Nomadic Gamer

GMs still Exist!

stargrace May 1, 2024 0 Comments

** Before I start this post, I do want to say that I know I pretended to be new when I wasn’t, and that isn’t the greatest behaviour, but I *was* on a new account, and I thought it was neat that they reached out **

I have 3 EVE accounts. One account has my ‘main’, and is in a corporation of just me right now. I did try out Catskull Cartel but it wasn’t for me. That’s OK, not every corporation is going to be a forever home. I have a second account, far less skills, this account has my Signal Cartel (love this corporation, can’t say enough good things about them) character on it and two PI alts. The account has been around since 2009 or so, but I barely ever kept up with it.

Then I have a 3rd account, this one is brand new, and is linked through steam. I created a character on the account in the hopes of doing something completely different from the norm (for me, at least), and I wanted to get some blog posts in about starting a fresh account and doing the AIR Career path along with whatever happened next. I also wanted to see what was available as an alpha, and test out content without having the omega skills. I see lots of YT videos following this path, and I find it interesting.

While I was finishing up the AIR Career path a GM Maverick reached out to me, and asked how I was enjoying EVE. They said they saw I was a new player (the account is 41 days old, alpha). I didn’t mention that it was just an alt account, instead I went forward as though I was a new player. I explained what I thought about the introductory quests, and they offered some advice on what I should do next, and where I should go. The interaction was wholesome and I loved it, especially in an age where very few MMORPG have these sorts of interactions any more.

They gave me a few beginner friendly ships (the same ones the AIR Career will provide) and a Gallente welcome package, which was neat.

In fact, the more I play EVE, the more I fall in love with parts of the culture – and that’s not to say there isn’t also a lot I dislike about the culture (it can be pretty rough) but surrounding myself with positive influences has been key. Anyway, I hope GM Maverick knows that their interactions made a difference and were greatly appreciated.

Fly your way. o7

EVE Gaming

Spreadsheets? We’ve got Those

stargrace April 30, 2024 0 Comments

I’ve been back in EVE Online since March 15th, and of course one of the first things I did was set up a spreadsheet to start calculating industry profits, and then another spreadsheet to calculate my total daily ISK earnings (across two accounts). We already know that in order to afford one month of game time, you need 500 plex, which (at the time of this post at least) comes to approximately 2.5 billion ISK. That means each day you’d want to earn roughly 84 million ISK in order to afford a single month of game time.

Earning currency doesn’t change much from game to game. Learning the markets takes time, but you already have a pretty good foundation if you’re already doing it elsewhere. It’s also not reasonable to expect a brand new player to be earning as much money as someone who has been around for a number of years and knows how to optimize (and who also has higher skills in the game, and higher skills in general). Most of the ISK on the main account (account E) came from industry. I’m just shy of the 2.5b mark for the month, but considering I just returned to the game, I’m very happy with those earnings. The ISK earned on my second account (S) is from selling off components of a package I got (I think I got the platinum bundle?) which included skill injectors (I sold them empty, I can’t afford to give up skills). Those numbers are highly inflated, and shouldn’t be considered ‘real’ numbers considering the lack of effort I put forth.

It does give me a nice nest egg. I’ve got a few months of game time on each account, and enough ISK to invest further into industry. I need to swap some PI around on my 2nd account, right now the components I’m making have almost zero market in my system, and while I know a lot of people adore the instant shopping in Jita, I prefer to stay away and sell slower (but for a slightly inflated price). Figuring out what sells, is the new game.

In the meantime, there are the constants. Ammo, drones, and a few meta ships. Consumables always seem to do quite well and you can really push out some nice numbers. I live in a system that happens to have ice mining, so I’ve started selling items related to that – and people are buying, even though they’re a higher price than other systems. The next challenge will be to beat this months earnings.

Fly safe! o7

EVE Gaming

The Most Annoying Quest I’ve Done (so far)

stargrace April 29, 2024 0 Comments

It is day one of my attempt to work towards a Stratios BPC – and of course I didn’t research everything properly, but oh well! I’m going for it. This BPC is sold from the SOE LP store, and while I have done the SOE introduction quest chain (there’s 52 quests, it’s a lot) it doesn’t count as LP missions, so I have zero (I believe). I have lots of standing with them though, yay. I searched for the nearest SOE agent and off I went – not realizing that they’re not really a regular agent, they were part of an event chain. I believe it is called Minmatar COSMOS? Whewps.

It was here that I came across the most annoying quest I’ve done to date. The first two missions were simple, transfer some infected militants, kill some things, and then I reached the 3rd and final quest which was to obtain a random drop from Cybertron Patrol/Sentry/Watchman. The thing is, this quest chain went from holding your hand and telling you exactly where to go / what to do – to telling you NOTHING. I had to look it up on the wiki, and even then I got it wrong.

First, I had to figure out what the ‘Contested Minmatar Army Complex’ even was. Thankfully that showed up on the overview, I didn’t even know there were static types of events like this. I activated the first gate, and found myself in a room with two gates. None of the encounters were the one I needed, and my first time through I actually went to the wrong gate, and then spent an hour killing the wrong encounters – no bounty, no loot. Whewps. I warped out and started again. Activated the first gate, found the second gate in BEHIND the gigantic structure blocking my way, decided to stealth, made my way around the structure, and finally activated the gate to the ‘Overrun Security Corridor’ – where I attempted to kill the Cybertron stuff, but there’s all sorts of other things in there, including a group that were too close to where I warped in and were not what I needed at all.

I over pulled on my first attempt, and had to warp off after killing only one Cybertron. I am not sure what I had on me that didn’t like me, but something out of the group of 20 or so angry ships HURT. Due to the nature of gates, I couldn’t just go back to where I was, nope. I had to activate the first gate, sneak around the structure and activate the second gate, and then finally find myself (once more) in the room I needed. This time I was much more careful about my pulling. I killed 15 ships in the system – everything I could see – and did not get the drop.

I waited a few minutes, and a few more encounters that I needed spawned. Eventually, I managed to get the random drop I needed.

This quest was a pain in the ass! Between making sure I was ducking through the right gates, to making sure I was killing the right things (in a mess of other things) and the lack of actual direction or instruction on where I should ever be – oof.

I did walk away with another huge chunk of faction, and a storeline BPC that seemed pretty neat. I suppose that was worth it, but I was still frustrated. Tomorrow I hope to find my way to an actual mission giving agent who rewards LP so I can start that grind.

Fly safe! o7

EVE Gaming

Stronger Than I Think

stargrace April 28, 2024 0 Comments

For years now I’ve been training skill points in EVE Online, and while I don’t have hundreds of millions like a lot of people who have been playing since 2009, I do feel like I have an ‘OK’ amount (on my main account, at least). The problem is that all of the skill points in the world won’t give you hands on experience and so it’s very difficult for me to judge whether or not a site or encounter is too hard for me.

Since 2015 I’ve been flying a Tengu, but it wasn’t until this round of playing that I decided to spend most of my time in jspace – and even then, I have been incredibly cautious and nervous about doing much combat. Turns out I’ve probably been able to handle C1-C3 sites for some time, I was just too scared to try them. Yesterday I was looking for some relic/data sites to complete on my Tengu, but instead I found nothing but combat sites. I decided ‘why not’ and went for it anyway. The system was a quiet C2 with no one around. I knew people had been there earlier because I found (and then rescued) their drones that were floating away in space. It was just some tech1 drones though. I made short work of the site with very little issue and walked away with 20 million ISK – It’s not the min/max ISK making that people like to dive head first into but it was fun, I learned a lot, and over all that’s a win in my books.

I’ve been talking on Mastodon to some lovely EVE players about what I’d like to work on moving forward. Even though it’s a lot of bling, I really want a Stratios. Instead of just going out and buying one – I thought I could do some dedicated work towards purchasing one. Then Alex suggested that since I enjoy the industry side of things, I should try to earn the BPC from SOE and BUILD my own.

YES!

This idea REALLY appealed to me, I still haven’t done the math on the cost of crafting one vs. the cost of purchasing one, but ideally it SHOULD be cheaper to craft (that isn’t always the case). I think this would be a perfect way to work towards a goal and save a little (or earn a little) ISK. I’m going to get some math done and then hopefully have a string of posts about this newest adventure in the future.

As always, fly safe! o7

Gaming

Wurm Online – Please Do Better

stargrace April 27, 2024 0 Comments

I love creator programs, and I think they’re a wonderful way to foster community – if done properly. Here’s an example of one I applied to back in November 2023 that I think could use a lot more work to foster that community and communication between game / players. If you’ve been reading the site for any length of time, you know I’ve spent years (10+) posting about Wurm Online and how amazing the game is. Unfortunately, they don’t treat people very nicely unless you’re part of the elite few and belong to the inner circle (names and addresses blocked for security reasons of course).

Now, maybe I never had a snowballs chance in hell – and that’s OK, but at least have the decency to follow up with people who are promoting your game (for free), who took time to reach out for a program that was advertised for applicants, and let them know that they’re not important enough to qualify.

Since then I’ve stopped writing about Wurm Online. The game may be one of my favourite, but they treat their players horribly, and I deserved better than that, as a player, and a content creator.

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