2012

Beware, Serpentis! #EVEOnline #Tweetfleet

stargrace July 20, 2012 2Comments

As much as I enjoy scanning sites in Eve Online, I rarely give it the patience it requires, and have fallen behind in my ‘skills’ for probing (har har). I take a lot of pleasure in finding sites of my own to explore, so last night I decided to do a revision on how scanning works, and I took my Helios out for a spin.

It’s always hit or miss when it comes to scanning, some times you’ll find things, and some times you won’t. That’s where the patience comes in. It also takes a lot of time to narrow down the search, but there are some pretty awesome tutorials and videos on how to do this. I didn’t travel far from home (because I was expecting to need another ship or two depending on what I found) and in my first session I narrowed down a Serpentis Den. I flew back to my ‘home base’, switched out the Helios for the Dominix, and headed back. It was a bit messy because I was still getting back into the swing of things, but I didn’t do too badly, and before long all of the bad guys were dead. I spent a bit of time salvaging the wreckage (I could have switched out for my salvager, but didn’t bother) and then switched back to the Helios.

My second run resulted in a radar site, I took my codebreaker (I have my Helios fit for radar sites as well as probing) and opened up the containers with glee – no NPC to defeat here. Inside I was rewarded with an item that boosts manufacturing stats, and is worth a few million ISK. YAY!

Continuing on (I was actually looking for mining sites) I found a Serpentis Lookout, so I once again switched out from the Helios to the Dominix, and proceeded through the acceleration gates. This time things went much easier – except that I completely forgot that when I removed the inventory from the Dominix on my last combat round, I also removed all of my ammo. Before I could pass through the second acceleration gate I had to head back to home and pick some up. Not being able to attack anything was proving to be difficult, especially since my drones were the ones getting aggro and it was going to be expensive to replace them all. I scooped them up, flew home, grabbed ammo, and back out to the site where I finished up killing the NPCs. I didn’t get the bonus spawn, but that’s alright. I still got a lot of bounty for killing and I also came back with a lot of salvage material.

All in all it was an incredibly productive night. Before I went out probing I also put in some production runs for invention and manufacturing, turned my PI runs on, did a few mining missions for faction, and picked up some datacores that my R&D agents have been holding for me. Now, all of this may not sound exciting to the dedicated long term EVE player, it just sounds like yet another night – but for me, it was incredibly exciting. It was my first time actually scanning down a site and then defeating it on my own. Hopefully tonight I have better luck with mining sites though, as that’s what I’m really after. I did also find a few wurmhole entrances, and I may check them out in the future, I do love wurmhole exploration, it’s just not something I typically want to do all by myself without a corp to back me up.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Things Have Changed #EVEOnline #Tweetfleet

stargrace July 16, 2012 1Comment

It just doesn’t feel right to be playing MMO’s unless one of them happens to be a sandbox, and since I was lacking the soft feeling of sand running between my toes I decided to sign back up with EVE Online. It’s been a few months since I’ve played to any extent, and when I left the game I was working heavily with industry and PI, creating drones to sell weekly at the market as well as POS components and fuel. All of which netted me a fair amount of ISK, and kept me out of trouble (for the most part).

Since I’ve returned I’ve noticed a few changes – most notably would have to be the changes to inventory. That’s right, players now have an actual inventory – sort of. It’s a drop down menu on the left hand side along with the usual tabs (wallet, assets, etc) and when you select it you’ll see more drop down menus with your items (hopefully). It took me a bit to figure this out, I was expecting a hangar, and couldn’t find it anywhere. Couldn’t find my corporate hangar or any of my ships, or figure out how to move items about. Of course once I learned we have an inventory, things became much easier. It’s still a bit of a pain but there are ways to filter it now which are nice. It does take some getting used to, but I think I can manage.

Of course the first thing I did was fall back into old habits, take a trip to Jita and sell off the merchandise that I had collected last time I played. Jita was as busy as ever which was comforting. I haven’t decided quite yet what it is I want to do this round – there’s so many options. If you’re unfamiliar with them you should really check out this amazing post by The Ancient Gaming Noob – and in specific this image.

I’ve always stayed on the PvE side of things, I enjoy spending my time in-game mining, scanning (which I’m not good at but I’ll get better with practice) exploring, and the occasional mission run for faction. I love salvaging, and I still enjoy research and development but I’m unsure if I want to keep producing drones or move on to something else. They’re good income but I’ve been crafting them for so long now it’s getting a bit boring.

No matter what I decide to do, it’s nice to be back flying the skies. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!