2024

My First Escalation!

stargrace March 27, 2024 No Comments

I’ve been doing some faction raising (remember I have one R&D agent who is still L2 and I want L4) and in between those missions I’ve been doing HS ratting, the ones that show up on your overview when you’re in an area. I’m not sure how many I’ve done now, but it’s a fair amount – and today I got my first escalation! I had to look it up first, because I didn’t want to jump 4 jumps away just to have someone else complete it while I was OTW, but I guess they’re specific to you (that does NOT mean you’re safe, someone can warp in on you easily if they’re looking for you) but since it was in HS no one was looking for me (I hope). It was a few thousand ISK of loot, and of course some great kills. I had to complete it in multiple stages, passing through a gate each stage, and handle a handful of encounters. The Gila is a lovely beast for HS, but I do wish I had a salvager fit to it, because letting all those wrecks sit there made me a bit sad – I understand it’s better to complete these missions fast and move on to something else for ISK/h but I’ve never been much of a min/max player, and I use those components for industry.

I went back afterwards with my salvaging ship just as a way to unwind and to take some pretty screenshots.

Speaking of industry, it was a very good week! I sold all of the drones I made, even though I had priced them above others in the market. I am not quite making enough for a PLEX, but I don’t really know if that’s my goal or if I’d rather just keep myself in ships and continue to buy my game time the good old fashioned way.

Losing the Tengu right at the start of my adventures really put a large dent into my ISK earned, but at least I’ve had a week now of gains in the green instead of in the red. It’s not the billions of ISK others talk about, but I’m still pretty happy with my time invested vs. ISK earned given that I tend to avoid PVP as much as I possibly can (I know this is EVE, I’m still going to play in the style I enjoy most).

Safe flying!

EVE Gaming

Day 12 (Still Flying)

stargrace March 26, 2024 No Comments

I’ve fallen into a comfortable routine in the mornings now when it comes to World of Warcraft & EVE. I check my industry, put new stuff in if I’m able to, check my PI, and then do a bit of ice mining until the two belts in my system are depleted. Once a week I travel to my PI planets and shuffle bits around, and once a week I head to the market to re-list and sell. In between all of that, I’ve started ‘ratting’ which basically just means killing NPC (I kill the ones I find in anomalies / signatures). In 4 days I can start flying my newly fit Tengu (hopefully an improvement over the one I was flying in 2015) and in the meantime I’ve been flying a perfectly apt Gila. I did end up losing a Helios this week to a data site when some very nasty NPC spawned and 1 shot me. Helios is not an expensive ship though so I replaced it and moved on. Ships are just ammo, as the saying goes.

For the past week I’ve made more ISK than I’ve spent, so that’s good. I’m experimenting with industry quite a bit, seeing what sort of markets I can find myself in. I’ve also joined a corporation, although I am not entirely convinced that they’re a good fit for me I think it’s more to do with being awkward and not necessarily a ‘them’ thing. For now I continue to lurk and learn, and explore aspects of EVE that I know I enjoy.

Gaming WoW Gold Making

Weekly Review [Mar17-23]

stargrace March 25, 2024 No Comments

Well, March isn’t nearly as profitable as February, but things are starting to trend upwards again which is always nice. Plunderstorm (I hate it, there’s a post on it around here somewhere) grinders are completing that and moving on to the next thing, maybe spending some gold here and there. I still really dislike the fact that Plunderstorm takes players OUT of the regular warcraft world (whether it is classic or retail) and puts them in a lobby instead. Splitting the player base EVEN FURTHER is a bad idea. Anyway, that’s not what we’re here for. Let’s get back to making gold!

The biggest sellers were my originals – pets and recipes. Transmog moved VERY slowly with only a few moving this week. I do have a bunch of pets I need to get to 25 some time, but the weather has been pretty sporadic and I have been losing power, so I’ve been doing non-online activities (gasp).

Unstable Frostfire belt, Frostfire legguards of preparation, titanic leggings, and steelgrip gauntlets – all of these were popular recipes. The most popular pet this week was the enchanted broom & bush chicken. I always love to see those selling.

Most of my ‘free’ time in game has been spent trying to earn my 1 renown & posting auctions, so I haven’t had a lot of other stuff going on. I’m looking forward to season 4, but things are absolutely in slow mode as far as sales and game play at the moment.

EVE Gaming

A fight in Perimeter

stargrace March 22, 2024 No Comments

To start things off, I have to say that as a newly returning player to EVE, I have absolutely no horse in this race. I was not a part of the political reasoning to this battle, and I had not even heard about it until this week when someone posted a few PSA about removing items from the structure. There are, of course, two sides. I learned the basics. An alliance put up a trade building in highsec, a few months later CCP changed the rules so that you can no longer do this. As time went on, some drama ensued (as it does in EVE) and one side decided this structure should cease to exist – because it was funding a few large nullsec corps (though from my understanding at the beginning many people were benefiting from it and then things changed) with highsec earnings as they would collect tax. This war would have permanent side effects since you can no longer place this building, and honestly, as has been said a few times over the course of this battle, it’s not actually about removing the building – it’s about the story. You can read about this really long feud over on TAGN, who explained it much better than I could since he has way more experience.

Anyway, at one point there were over 5.1k people in local. It was INSANE. Probably one of the best (and by far the largest) events I’ve ever seen take place in a video game. I learned many new terms, like TiDi, and that it was not in fact lag, but TiDi that slowed actions down so that the servers could cope with so many players being in such a concentrated space. EVE became a literal spreadsheet game, almost turn based. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it before. No one enjoys when TiDi happens but everyone adapts and goes along with it because let’s face it, a space battle with 5000+ people is something to talk about. That’s how I felt, at least.

It took over 5 hours, but both of the structures fell, and I learned things like how timezones play an important role in these battles because of the way TiDi stretches out the fights. I lurked in a few streams, and listened to the community, something I truly enjoy doing. The community of EVE is.. unique. Friends and enemies alike came to twitch to chat, which I wasn’t expecting.

It feels like I came back at a great time to be able to watch this happen, and while I know EVE isn’t all sunshine and roses (anything but) it was still a neat feeling to be ‘part of’ something on this large of a scale. For now, it’s back to my quiet area of space to scan down some more relic/data sites.

Gaming WoW Gold Making

I do not like Plunderstorm

stargrace March 21, 2024 No Comments

Blizzard released a new ‘feature’ for Warcraft – Battle Royale. If you’ve ever played Fortnite before you’ll know what I’m talking about and you’ll probably also wonder how many Warcraft players were hoping for a battle royale in their MMORPG – let me tell you, that number is low.

I dislike PVP. I dislike the us versus them mentality. If you look at statistic tracking sites, PVP achievements are the LOWEST earned by players. I do not have quick reflexes, I struggle with my hands and vision. I do like collecting things and low pressure events. This is not that. I feel jaded that 10.2.6 actually gave very little to Dragonflight in any sense of story, quests, etc, and instead offers a new game all together where you can level up renown and earn items for Warcraft (both classic and retail). There are pets, transmog, and mounts as well as the tenders currency. There is also zero items a gold making goblin can make use of. These items are purely for collectors.

“If you don’t like it, then don’t play!” – sure, this is something I’ve already heard but then I miss out (as a collector) on pets and mounts. Instead I am forcing myself to gain at least 1 renown a day, which (for me) on average takes between 1-1.5 hours. What this means is that I’m doing VERY little else in game, because that eats up almost all of the free time I have to play. I also dislike how this new feature removes players from the world, and so things are looking empty. I imagine when they earn their rewards and when Season 4 releases it will get busy again but it’s really not fun to see a once active server reduced so much because everyone is out there grinding for their 40 renown. It’s not fun. I do not enjoy it. I realize lots of people DO enjoy this style of game play, and that’s fantastic for those people, but that doesn’t disqualify how I feel about it.

My First Escalation!

Day 12 (Still Flying)

Weekly Review [Mar17-23]

A fight in Perimeter

I do not like Plunderstorm

You Missed

Leveling Up With Timewalking

The Construction of Quail Landing

Making Gold – One Sale at a Time

Timewalking, Gets me Every Time