Suitcase Challenge Day 18: My First C13!

For exploration purposes, I stick to the C1-C3 range of wormholes. I’ve entered a few C4/C5 but don’t stick around as there is usually someone living in them (or someone being evicted). I prefer to keep a low profile, especially since I am casually living in a wormhole myself, out of an Orca I have parked at a safe. This week I managed to find myself in my very first C13 wormhole – which is a version of Shattered that only allows small size ships to pass through. Thankfully the Helios I’ve been using to explore fits that qualification no problem. There’s no moons and all planets are shattered in these WH, which is pretty, but useless for anything like PI.

The wormhole was filled with signatures. My usual method is to scan the entire hole and then proceed from there – but if there’s a site I want, I’ll stop scanning, go do the site, and then return to scanning. I’ve already posted about using the ‘perch’ method, and then I turn these perch bookmarks into a safe bookmark after the site has expired. This C13 had 7 relic/data sites for me to complete, and in about an hour I had 270,000,000 ISK in value in my ship. I never saw another soul, whether it was because of the C13 status, or because it was close to downtime, I’m not sure. My usual game play happens around 5am my time (Atlantic) until 7:30am, and then I get another hour at the end of the day. Some days I’m not in the mood for exploration, or there’s no good sites within range, and in those instances I’ll spend the last 1h before I go to bed doing something with guaranteed ISK reward, like ratting.

I haven’t been selling my exploration loot because I’d like to use it for crafting. In specific, I can save almost 100m ISK by crafting myself a zeugma analyzer instead of buying one off of the market. The thing is I’m not so certain I want to justify the additional ship value by adding one. I certainly won’t bother on the Helios, but maybe for the Stratios so I can free up the mid slot. I’ll probably sell the other two (the bpc comes with 3 runs). In any case, it was a very exciting morning, I ducked into the ice field just to nose around, and then spent some time jumping from hole to hole to find one that had a static HS connection.

I’ve finally gotten the hang of using pathfinder – and I love it. I tried Tripwire briefly, but didn’t really understand anything about it at the time, so I’ll try that one again when I’ve got some free time, but pathfinder makes mapping very simple. It tells me statistics about my wormhole at a glance, and you can see the C13 I went through, along with the connections it had. These connections of course won’t be the same any more at the time of this post, they change every 24h roughly, which is why mapping can sometimes be a bit of a pain. I just like knowing the path back home (you can also flag WH as EOL so you avoid it if required) and I like knowing what connections I can count on. I can also usually figure out if a WH is going to be busy or not based on those connections and where they’re at in kspace.

Any way, it was a great day for exploration, and my little helios has paid for itself over a few times now with plenty of profit to spare. This little ship might not be able to do any combat, but some days, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.

Fly your way. o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 17: The Little Helios who Could

In case you’d like to read about my suitcase challenge from the beginning, here are those posts:

It is now day 17 (remember I’m posting these after the fact, so whatever I’m writing about has already happened, security reasons and what not) and things are going well! Every day it’s a different adventure. One of my first small goals was to cover the cost of ships that I might lose along the way – and I have to say, this little T2 ship, the helios pictured above, is cost effective and super great at what it does. I don’t quite have max scanning skills, and I also don’t have implants at the moment (I’ve just never bothered) but my scan range is 109 which should be more than enough for anything I want to scan down.

The total cost of this ship is around 55m ISK, and when I took it out I attempted to earn at least that amount in loot, then everything else I made after would be profit. The ship does have some downsides, I can do zero combat with it at all, I have one tiny EC-300 drone just because there’s enough room for that, and that’s about the extent of things.

This is the current fit I’m sporting:

I love how speedy and cute it is, and the fact that I finally have a skin for a ship I fly is a nice little bonus. I’d expect a good amount of posts involving this little Helios, let’s see what trouble we can get into together!

Fly your way. o7

A Little Economic Update

Today is the 21st of May, and I’ve been back playing EVE Online since March 15th. I immediately started tracking my ISK making capabilities, in March I made a total of -1.8b. Zero profit. In April I turned things around and made 1.8b profit. Not quite enough for Omega, but I was getting somewhere. So far this month I’ve made 3.9b profit – even after purchasing some supplies for the Stratios, and two Ishtar. Keep in mind I do also have 3 accounts, and this is the financial results of just one of those accounts.

Where did the ISK come from?

I tend to spread around in-game, I enjoy a whole lot of different activities. I do some PI (basically passive ISK) on 4 characters. I make drone components from the PI and then I sell whatever remains. I also make fuel components. I do some industry. I don’t build many ships, just some simple T2 and a whole lot of drones. I also started delving into rigs. I do a little PVE ratting, normally just enough to cover the 84m ISK a day I aim for. That gets me enough for Omega for the month. My account is currently subscribed until the end of July, and by then I’d like enough for 6 months of Omega, buying in bulk is the way to go. Exploration, mining / huffing, and missions round out the rest of my ISK adventures. I did also sell a spare Orca I had kicking around since I’m not really doing that much mining at all any more. I have three characters who can fly an Orca, and only one is using it (for the suitcase challenge).

Only one of my accounts is ‘stable’ enough to pay for the subscription with ISK – ideally all of them would be, but my thinking is that I’ll downsize at the end of the Capsuleer event to just two accounts, and I’ll pay for one with PLEX and the other one with a RL subscription. If there was a safe way to turn my WoW gold into ISK I’d jump all over that, but since there isn’t.. it’s back to the grind.

Fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 14: A little (gas) huffing

One of the more relaxing activities I can do in the wormhole I’m currently living in, is gas huffing. I don’t remember if this sort of gathering was a thing when I played last 4 years ago, if it was, I didn’t do any of it. It’s pretty easy for new players to get into and there are some very clear fits that work for both alpha and omega users. The gas in my current wormhole isn’t worth a huge amount, but the ISK adds up, and I like clearing it. Once the rats have spawned and I’ve gotten rid of them I can just casually check d-scan every few seconds to make sure no one is hunting me. So far it has been working out lovely.

A link explaining gas huffing, with some alpha / omega fits included.

I was in the mood for a little quiet, so that’s how I spent my time. I like that there are so many different activities I can partake in depending on my mood. Some days I don’t want to do anything at all, and I just watch the chat windows scroll.

As always, fly your way! o7

Tips: Getting Comfortable out of High Sec

Here are some things I’ve been learning that really helped push me out of my comfort zone of high sec (which as I already mentioned yesterday, is NOT very safe) and into other zones.

Number one – bring a security blanket for the first few adventures. I’m talking about that covertops cloak. Yes, I know this requires Omega, so this isn’t for the alpha player. You don’t have to, but it really comes in handy. I also learned something that I did not know for the first.. 15 years of the game. There’s a 15 minute timer that counts down when you’re cloaked. I always thought that was the ONLY time you could be cloaked, and if you let that 15 minute timer lapse you’d expose yourself. Turns out, that isn’t true. I’ve floated around in space for hours before and never felt safer. Now, there are some exceptions to this. People can deploy a ‘mobile observatory’ in lowsec and nullsec and it WILL be able to de-cloak you. I haven’t had this happen yet, but I spend most of my time in a wormhole, where you cannot use this item. You also can’t use it in high sec. Read up about cloaking here if you were like me and had no idea. If I’m going exploring, or am not sure about the systems I’m passing through, I tend to feel a little less exposed if I can cloak. Eventually, as you get more comfortable and learn how to deal with aggressive folks, you can leave the cloak for a different high slot.

Number two – if you’re in an anomaly, or a signature, you’re never safe (I mean, you’re never safe even if you’re not in those, but in specific, those things that show up on in space). People can use the d-scanner to figure out which one you’re in, and the guys who are good at it can do it before they de-cloak at a gate. I asked how people were able to find me so quickly, and they told me they use d-scan in 5% increments and narrow down which anomaly you’re hanging out in. If you see someone you’re not sure about in local, your best bet is to fly off to a safe – which brings me to number three.

Make a safe. Make 10 safes. Bounce between them all. If you’re there a lot, change them every so often. A safe is basically a bookmark in the middle of no where. Warp to something, like an anomaly or a signature, and while flying make a random bookmark (ctrl+b, L to open your bookmarks). Warp there, and then burn off from that bookmark for a few hundred KM away from things, and make another bookmark. Use the 2nd one as your safe. The further away it is from planets / stars / buildings / etc – the better. If someone jumps into your system and you’re not familiar with them, go warp to your safe. Cloak up if you can, and if you can’t, just keep mashing that d-scan to see if they’re probing for you. If you see combat probes and you can’t dock up safely, bounce between all of your safes. Don’t bounce between until you see them trying to come at you in your new safe, you don’t want to accidentally run into them on-grid as you hit a new safe. Patience is the key to this game. What I don’t do when an aggressive person comes into the system is try to leave via gate unless I can safely scout first and make absolutely sure that no one is there camping it. In most cases my patience outweighs theirs (because they’re looking for a fight, and I am not) and they leave, or they get bored. I usually say hi and try to talk in local, because why not.

Number four – Learn that wormholes are your friend. I love wormholes! Every day it’s some place different in New Eden. Don’t like where the exit is today? That’s OK, just give it 24h and see where you pop out tomorrow. I also use the WH system more than anything else to find my way around high sec, especially to get back home. Filament over to nullsec, and done your adventures there? Instead of trying to jump through a billion gates in hostile land, I’ll look for a wormhole every time. Jump in, and I can almost guarantee you that within 3-4 connecting wormholes you will find one that leads to high sec. Obviously there are exceptions to this, sometimes wormholes are camped when they lead to specific territories, for exploration and travel purpose I suggest sticking to C1-C4 holes. I spend a little time in C5/C6 but people like to live in those ones. If you stumble into a shattered one, enjoy the eye candy. Those wormholes are absolutely beautiful and they’re ‘rare’ (I say that, but I’ve walked into three so far).

Number five – You do NOT need to bring the bling. A bigger ship isn’t always going to be the best for your specific situation. I spend a lot of time in fairly cheap ships, it means I can lose a lot of them and I don’t stress or worry about it. I do own a few special ships that cost a fair amount, they have specific purposes and yes I do own the Orca which is a 2b ISK ship (but it wasn’t nearly that amount when I bought it 10 years ago). I try to be patient about the skills I’m training up, learning how to actually play with lower ISK value fits has taught me WAY more than flying something expensive that I didn’t understand.

As always – fly your way! o7

Nomadic Gamer