EVE Online

Locked Out (again)

stargrace October 11, 2024 1 Comment

I found a nice bunch of gas and decided to do some huffing – thankfully I also keep a mobile depot and some probes and a scanner with me, because the exit out of this wormhole closed behind me and I needed to find my way back home. These days, it’s more of an annoyance than anything else, I’ve never been completely lost in space before, and eventually you will always stumble into some system that has a jump that leads out of the wormhole, whether it’s to highsec, nullsec, or lowsec. We’re 11 days into October, and I’ve made just over 1 billion ISK for the month, sitting at 1.3b. I’m hoping to use all of the ISK I make this month to purchase some sort of structure to place somewhere in a wormhole – with the understanding that it might just get blown up the very next day. I’m still undecided as to what sort of structure I want to place, I’m leaning POS just to get my feet wet and to learn the ropes, despite the higher fuel cost. That would allow me less stress about placing / taking down a structure but I could also learn about wormhole control and how to roll them. Or maybe I’ll just continue to suitcase for a few weeks until I feel more comfortable. I still haven’t found the perfect spot to be, yet. I don’t think I want a high sec connection, but a quiet C2 with a C1 static might be alright. I don’t want to draw attention to myself while I live there, but I also don’t want to always be completely out of content. It’s a delicate balancing act.

This week most of my in-game time (when not focusing on PI) has been trying to work on the Crimson Harvest event. Have I mentioned how much I dislike this event yet? It’s frustrating to have to constantly reach after VERY specific sites – I can’t just do any hacking site, it has to be a certain one. If I find a crimson one I don’t get credit. WHY?! Why is this a thing. Events should be fun and while I realize that EVE is nothing like other MMORPG that I play – I can’t help but wish it was just a tiny bit more familiar, because everything shouldn’t have to be a struggle.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at with things right now. As always, play your way! o7

EVE Gaming

What’s Going on?

stargrace October 10, 2024 No Comments

A lack of blog posts – but instead I’ve been posting video of my adventures over on YouTube. They’re not fantastic quality, but it has been fun posting stream-like episodes of my adventures in space. I keep trying to fit into games like World of Warcraft, but since I have almost zero community in game, I haven’t been able to make it stick. The same can be said for GW2. I love playing, but I have limited time, and in EVE Online I belong to a handful of communities. I think that’s why I’ve been sticking with it for so long now.

I’ve been slowly (very slowly) working on my Crimson Harvest points. I’ve looted a number of ship skins, including a few for ships I actually fly. I’d love to find a helios version (does one even exist?) since that’s what I fly most of the time. The hacking sites are quite simple for me to do these days, though I have failed a can or two along the way. Things have fallen back into a familiar pattern that I’m enjoying quite a bit. When the servers come up from their daily restart I do PI on all my characters (that’s 5 characters, 6 planets on each), and then I start doing dailies on whoever I can before I have to tend to real life (I usually have just shy of an hour, which is enough to get dailies done on all 9 of my characters). Once I’m finished with whatever real life dailies I have to tend to, I decide if I want to do some exploration, mining, working on missions, gas huffing, or just flying around exploring. I’m getting more comfortable with multiboxing, and running 3 accounts seems to be a nice balance. I know there are people with far more (and others adamant about keeping just one) but any more and I think my attention wouldn’t be able to keep up. I normally do mining with 2 retrievers + a porpoise for boosts, and I have everyone with mining / boosting augments. Some days are better than others as far as ISK return – I did find a really expensive faction module this week that was worth 300,000,000 ISK which I promptly sold.

I’m usually flying a Helios for exploration, but I also venture off into the Astero. I fly a Vexor, Ishtar, or Typhoon for regular combat stuff. I fly a Tengu for C1-C3 sleeper sites. I fly a Wreathe for distribution missions, and a Squall for hauling PI, an Epithal for hauling PI around the wormlife freeport. I do have a stratios that doesn’t get much use at all, and since I’m no longer backpacking with the Orca, that has been sitting in the hangar collecting dust. My Jita alt can fly a Viator, but I haven’t purchased one yet.

There’s an announcement coming today which I assume will be about the next expansion. CCP had mentioned months ago with the release of Equinox that the Sov changes wouldn’t HAVE to take place until the following expansion – and that transition date is October 29th, so I can only assume that we’re going to be looking at some sort of expansion in three weeks. What will be changing? No idea. Equinox has been lackluster to say the least, and I doubt anyone would call it any sort of revival.

In any case, I’m really happy playing EVE, and I hope folks are not too upset at the lack of updates here. Fly your way! o7

EVE Gaming

New Videos – Stargrace in Space

stargrace September 30, 2024 No Comments

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you might remember that I used to do a fair amount of streaming over on Twitch, but my schedule is difficult to work with, and I often feel absolutely exhausted in the only ‘free’ moments that I have. I feel that streaming is an activity that you need to spend at least 1-2 hours steadily doing in order to allow people who want to watch to drop by. If you’re only streaming for 15 minutes, chances are no one is going to watch.

Because of this I decided that I should try my hand at creating YouTube videos, instead. I’ve got one series on the go right now called ‘Stargrace in Space’ which is (of course) all about EVE Online, with other series in mind for other games. I’m fairly confident that I’ll add a RimWorld series, and probably some World of Warcraft content (maybe not right away). This isn’t the same as streaming, but it is some content creation that fits within my sporadic play times. I can easily record a video here and there, with no pressure if I have to step away. I can edit in the moments in between, too. If you’re interested in watching my EVE series you can find it on my channel here. The quality right now is not the greatest, I’m having some growing pains with OBS & my microphone set up, but give it time and things should go smoother. We’re just about in October, and all sorts of in-game events will be popping up all over the place, and I’m looking forward to sharing that with everyone.

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

EVE Gaming

ISK Update for July

stargrace July 10, 2024 No Comments

It doesn’t show in my ISK tracking spreadsheet yet, but today I spent almost a billion ISK on various ships / implants / things I wanted, and while normally that would make me a bit sad (I hate spending ISK) I’m feeling pretty good since my accounts are all situated for game time and there’s really nothing I’m saving up for. In order to be ‘on track’ to purchase 1 month of game time, I would have had to have earned 840m ISK by today, and I had made 1.5b ISK – well over where I needed to be. Of course, tomorrow might show that I’m once again below where I ‘should’ be since the spending isn’t calculated until next day, but again, it’s really no big deal.

What did I buy? Well, for the first time ever I splurged and picked up some ORE strip miners. That’s right, I’ve started to bling out my hulk. Might not be the smartest idea, but I decided why not. We’ll see how long it takes me to replace it with harvested materials. Ideally I’d earn enough to at least replace it if I lost it – and some extra. Unfortunately right now hulks are EXPENSIVE, so those 2 ore strip miners + hulk with a basic fit, came to just under 700,000,000 ISK. Making it one of my most expensive ships. Fingers crossed I don’t immediately lose it.

Yesterday was a fantastic day as far as ISK making went. I made almost 500m ISK after selling off some PI and some exploration loot with my market character. Industry has been a bit slow moving for me, I’m attempting to harvest my materials instead of purchasing them, at least for now. My industry is so small scale that it’s not a big deal, that may change if I get more involved or production becomes larger.

I’ve started making some popular rigs that sell for a decent amount. I also completely forgot that I do still work with R&D agents and have datacores coming to me. I should probably pick them up, eventually. Maybe this time I won’t get ganked at a gate and lose 500m worth of stuff. At least it was a learning experience.

I have not played with skinr since it released. I have been collecting all of the goodies that CCP threw at us and what I found in exploration cans, but I don’t know the value of them or if people are actually paying. In fact I don’t think I’ve even seen anyone with a custom skin – but I haven’t been looking too hard (nor do I fly in areas where I would be running into someone else).

Yesterday my system joined with a very active C5 that had a fortizar inside of it, that was pretty exciting. Throughout the day people would pop into my home system and look around, but there isn’t much there at the moment, so finding no content they would move on. I’m perfectly OK with that and honestly don’t mind the quiet.

As always, fly your way! o7

EVE Gaming

Suitcase Challenge Day 63: Finally

stargrace July 8, 2024 No Comments

When I returned to EVE online in March, I had no idea what I was looking for or what I hoped to accomplish. Normally when I “play” EVE, I jump in for a month and then would find myself at a loss on what to do, and I’d wander off. This time for whatever reason the game has staying power (combined with the fact that no matter how much I try, I just can’t seem to get interested in Warcraft these days, Plunderstorm really did a number on me) so much so that it’s 4 months later, and I’ve just picked up 6 months of game time on two of my accounts. That’s pretty neat.

Anyway! My Orca is still safely living in her wormhole. I’ve been doing a little bit of mining, a lot of PI, some anomalies, and I continue to work on my market character along with my ‘main’ who is doing industry. I was thinking of trying mercoxit mining, but I have no idea what sort of ship fit I need for that, I just know that when I run into it, I can’t collect it with my strip miner II modules. It probably has special ones. Also something about spawning gas that harms you as you mine it? Interesting!

I’ve stopped trying to fly the biggest and best ships out there (note: I’m not even close to flying anything big anyway) and instead focused on flying what I can, well. I finally finished training biology V on my Signal Cartel character, which means I was able to pick up the Neural Lace ‘Blackglass’ Net Intrusion 920-40 implant, and oh my this thing is lovely. It lets me basically 1 shot any of the bad virus’ that show up on the mini game when you’re doing hacking. My helios is still my ship of choice. That little ship is amazing. I’m also still really enjoying my Tengu for C1-3 and while I know there’s more ISK if I were to do harder things, I’m happy and having a lot of fun with what I’m doing so far.

There’s less than 1 month left for my Suitcase challenge! I can hardly believe where the time has gone. As of today, I’ve been to 198 systems, and visited 143 unique wormholes. I’m not sure what I’ll do once the challenge is over. I might just continue to live in the wormhole, or I might try something new. Maybe I’ll sell the Orca. It doesn’t get a lot of actual use, since I don’t want to lose it. It feels strange to keep a ship around with such high value but with very little use. I guess we’ll just have to see!

Fly your way! o7

Locked Out (again)

What’s Going on?

New Videos – Stargrace in Space

ISK Update for July

Suitcase Challenge Day 63: Finally

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