Eve Frontier is a CCP Games blockchain game that is currently in early development. Right now, they have a free trial period ending on September 15th, 2025. I thought I'd jump in and see what it was about.

While it currently has some Eve Online flavor to it, a lot of things are also done differently. With the game being in early development, there seem to be quite a few placeholders as well. Some things were great and others not so much.

It is important to note that with the game being in early development, there are consent wipes. The game, just recently, not long ago, had a wipe. There is a point system for some cosmetics when the game releases. You are not really missing out on much since things don’t last long.

As far as starting the game itself. You are given three options for starting regions. You are also limited to just one character per account. Like a lot of things, there is quite a lack of information about any of these regions. So, I just went with the middle one.

I ended up finding myself in an area of space that has no gates. You have to install a special engine that uses fuel that you must make to jump between systems. There is also the heat each system produces as a baseline that I found to be quite more limiting factor in how far I could jump.

While the system I started in had each of the three base materials: carbon, common ore, and metal-rich ore. This would not be the case for every system I'd come across. As far as importance goes, you need carbon to make fuel and at least 50 common ore to craft a refiner. So, it is possible to find yourself trapped in a system.

Funny enough, that would end up happening to me on my own adventure. It was, however, not due to a lack of fuel but too much heat in the system I found myself trapped in. The system I was in was quite hot, and my engine would have “overheated” if I attempted to jump to any system in range. My only solution in the end was self-destruction and respawning back at the base I created for myself.

Each system you find, and there are an insane number of them. Yes, each dot in the map above is a system. It will be filled with planets, moons, sites to run, ores, and Lagrange Points (L-Points).

With as many systems as there are in the game, it can get a bit confusing trying to get around. While it’s possible to build gates between two points. They are not exactly cheap. Not something you will end up doing early game.

Thankfully, the galaxy map allows you to set some filters for things like distance. So, you can see every possible system you are within range of. Assuming you don’t have heat, issues which can sometimes be solved by simply going to the edge of the system you are in, away from the sun in the middle.

I ended up making it a couple of jumps to find a new system to call home for the time being. The nice thing is that when you are getting low on fuel. If you end up on a planet with carbon, you can craft more of it. I even found some systems that already had a refiner from other players built in the ore sites. It seems many have just built one to craft fuel to resupply and keep jumping.

With how big the map is, and not having any real goal of where to go. It was, in quite a pure sense, mindless exploration. It was more about finding a system to settle in that had an open L-Point (I'd prefer no one else at all to avoid any issues with another player). Along with having some needed resources.

Once I found a system that at least had the ores I wanted and a site I could run. I started to set up my first real base. Instead of living out of something like a station. You instead put down different structures that perform different things.

Some of these structures are for storage, refining, module crafting, and ship building. Some of them require power from the Network Node that you must drop down and fuel as well. Many of them also have upgraded higher-tier variants as you progress through the game.

Early game, it’s all about just getting up the basic buildings you need to progress further along. With things like the Assembler, where you craft ship modules. At the current stage of the game, it is a bit confusing since most things just have placeholder text. Thankfully, there is a fitting window, and once you craft things, they tend to show a bit more information about them.

All these buildings also have health and a reinforcement timer for when they get attacked. While I did run into some other players, no one seemed to want to cause any trouble. I’d usually just see someone mining in the same site that I was, and we kept our distance.

The Network node is also where you start seeing some elements of blockchain. From my understanding, Eve Frontier will be running on an L2 network on ETH called Redstone. Since I had yet to go through the process of connecting a wallet, I did notice the owner of the Network node is a real ETH address listed. There also seems to be some other elements for possible smart contracts included on this page as well.

A huge part is going to be a structure called Smart Storage. The structure has an input field to link to smart contracts. These smart blockchain contracts are expected to allow players to create their own market hubs, missions, and who knows what else. Something that will be quite interesting to see unfold one day.

Eve Frontier is also going to have its own cryptocurrency called Eve as a utility token. You will be able to exchange it for the in-game currency called LUX. That will be something to keep an eye on.

Most of my time was just spent farming salvage to ore sites. Like the site above, which had no living NPCS in it. I’d just go around looting their wrecks. It also had quite a quick respawn time. This was quite a lucrative spot for quickly getting some resources I needed.

There is also a lot of mining. I never had any asteroids get fully mined out where I was. Sometimes rats are farming in them as well. They, however, did not attack me since I had yet to receive a bad standing for killing them. Something that would not always be the case.

Perhaps the oddest thing is just trying to get used to the UI. It’s a bit of an odd one. That whole square thing on the right side that says status and other things gives a lot of details. The box with a bunch of squares in it is my ship's energy being used; there is also another one showing my current fuel levels.

You can also see that on this ship, I don’t have any modules for shields or armor. As such, my ship only has a hull. That is quite a big difference between Eve Online and Eve Frontier. Every ship does not just get armor, shields, and hull. You need to have modules that give those stats.

After building a couple of ships, lots of ship modules, and stacking up some decent resources. It became clear that the place I had called home for a couple of days, I had outgrown. So I boarded a ship I did not mind losing and headed off to explore for a better system.

Moving to a new system was going to be quite a pain. I had no idea just how much. My smaller ship, which I was willing to lose, turns out to be a much better exploration ship than the ship I had set up for combat. It was able to jump further and deal with heat issues a lot better.

Some of the new systems I found were quite barren. Others had lots of what I already had. Over time, I finally found the system I wanted to settle in. I flew all the way back to my old home and jumped into my better ship. The one I wanted to use in combat sites, the new system had. That ship was unable to make the trip there due to heat issues.

Final Thoughts

It’s nice to see they have a lot of the basic systems in place. There still seems to be quite a few placeholders. I also hope the ships in-game are just placeholder models, as they are quite ugly.

While I did find the whole heat system, the models I thought would resolve those issues were rather worthless and annoying. I still had quite a lot of fun getting to check out the game.

It’s a shame I could never find where there are supposed to be lots of gated systems to help you get around a lot easier. It also became quite clear that I was never going to make it to any station that I could see on the map in any reasonable amount of time. This alone would end up halting my progression in moving forward in the game to get the better ships and see other kinds of content.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Frontier