2024

Thoughts on Security Space

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been playing EVE off and on since 2009 (mostly off) and during that time I basically exclusively played in high sec content. To be honest, that’s probably one of the main reasons that I never stuck with the game longer than a month or two at a time. Since returning, high sec has become a thing of the past, and I spend a majority of my time elsewhere. Here’s some bullet point thoughts I have on security systems:

High sec: It’s not really safe. I’ve had most of my deaths occur here. The bottlenecks that head to trade hubs are almost constantly camped by gankers, and there’s nothing more frustrating. I dislike these types of players who prey on people who have no interest in combat when there’s an entire game filled with pvp hungry people out there. I know, no place is safe, EVE is a pvp game, etc. That doesn’t change my mind. High sec is also low ISK vs. other security space, and while there are certainly quiet areas there’s also a lot of competition.

Null sec: This place is still scary to me. People ‘own’ land there (sovereignty I think it’s called), and they don’t like me much. I’ve used some filament to port around, and while I can at least see who is in local that doesn’t really give me any relief, they’re normally huge systems called a bloc, all owned by one alliance with lots of little corporations under their umbrella. I normally spend most of my time in these systems scanning down a WH so I can find a HS connection to get home.

Wormholes: This is where I’m most comfortable. I’ve spent most of my time this play through in a wormhole, and I’ve never lost a ship in one – I know it WILL eventually happen, but whether it’s because I’m *extra* cautious while traveling in them or because I just have a knack for picking quiet places, this is where I feel most at ‘home’. Hence the 90 days suitcase challenge. I love wormholes. I also am aware of a gigantic C5-C6 eviction war going on at the moment, but it doesn’t affect me except to stay out of the way.

Low sec: I’ve spent the least amount of time here. It feels like there are always others around, and since there’s no concord response I may as well just be in a wormhole, which I already prefer. Is there some secret to getting anything done in these systems? I’m not really sure. I’d like to take a cheap exploration ship out and about for a while to learn more about what makes it a popular place to hang out.

What are your favourite systems to hang out in? Where do you spend your in-game time? Let me know in comments, and as always, fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 11: Statistics (of course)

Since I’m using Pathfinder (and a few spreadsheets) to track all of my adventures in this suitcase challenge, of course it’s time for a few statistics.

This is day 11, and I’ve visited 77 systems, with 58 unique wormholes. I’ve dipped out to high sec 5x so far, and made 2,476,517,197 ISK. Note that I do leave the Orca in the WH when I go to sell, I’m not risking taking that in and out. What I’ve been doing is confirming the WH is ’empty’ (who knows if it’s actually empty, given as there’s no one on local), parking a character at the HS entrance 100km off gate cloaked to watch the gate, log the Orca in, warp to the bookmark, drop off/pick up whatever it is I want to deal with, and then leave the WH (and log the Orca out safely in space). If anything at all changes, I log out the Orca first. That’s always my main priority. Once the Orca is logged out, I breath a sigh of relief, lol.

I do tend to take smaller bundles of items off to market rather than taking large expensive trips. I’m more paranoid in high sec than I am in the wormhole. I don’t sell in Jita, but I do price at Jita prices most of the time. So far? It seems to be working out.

Fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 10: What Have I seen?

So far the Orca is still alive, and I’m still living happily out of my wormhole. PI is all set up on 3 characters, and I’ve set it to a 2 day schedule so that I don’t have to constantly tend to it. So far that seems to be working for me just fine. I do have to say, the amount of materials you get outside of high sec is astounding. The planets are bustling, for a much higher risk, of course.

My suitcase life has settled into a comfortable routine, that I hope to expand on as the days go by. I log in, scan down any new signatures while frantically checking the space for anyone new. Some days there’s someone meandering around but most days (when I’m around at least) it has been empty. I do a few gas runs (ninja huffing, I just huff until the rats show up and then I leave) and I started doing some mining. Exploration is still my preferred activity.

Pictured above is one of the neat Wormlife Freeports that someone mentioned to me on Mastodon. I took a little break and docked up, and just spent some quiet time looking at eve.

I find life in the WH very relaxing. The ‘out of sight, out of mind’ saying holds true here, because I can’t see people on local my anxiety is quite lessened. That doesn’t mean there is no one around, I’ll probably wear a hole in my keyboard from mashing the V key (d-scan) repeatedly while I’m out and about, but I’m not flying anything I can’t afford to lose – minus that Orca, who stays stealthed or logged off 99% of the time. I’ve made a habit not to venture to the bookmark location unless I absolutely have to swap out a ship or drop something off.

I’ve been using Pathfinder to map my routes each day, and for finding my ‘safe’ way back to high sec to drop off PI components. I’m only making P0 and P1 at the moment, normally I’d do P2/P3 on a factory planet, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, quite yet. Keeping it simple seems to be working.

What adventures will come next? I have no idea. We’ll just have to see!

Fly your way. o7

What Happened to Playing WoW?

I’ve been playing WoW almost exclusively for the past 8 years, and prior to that, off and on. I love the market, and collecting mounts/toys/pets would keep me logging in each day.

Unfortunately I’ve been less-than-enthralled with the course the game has been taking. First with the ‘fortnite-esc’ Plunderstorm event, and now with the Pandaria Remix announcement. My major issue with these events is the time-gated nature of them, and the fact that they remove players from the general world / server and place them in a closed off system. I don’t get to play any of my already established characters, and I feel no connection to them because they are quite temporary, used simply to grind through content and pass it on to my main.

I know a lot of people are very excited about this content, and that’s wonderful. It’s just not for me. I’m also currently in The War Within alpha, but I haven’t nosed around too much yet. Aside from logging in for market reasons, I haven’t really found the desire to play, and I haven’t attempted S4 at all (which is unusual, I eagerly reached 2500+ rating in the prior 3 seasons). I know this feeling of stagnation will pass, it always does, but in the meantime I’m just not spending that much time in Warcraft. I log in each day to list/relist and then I log out. Of course spring has also FINALLY arrived, so I’m spending lots of time outside with the minions and getting the garden ready. This year it went from winter->summer in the span of a week, something I’m slowly getting used to as being the new ‘norm’.

In any case, I just wanted to let my WoW readers that I am still around, keeping an ear to the ground on what is happening out there – and I still love the game, but it’s a good time to take a little break before the fun starts again in TWW.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Waiting on Some Skills

This week has been an (unintentional) expensive one. I lost two ships (one to pvp, one to an NPC) that I had to replace, and I didn’t have a whole lot of ‘free’ time to try to make that back. I also bought a bunch of skill injectors thinking I would take the skills from my 3rd account (which I plan on letting lapse to alpha, as I’m not really keen on keeping 3 accounts active) and distribute them elsewhere, or sell them – and then realized that there’s a 5.5m buffer for siphoning those skill points – AFTER I purchased 7 extractors. I did manage to fill 3 of them up, but the others will have to wait. That account does have a bit more time remaining on it, and I’ll just slowly siphon as I gain 500m points so it’s not a complete waste, but it is a lot longer of a wait than I expected and has become a long term investment.

That will leave me with two active accounts. One has my ‘main’ and two PI characters, and the other has my signal cartel character, an industry character (what industry, I know people are less than enthused at the current state of things as they’re selling for barely-profits these days) and I still have one empty character slot. Undecided as to what I’ll do with that yet. My PI characters are nicely established for what they do, I bought two MCT (multi character training?) certificates a month ago and that was just enough to get them situated with 5 planets at max CPU. The 6th one can wait.

I think with PI alone I’ll be able to pay for one of my accounts, or at least mildly supplemented. The goal is to pay for one of my accounts with traditional subscription (when it goes on sale) and pay for the second one with ISK. I don’t want ALL of my time in game to be devoted to making ISK because that gets old fast and feels like a job and encourages burn out – but I do really enjoy the market/industry aspect of the game so I don’t mind spending my time on it.

I’ve got some thoughts on the expansion coming in June, but this post is long enough so I’ll save that for tomorrow. As always, fly your way! o7

Nomadic Gamer