Just Spinning

Things are going pretty good in EVE Online these days, I earned enough ISK / plex with some sales to pick up 6 months of game time, so I’m set for a bit on my main account. The Equinox expansion has been a bit lack-luster for me, personally. The new ships have gotten a few nerfs, the nullsec stuff doesn’t pertain, skyhooks are not something I’ll be dealing with personally (except that my PI pilot may need to defend itself from rats that spawn at them – I think if I’m fast I’ll be alright). The new skinr system that lets you design skins for your ships is a bit out of my budget, and I’m quite content with the skins we already have available to us so I don’t know how much I’ll be spending on it besides the free components that they’ve been giving us as a login reward.

I put some skill points towards yet another PI character, ideally I’d like to have all 6 with the ability, even if I don’t keep up with it. We’ll see how that goes. The skill training is something that only needs to be completed once and then it’s set for the rest of your days, which I like.

I’ve been trying to find some tutorials for reactions. I’m still not exactly sure what they are or how they work. I know they use a combination of gas / ore and it’s to create some boosts as well as T2/T3 ship components, but that’s about as far as my knowledge goes. I know you also can’t do invention in high sec, and that one of the more difficult parts is just figuring out where to set up. I tried watching a few YouTube videos but honestly they just didn’t explain things in a way that I could understand.

In the market, people have been dumping their supplies. I imagine more stability will need to happen after the 20th, which is when the next ‘stage’ of changes takes place. If anything, EVE is teaching me to have a lot of patience. Patience for skills, patience for patches, and patience for everything in between.

Fly your way! o7

My first C3 Ghost Site

Despite the (what I consider) large number of relic & data sites I’ve completed in jspace – today was the very first time I came across a superior ghost site. I was absolutely NOT equipped to fully complete one and handle the onslaught of rats & explosions. I do have a stratios that I can fly – but – since I can’t fit it the way I’d like quite yet, I haven’t taken it out much. The helios has been more than enough for what I’m trying to handle.

Anyway, that doesn’t mean you *can’t* do ghost sites, it just means you have to be fast, and you have to potentially leave a lot of loot behind. I decided to do the ‘egg thief’ tactic, I warped in, hacked a single can, looted (more about that in a second) and warped out. I could have probably hacked a second can (the helios is speedy) but I was already sweating and even though losing it wouldn’t have put a dent in the wallet, I have some emotional connections to the ship and wasn’t willing to take the risk.

The one can I opened was filled with Isotropic Deposition Guide which I had never seen before, a few other bits and bobs, and a Wetu mobile depot blueprint copy. I didn’t want to risk things by scanning down the cans first, so I just grabbed what I could, and fled. Once I was at my safe, the site imploded and vanished from the overview. It was pretty exciting, I honestly didn’t even know that these sites could spawn in jspace, I have only ever seen one before, and it was in high sec.

The ‘problem’ with the loot, is that it was HUGE and filled up my entire hull. I couldn’t even take all of the isotropic deposition guides, I had to leave 4m worth behind. I suppose that is one downside to the helios being so small and nimble.

Still, it was a good amount of ISK when I was finished, and a nice relaxing morning in jspace. I headed back to kspace after, dropping off the loot to my marketing character, and the bpc to my industry character. Yesterday was the release of Equinox, and it’ll be interesting to see how things shake up. The cost of PLEX has gone through the roof (at the time of this post I believe it’s around 5.5, it was 4.5 for the longest time) and hopefully people enjoy the new content. I’ll comment on it further in a few days.

Fly your way! o7

How I’m making my ISK

Right now one of my smaller ‘goals’ is to be able to pay for 1 of my accounts with plex / ISK. That goal is going pretty well, some days are better than others but I really enjoy tracking and making charts on all of that. The other account I just pay for with a subscription using RL money. How exactly am I making that ISK?

A lot comes from selling on the market. I have 1 dedicated market character, I started learning station trading (where you put in buy orders, then resell those when people sell to you), and I trade all of my loot to that character to sell since they’re trained in reducing broker fees and what not. Gas has been a nice seller for me, there’s usually always a site or two around in a WH and when it’s empty I’ll get out the tengu & prospect team to do some huffing.

I also do a lot of exploration, and sell the components to that (where I can at least, I tend to hang onto a lot of them for my industry stuff, too). I do C1-C3 anomalies which reward blue loot that you can sell to an NPC for ISK (combat ones, at least). I’ve done a few of the regular signatures too, but I tend to prefer the ones you have to scan down so that people are not just warping directly to me.

I also do a good amount of industry. Right now I’ve been working on my BPO collection, and upgrading them with ISK/time to reduce the amount of time it takes / material it takes to make each item.

I’m also still making drones, though right now the mining drone II is not profitable. I go through a lot of shuttles (they’re bubble immune, but not smart bomb immune) so I’ve been making a few of those and putting the spares up for sale, too.

Then there’s PI, which is pretty steady money. I’m currently doing PI on 3 characters, 2 are in a WH. I could eventually expand to doing PI on all 6 of my characters, but I’m not sure if I want to be THAT dedicated to it. The totals above are for the ‘perfect’ situation, which is roughly 2.4b ISK a month. That’s almost a token just from that one endevour. PI is one of the easiest / least time consuming methods of making ISK, but it does require some dedication. I take maybe 5 minutes every day (total) to reset my extractors, I collect the goods once a week and drop them off in HS, then I pick them up in my hauler and take them to market. I’m only making guidance systems and P1 items for now. I was doing robotics for my drones but it became cheaper to just buy them already made, instead. One of those characters is also still doing PI in high sec, so I spend a lot more on taxes over there. The other two are in the Wormlife Freeport and have been there just shy of a month, so far. When I returned to the game in mid-March I had 4 billion ISK liquid to my name – and now I have 17.5b ISK – even after making some pretty hefty purchases. The goal is to save up enough so that I can buy game time in large chunks, which gives bigger deals. I’m going to be sad to see that pile of ISK go down in such a large amount, but I’m excited that I can confidently pay for one of my accounts in this way.

As always, fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge: Ship Fit (Tengu)

One of the ships I took with me on my suitcase challenge is my tengu. I’m using it as an ‘all the things’ sort of ship, in the cargo hold I have a MTU, mobile depot, relic / data analyzer, and a target painter II that I swap out depending on what I’m doing. I also have ammo, which I have to replenish frequently at a market hub because tengu eat missiles like they’re candy. I also have a helios (I’ll post the fit for this another day) when I’m doing pure exploration and don’t want to deal with combat. Sometimes I like clearing the C1-C3 signature sites though, just for a change of pace.

I’ve been able to fly a tengu for a very long time now, but I’ve never really focused on maxing out my skills for it. It’s an expensive ship, and I’ve lost a few of them over the years, too. There was no way I should have been flying one when I didn’t understand the very basics, but I feel like I have a good grasp on things now, and I’m pretty confident in my ability to stay alive through most things. Of course it also helps that I have more than enough to replace the ship if I did ever lose it, a few times, at that.

Anyway, now, I love this ship. It just took me a while to realize how best to use it. It’s the only T3C I’ve got the skills to fly, and I know it took a heavy nerf a few years back, but it still does exactly what I want/need it to do in my situation, which is a bunch of random things while I’m living in a WH. I swap out the 1 mid slot for relic/data/painter depending on what site I’m on, and I also have a defensive fit if I really need to beef things up – since I’m just hanging out in C1-C3 I haven’t had a need for that fit. I’m also cap stable, which is a big deal to me. It’s not the most agile ship I fly, but it’s one of the most used. If you’re curious about what other ships I’m flying while I live out of a wormhole, you can find my write ups here:

I’ll post about my prospect next, although that fit is pretty basic and there’s not much to it. Since I’m no longer doing PI out of my suitcase WH and have instead moved to a Wormlife Freeport with 2 alts, I don’t have the Epithal, but I might just talk about the basic fit anyway.

As always – fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 35: Exploring the Chain

At the time of this post, I have been to 137 systems, and 100 unique wormholes. To put that in perspective, there are roughly 2600 wormholes in EVE, so I still have 94.7% of jspace to explore. I stumbled into another shattered wormhole this week – I love the skyboxes on these locations best. They’re beautiful. Sadly it was already picked over, so I decided to travel up the chain and see what I could find.

C2 -> C1 -> C2 -> C1 -> HS

My connection took me from my shattered wormhole to a C2 connection and then I moved on from there. Along the way I scanned down a few data / relic sites and made quick work of those. I tend to stay away from the C4 and higher holes because there’s nothing for me in them when I’m out in the helios and I would rather stay away from WH systems of other players. The least explored systems I have been in have been low sec – but I realized that a quiet low sec system could be profitable, so when I find a connection I dip in to see who is around, and if it’s quiet I’ll take time to scan down whatever signatures I find. Since people show on local I don’t have to be very sneaky and I don’t have to mash the d-scan button (although now I do it just out of constant habit).

EOL (end of life) wormholes don’t bother me any more, I always leave 1 scanning character inside, and my wormhole has a static HS connection, so even if things close behind me, it only takes a little time to find my way back in. I’m not even stressed if I have to log out safely in space any more. Since my return to eve in March, I have to say that I’m most comfortable in jspace – just doing my thing.

I’d like to practice multiboxing a bit more. I’m not particularly good at it and I feel like there’s so much to watch and pay attention to in EVE that it’s easy for me to get flustered. Practice and time are both needed in order to get comfortable with it. So far my favourite thing to do is to scan down an empty wormhole, bring out my gas huffer, and protect her with my tengu. I normally drop some combat probes in the system, and just casually huff gas while waiting for the belt rats to show up. If anyone shows up on d-scan, I’ll warp the gas huffer away (she’s flying covert ops cloak) to a safe, and then I’ll stealth with the tengu. MOST of the time I’m left in peace, I’m patient, I wait for people to finish what they’re doing before I duck back out. I’ve got multiple characters and if things are too busy I’ll just log for a while and try again later. I’m not interested in hunting down other players or disturbing their method of gameplay. At least, not on these characters.

It will be interesting to see if I can take the Orca out of the wormhole alive once this challenge is completed. For now it doesn’t move, it just compresses ice / ore and barely logs in (aside from letting me swap my ships around) – which is fine, that’s all I need it to do at the moment. The patch is in just a few days, and I’m interested to see how things shake up.

As always, fly your way! o7

Nomadic Gamer