EVE

Compression is the Way to Go

I’ll be honest here, most of my ship builds are *ancient*, the Tengu fit that I used to use was from 2015, and the game hasn’t exactly stood still while time marched on. Some people have a lot of fun playing with different fits, but me, I tend to stick with one until it’s no longer viable to stick with it or until I lose the ship and need a new fit.

That’s how I found out that there’s a new fit I should be using when it comes to mining with the Orca. Especially ice mining, which I do in my home area quite frequently.

One of the banes of ice mining is that it’s SO large and takes up an incredible amount of room. That is apparently no longer the case if you can fleet up with an Orca (or other ship that can fit a compressor, there’s a few types). So I trained the skills, picked up an industrial core, and an ice compressor, and now all the weight of ice mining is a non issue. It has never really been that much of an issue for me in the past because I live in the system and dropping off the ice hasn’t been a big deal, but I can see the appeal. There’s also a lot of regulars who ice mine in my home system, and I’ve gotten to know them over the past week. They’re pretty friendly, offering to fleet up, offering advice on more up-to-date fits, and just chattering. I explained I was newly returning after a long break, and they completely understood (one of them mentioned that they had also just returned after a 10 year break).

It’s not exciting (well, unless someone unsavory pops by) and it’s not huge amounts of ISK, but it’s certainly better than regular mining in high sec, and my home area has quite a few ice fields to pick from. Yes, there are 20+ of us in there at any given time, but I’ve been enjoying this low key aspect of gameplay. It gives me time to read through the Rookie Help channel and get familiar with my new corporation. Plus I’m close to home, in case I need to log off for RL or I have a sudden urge to explore a new signature. I understand that mining is certainly not for everyone, but for now, this is exactly what I was looking for.

The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

I’ve been killed more in EVE this week than I have in the previous 12 years I played – and that’s what feels like it has changed (to me, at least). Yesterday caught me off guard. I plotted a route some where and one of the sectors it had me go through (even though I do have ‘high sec only please’ turned on the mapping – was 0.4, which was in the middle of a huge war that I absolutely had no place in. I wasn’t expecting it at all (in hindsight, I should have probably expected it). 0.4 is lowsec, and dangerous even on the best of days, let alone days when there’s massive amounts of people all over the place (hello weekend).

Now, ideally, I could have just turned around and left right back to the safer side of things, except I wasn’t expecting a bunch of people to be RIGHT there all pew pewing at one another – so I panicked, and of course just sat there like a lump on a log until I was blown to smithereens. Bye bye Tengu 2.0. I think the kill thing said I was shot by 7 different people. Nice. Thankfully I was not carrying around anything of value this time around.

The famous motto in EVE is to never fly something you can’t afford to replace. I know this, and I could afford to replace it, so I did. I decided to go with a different fit this time around though and it’s going to take me a few days to get my skills up to snuff (14 days, in fact). In the meantime, I decided to get some ice mining done. Nice, quiet, high sec ice mining (just watch out for the diamond rats). After, I did scan the sites around my home hoping for a WH with a gas site, but I didn’t have any luck. I did find a high sec relic site, but it had less than 100,000 ISK worth of stuff, gross. I still stand by the opinion that being in WH is far safer than being in lowsec.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.

Organizing Those R&D Agents

Today I decided it was time to look into my R&D agents, see who I was working with, what rating I was at with them, and shuffle things around so I was working with the highest levels that I could. Right now I’m using R&D to craft drones which I then sell for a bit of income. I personally only have 1 ship fit for drones and I use it very rarely, I prefer the missiles I use with the Tengu. Anyway, two of my R&D agents are L4, one is L3, and one is L2. I want to raise up the faction that’s at L2 so I can work with a higher level agent, but the ONLY agent I could find is in a 0.5 section, and of course I tend to have horrible luck with those places. It’s 9 jumps away from home, which isn’t horrible all things considering, but I did want to be cautious. I only managed to do two security missions there before I had to head back, but I do plan on flying back out later today to get a few more done.

I also started making a chart for my ISK earnings & hangar value. If I want to pay for game time with PLEX, I would need to earn on average 83,000,000 ISK a day for 30 days. Right now I am obviously in no shape to do so but long-term it seems like a neat goal, since I’m all about the gold making in World of Warcraft, some of those skills should transfer over to EVE too. We’ll see. It has been a VERY expensive month so far because I had to insure my ships, and while I am making more ISK than I’m spending, it’s not by that much at all.

Hopefully getting on a schedule for PI & industry will help that out. I also started doing some gas mining, which I’ve never done before even though I had trained for it. Yesterday I was flying around trying to find a gas site (instead I settled for a relic site in a C3 wormhole) but I haven’t had a lot of luck. I’ve also been working through the application process to join a new corporation. I had been in my last one for 12 years, but it’s no longer active, and while I know it’s not absolutely essential, an active corporation is something I wanted to experience. I’m still waiting for an invite now that I’ve gotten through security, but I’m hopeful.

I still feel much safer in a wormhole than I ever did in ‘actual’ space (hi, lo, or otherwise). Maybe it’s just because I can’t see local and it’s an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ sort of situation. I don’t see that changing any time soon. In any case, fly safe and happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Learning (Still) (Always)

Things have already fallen into a bit of a routine when it comes to EVE. I’ve got my PI to do first thing when I log in, then I’ve got industry jobs to check in on, then I try to complete the dailies (usually just kill missions). From there my schedule is wide open.

My corporation was no longer active, so I decided to apply to a new one. I had been watching YouTube videos to try to get back into things and see what changes had happened when by chance a friend mentioned their corporation and it was run by the s

ame YouTuber that I had already been watching. I have very little experience with corporations in Eve, I tried to join one many years ago and I instantly decided it was not a fit for this casual care bear. Hopefully I have better luck this time around.

Speaking of little experience – I got killed yesterday in 0.5 space! I’ve been playing off and on since 2009 and I’ve lost 4 ships (and been podded twice). The Tristan was my first loss, then a hulk, a tengu, and yesterday an Iteron Mark V. I know Eve is never ‘safe’ but in 2020 I had zero issues running from my home to Jita – that is no longer the case. There’s a single 0.5 bottleneck on my way to Jita that is pretty well camped these days, and I absolutely wasn’t expecting it (although I should have been) and took zero precautions. I was carrying too many high value things, in an obvious ship, and while I was not on autopilot, I also wasn’t nearly as safe as I could have been – that’s all on me.

Thankfully the Iteron Mark V isn’t exactly an expensive ship, I craft them myself, and I have more in the hangar. I did end up losing the products I was trying to sell in Jita, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t exactly a lot of ISK (maybe 200 million). There are lots of different ways to be ‘safer’ as you move products across space, or you can hire a company to do it for you, and you typically mark the value of your belongings to 120% so that if they lose it, you get reimbursed for more than you were expecting anyway. You do (of course) have to pay for that service (it’s run by players) but it’s either that or find a different way to get your items to market, or make it an ultra-safe trip.

As always, the rule of thumb in Eve is don’t fly things you can’t afford to lose. I’ve always personally felt safer in WH space than I ever did in lowsec and that looks like it still holds true for now.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Returning to Eve Online (4 years later)

The last time I wrote about Eve Online was back in 2020, so I assume that was the last time I was playing it, too. A LOT has changed in four years – but the basics were still familiar as I dove head first into the game. First of all, there’s (yet another) new / returning player experience by means of the AIR Career Program. This is great for old and new players, and it’s meant to give you a little more direction in what you want to do. You basically complete tasks like you would in a regular quest journal, and you get rewarded for it. I had a task to complete a mining mission, and you get to pick any that you have access to, so I didn’t have to complete L1 missions when L4 were available. I like this method, instead of being forced to do lower level content. Of course now they want me to complete 5 mining missions, and so on. After running a few of those, I swapped over to the Epic Arc Agent I had been working for in the past. This is the SOE (Sisters of Eve) quest chain that I never really completed. Doing these missions also check some points off in the AIR Career Program, which is nice. Daily log in rewards were a thing when I played last, but now there are also daily goals, like killing 25 NPC, etc.

Even though I’ve been away for a fair amount of time, it didn’t take long at all to reacquaint myself with my ships and my tasks. I set my scanners running again for PI, insured my most-used ships, and defeated some bad guys with the Tengu. I’m not exactly sure what goals I want to work towards, but it feels nice to be playing again (I know, I say this every time I return). For now I have no expectations, and I’m content to just fumble my way through while lurking in the Rookie Help channel. If you happen to be playing Eve, feel free to say hello! My in-game character name is Ellithia.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Nomadic Gamer