Please be sure to re-train all skills required to equip the items you planned to bring into battle.

While skill resets do not affect AUR wallets or items, we are offering a separate and optional full account reset to eligible players. Please see our previous announcement for more information.

Good Hunting,
Lead GM Grave
CCP Customer Relations

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On the battlefield, quick dissemination of orders is a top priority for any commander. Voice communication is the most efficient method of transmitting those orders, so it comes as no surprise that when mercenaries are off the battlefield, they engage in quite a lot of chatter. Sometimes, they ask questions. Sometimes, those questions are posed to people of importance and influence. And every so often, those conversations are recorded and the broadcast for everyone to enjoy.

Such is the case with Cast514, the podcast currently run by Nova Knife and Grideris, two of the most prominent members of the DUST 514 community. Having been broadcast for over a year, the podcast has become a vital source of information on DUST 514 for both the boots on the ground and the people involved in getting them there.

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Hello cloned mercenaries! As you all know, Uprising is coming on the 6^th and the launch of DUST 514 is happening a week later, on the symbolic 5/14, with additional features added in. There has been some confusion about the difference between these two dates. What is coming when? When do we get new weapons? When can we conquer planets? And so much more!

Well, here in this dev blog, we aim to clarify those questions for you.

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TL;DR: While planning your planetary conquest launch strategies, add 24 hours to your times for the first battle.

Hey guys I hope you are all getting as excited for the launch of planetary conquest as we here at CCP are. I know lots of you are making plans when planetary conquest launches and I want to make sure you are all well informed as to how things will work.

Before we go into this much further I would like to point you guys to some previous pieces of information so that if you desire you can catch up on what is going on:

• The original announcement dev blog: http://dust514.com/news/blog/2013/03/planetary-conquest/
• An update about planetary conquest dev blog: http://dust514.com/news/blog/2013/04/an-update-dev-blog-for-planetary-conquest/
• Fanfest presentation: http://www.twitch.tv/ccp/c/2208242

That should cover most the details for planetary conquest, and I will be answering questions in the comments thread of this post.

What I want to focus on is how the capturing of districts will work at launch and when you can expect the first battles to happen. Before we go into what is different about launch, lets quickly look at how things will work normally so we are all on the same page. Based on all the information provided so far you would expect the first day to go something like this:

• DUST exits downtime at 14:00 on Tuesday May 14th. (I don’t actually know the time, I am just using this as an example)
• At 14:01 on May 14th corporation A conquers a district with a reinforcement window of 16:00 to 17:00.
• At 14:02 on May 14th corporation B attacks corporation A’s district.
• At 16:00 on May 14th corporation A’s district generates clones.
• At 16:00 on May 15th corporation A’s district generates clones.
• A battle for the district occurs on Wednesday May 15th between 16:00 and 17:00.

To sum it up, corporation A’s district gets two cycles of clones and there is approximately 26 hours between the launch of corporation B’s attack and the battle happening.

On May 14th however all of the districts will be unoccupied. And districts without owners act a little differently. So, to help you with your planning this is how things will actually work:

• DUST exits downtime at 14:00 on Tuesday May 14th. (Again, I cannot stress this enough, I don’t know when it actually will. This is just an example)
• At 14:01 on May 14th corporation A  takes an unoccupied district with a reinforcement window of 16:00 to 17:00.
• At 14:02 on May 14th corporation B attacks corporation A’s district.
• At 16:00 on May 14th we skip corporation A’s reinforcement window.
• At 16:00 on May 15th the first reinforcement window for corporation A’s district happens and it generates clones.
• At 16:00 on May 16th corporation A’s district generates clones for the second time.
• A battle for the district occurs on Thursday May 16th between 16:00 and 17:00.

To sum this up, corporation A’s district still only gets 2 cycles of clone generation, but there are approximately 51 hours between the launch of corporation B’s attack and the battle happening.

The difference between the two is that when the district is unoccupied, or has no owner, when it is first taken the first reinforcement window does not happen and the first possible fight is delayed by 24 hours.

TL;DR: While planning your planetary conquest launch strategies, add 24 hours to your times for the first battle.

A small note about EVE bonuses

We will not be applying bonuses to EVE for ownership of districts until the May 16th. This gives us the ability to ensure the launch of planetary conquest goes as smooth as possible and filter out any noise that the EVE bonuses might have.

We had announced that there would be three bonuses in EVE, one for each surface infrastructure. The planetary interaction bonus for owning the production facility has been dropped. There are many reasons for this, the primary being that we didn’t feel it was a worthwhile bonus to provoke fights and didn’t have time to create a new one.

We are committed to making this an enjoyable and worthwhile experience for you all and hope that these changes and dev blog help with that. If you have any questions please ask away in the comments thread for this dev blog.

CCP FoxFour

Team True Grit

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As we have been easing DUST into the EVE Universe, one problem that arose clearly was how we could convey to DUST players the feeling that they are actually part of a large universe. Even though battles take place at various places in EVE, there isn‘t enough contextual information to give a true feeling for the location they are in and how it connects to other locations. Now for anyone that has experienced being lost in a big unknown city, the first idea that comes to mind is to get hold of a map. But maps come into various forms and flavors. You can have very realistic maps based on aerial photographs or you can have highly stylized maps that focus more on the functional purpose of the map.

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Dear players,

On May 6th, we will have an extended down time on Tranquility server in order to bring you the latest DUST 514: Uprising update.

As part of the update, we are making major changes to the skill system. These changes will also affect how in-game items work, as explained by CCP Praetorian in both Merc Cast - Episode 1 and his Skill Progression System Dev Blog. Due to these changes we will be doing a general respec. This is a very important step that will not only affect the skill system, but also how new features and content will work in the future.

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Iron Wolf Saber is one of the members of the beta Council of Planetary Management. His knowledge and passion for DUST 514 are obvious, but there are many like that who were passed over for the seats. So what sets Iron Wolf apart from others?

Simply put, it's his willingness to share that information with others. Iron Wolf has become well-known for his amazing, hugely informative posts on the DUST 514 forums, where he collects information from all over and collates it into one thread for the interested masses. It can be everything from test server stats to expansion FAQs to concept art.

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Hey guys,

Fanfest is over, the road to recovery has begun, and I am almost caught up on my email. I hope you all enjoyed Fanfest, either in person or via the stream, as much as everyone at CCP did. Personally I cannot wait until next year! :D

On to business though. We announced a while ago that planetary conquest would launch with Uprising on May 6th. Planetary conquest, for those who haven't heard, is the ability for DUST corporations to conquer districts in the Molden Heath region, acquire the ability to generate clones and ISK, and build facilities that will give bonuses in EVE Online. Full details of the feature can be found in two previous dev blogs here and here. At Fanfest we also announced that certain other features, such as new weapons in DUST, would be coming on May 14th.

The DUST community made it clear to us, both in person at Fanfest and on the forums, that this was not ideal. During Fanfest we didn’t have much time to comment on these concerns, but as soon as Fanfest was over members from the Council of Planetary Management (CPM) began immediately asking us to take action and respond to the concerns of the community.

The primary concerns from the community around planetary conquest going live on May 6th were:

• Client downloads going live at different times in different regions give an unfair advantage to certain players.
• The skill point respec happens on May 6th, but new content (weapons, dropsuits, etc.) being released on May 14th leaves players a hard choice: Spend skill points to do good now and miss out on the new items, or save the skill points and risk missing out on the first wave of conquest.
• The volume of feedback related to this led us to reconsider our planned launch date.

Based on your feedback, we will not be enabling planetary conquest until May 14th during downtime. The districts will still be there and you will be able to see them, including their surface infrastructure and reinforcement window. The only difference is you will not have the option for deploying clone starter packages to them.

Having the CPM available to not just tell us that something needed to be done, but to discuss the options that we could take in real time was immensely valuable and we thank them greatly for helping us come to a solution on this as quickly as possible.

TL;DR: Districts in in Molden Heath will be conquerable on May 14th.

The above image is how you can expect temperate planets in Molden Heath to look between May 6th and May 14th. The districts will be there, but they will not have an owner.

That is all for now and we cannot wait to see you guys in battle come May 6th and what you do with Planetary Conquest come May 14th.

Sincerely,

Team True Grit

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Hi everyone, I’m CCP Dolan. CCP Xhagen and I are the developers behind the EVE Online Council of Stellar Management (CSM). Earlier this month the developers for DUST 514 and I sat down with the goal of creating a player advocacy group like the CSM in DUST 514. We came to the conclusion that the best group of people to help design the future of this player run organization was the players themselves.

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Jenza Aranda is a well-known name in the DUST 514 community. As leader of BetaMax., she's been around DUST since the very first iteration of closed beta. In that time, she's made a name for a variety of initiatives she's taken in the community, including a live streaming for charity.

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The DUST 514 Journey Continues

We have learned a great deal throughout last year, both from the perspective of what works and what does not with regards to the progression system itself and more importantly how you are using the items to advance through the game. This is all thanks to the terrific amount of player feedback we’ve received during the beta period.

As we started re-aligning the progression tree we realized that trying to map the new skills, bonuses and requirements to your existing items was not only complicated on the technical side, but also likely unfair to you, in that you may have committed to a certain play style, and with the new layout and skills you may find yourself regretting some of your prior choices. We have thus decided that it is far better to re-spec not only the skills but items as well. In short, you will get your skill points (SP) back and the ISK and AUR (in-game currencies) value of any item that is removed from your inventory. Below are more details on how this works.

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Human Endurance Event for DUST 514

The Kameiras are one of the products of the infamous Human Endurance Program (H.E.P.) that the Amarr Empire ran on their Minmatar slave populace. The tales of physical endurance and punishment have become legend within the Amarr Empire and have helped to create the most successful - and, indeed, feared arm of the Amarrian military machine.

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Tournaments have long been popular throughout New Eden, from the Alliance Tournament and New Eden Open to small, player-sponsored events like the Syndicate Competitive League. Combine that with the love of competition among FPS players and it is no surprise that there has been a great desire for tournaments in DUST 514. Kain Spero of the Imperfects corporation has stepped up to fill them with one of the more innovative tournaments in New Eden history.

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Introduction

This dev blog is a follow up to a previous dev blog. If you have not read the previous dev blog please see the following link: http://dust514.com/news/blog/2013/03/planetary-conquest/

There is a really good discussion about it in the comments section along with an FAQ.

Before I go into details about what we are changing from that design to this design I want to give a big shout out to everyone in the community. The response to the previous dev blog for Planetary Conquest has been amazing. The feedback, both positive and negative, gathered from right here on the forums, IRC, twitter, and everywhere else has helped us immensely. So a big thank you for that. :D

So what is this dev blog? Basically just an update to what we are doing, some changes in numbers we are thinking about, and a new FAQ. :)

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This is not an April Fool’s joke. Pinkie Promise on Old Man Star.

Following on from our inaugural broadcast for the Battle of Caldari Prime, the CCP Community Team are preparing a series of videocasts on our Twitch.TV channel in the run-up to Fanfest 2013. With the announcement of Eve Online: Odyssey, the 19^th free expansion for EVE Online and the upcoming release for DUST 514 in May with ‘Uprising', we are very excited to start giving you more in-depth insight into the improvements and additions we have planned for EVE Online and DUST 514 this summer and beyond. Much of this information will be released at Fanfest, however there is a lot of information we can share with players before April 25.

So tell us more about these videocasts. What are they?

We will hold a series of Q&A sessions with EVE Online and DUST 514 development teams, Senior Producers and Executive Producers over 4 weeks starting on Tuesday, April 2 at 16:00 UTC. The full schedule is listed below:

·         April 2, 2013 at 16:00 UTC - Linking EVE Online and DUST 514

·         April 9, 2013 at 16:00 UTC - EVE Development

·         April 16, 2013 at 16:00 UTC - CCP Past, Present and Future

·         April 23, 2013 at 16:00 UTC - DUST Development

A Q&A? How do I ask a question? I have a REALLY important question about my Raven fitting.

The bulk of questions will be taken from the Twitch TV chat. Players should use this opportunity to click the ‘Follow’ button on this page and register an account by clicking on ‘Sign Up’ in the top right hand corner. When you follow the CCP page you will get notifications when it goes live meaning you never need to miss a show.

Questions can be asked in one of several ways. Players who have purchased the Fanfest HD stream will have a chat icon in the Twitch TV chat channel which will allow for priority when asking questions. We want to be able to include everyone so we will also host an EVE Online Facebook thread, DUST 514 Facebook thread, EVE Online Twitter feed and DUST 514 Twitter feed. Make sure you follow these pages if you are not buying the Fanfest HD stream so that you can put your questions forward.

Q&A sessions – the complete guest list

So that you can be prepared for which developers will be attending which Q&A sessions, here is a full list of your attendees. Please note that each session is one hour long and will be archived on our Twitch page should you not be able to make it for the live broadcast. We will also ensure that they are copied over and available on our YouTube channel as soon as possible. Your host for all events will be CCP Guard and our very own CCP Bro will be handling the production.

 April 2, 2013 at 16:00 UTC - Linking EVE Online and DUST 514

CCP LeKjart - Principal Game Designer

CCP Foxfour – Content Designer

CCP Nullarbor – Senior Programmer

 April 9, 2013 at 16:00 UTC - EVE Development

CCP Soundwave – Lead Game Designer

CCP Solomon – Producer, Team Superfriends, Team Game of Drones, Team 5-0

CCP Sisyphus – Producer of Team Pony Express

CCP Mannbjorn – Producer of Team TriLambda

 April 16, 2013 at 16:00 UTC - CCP Past, Present and Future

CCP Unifex – Executive Producer for EVE Online

CCP Seagull – Senior Producer

CCP Ripley -  Development Director

CCP t0rfifrans - Creative Director

 April 23, 2013 at 16:00 UTC - DUST Development

CCP Jian – Executive Producer for DUST 514

CCP Praetorian – Creative Director

We are hopeful that this pilot program of bringing you content directly through our streaming platform can evolve into a regular series of information in the form of blogs, announcements and much more in the future. We look forward to seeing you on the stream and answering your questions, and hope you provide us feedback when the sessions are complete.

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