June 2024

Monday’s Are for PI

stargrace June 17, 2024 0Comment

Right now I only have 2/6 characters doing PI steadily. I’m extracting P0 and turning it into P1, and I would usually then take it and turn that into P2 (robotics & guidance systems) but I’ve been trying to get things sorted so I’ve let it lapse for now while I figure things out. I use a wormlife freeport for the 4.5% taxes, and every Monday I collect my PI and then when it’s quiet I’ll scan down the HS connection and drop it off. My PI characters are not very fancy, but they are Omega, and they can fly ships with cloaks, which is nice. It’s not mountains of ISK each week, but it is pretty passive, sells well, and is very minimal effort. I don’t mind logging in to re-set my extractors each day, and collecting PI once a week works out well. I could attempt to collect it less frequently, but the Epithal I’m flying fills up quickly and I don’t want to make more trips than I have to.

Ideally sometime this week I’ll set up the other characters who need to get their PI off the ground. I spent some SP last week unlocking the various skills required, and while they can all use the command centers at V none of my PI characters have 6 planets. Setting up PI itself is pretty simple once you get used to the clicking, and you can do most of it docked once you place the command centers. You can even gate to a safe, cloak, and place command centers without being anywhere physically near your planets. Seems a bit OP to me but who am I to complain.

Industry / Market wise, gas took a huge dip in value this week, I imagine it’s because of the pirate faction ship changes. Some of it might be because of people panic dumping, so we’ll have to see where the numbers go from here. I’d like to branch out a little bit in my station trading, I’m even contemplating switching to Jita to just see how different it is from where I currently trade. Things are slower where I’m at, but there’s also less competition and I’m OK with that. It might be interesting to see how the bigger fish play.

Speaking of bigger fish, I got to finally catch one of Oz_Eve’s streams live this weekend! He’s on the CSM team this year so he’s not actually doing any trading due to his NDA, but he still offers updates and support to other traders. It was fascinating to listen to him talk about the ins and outs of marketing, and listen to the speculation on where things are going. Of course there were the usual doom/gloom people, but that happens in pretty much any game ever. I am a big advocate of constructive feedback (ie: mention an issue – give a few solutions, in a constructive way that doesn’t death threat the developers..) and I think a lot of people miss the fact that they can actually voice their opinions without having it devolve into something violent. Tomorrow, a suitcase challenge update!

As always, fly your way! o7

My first C3 Ghost Site

stargrace June 12, 2024 0Comment

Despite the (what I consider) large number of relic & data sites I’ve completed in jspace – today was the very first time I came across a superior ghost site. I was absolutely NOT equipped to fully complete one and handle the onslaught of rats & explosions. I do have a stratios that I can fly – but – since I can’t fit it the way I’d like quite yet, I haven’t taken it out much. The helios has been more than enough for what I’m trying to handle.

Anyway, that doesn’t mean you *can’t* do ghost sites, it just means you have to be fast, and you have to potentially leave a lot of loot behind. I decided to do the ‘egg thief’ tactic, I warped in, hacked a single can, looted (more about that in a second) and warped out. I could have probably hacked a second can (the helios is speedy) but I was already sweating and even though losing it wouldn’t have put a dent in the wallet, I have some emotional connections to the ship and wasn’t willing to take the risk.

The one can I opened was filled with Isotropic Deposition Guide which I had never seen before, a few other bits and bobs, and a Wetu mobile depot blueprint copy. I didn’t want to risk things by scanning down the cans first, so I just grabbed what I could, and fled. Once I was at my safe, the site imploded and vanished from the overview. It was pretty exciting, I honestly didn’t even know that these sites could spawn in jspace, I have only ever seen one before, and it was in high sec.

The ‘problem’ with the loot, is that it was HUGE and filled up my entire hull. I couldn’t even take all of the isotropic deposition guides, I had to leave 4m worth behind. I suppose that is one downside to the helios being so small and nimble.

Still, it was a good amount of ISK when I was finished, and a nice relaxing morning in jspace. I headed back to kspace after, dropping off the loot to my marketing character, and the bpc to my industry character. Yesterday was the release of Equinox, and it’ll be interesting to see how things shake up. The cost of PLEX has gone through the roof (at the time of this post I believe it’s around 5.5, it was 4.5 for the longest time) and hopefully people enjoy the new content. I’ll comment on it further in a few days.

Fly your way! o7

How I’m making my ISK

stargrace June 11, 2024 0Comment

Right now one of my smaller ‘goals’ is to be able to pay for 1 of my accounts with plex / ISK. That goal is going pretty well, some days are better than others but I really enjoy tracking and making charts on all of that. The other account I just pay for with a subscription using RL money. How exactly am I making that ISK?

A lot comes from selling on the market. I have 1 dedicated market character, I started learning station trading (where you put in buy orders, then resell those when people sell to you), and I trade all of my loot to that character to sell since they’re trained in reducing broker fees and what not. Gas has been a nice seller for me, there’s usually always a site or two around in a WH and when it’s empty I’ll get out the tengu & prospect team to do some huffing.

I also do a lot of exploration, and sell the components to that (where I can at least, I tend to hang onto a lot of them for my industry stuff, too). I do C1-C3 anomalies which reward blue loot that you can sell to an NPC for ISK (combat ones, at least). I’ve done a few of the regular signatures too, but I tend to prefer the ones you have to scan down so that people are not just warping directly to me.

I also do a good amount of industry. Right now I’ve been working on my BPO collection, and upgrading them with ISK/time to reduce the amount of time it takes / material it takes to make each item.

I’m also still making drones, though right now the mining drone II is not profitable. I go through a lot of shuttles (they’re bubble immune, but not smart bomb immune) so I’ve been making a few of those and putting the spares up for sale, too.

Then there’s PI, which is pretty steady money. I’m currently doing PI on 3 characters, 2 are in a WH. I could eventually expand to doing PI on all 6 of my characters, but I’m not sure if I want to be THAT dedicated to it. The totals above are for the ‘perfect’ situation, which is roughly 2.4b ISK a month. That’s almost a token just from that one endevour. PI is one of the easiest / least time consuming methods of making ISK, but it does require some dedication. I take maybe 5 minutes every day (total) to reset my extractors, I collect the goods once a week and drop them off in HS, then I pick them up in my hauler and take them to market. I’m only making guidance systems and P1 items for now. I was doing robotics for my drones but it became cheaper to just buy them already made, instead. One of those characters is also still doing PI in high sec, so I spend a lot more on taxes over there. The other two are in the Wormlife Freeport and have been there just shy of a month, so far. When I returned to the game in mid-March I had 4 billion ISK liquid to my name – and now I have 17.5b ISK – even after making some pretty hefty purchases. The goal is to save up enough so that I can buy game time in large chunks, which gives bigger deals. I’m going to be sad to see that pile of ISK go down in such a large amount, but I’m excited that I can confidently pay for one of my accounts in this way.

As always, fly your way! o7