EVE

Ship Shopping #EVEOnline #Tweetfleet

stargrace July 24, 2012 1Comment

The past few days I’ve been spending a lot of time probing, scanning down sites and then exploring whatever it is I’ve discovered. I started off looking for grav sites for mining, but they have been incredibly rare as of late – and (I know, gasp) a bit boring. Instead I’ve spent most of my time hanging out in the NPC sites, battling serpentis. I still haven’t worked my way up to pvp quite yet.

That being said, a few exciting things happened yesterday. First of all, I joined a corp. Yep, my first ‘active’ corp besides the NPC default one that I was placed into. Listening to them in channels is like listening to a whole other language, and so far I don’t quite understand that language – mostly because I’m a ‘carebear’ in game who doesn’t partake in pvp. That’s alright though, there’s no pressure for me to jump right into things and I like that. In fact it’s nice to simply have other people around to communicate with and since I’m a fast learner, I bet it won’t be long before I figure things out.

While scanning down sites yesterday I ran into a few issues. First of all, my Dominix isn’t allowed in a lot of the sites I scanned. I love my Dominix but I feel like I’ve outgrown it some what. So I’m training towards an Ishtar. In the mean time I picked up a Myrmidon which is a Battlecruiser and was allowed through most gates. Of course then I came across a gate that wouldn’t allow the Dominix OR the Myrmidon, so I picked up a simple Vexor which is a cruiser, and completed the system in that. Then I came to a third gate that wouldn’t allow any of those ships through. So I decided – not to bother. I had done enough ship shopping for the day. None of these ships are particularly impressive, but they do really well when they’re fit properly. Playing the Myrmidon is quite fun, it’s completely different than playing my Dominix. It’s a close range ship, and incredibly fast. Of course I’m still pretty dependent on my drones, but that just happens to be my play style.

Mean while, I’m still knee deep in invention and manufacturing. I need to focus on raising my standings with my R&D agents so I can continue moving up the chain and earn more RP/day. There’s so much to do in EVE, it certainly keeps me busy.

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

Beware, Serpentis! #EVEOnline #Tweetfleet

stargrace July 20, 2012 2Comments

As much as I enjoy scanning sites in Eve Online, I rarely give it the patience it requires, and have fallen behind in my ‘skills’ for probing (har har). I take a lot of pleasure in finding sites of my own to explore, so last night I decided to do a revision on how scanning works, and I took my Helios out for a spin.

It’s always hit or miss when it comes to scanning, some times you’ll find things, and some times you won’t. That’s where the patience comes in. It also takes a lot of time to narrow down the search, but there are some pretty awesome tutorials and videos on how to do this. I didn’t travel far from home (because I was expecting to need another ship or two depending on what I found) and in my first session I narrowed down a Serpentis Den. I flew back to my ‘home base’, switched out the Helios for the Dominix, and headed back. It was a bit messy because I was still getting back into the swing of things, but I didn’t do too badly, and before long all of the bad guys were dead. I spent a bit of time salvaging the wreckage (I could have switched out for my salvager, but didn’t bother) and then switched back to the Helios.

My second run resulted in a radar site, I took my codebreaker (I have my Helios fit for radar sites as well as probing) and opened up the containers with glee – no NPC to defeat here. Inside I was rewarded with an item that boosts manufacturing stats, and is worth a few million ISK. YAY!

Continuing on (I was actually looking for mining sites) I found a Serpentis Lookout, so I once again switched out from the Helios to the Dominix, and proceeded through the acceleration gates. This time things went much easier – except that I completely forgot that when I removed the inventory from the Dominix on my last combat round, I also removed all of my ammo. Before I could pass through the second acceleration gate I had to head back to home and pick some up. Not being able to attack anything was proving to be difficult, especially since my drones were the ones getting aggro and it was going to be expensive to replace them all. I scooped them up, flew home, grabbed ammo, and back out to the site where I finished up killing the NPCs. I didn’t get the bonus spawn, but that’s alright. I still got a lot of bounty for killing and I also came back with a lot of salvage material.

All in all it was an incredibly productive night. Before I went out probing I also put in some production runs for invention and manufacturing, turned my PI runs on, did a few mining missions for faction, and picked up some datacores that my R&D agents have been holding for me. Now, all of this may not sound exciting to the dedicated long term EVE player, it just sounds like yet another night – but for me, it was incredibly exciting. It was my first time actually scanning down a site and then defeating it on my own. Hopefully tonight I have better luck with mining sites though, as that’s what I’m really after. I did also find a few wurmhole entrances, and I may check them out in the future, I do love wurmhole exploration, it’s just not something I typically want to do all by myself without a corp to back me up.

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

Things Have Changed #EVEOnline #Tweetfleet

stargrace July 16, 2012 1Comment

It just doesn’t feel right to be playing MMO’s unless one of them happens to be a sandbox, and since I was lacking the soft feeling of sand running between my toes I decided to sign back up with EVE Online. It’s been a few months since I’ve played to any extent, and when I left the game I was working heavily with industry and PI, creating drones to sell weekly at the market as well as POS components and fuel. All of which netted me a fair amount of ISK, and kept me out of trouble (for the most part).

Since I’ve returned I’ve noticed a few changes – most notably would have to be the changes to inventory. That’s right, players now have an actual inventory – sort of. It’s a drop down menu on the left hand side along with the usual tabs (wallet, assets, etc) and when you select it you’ll see more drop down menus with your items (hopefully). It took me a bit to figure this out, I was expecting a hangar, and couldn’t find it anywhere. Couldn’t find my corporate hangar or any of my ships, or figure out how to move items about. Of course once I learned we have an inventory, things became much easier. It’s still a bit of a pain but there are ways to filter it now which are nice. It does take some getting used to, but I think I can manage.

Of course the first thing I did was fall back into old habits, take a trip to Jita and sell off the merchandise that I had collected last time I played. Jita was as busy as ever which was comforting. I haven’t decided quite yet what it is I want to do this round – there’s so many options. If you’re unfamiliar with them you should really check out this amazing post by The Ancient Gaming Noob – and in specific this image.

I’ve always stayed on the PvE side of things, I enjoy spending my time in-game mining, scanning (which I’m not good at but I’ll get better with practice) exploring, and the occasional mission run for faction. I love salvaging, and I still enjoy research and development but I’m unsure if I want to keep producing drones or move on to something else. They’re good income but I’ve been crafting them for so long now it’s getting a bit boring.

No matter what I decide to do, it’s nice to be back flying the skies. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Playing the Skill Point Game #EVEOnline

stargrace February 24, 2012 4Comments

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the way that skills work in EVE. In more ‘tradtional’ MMOs (ie: most themepark) I would log in to ‘grind’ skills or levels. I’d work on tasks that would better my character. In EVE there’s no way of doing this. Your skills come from books that you add to a queue, and automatically learn in a number of hours/days/months while you’re in game or not. You’re only limited by the amount of time required to fully learn a skill, and the price of the skill book. That means the ‘main’ thing to work on is gaining ISK so you can afford those books / ships / etc. How you decide to earn your ISK is completely up to you.

Above is my current ‘planned’ queue of skills. It will take around 49 days to learn them all. This is the Dominix fit I’ve planned out on Battleclinic, and then I’ve uploaded the skills I need for that fit. It’s drone heavy (obviously, almost everything I have left to train is drones) since that’s how I enjoy playing. I love sending my drones out into combat while I hang back and blast things from range or tank the heavier hits while they do the bulk of the damage. Picking a fit for your ship is unique to the type of gameplay you enjoy so be sure to spend a lot of time browsing fits. You don’t have to go with what everyone else dictates is the best, either. You should always focus on how YOU enjoy playing. The dominix makes a great drone ship, although I’d like to upgrade it eventually. Since the only real combat I do is for missions, I’ve never been that focused on my PvE combat ship.

One thing I wish were a little easier to do in game is probing. Normally Kasul would scan sites and then drop off the mining locations for me because I’m just not good at it. He’s moved on, so I’m left to figure out probing for myself. It’s not THAT difficult, I’ve watched videos on how to do it and I’ve even managed to scan down a few sites myself. It’s just that I’m not very good at it, and I prefer to spend my time in game doing things that I’m good at and that I enjoy. Problem is I enjoy mining (I know, how wrong of me) and if I spend my time mining just the regular asteroid belts, that can become a chore. I really enjoy the excitement that the other sites bring, especially if there are rats around. So, a large portion of my time in-game must be spend dedicated to learning the finer arts of probing. That sounds completely wrong.

How do you enjoy spending your time in-game? Let me know in comments! As always, happy gaming no matter where you are.

Pulling Me Back In #EVEOnline

stargrace February 19, 2012 4Comments

There have been a few changes since I last played EVE, and I haven’t really kept up to date with any of them (it’s just the way I am, I rarely keep up with any of the game ‘news’ out there). Of course some changes were unavoidable to notice, like the graphics that have been updated. As soon as I pulled out of the corp hangar I noticed the skies have changed. They’re far more richly detailed, and have a lot of depth to them. It was beautiful.

Even though it’s been a while since I logged in, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had been working on finishing up a new fit for my dominix, my mission running ship. My plan was still saved in EVEMon, so I loaded that up to see what skills I wanted to add to the queue next. After that it was time to check on my PI, set the new programs running and make sure the locations still had room for new produce. I’ll have to pick up the cargo some time this week and ship it out to Jita.

I had some jobs on the go when I stopped playing as well. My copy job completed, I now have a nice selection of hammerhead blueprints. I’ll turn those into hammerhead II blueprints (hopefully), and then produce hammerhead II’s. My research agents have been neglected as well, and I have to go pick up some datacores from them.

From there it’s mission running. Working on my factions so that I can work with better datacore agents and buy nifty faction items. I have been contemplating signing on with a new corp, there are some that are offering a signing bonus to haulers, and it would put my Orca to great use. I’ve never really been part of a large corp before and I’m still trying to decide if it’s something I’d like to try, or if I’m better suited to continue in the smaller corp that I’ve been apart of since I started playing EVE. I did try to give another corp a try, but that didn’t end too well, as they sent me threatening letters when I died, implying that if I were to fly where I shouldn’t they may even simply fire on me so that others could not. Really not a place I wanted to be.

In any case, it’s no surprise that my attention has turned back to EVE at the same time that I’m fully engrossed with Wurm. Last night I was mining in both games, and while they’re at completely different ends of the spectrum, the end result was the same. In Wurm I use a pickaxe to harvest ore to use for items, and in EVE I use a ship with guns to perform the same actions and end up with the same results, ore used to make other items. I’m looking forward to getting back into mission runs, and outfitting the dominix. It’s been a while.

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