I admit, I’ve never really gotten ‘in’ to EVE before. I know there are pirates, I know there are players, I know that there are different types of ammo that is strong against certain ships vs. others. I know my Tengu has a bonus for kinetic, so that’s what I use as ammo, and it works great against most pirates in my areas, but it’s not so great against others from other factions. I know that some pirate sites have hefty mechanics, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you which ones by name (I still look them each up) and I know that there are ‘triggers’ in each wave that spawn the next wave, so on tough encounters you have to be careful about what order you kill. I rarely ever create my own fit for a ship, I usually look one up – but I’ve recently started learning to adapt them, and really understanding and learning what each piece of my fit actually DOES. I’m paying attention to the numbers – and while I have zero interest in doing anything min/max or FOTM (flavour of the month, Loki, I’m looking at you) it IS quite helpful to make builds that focus on what I’m actually doing.
I tend to explore. I’ve been using a helios, both in WH and out, and I scan down sites. I have it fit with relic/data modules (and of course a cloak), but that thing is basically a tin can and cannot complete any sort of combat what so ever. If I’ve scanned down something I’m actually interested in that involves combat, I go back home and swap for my Gila.
The Tengu that I have got nerfed a few years ago and that is just the nature of games – I couldn’t find a good fit that I actually enjoyed, so it’s just been collecting dust in my hangar. Then I watched a video on YouTube about a mostly pve Tengu fit that was doing C3 sites, and I thought to myself well, I don’t need to jump right into C3, but it would be nice to have a fit where I could maybe take down the sites I scan and maybe I wouldn’t always have to swap ships. I didn’t want anything with too much bling (Tengu has some pretty expensive parts as it is) but something that could hold its own in some of the lower tier WH or even just for HS combat sites. After a bit of shopping, I cobbled something together that I’m quite happy with, and I even got to test it out a bit. I briefly looked at the Zeugma Intergrated Analyzer – but holy crap that thing is more expensive than all of my ships (minus the Orca). No need for that sort of bling right now.
The Gila I fly is lovely, but it’s a completely different type of ship, it uses drones and can take a heavy hit. The Tengu needs to keep moving, and I didn’t realize it but I was also lacking a bunch of the subsystem skills – they were sitting at rk1. Yikes.
I’ve been enjoying myself so much that I decided to up my account for another two months (renewal was coming up on April 10th) and I picked up one of the packs CCP offers. It came with 500 plex (I could turn this into a 3rd month of game time, or I can exchange it for ISK), 500,000 skill points (which I was going to save, but promptly spent), a bunch of skins for ships (which I can also sell, or just add them to my collection) and a booster so I can learn my skills faster. Overall, it felt like a good deal. I was surprised that EVE is much more expensive to play these days, they raised the price back in 2022 which I’m sure people were not very happy about. I’m OK paying for my account (for now) but ideally I’d love to make the ISK for it to become self sufficient like I do in World of Warcraft (at the time of this post I’m sitting on 130 million gold in Warcraft, and $800 in bnet balance across two accounts…) but I know it will take some time. With the small invention I’m currently doing I’m making about 30-50 million ISK a day, to afford a month of game time I need to earn around 83-86 million ISK a day. I think it’s obtainable, but again it will take time.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!