EVE Online

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

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

Thoughts on Security Space

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been playing EVE off and on since 2009 (mostly off) and during that time I basically exclusively played in high sec content. To be honest, that’s probably one of the main reasons that I never stuck with the game longer than a month or two at a time. Since returning, high sec has become a thing of the past, and I spend a majority of my time elsewhere. Here’s some bullet point thoughts I have on security systems:

High sec: It’s not really safe. I’ve had most of my deaths occur here. The bottlenecks that head to trade hubs are almost constantly camped by gankers, and there’s nothing more frustrating. I dislike these types of players who prey on people who have no interest in combat when there’s an entire game filled with pvp hungry people out there. I know, no place is safe, EVE is a pvp game, etc. That doesn’t change my mind. High sec is also low ISK vs. other security space, and while there are certainly quiet areas there’s also a lot of competition.

Null sec: This place is still scary to me. People ‘own’ land there (sovereignty I think it’s called), and they don’t like me much. I’ve used some filament to port around, and while I can at least see who is in local that doesn’t really give me any relief, they’re normally huge systems called a bloc, all owned by one alliance with lots of little corporations under their umbrella. I normally spend most of my time in these systems scanning down a WH so I can find a HS connection to get home.

Wormholes: This is where I’m most comfortable. I’ve spent most of my time this play through in a wormhole, and I’ve never lost a ship in one – I know it WILL eventually happen, but whether it’s because I’m *extra* cautious while traveling in them or because I just have a knack for picking quiet places, this is where I feel most at ‘home’. Hence the 90 days suitcase challenge. I love wormholes. I also am aware of a gigantic C5-C6 eviction war going on at the moment, but it doesn’t affect me except to stay out of the way.

Low sec: I’ve spent the least amount of time here. It feels like there are always others around, and since there’s no concord response I may as well just be in a wormhole, which I already prefer. Is there some secret to getting anything done in these systems? I’m not really sure. I’d like to take a cheap exploration ship out and about for a while to learn more about what makes it a popular place to hang out.

What are your favourite systems to hang out in? Where do you spend your in-game time? Let me know in comments, and as always, fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 11: Statistics (of course)

Since I’m using Pathfinder (and a few spreadsheets) to track all of my adventures in this suitcase challenge, of course it’s time for a few statistics.

This is day 11, and I’ve visited 77 systems, with 58 unique wormholes. I’ve dipped out to high sec 5x so far, and made 2,476,517,197 ISK. Note that I do leave the Orca in the WH when I go to sell, I’m not risking taking that in and out. What I’ve been doing is confirming the WH is ’empty’ (who knows if it’s actually empty, given as there’s no one on local), parking a character at the HS entrance 100km off gate cloaked to watch the gate, log the Orca in, warp to the bookmark, drop off/pick up whatever it is I want to deal with, and then leave the WH (and log the Orca out safely in space). If anything at all changes, I log out the Orca first. That’s always my main priority. Once the Orca is logged out, I breath a sigh of relief, lol.

I do tend to take smaller bundles of items off to market rather than taking large expensive trips. I’m more paranoid in high sec than I am in the wormhole. I don’t sell in Jita, but I do price at Jita prices most of the time. So far? It seems to be working out.

Fly your way! o7

Waiting on Some Skills

This week has been an (unintentional) expensive one. I lost two ships (one to pvp, one to an NPC) that I had to replace, and I didn’t have a whole lot of ‘free’ time to try to make that back. I also bought a bunch of skill injectors thinking I would take the skills from my 3rd account (which I plan on letting lapse to alpha, as I’m not really keen on keeping 3 accounts active) and distribute them elsewhere, or sell them – and then realized that there’s a 5.5m buffer for siphoning those skill points – AFTER I purchased 7 extractors. I did manage to fill 3 of them up, but the others will have to wait. That account does have a bit more time remaining on it, and I’ll just slowly siphon as I gain 500m points so it’s not a complete waste, but it is a lot longer of a wait than I expected and has become a long term investment.

That will leave me with two active accounts. One has my ‘main’ and two PI characters, and the other has my signal cartel character, an industry character (what industry, I know people are less than enthused at the current state of things as they’re selling for barely-profits these days) and I still have one empty character slot. Undecided as to what I’ll do with that yet. My PI characters are nicely established for what they do, I bought two MCT (multi character training?) certificates a month ago and that was just enough to get them situated with 5 planets at max CPU. The 6th one can wait.

I think with PI alone I’ll be able to pay for one of my accounts, or at least mildly supplemented. The goal is to pay for one of my accounts with traditional subscription (when it goes on sale) and pay for the second one with ISK. I don’t want ALL of my time in game to be devoted to making ISK because that gets old fast and feels like a job and encourages burn out – but I do really enjoy the market/industry aspect of the game so I don’t mind spending my time on it.

I’ve got some thoughts on the expansion coming in June, but this post is long enough so I’ll save that for tomorrow. As always, fly your way! o7

Nomadic Gamer