My First Shattered Wormhole

Unfortunately I didn’t get into EVE yesterday until just before bed, so I didn’t get a lot of time to explore – but as I left my home in high sec (flying the astero that I won), I figured I had enough time to get a little bit done. I’m so glad I did. I scanned down a WH in my home system and it lead to – another high sec system. So far I’ve never had that happen, I was curious about where it was possibly going to lead, maybe it gave a short cut to some place neat – so I jumped, and found myself around 35 jumps away from home, in a quiet area of space. No one else in local. In that high sec system there were a few more signatures, so I scanned them down and one of the first ones I found was a shattered wormhole system!

I wish I had more time. I jumped in and things were quiet. For a few minutes I just warped around, enjoying the views. There was a beacon, an ice field, and a shattered debris field. I couldn’t scan down all of the signatures (I really wanted to) but I found a relic site and made short work of that, at least.

It was so pretty. I would have loved to stay and scan down more of the signatures, but alas, real life has me waking up early these days and I had to do the grown up thing and get some sleep. It was still pretty exciting.

Speaking of exciting, I’m looking for EVE twitch streamers to watch – if you know of any, let me know in comments! I’m not much of a PVP player, but I’m looking for calm and relaxing streams, family friendly would be great (but I know that’s not always possible). Like-minded folks who spend their time exploring, hacking, pveing (whether in high, low, or null doesn’t matter). Mining, Industry. Those types of things. One person I was watching last night was flying around high sec in a stratios doing ghost sites – woah. They had over 2 billion ISK in their hull from their pillaging. It was neat. Ghost sites are a bit out of my range at the moment, but I’d love to get there eventually. I know the stratios is an expensive bling ship, and there are other ways to work a ghost site, but I’m still new to all of that.

I also watched another streamer who was doing data/relic sites in jspace and I was amazed at how FAST they were. I feel like I’m very slow when it comes to the mini game. I try to be fast, I’m also using d-scan in between every move I make which I know slows me down (but also keeps me safer). They had a smaller audience but I really enjoyed learning how they handled relic/data sites and exploration in general. Since my time is so limited I tend to warp in, bookmark the exit, check for life, and then scan down a site or two until I find a relic/data/something of interest. I don’t scan down the entire system, because sometimes by the time I do that I have to AFK / log for a bit. If I just scan as I go, I usually have time for a bit of ISK making before real life drags me away. On longer game play sessions I would probably adjust this.

Any way, it was a lovely night exploring – and I have some ship goals to work towards.

If you’re looking to return to EVE or maybe to try the game for the first time, keep in mind that you can get 1 million skill points (new and returning players can each get this, one time only) and I have a link on the right hand side of my site you can use! I’ve been back in game for a little over a month now, and it has been a nice addition to my regular gaming habits.

Fly safe! o7

Flying Cheap

As always, when I play EVE Online I seem to learn something new, or pick up some new information, or have an ‘ah ha!’ moment. I’ve been training my skills and learning about different ships and different fits for those ships and spending most of my time in jspace (wormholes) where I feel safest. Yesterday I was scanning my way around and found a C5, I think it might have been my first. I jumped in, someone was at the gate, so after I bookmarked my exit I jumped back out to check out the 4 other wormholes I had found – the person at the gate decided to follow me and jump in too, but by then I was already cloaked and zooming off towards a C2, so I jumped that, and since I had already scanned that one down too, then jumped into another C2 from there, and eventually I jumped into Highsec (35 jumps away from where I had entered from). I just naturally assume anyone I see wants to kill me, and it seems to be working to keep me on my toes and alive (for now at least).

In jspace I feel most comfortable when I can cloak, but, after I had scanned down all of the connections and created a bunch of bookmarks, I decided to bring out my Venture, which does not have a cloak. It’s a simple frigate, nice and cheap. Alpha gamers can use it (CCP’s name for F2P). I stuck myself in a gas site for 18 minutes and warped off before the rats could show up. Then went to the next gas site, and so on. Since I couldn’t stealth I was hyper vigilant about checking d-scan for anything at all, but I didn’t see anyone else. I just assume everyone is cloaked and lurking about, like me. I figured even if I lost the ship it wouldn’t really be a big deal, and after a few sites the day paid for itself. I have done almost zero mining since taking a greater focus on exploration, but I’ve done a fair amount of gas huffing, and a LOT of relic/data sites. I’m gearing up for ghost sites next. I’ve also been looking at some other combat fits that are less expensive to fly than my Tengu (which I adore, but I’m not keen to draw so much attention) including my Gila, and maybe a Myrmidon. I’ve also got a Dominix (not sure if I have a current fit for it) but I still always seem to default to the Tengu. I’m learning that you don’t have to fly expensive ships to get stuff done – and the ‘stuff’ to get done, is plentiful.

Fly safe! o7

Er, OK?

I’m not really sure how it happened, or why, but someone that I’m not familiar with randomly sent me 300+ items. It’s a character I don’t advertise, I don’t talk to anyone else, and I just use for auction house sales. I wrote them a letter back and said this must be a mistake, and I returned all of the mail to them in case this is some weird plot involving nefarious schemes in Warcraft. I honestly have no idea.

Anyone else have a strange interaction like this? Just odd Warcraft things I guess!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

10th Annual Frigate Free for All

Today was the 10th annual Frigate Free for All hosted by Stay Frosty, and I decided why not show up. I used my second account since this would be a PVP event, and it was actually a lot of fun! Minus the people who showed up who just wanted to create chaos and not play by the rules (not a big deal, more details about that later).

The event worked like this: You show up (I went early to make bookmarks) and then frigates with fittings were given away to anyone who opened trade with the hosts. Fly your frigate around and try to take out other frigates. The system was a .4 so there was no concord to worry about, though there was some sentry guns causing issues for some people I believe. Their range is 150km, so stay away from those and it was no big deal. There were shouts of ‘gf’ everywhere (I believe this means good fight?) and people good naturedly ribbed one another. Lots of harmless fun.

Then one annoying corp who had a beef with the host showed up and started demanding money to have you be flagged blue (allied) – they used legion’s to fight the frigates, not exactly a fair fight but since they were free ships it also wasn’t a big deal. They were intent on spoiling the fun for others, and I like to think that the 450+ people who showed up managed to have a fun time anyway, despite the sore losers.

I saw my first CCP employee, and also a GM in system playing along with. They interacted and had a good time all around.

I stuck around for a few hours (the event ran for 6) but eventually the harshness of it all started wearing me out a bit. I can only handle so many people screaming and yelling and fighting before I get tired of it and long for the quiet of jspace again. I am not much of a crowds person IRL and that is very much the same thing in game. Still, I’m glad I went and had some fun. It was neat to see everyone in local, and I enjoyed watching people greet each other who hadn’t seen one another in some time. I think the most exciting part was that so many people turned up for a player run event – I’m a huge fan of player run events, no matter the game, and with 450+ in local at the height, it was quite a sight.

Fly safe o7

Being Safer

Much has been said over the years about the learning curve in EVE Online. Sometimes, when I watch streams, I’m amazed at how much of the language I still don’t know. I watched a big battle go down in Curse yesterday with 1900+ players, which was awesome to watch, and while I once again took absolutely no sides in the outcome, I did feel like I was constantly learning about the history and drama that has trailed people around.

To that note, I decided it was time to learn two aspects of the game that I probably should have learned years ago but had never really given it much thought. It’s two (well, I suppose one) ways to keep ‘safer’ in space, since you’re never really 100% safe no matter where you are (unless you’re docked). For the first time ever, I decided to create some insta-dock and insta-undock bookmarks.

I use a lot of bookmarks, but they’re usually to pretty mundane locations already marked in the overview. I have never really paid attention to the tips and tricks of flying around safely, and when you’re a beginner, that’s OK. EVENTUALLY you should learn a few things though, and one of those things is how to set up an insta-dock (and undock). It’s pretty simple. Normally, I warp to my home station using the overview, and dock. There’s a few seconds where I’m not safe, because I need to inch a bit closer to the landing area. So what I had to do was get within 0m the landing area (taking care not to bounce off of the structure) and create a bookmark. I made one for my shopping hub that I frequent on an almost daily basis, and another for my home station. When going to either of these locations, the idea is: Set my autopilot destination to the location (don’t turn autopilot on yet though). Then warp to the newly set bookmark that’s within 0m, stealthing as I warp (or not, if I’m flying something that doesn’t stealth), turn on autopilot as I’m warping, and when I hit that 0m spot, autopilot will turn on, and instantly dock me. I could also manually dock instead of doing the autopilot thing, but it’s easier to just have the game dock me.

I didn’t really understand insta-undock, but what I’ve gathered is – you undock from your station, and don’t touch anything, using a naturally fast ship (to create the bookmark). Then you drift out away from the station, turning on MWD if you want. You have to be careful to pick a spot that’s at least 200m away from the station – but (and here’s where I get conflicting reports) you also don’t want a ‘typical’ number, because someone might be waiting there for you because they know it’s a popular warp area. So to set this one up I drifted out some random number away from the station, bookmarked it, and then went back and docked using my insta-dock. How I believe the insta-undock works is that your ship normally needs time to align to whatever you’re moving towards after you undock. If you set a bookmark out far away from the station in a perfectly straight line, then there’s no time needed to align. There’s also a buffer of (10?) seconds where you’re invulnerable from attacks as you undock in case your computer has lag. I set up the undock bookmarks, but I’m still not really sure how they work. It didn’t feel like I instantly warped off to anywhere, and I’m not really sure I set them up properly. I’ll keep practicing though and see if I can get it all sorted.

Ideally, you’d make these bookmarks for any place you go to. For now, I just plan on making them for the more popular routes I take. As I get better / faster at it, I’ll add more bookmarks. Now that I’ve joined Signal Cartel these bookmarks are really important because we spend a lot of time wardec’d. Plus there’s been some little beginner gankers hanging out at my shopping district hoping for easy kills. I don’t want to be one of them.

Fly safe! o7

Nomadic Gamer