EVE

Good ISK – Tough Event

stargrace May 5, 2024 No Comments

The Capsuleer event is running for the entire month of May, and so far I’m not finding it terribly exciting. Anyone else? I’ve been sticking to the exploration path because that’s what I enjoy doing, and the cans never reward that much. When I was doing the combat sites they at least rewarded me with skins and other goodies. I managed to work my way up to the 3rd level of relic site before deciding that it simply wasn’t worth it, and deciding to sell off all of the spare materials I had collected. Jita might be over flowing, but I managed to sell everything I had to some whales in another system, for well above baseline prices – and I couldn’t be happier.

I’ve been back in game for almost two full months, and I’ve been having a great time refreshing my knowledge as well as learning a bunch of new stuff. Turns out I never really knew much about the game – and that’s alright. I feel like these days I have a MUCH better grasp on things, which is probably why I’m enjoying myself so much, too.

I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to live in a wormhole. I recently stumbled into a quiet C2 with C4/H connections. I’ve heard about people living out of their ships, but I’m not sure if that’s the route I want to go. I did some reading, and I realize that setting up some sort of POS could be fun – but also could turn into a job, and requires a lot of dedication if you’re just one person. That leaves me with perhaps finding a WH corp to join, but I’d want it to be industry / mining / PvE heavy, I simply don’t have the blood lust required for PvP and I do not enjoy it.

For now, I’ll continue to think on it and try to figure out what it is I want to be doing.

Fly your way! o7

Learning What I want to Fly (and how to Equip it)

stargrace April 4, 2024 No Comments

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!

Back on the Belts (and other stuff)

stargrace April 2, 2024 No Comments

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.

Industry? Sure!

stargrace March 29, 2024 No Comments

Apparently during one of my (many) breaks from EVE, how BPO work was changed – I don’t remember how it used to work, but now, they’re sold by NPC, and you can sell the BPC through contracts. I have quite a few BPO and BPC just sitting around in my hangar, I know I was making some T2 drones at one point, so that’s what I decided to start with for some pocket change. Then I noticed some of my blueprints were not optimized for time/materials, so I decided to fix that on a few of them. I’m not even sure why I have 14 Nereus blueprints, all I can assume is that I was trying to research them into the T2 version (Why? Was I going to fly one? I have no idea).

I spent a small portion of the morning scanning down WH and hoping I’d stumble into a gas site – but I did not. Not even a relic/data site. I did find quite a few combat sites, so I completed my dailies (two quests to scan down 5 sites, and one to kill 25 NPC) easily enough.

I parked myself in the two ice belts that spawn after downtime, and decided to lay low while happy weekend gamers decided to blow one another up. I learned a little while ago the Tengu was hit with the nerf bat, so I may just keep mine parked (it’s expensive to fit) and figure out what I want to fly next. I’ve got quite a few skills but they’re a bit all over the place. Heavy assault missiles V is what I’m finishing up right now, and then it’s on to the specialization.

I’ve been practicing using Pathfinder to map my way around the universe, but haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet. It’s supposed to auto-map as I jump, but that function doesn’t seem to work for me, personally. I did learn how to delete old signatures and add new ones, so that’s something at least. I know how to manually add connections, but the auto mapping still eludes me. My EVE folder continues to grow with all of these neat little 3rd party tools, enhancing my already splendid spreadsheet game. I know a lot of folks are preoccupied with flying the most fancy ship they can possibly get into, but slow and steady wins the race, or.. something like that.

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