When people talk about EVE Online, I’m always surprised at how many different ‘things’ the game is to each individual. To some, it’s a PVP game. To others, it’s an industry game, and for some – EVE is a game about exploring, and discovery (it can also be a game of all of these things, that’s the point). It’s no surprise that I fall into the later categories, and to be honest I’ve always felt a bit awkward, like I wasn’t “playing the game right” because I’ve got zero interest in blowing up other people. I am glad there are many different ways for each person to play, but I never truly felt comfortable doing what I enjoy, in a corporation setting.
Then I heard about Signal Cartel. A neutral corporation who helps players who are lost in space, no matter their standings. They thrive on exploration, and the more I read about their credo the more interested I was. I hummed and hawed over the decision for a month and then decided to take the plunge. I got an invite. I joined. I met people. I tended to my first EVE-Scout cache, and for the first time in 15+ years I felt like I was HOME in EVE. It’s not a ‘safe’ choice, since Signal Cartel does get wardec’d frequently, and let’s face it this is EVE, but right from the start, it felt like the right choice for me. If you’re not sure if your current corporation is the ‘right’ fit – then go out and find one that is. I promise such a thing exists, it just takes a bit of time to wade through everything first.
After I joined, very little changed in my day to day except that I had more purpose (and a lot of reading). I was already jumping into WH and mapping – that continues. Now I can tend the caches that are placed for lost pilots while I’m already out and about. Industry is a nice background activity, and I continue to do that, too. I’m hoping that this ends up being my ‘home’ for a good long time, we’ll just have to see.
Yesterday I got an email from CCP saying that there was something mysterious going on in the Auviken system, and if we were to turn in some drone graviton emitters, we could help contribute to the development of the new facility, and earn LP (loyalty points) that could then be traded in for a new consortium tractor beam and mobile tractor unit.
Right now these items are going for a LOT of ISK – but I’m not sure I have any interest in trying to collect them right this second. I did fly out to the location, and well, a LOT of PVP has been happening over there, even though it is a high sec area. My concern is that if I try to turn in the parts, I’m more likely going to get killed and have those bits stolen. There were some cargo scanners going off – and while I was as “safe” as I could be (I just headed out in a tiny imicus with nothing important on me for screenshot purposes) I don’t really feel like tempting fate. I’m quite content to let everyone else chase after the new shiny, and I’ll just watch and take screenshots – much more my thing.
The rest of the day was filled with my usual adventures. I scanned down sites, I found a few quiet sections of space with some data/relic adventures, and of course I continued with my industry, and earned a bit over 100m ISK for the day. I had to do some shopping, my Orca was out of booster / compression components, but it was still a pretty nice day. I found one particularly neat looking relic site that was filled with all sorts of space junk floating around – took a lot of screenshots.
Today – shield management V is finally finished! My training queue is sitting at 370 days (hah) just of items that I actually want / make use of. I do have almost 47m SP, but that is just a drop in the bucket. I have nice skills for flying / using what I have but I’ll be chasing that SP train for years still and I’m OK with that. Even though I find the PVP aspect of the game incredibly fast paced and anxiety inducing, the rest of the game is pretty relaxing and low key (minus the constant paranoia that I’m about to get ganked). It’s the weekend, so the skies are filled with players, especially in my little neck of the woods where everyone comes out for the ice belts.
As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!
Yesterday I wrote about how I wanted a new Tengu fit, and that I had spent the evening cobbling one together that did what I wanted it to do (ie: things I actually enjoy) – and then I took it out and played with it in some HS combat sites. I lucked out.
The first site I scanned down was called ‘Serpentis Lookout‘ – and what’s most important about this site is that there is ore here that you normally cannot get in high sec.
Scarcity Update: This site, like other cosmic signatures, contains ore.
As of 15 February 2021, this site contains the following units:
Second room: 85,727 Omber (51,436m³), 835,762 Plagioiclase
3,192,395 Veldspar (throughout)
The acceleration gate permits expedition frigates, exhumers, and the Orca to enter the site. An Orca and Skiff were sufficient to kill all NPCs present.
Warning: Once the Boss has been destroyed, the site disappears from the Probe Scanner.
Once this happens, the site will despawn immediately if you abandon the site.
Keeping at least one character in the site will prevent the despawn.
While mining after the site is complete, an additional frigate may occasionally spawn.
Since I was in my home system, it made things pretty easy. I started working away on collecting the ore once I dispersed of the site, and then that little tidbit at the bottom about the additional frigate happened. Well.
When I killed and looted that frigate, I managed to pick up an additional 44,000,000 ISK worth of value. That brought the total value of this single HS site to over 100,000,000 ISK – That was the biggest payout I had in HS to date. My overall ISK gained for the day (between a few sites, industry, etc) was: 349,904,003 and all of it was done in HS. Peanuts compared to the big guys, but I’m less than a month back in game, and I was so excited! I know there’s all sorts of comments about folks who live in HS, and I hear about how the ISK/h is very low – but none of that really matters when I’m enjoying myself playing the game the way I want. Overall, the entire day was just a gigantic win.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
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!
It has been a little over two weeks since I’ve returned to EVE Online, and as I mentioned in a previous post I’ve finally settled into a bit of routine. I try to get a bit of ice mining done first thing, do my dailies, and I re-set my PI. PI is really treating me quite well. I’m not selling the components but instead crafting bits with them which I sell. My hangar was filled with a lot of BPO/BPC so I’ve been working through the backlog and making some ships to sell (when profitable). Looks like I had stocked up on Viator BPs for some reason, I don’t think I intended on flying one (at least I can’t find any mention of it) so I’m crafting those for a few million ISK of profit.
There was some drama in the Jspace version of my corp yesterday, which doesn’t affect me since I live in the Kspace version, but it still didn’t sit very well with me. I’m thinking I might try to find a more pve/industry/exploration aligned home, if one exists. One of the issues I have is that the corp has an open policy on pvp, if it’s not blue/green (alliance/corp mate) then you’re free to attack no questions asked. I prefer a more passive method of gameplay – defense is fine (and encouraged) as well as attacking those with negative standing, but there’s some great kind people out there just doing their thing, and I don’t really like the idea of just being a random asshole simply because they’re not known. I understand that’s a very me mentality, and a lot of EVE is “bully, or be bullied” but it’s just something that has been on my mind. I also don’t really appreciate some of the snide comments from the Jspace corporation towards the Kspace one, like we’re lesser. Again, purely me thoughts on all of this.
I’ve been doing a LOT of exploration this week. I watched a few videos on how to get pathfinder working, and now I’m mapping my way through Eden. I enjoy this a HUGE amount, I found my very first C6 WH! I did not peek inside as it was EOL (end of life), but it was still a neat discovery. Doing this sort of exploration is fun – and sometimes it can be pretty rewarding if I happen to stumble into some relic/data sites. My industry adventures are keeping me well supplied, but I don’t think there are any other ships (at this time at least) that I want to add to my rotation. I’m pretty set for everything I enjoy doing – what I do want to spend a little ISK on are a few more BPO to round out my collection.
Back to exploration – I was scanning down WH yesterday and found one that went from Agal to another high sec, Fabum! When I manually made the path between those two destinations, it was over 40 jumps away, so it was a really neat little shortcut for anyone who may have wanted to head out there. I thought that was a cool discovery. I also learned about some POI (points of interest) that I may want to explore, thanks to Signal Cartel, and TripTik. I love this idea and everything about it, so expect some posts in the future talking about it a lot more.
I think EVE is still the only game I play where I need to have a minimum of 10 browser tabs open at once just to get through my gameplay and I am completely here for it. I have so many spreadsheets, have so many lists and notes and just bits of information I’m trying to retain all over the place. It’s lovely.
As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.