March 2024

The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

stargrace March 17, 2024 No Comments

I’ve been killed more in EVE this week than I have in the previous 12 years I played – and that’s what feels like it has changed (to me, at least). Yesterday caught me off guard. I plotted a route some where and one of the sectors it had me go through (even though I do have ‘high sec only please’ turned on the mapping – was 0.4, which was in the middle of a huge war that I absolutely had no place in. I wasn’t expecting it at all (in hindsight, I should have probably expected it). 0.4 is lowsec, and dangerous even on the best of days, let alone days when there’s massive amounts of people all over the place (hello weekend).

Now, ideally, I could have just turned around and left right back to the safer side of things, except I wasn’t expecting a bunch of people to be RIGHT there all pew pewing at one another – so I panicked, and of course just sat there like a lump on a log until I was blown to smithereens. Bye bye Tengu 2.0. I think the kill thing said I was shot by 7 different people. Nice. Thankfully I was not carrying around anything of value this time around.

The famous motto in EVE is to never fly something you can’t afford to replace. I know this, and I could afford to replace it, so I did. I decided to go with a different fit this time around though and it’s going to take me a few days to get my skills up to snuff (14 days, in fact). In the meantime, I decided to get some ice mining done. Nice, quiet, high sec ice mining (just watch out for the diamond rats). After, I did scan the sites around my home hoping for a WH with a gas site, but I didn’t have any luck. I did find a high sec relic site, but it had less than 100,000 ISK worth of stuff, gross. I still stand by the opinion that being in WH is far safer than being in lowsec.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.

Organizing Those R&D Agents

stargrace March 16, 2024 No Comments

Today I decided it was time to look into my R&D agents, see who I was working with, what rating I was at with them, and shuffle things around so I was working with the highest levels that I could. Right now I’m using R&D to craft drones which I then sell for a bit of income. I personally only have 1 ship fit for drones and I use it very rarely, I prefer the missiles I use with the Tengu. Anyway, two of my R&D agents are L4, one is L3, and one is L2. I want to raise up the faction that’s at L2 so I can work with a higher level agent, but the ONLY agent I could find is in a 0.5 section, and of course I tend to have horrible luck with those places. It’s 9 jumps away from home, which isn’t horrible all things considering, but I did want to be cautious. I only managed to do two security missions there before I had to head back, but I do plan on flying back out later today to get a few more done.

I also started making a chart for my ISK earnings & hangar value. If I want to pay for game time with PLEX, I would need to earn on average 83,000,000 ISK a day for 30 days. Right now I am obviously in no shape to do so but long-term it seems like a neat goal, since I’m all about the gold making in World of Warcraft, some of those skills should transfer over to EVE too. We’ll see. It has been a VERY expensive month so far because I had to insure my ships, and while I am making more ISK than I’m spending, it’s not by that much at all.

Hopefully getting on a schedule for PI & industry will help that out. I also started doing some gas mining, which I’ve never done before even though I had trained for it. Yesterday I was flying around trying to find a gas site (instead I settled for a relic site in a C3 wormhole) but I haven’t had a lot of luck. I’ve also been working through the application process to join a new corporation. I had been in my last one for 12 years, but it’s no longer active, and while I know it’s not absolutely essential, an active corporation is something I wanted to experience. I’m still waiting for an invite now that I’ve gotten through security, but I’m hopeful.

I still feel much safer in a wormhole than I ever did in ‘actual’ space (hi, lo, or otherwise). Maybe it’s just because I can’t see local and it’s an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ sort of situation. I don’t see that changing any time soon. In any case, fly safe and happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Returning to Eve Online (4 years later)

stargrace March 13, 2024 No Comments

The last time I wrote about Eve Online was back in 2020, so I assume that was the last time I was playing it, too. A LOT has changed in four years – but the basics were still familiar as I dove head first into the game. First of all, there’s (yet another) new / returning player experience by means of the AIR Career Program. This is great for old and new players, and it’s meant to give you a little more direction in what you want to do. You basically complete tasks like you would in a regular quest journal, and you get rewarded for it. I had a task to complete a mining mission, and you get to pick any that you have access to, so I didn’t have to complete L1 missions when L4 were available. I like this method, instead of being forced to do lower level content. Of course now they want me to complete 5 mining missions, and so on. After running a few of those, I swapped over to the Epic Arc Agent I had been working for in the past. This is the SOE (Sisters of Eve) quest chain that I never really completed. Doing these missions also check some points off in the AIR Career Program, which is nice. Daily log in rewards were a thing when I played last, but now there are also daily goals, like killing 25 NPC, etc.

Even though I’ve been away for a fair amount of time, it didn’t take long at all to reacquaint myself with my ships and my tasks. I set my scanners running again for PI, insured my most-used ships, and defeated some bad guys with the Tengu. I’m not exactly sure what goals I want to work towards, but it feels nice to be playing again (I know, I say this every time I return). For now I have no expectations, and I’m content to just fumble my way through while lurking in the Rookie Help channel. If you happen to be playing Eve, feel free to say hello! My in-game character name is Ellithia.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.