2024

My Biggest Exploration Holy Grail

stargrace September 7, 2024 No Comments

I wasn’t in the mood to mine or rat, so late yesterday I decided I would spend some time doing what I love best – exploring wormholes. No pressure, no obligations – I headed out in my trusty Helios, ship of choice. The path was simple. I jumped into a C2 with a C5/null connection, from there headed to the C5, and in the C5 I found a C1/3 (by description) that only allowed the smallest of ships to enter. I typically have very good luck with these, and this was no exception. It ended up being a C13 shattered wormhole, with a C6 and a nullsec static.

There had been no deaths in the system since early August, and there was no one around judging by the plethora of sites available to scan. I went to work, I scanned down 10, completed the relic/data that I wanted, and then would scan another 10.

On my second pass, I happened to notice a particularly difficult site – and when I saw the title was displayed, I gasped. It was my holy grail of exploration. The Silent Battleground. I had never come across one before in all of my travels and I was EXCITED.

Silent Battleground is a very rare data site found in shattered wormholes.

The silent battleground contains 20 relic and data cans scattered in 60 km radius, with no Sleeper rats present. It must be scanned down and requires decent skills to do so. Failing the hack twice does not blow up the can. The data cans contain data cores, and the relic cans contain T3 manufacturing components such as Intact Power Cores. Early reports suggest that this site operates on a timer and will explosively despawn after some time, though dealing no damage. This timer should be longer than 30 minutes. 3 hacking ships should be able to clear the entire site before this happens, however.

At the centre of the silent battleground is a wrecked Revenant, suggesting an unexpected historical Sansha’s Nation presence in these shattered wormholes. The wreck cannot be salvaged.

I set to work. I tagged anything with a value of less than 2m ISK with a 0 so I would know to leave the cans alone. I’m not certain what the timer was exactly, but I had enough time on my own to complete the entire site. A word of warning, the items you find take up a LOT of room, so I ended up jettisoning cans into space filled with my loot, and just took the most valuable with me. When the site vanished, the cans remained. Then I finished scanning down the rest of the data / relic sites and by the time I looked up from all of the treasures I had found – it was 3am, and I had to get up at 7am. It was absolutely totally and completely worth it. I also forgot to get screenshots of all of the loot I found, and I just took the one below when I was part way done.

Wow. It was so quiet and eerie floating around from can to can. I took so many screenshots, and I just had the best time. I think I yelled out loud when I finally completed scanning the site down, it was by far the most difficult site I’ve scanned and I was incredibly proud.

Fly safe o7

Purifiers, Purifiers Everywhere

stargrace September 6, 2024 No Comments

I was minding my own business doing some mining, when a wormhole opened. Of course I scanned it down, checked it out, and found two gas sites inside, and a buzzard. I went and got my prospect, and then after I had gotten situated at the gas site, suddenly 6 purifiers showed up on d-scan.

OK then! So I warped back to the exit – but they were there. Waiting. Coincidence? There’s no way they had 6 purifiers there waiting for a prospect, they were obviously going after bigger targets and I just happened to bump into them on their way. So I relayed the information to my corporation, and really wished I had a ship to roll wormholes. In fact, that might be one of my next purchases. I waited for them to jump out, and when they had, made my move. My prospect is fit with covertops cloaking, and that always makes me feel pretty confident. I had no issues leaving the WH and heading back to the security of my station but it absolutely helped that they were busy going after bigger targets. I don’t fly anything fancy or even own anything expensive except for my Tengu & Orca and I keep those parked most of the time. I’m not very confident in my pvp skills, I don’t know all of the ins and outs and what to fly or what is good against something else. I’m learning, but it’s a slow process and it’s not really a part of the game that I particularly enjoy.

I noticed the economic report came out – and as a surprise to no one, the price of ore is going through the roof. It’s almost higher than the highest part of scarcity, a time no one wants to go back to. I have a lot of opinions on all of this, especially as someone who enjoys making ISK in game, and none of it is very good. When I started playing in April the max number of players during prime time would hover between 31-35,000 players. These days, the max numbers I see are around 5-10k less. Of course winter is coming and school is starting and summer no one is playing because they’re all on vacation and it’s too nice – but I really hope to see those numbers creep back up and I want to see the price of ore (and thus, ships) come down. People want content, but they don’t want a job where they have to budget to afford to fly something and risk losing it.

Anyway. It was an exciting night! I’m glad those purifiers were not all coming after me.

My August EVE Economic Update

stargrace September 5, 2024 No Comments

I wasn’t playing much EVE at the beginning of August, so my ISK making chart remained mostly empty – and then when I got back into the swing of things I decided I should start up a 3rd steady account to play along with my other two – so that’s exactly what I did. I had been training the account for some time already, it’s an old one I had from 2010, but had stayed at the alpha level. I used ISK to plex the account.

Still, I made over a billion ISK for the month even with my limited game play. I did some mining, a little ratting, and because there was a lovely electric storm for a few days I was able to get a lot of hacking done. I debated if I wanted to sell everything or keep it for crafting, but in the end, I sold it. Next round I’ll be hanging onto the bits though. Things are getting expensive, and I’d rather craft it all myself.

At the end of the month I was in a strange frame of mind where I decided I should sell off some of my mining ships, which I instantly regretted and re-purchased at the beginning of September. Still trying to work myself out of that debt at the time of this post. I’m not sure why I buy / sell ships depending on my moods and whims, I should just hang onto them for the future when I change my mind, because I almost always do.

My market character is almost done training to fly a blockade runner, and I’m thinking it might be time to get back into market trading. For now she’s been hauling my PI that I drop off weekly (I have 2 characters living at a Freeport Wormhole who do PI and nothing else) and I also use her to run hauling missions when the daily requires 50LP. I don’t know what I’ll train up next on her.

On the 3rd account my character is able to fly mining barges and exhumers – but I’ve downgraded the exhumers because of the cost and the fact that there’s a lot of gankers around. I mine slower – but safer. I’m OK with that. We’ll just have to see what September brings.

Fly your way! o7

What Did I Learn?

stargrace August 31, 2024 No Comments

Joining Pandemic Horde Inc back in April of 2024 opened a few doors to me that I never knew existed. First of all, a huge number of the regular / steady EVE Online players belong to nullsec blocks. Whether it’s Goons, Pandemic Horde, or someone else. Even if you don’t play in nullsec, I dare say that everything that happens in EVE, is touched in some way by these players. Whether it’s the huge battles & content that happens, the mining, or the ratting. To implement things like scarcity within null is to make a change that trickles down and affects every single person in the game – and scarcity, is not good. CCP needs these players to keep doing their thing, so that other aspects of the game continue to thrive and survive. I was astounded at just how many nullsec players are active in the game. On reddit there’s tons of comments about nullsec players crying when changes happen – but nullsec players are the majority. Implementing changes that cause them to quit, is bad. Whether or not everyone else likes it.

Content is good. Cheap ships are good because that lets everyone undock and create that content. If we’re all too scared to undock because ships are expensive, that’s bad. Lack of content is bad. People LOVE the big fights. They LOVE being a part of something larger than themselves. They thrive on the drama. It was so easy to get caught up in it all. Some take it a lot more seriously than others.

Because Pandemic Horde Inc doesn’t have a screening process, ‘Awox’ is common. This is when someone joins only to lead the enemies right to your own alliance. Sometimes it’s as simple as a 1 day member, sometimes it’s someone who has been around plotting for months. Scams are common, preventions are put in place, until those are figured out and so on.

I remained loyal to Pandemic Horde while within their corporation, but eventually you learn you’re just one tiny little insignificant person within a giant cog of other more important people. In a lot of operations, bodies, are what matter. Even when I left PHI to join an ‘ESI-Gated’ corporation (I eventually joined two) – it was quiet. These people had been gaming together for 10-15 years, and I was an outsider joining. The friendliest corporation I joined was actually PHI because of the rotating new players. I’ve mentioned a few times now that I’m not a huge PVP player – but I do feel a fierce loyalty to my ‘area’ in space, I’ve stood up to gankers who were harassing miners, and I chased neutrals out of spaces when they were attempting to rob ess, or skyhooks. ISK is easy to make in nullsec, but there’s also risks. Some newer players would (wrongfully) assume that because it was “our” lands that it was 100% safe. Absolutely not true. It is ‘safer’ than other areas, but never 100% safe. Anyway.

I learned how to fit ships, how to make ISK, how to escape when someone was after me. I learned how to protect an ESS, how to defend a gate, how to roll a wormhole, and so many other little tips and tricks that you can’t learn in EVE without participating in something bigger than yourself. My bookmarks folder overflowed with charts, graphs, websites, and information all relating to EVE Online. I stayed out of the drama portion of it, but I read about it in chat and saw others talking about it. Why certain fights went the way they did, why we did certain things over other things, etc.

One thing that constantly came up that frustrated me to no end was the abundance of misinformation in the newbean channel in game, and the inability for people to just read. I doubt this is a PHI specific issue, more likely an issue with people in general. All of the information someone could ever need has already been written out and posted, somewhere, you just need to actually read it. Day in and day out, the same questions would be asked, and answered, sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly. I obviously don’t know everything about the game, but there was just so much misinformation. I wasn’t expecting that.