September 2024

A Return to Warcraft

It was only a matter of time before I found myself back in World of Warcraft and joining the ranks of those leveling and exploring through the most recent expansion, The War Within. The first thing I had to do was settle on a character to level – I have a lot of characters, but eventually decided that my paladin should be the first one to reach 80. I’ll (hopefully) get things unlocked and started on her, and then move to other characters as time goes on. I have a ‘core’ group that I’m using with my warband, I collect recipes and attempt to complete the main story with these 4 characters, but as always, nothing is set in stone.

I completed my first dungeon (I ran it with NPC which was much less stress and gave me an opportunity to learn the dungeon) and right now I’m questing in the Ironhaul Station area. I love the aesthetics of the expansion, so far the graphics are beautiful and though I’m only level 72 (part way through at the time of this post) things seem to be moving along quickly.

I also completed my first Delve, which reminded me a lot of the mini game solo dungeons from prior expansions. In specific the Niffen ones from Dragonflight. People seem to be enjoying themselves, and that’s always good to see. Is it enough to keep people playing long term? Well, I guess we’ll just have to see! For those of us who enjoy partaking in the various meta games that Blizzard offers (collecting, gold making, etc) there’s at least always something out there to go after.

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

The Helios Adventures Continue

I’m still using the Helios as my main exploration ship of choice – it doesn’t do any combat what so ever, but it’s fast, has enough room (unless you happen into the Silent Battleground, or a lot of Sleeper Caches), and is really budget friendly. Plus, it’s tiny and cute. Can’t go wrong with tiny and cute.

The Tengu has been my C1-3 choice if I feel like doing combat sites, but I haven’t even bothered for a little while now. I was contemplating training my Signal Cartel character to the Tengu, but I’m not sure if that’s the direction I want to go. My main can fly one, and it already gets very little use.

The Astero (and the Stratios) are great ships, but I tend to leave them in high sec. Since moving to the Wormlife Freeport, I spend less and less time in high sec. Not necessarily a bad thing. I did also record some video of me flying around on my Signal Cartel character – unfortunately there’s some sound issues with my set up, and there’s some clicking sound that I need to figure out. Hopefully once that is solved, I’ll be able to get some YouTube videos posted about my adventures. I thought about live streaming it, but I’m not confident enough in my abilities, and in a PVP game like EVE some time-lapse is handy.

For now, I’m keeping all three accounts active. I’m getting used to multiboxing, and EVE O Preview has been pretty easy to figure out. It’s different from multiboxing in say, World of Warcraft, but not too different. I think I’ve only left my accounts behind a handful of times when I warp off, hehe.

As always, fly your way! o7

Deepflow Rifts?

This event has ended now (I believe) but it was fun while it lasted, minus the length of time it took to scan down the rifts. You would park outside the rift (looked exactly like a wormhole), and start using salvaging modules on it, and then you’d pull out loot. You could get more loot if you used more salvagers, but if you used too much, you’d spawn bad guys. You had to find a balance. The ISK wasn’t great (especially if you take into consideration the time it took to find a rift, which you should) but it was a weird little event.

I appreciate the events like this, they liven things up a bit. I do think it was much more difficult to find rifts than I would have initially expected, but that’s OK.

Did you partake? Was it interesting? Let me know in comments, and as always, fly your way! o7

Keeping Organized (Bookmarks)

Keeping things in game neat and tidy (no matter the game I’m playing) is something I’ve always really enjoyed doing. Organizing banks? I’m all over it. Trying to empty my inventory? Sure thing! Of course that carries over into EVE Online, too, where I need to keep a LOT of different things organized.

One of the first things I wanted to do was to set up a way of sharing my bookmarks across all of my characters, and then having a way to know what those bookmarks were for. I have a very simple system. If it’s a system I frequent, or one I’ve never been in before but I’m spending some time in, I set up a safe (or two). In wormholes that means I take the perch that I’ve made for relic/data sites, and I convert those into a safe once the site is completed. These don’t expire.

Perches do expire, I set them to 2 days.

The rest of my bookmarks follow a simple system. Their SIG number (the 6 digits at the start) followed by what it is (C1/3, HS, NS, LS, etc), followed by EOL (end of life) if the system is nearing the end – or just brackets with the size of ship that can fit through. If it’s a relic / data site, I bookmark it anyway even if I have no intentions of completing it because if you get disconnected or log out, you will lose the sites you’ve already scanned. I bookmark it all, set it to 2 days, and then if I go back to the system I can easily tell if I’ve already scanned it down.

I keep two different folders, one is for ‘universal’ bookmarks like the safe / instadock / instaundock that all my characters share, and then I also have a WH folder just for my Signal Cartel character. I can always drag bookmarks around if needed, but none of my other characters travel nearly as much as that one.

You can only keep 4 folders online at a time, so I tend to keep my 1 universal folder + my independent folder + 2 misc folders if / when I need them and I’ll offline anything I’m not using. If things are getting too crowded I’ll remove some of the less used safes, I’ve also started adding the date to the name of the safe so I know when I made it in case I feel I should make a new one.

If I’m just passing through a system I almost always set the bookmarks to expire – there’s a limit on how many you can have per folder, and I want to make sure I always have room for the ones I use on a daily basis (like the undock ones, those take time to make). I can always make another safe when I need it – and if it’s a system I frequent I keep those bookmarks, too. Important structures I use a lot, the market, etc.

If I’m mining something in specific I’ll bookmark a few ore nodes so I don’t have to slowboat through the belt, but that can be hit / miss depending on my mood and how busy the area I’m in is. So far, the system seems to work for me. I also use Pathfinder to keep track of where I’m at / where I’ve been for longer WH trips, I don’t use it at all when I’m travelling around in highsec (which isn’t too frequent, these days).

I have been thinking about moving my marketing alt to Jita, right now I’m actually based at one of the other market hubs, but I think I’d like to see how a fast moving market could be. I can finally fly a Viator, and I doubt very much I have anything worth while that would get me ganked (other thank flying a viator, which cannot be scanned, so people assume you’re bringing in the big bucks). I’ll have to think on it a bit more. You might remember that when I returned to the game back in April, I attempted to haul 500,000,000 worth of stuff to Jita in an Iteron V and was promptly killed. I won’t be doing it that way again. I actually haven’t been back to Jita since, the event bothered me that much. I’m still not a fan of ganking, as much as it is part of the game. In any case, nothing is set in stone and we’ll just have to see where I end up. As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Fly your way o7

Why a Nullsec Bloc Just Wasn’t For Me

I mentioned in a few previous posts that I joined up with Pandemic Horde back in April of this year, but eventually decided it wasn’t really for me, despite feeling fierce ‘loyalty’ at being a part of something bigger – initially. The reason I ultimately decided it wasn’t for me is more to do with my own personal play style and frame of mind than anything else. The corporation didn’t do anything wrong, in fact they have very strict rules on not being assholes to new players which I really appreciated. There are of course bad apples in every corporation you’ll ever come across, but my time there was pretty relaxed, and highly profitable. The problem is (for me) the universe started to feel small. I felt almost like I was swimming around a fish bowl instead of a vast universe. You get comfortable in the systems you frequent, and you spin ishtars or you mine and maybe you attend a fleet or two – but you don’t really experience EVE outside of your little bubble.

For me, this was an issue. While I don’t begrudge people offering protection and ‘renting’ systems, they don’t actually *own* those systems either. It feels a bit like exploitation. Renters would pay for the ‘right’ to use resources in a game that is open to everyone. Anyway, the world of EVE was starting to feel small and I didn’t like feeling like I was swimming around a fish bowl, so I decided it just wasn’t for me. I like the freedom of exploring where ever I want, and if I stop to do something so be it, and if I move on, that’s OK too.

With that in mind, it was easy for me to make my next decision. I opted to move my Signal Cartel character into a wormhole to live, a wormlife freeport, in fact. I’m tired of the 15% tax on PI in high sec, and I was rarely ever hanging out at my ‘home’ base anyway, I don’t do invention or anything like that there. Plus the freeport has a highsec connection, so it’s not like I can’t just pop out any time I want. With two other PI characters living in the system, I’ve always got a way back in should I get locked out.

I don’t plan on leaving anything in the freeport itself, all of my ships have pilots in case something happens and it gets attacked, and since it has a high sec static there’s no problem with me moving things around. It might take a while to find a quieter place to hang out if I want to do relic/data sites as there’s other residents, but that’s alright, I mostly want a quiet place to do PI where the taxes (and resources) are reasonable.

As always, fly your way!