Havoc - Pirate Insurgencies

Havoc - what changed

Background

Havoc (14 November 2023) lets you side with pirate factions for the first time in EVE's history. Players can enlist with the Angel Cartel (stations in Curse and Fountain) or the Guristas Pirates (Venal), provided they meet a -2.0 standings floor.

Pirate factions launch Insurgencies - FW-like raids into empire warzones, centered on a Pirate Forward Operating Base (FOB) at a temperate planet, that spread to 4 nearby systems and run a Corruption / Suppression progression mechanic. The Deathless Shipcaster in Zarzakh links pirate-aligned players to the active FOB. New pirate ships (the Mekubal pirate destroyer line) are available exclusively from Pirate LP stores.

What changed, by playstyle

PvP

If you've ever wanted to play the bad guy in EVE, Havoc is the expansion that made it official. Enlist with the Angel Cartel or Guristas Pirates (you need -2.0 standings, so already-anti-empire players are home), and you can run pirate-versus-empire-militia fights inside an Insurgency - the pirate equivalent of an FW campaign - with system-level Corruption / Suppression stages deciding the rewards and effects. The Deathless Shipcaster in Zarzakh teleports you to the front. New pirate ships (the Mekubal pirate destroyer line) landed in pirate LP stores. If you logged out as a high-sec mission runner and came back wanting to be the antagonist, Havoc is the expansion to start with.

PvE

Havoc gives PvE a pirate-aligned content track for the first time. Insurgency sites are runnable solo or in small groups, the pirate LP stores carry hulls you can't get elsewhere, and Atavum drops from exploration sites tie the explorer loop into the Deathless trader in Zarzakh. The "system stages" mechanic from FW-style content is back here too - you can feel the system change around you as Corruption or Suppression rises.

Social / political

If you've been part of an EVE corp that doesn't fly together as much as it used to, Havoc gave individual players a pirate-aligned social identity that doesn't require corp/alliance buy-in. Zarzakh is the new pirate hub; the Deathless Shipcaster gates you to the front; pirate-faction militia channels parallel the FW ones. For returning FW veterans, the recruiting and diplomacy patterns are familiar.

Aftermath / what stuck

Havoc set up the entire post-2023 pirate-faction content track. Revenant (November 2024) layered the top-end pirate hulls (Tholos / Cenotaph) and the Mercenary Den + Breacher Pod Launcher infrastructure on top of Havoc's foundation. The Corruption / Suppression mechanic itself proved durable enough that CCP iterated on the thresholds in a "Insurgencies Intensify" patch in late 2023 / early 2024, and the system-level effects (warp speed, NPC presence, etc.) have remained part of the pirate-faction loop since. If your last memory of EVE was a high-sec mission runner with -1.0 standings to the empires, Havoc is the moment those standings became a feature, not a problem.