Despite CCP's economic woes, the developers' blog is still filled with a lot of updates regarding EVE Online.

Speaking of the economics, the newest blog entry outlines in detail some new alchemy mechanics that are being implemented to help ease the high demand on a limited supply of materials and minerals (dysprosium and promethium, for example).

We've created six new reactions which allow you to create key intermediate materials without relying on the rarest moon minerals. This isn't, of course, an efficient process! Each rare mineral has been assigned a more common counterpart, which can be used in the place of the rare mineral in these new reactions at a ratio of 20:1, which roughly approximates the difference in moon count between the rare mineral and the common mineral in each case.

Keep reading after the jump for more information on other recent blog entries, including a buddy invite contest for a new, signed computer.

EVE Fanfest 2008 will be held Nov. 6-8 in Reykjavik, Iceland. In anticipation, CCP is keeping track of who can lock down the most buddy invite conversions before the start of the festival. The winner will become the proud owner of a massive Special Edition Commodore EVE Rig signed by the dev team.

RULES:

Buddies invites that are converted to a subscriber from Oct 24th until November 6th will be counted. Since trials are 14 days we will make the cutoff for conversions on Nov 20th to give your Buddies enough time to decide and enjoy their full trial time.

Participant must be a current subscriber.

Buddy invites must be sent out from the Buddy Invite Page so they can be tracked

Only conversions from invites sent during this promotion will be counted, conversions from invites sent before Oct 24nd will not count.

In the case that two or more Buddies are even as winners, then a drawing will determine the final winner.

Also, voting for the second Council of Stellar Management will begin Nov. 7 and end Nov. 21. Full information can be found here. CCP accepted 42 of 71 applicants.