Personal EVE Economic Update (October)

I know this post is coming a bit late, but I took a tumble down some stairs (no, really, I did) so typing has been awkward and sitting at my chair incredibly painful. Hopefully things can get back to normal, whatever that is.

October was fantastic as far as making ISK in EVE Online goes. I settled into a pattern with my three active accounts, and expanded my PI process so now 8/9 characters are currently doing some form of industry. You’ll also see I made some pretty big purchases on October 30th, which I will talk about at a later date. I’m trying to space everything out a little bit so it’s not immediately blown up. My monthly earned was higher than I’ve ever had in the past, at just over 7 billion ISK. I also bought a bunch of new ships and did some hefty spending. Most of my income these days is coming from day trading. I’m still producing consumables, mining, ratting (though only a little bit) and I have also started getting into reactions.

Reactions are annoying. Well, to start with, at least. There’s no real good updated guides because that would almost be giving away trade secrets, which no one apparently wants to do. I keep hearing “reactions can make you billions of ISK, but it also costs billions of ISK to get into it” and I had no idea what they meant or what they were talking about. So I started looking into how they worked, and picked a few smaller ones to get started with. I’m still in the initial stages, so we’ll just have to see ‘how’ profitable it is.

The halloween event has ended, and I’ve got to say, I was very disappointed with it overall.

I felt like I spent most of my time hunting down sites and trying to find the right ones that I needed, which of course were never the ones I found – but I did both types any way because there was a chance at some neat loot from them. I did get quite a large collection of ship skins, instead of selling any of them I decided to keep them all for myself, and later on down the road maybe I’ll sell the extras.

This event was very difficult. The hacking was tough even with max skills, the combat sites were things I couldn’t even attempt. I’ve been a bit disillusioned with CCP lately, and this event did absolutely nothing to change my mind on that. There is another “expansion” planned for a few weeks from now, but once again I think very little of it will pertain to me or make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

I guess we’ll see.

Fly your way! o7

Expensive Month (preparing for fun)

I’ve mentioned before that I was curious about putting my own structure up in space, and so this month I have been preparing to do exactly that. I also invested in some ISK to get some proper hauling ships. I bought a viator & an occator (and fit them appropriately) and then practiced doing the MWD & cloak trick that I had heard about many times but had never actually executed. Turns out, it’s pretty simple, but there is some muscle memory involved so I flew around highsec with my empty occator just practicing (I keep forgetting to align and use bookmarks to dock, instead of warping straight to the station, which is bad, because you can end up outside of the docking area). I also set up a second highsec corporation, because once I have a structure down I’m open to wardec, and I wanted someone who can still do my PI hauling and act as a market character. Another reason is simply because I enjoy doing the 50lp dailies and wanted to be able to complete them. As far as I’m aware, there’s no easy way to do this from inside a WH.

As much as I’ve played EVE, I have zero experience with structures and I’m learning a lot. For example, I need to set up an ‘ACL’ which is ‘access control list’ so that I can allow / disallow people to do things like dock. This is how structures like the wormlife freeport operate, and something I hadn’t even considered. Somehow I forgot that structures are going to require fuel, though I am less concerned about that. I can either attempt to produce my own, or buy some and haul it in, a few months in advance.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the system I plan on using, and it has been quiet – but not silent. Some people come and go, and am pretty confident now that no one is actively living there. I will be setting up a POS to start with – I want to get the hang of things, and then from there I’ll expand and upgrade. It takes much less time to set up a POS than say, an athanor. It was an expensive week, but I feel confident in my spending and honestly the viator and the occator were both ships I had plans of purchasing eventually, anyway. The next ship I’m hoping to pick up is the Deluge. I have been flying a squall, but I think the upgraded version is quite beefy.

As always, fly your way! o7

Locked Out (again)

I found a nice bunch of gas and decided to do some huffing – thankfully I also keep a mobile depot and some probes and a scanner with me, because the exit out of this wormhole closed behind me and I needed to find my way back home. These days, it’s more of an annoyance than anything else, I’ve never been completely lost in space before, and eventually you will always stumble into some system that has a jump that leads out of the wormhole, whether it’s to highsec, nullsec, or lowsec. We’re 11 days into October, and I’ve made just over 1 billion ISK for the month, sitting at 1.3b. I’m hoping to use all of the ISK I make this month to purchase some sort of structure to place somewhere in a wormhole – with the understanding that it might just get blown up the very next day. I’m still undecided as to what sort of structure I want to place, I’m leaning POS just to get my feet wet and to learn the ropes, despite the higher fuel cost. That would allow me less stress about placing / taking down a structure but I could also learn about wormhole control and how to roll them. Or maybe I’ll just continue to suitcase for a few weeks until I feel more comfortable. I still haven’t found the perfect spot to be, yet. I don’t think I want a high sec connection, but a quiet C2 with a C1 static might be alright. I don’t want to draw attention to myself while I live there, but I also don’t want to always be completely out of content. It’s a delicate balancing act.

This week most of my in-game time (when not focusing on PI) has been trying to work on the Crimson Harvest event. Have I mentioned how much I dislike this event yet? It’s frustrating to have to constantly reach after VERY specific sites – I can’t just do any hacking site, it has to be a certain one. If I find a crimson one I don’t get credit. WHY?! Why is this a thing. Events should be fun and while I realize that EVE is nothing like other MMORPG that I play – I can’t help but wish it was just a tiny bit more familiar, because everything shouldn’t have to be a struggle.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at with things right now. As always, play your way! o7

What’s Going on?

A lack of blog posts – but instead I’ve been posting video of my adventures over on YouTube. They’re not fantastic quality, but it has been fun posting stream-like episodes of my adventures in space. I keep trying to fit into games like World of Warcraft, but since I have almost zero community in game, I haven’t been able to make it stick. The same can be said for GW2. I love playing, but I have limited time, and in EVE Online I belong to a handful of communities. I think that’s why I’ve been sticking with it for so long now.

I’ve been slowly (very slowly) working on my Crimson Harvest points. I’ve looted a number of ship skins, including a few for ships I actually fly. I’d love to find a helios version (does one even exist?) since that’s what I fly most of the time. The hacking sites are quite simple for me to do these days, though I have failed a can or two along the way. Things have fallen back into a familiar pattern that I’m enjoying quite a bit. When the servers come up from their daily restart I do PI on all my characters (that’s 5 characters, 6 planets on each), and then I start doing dailies on whoever I can before I have to tend to real life (I usually have just shy of an hour, which is enough to get dailies done on all 9 of my characters). Once I’m finished with whatever real life dailies I have to tend to, I decide if I want to do some exploration, mining, working on missions, gas huffing, or just flying around exploring. I’m getting more comfortable with multiboxing, and running 3 accounts seems to be a nice balance. I know there are people with far more (and others adamant about keeping just one) but any more and I think my attention wouldn’t be able to keep up. I normally do mining with 2 retrievers + a porpoise for boosts, and I have everyone with mining / boosting augments. Some days are better than others as far as ISK return – I did find a really expensive faction module this week that was worth 300,000,000 ISK which I promptly sold.

I’m usually flying a Helios for exploration, but I also venture off into the Astero. I fly a Vexor, Ishtar, or Typhoon for regular combat stuff. I fly a Tengu for C1-C3 sleeper sites. I fly a Wreathe for distribution missions, and a Squall for hauling PI, an Epithal for hauling PI around the wormlife freeport. I do have a stratios that doesn’t get much use at all, and since I’m no longer backpacking with the Orca, that has been sitting in the hangar collecting dust. My Jita alt can fly a Viator, but I haven’t purchased one yet.

There’s an announcement coming today which I assume will be about the next expansion. CCP had mentioned months ago with the release of Equinox that the Sov changes wouldn’t HAVE to take place until the following expansion – and that transition date is October 29th, so I can only assume that we’re going to be looking at some sort of expansion in three weeks. What will be changing? No idea. Equinox has been lackluster to say the least, and I doubt anyone would call it any sort of revival.

In any case, I’m really happy playing EVE, and I hope folks are not too upset at the lack of updates here. Fly your way! o7

EVE September (personal) Economy Update

Well, another month has gone by – and my ISK is almost where it was when I bought the 6 months of game time that is going to last me until February, I should be able to easily purchase another 6 months if I wait for a sale, considering I still have 4 months to go. At the start of the month I was in the negative, as that was when I had randomly decided to sell & then re-purchase my mining barges (currently flying 2 retrievers + 1 porpoise). I did lose one hulk to an infested carrier that warped to my mining anomaly (I didn’t even know that was a thing, lesson learned) which is why I made the decision to downgrade to retrievers. Far less expenses involved, and mining is a ‘slow and steady’ activity anyway.

I did also complete the monthly goals on 8/9 of my characters, falling just one day short on the final character (but earning the plex/isk reward, which is what I was really after).

I continue to do small time industry, making mostly drones and ammo (I did branch out a bit this month and started making repairers). You can consider these the ‘consumables’ of the EVE world, so they’re always in demand. People leave drones behind, they get blown up, they seem to just wander off on their own. It’s not a lot of ISK, but it’s slow and steady throughout the month which is more important to me and the type of gamer that I am.

I’ve been selling the PLEX I get from the daily rewards, but I might try to hang onto it, I know with 3 active accounts (3 characters max per account) that it would accumulate nicely and may even help when it comes time to purchasing game time. I also know that I’m pretty rubbish at ‘saving’ anything, and that extends to skill points and items to use later. I tend to sell it all, and then re-purchase it when I need it.

October / Halloween events start soon, so that should be fun. There may even be some ISK earning opportunities with it depending on what items we can get. In the mean time I’m thinking of taking all of the ISK I earn for October and putting it towards placing a structure in a wormhole – under the assumption that I could lose said structure the instant I place it – if I can even finish placing it. Most structures require 24h to anchor (I believe, I’ve never anchored one before so this information could be wrong) which is one of the reasons that a lot of people go with a POS despite the heavier fuel cost. Since I’m unfamiliar with rolling holes (what you do to secure a WH) and the whole thing seems confusing to me, I’m just not sure how I want to go about it yet. If you have a guide or some suggestions, let me know! In the meantime, I’m still flying the skies and trying to decide where I want to live.

As always, fly your way! o7

Nomadic Gamer