EVE

We All Love New Things #EVEOnline

stargrace October 30, 2011 0Comment

It doesn’t matter what game I play, I love getting new things. Some times those new things are gear, weapons or even crafting supplies. In EVE one of those things is ships. Ever since I heard that there was a little war on ice miners I decided that I wanted an ice mining ship. Technically I could use my hulk (as I’ve already mentioned) but the Mackinaw receives a lot of bonuses for ice mining in specific. Today I decided to purchase one, and I’ve got three more days before I can finish fitting it, but it’s coming along nicely. I gave it the name ‘Cyrosphere’ which I think suits. I was a bit sad when I looked at the insurance value of the ship. The maximum you can get back is 26 million ISK, and the ship is going for roughly 115 million in Jita. That’s not including any money you spend fitting it. I took it out for a spin and was incredibly happy with my results, but I was also very paranoid that I’d get shot out of the skies, even if I was in .7 HighSec. After a few circles of the mining guns I decided to head back to the station and refine my goods, which is where the real money comes from.

Hopefully things will calm down for ice miners before too long, and I won’t have to be constantly looking around for people flying in all of the sudden. Of course it’s better to be safe than sorry, but after losing my hulk last week I really wasn’t in the mood to replace a 2nd ship quite so soon.

It’s almost time for me to upgrade my research agents again. I’ve been working on missions for Creo and my standing is almost high enough to warrant the change. I’ve been with my current agents for a long time, and even though I only visit them when I need a bunch of datacores you sort of get attached to them. Plus they’re in a nice location that’s easy for me to reach when I’m en-rout to my factory outpost.

Once I finish training the ice harvester, I’m going to complete fitting the Dominix (I sort of stopped half way through) and then work on my other crafting skills like mining different types of ore and refining them. Maybe I’ll do a little wurmhole exploration, and eventually I’ll finally get the hang of probing. In the mean time I’m still bugging corp mates to help me with that.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself! I hope all my friends down south stay safe with the storms that have been passing through. No sign of any snow up here in Ottawa.

o/

Relaxation via Mining #EveOnline

stargrace October 28, 2011 1Comment

It feels really good to be back in EVE, and even better to be spending most of my time ‘crafting’. While the majority of people I know spend their time blowing up other ships (be they NPC or players) I spend a lot of mine crafting or preparing to craft. You may hear about how boring mining is, but I find it incredibly relaxing. It’s something I can do while doing other things (especially since I mine in high sec without using cans). I’m working on affording an ice mining ship, technically my hulk could ice mine, but it doesn’t have the bonuses that the new ship would have. It’s about 140 mill ISK to save up for one, so I won’t be getting it any time soon.

I’m thinking of starting up an alt on my main account, simply to be able to produce more in PI. It takes about a week to train the skills I would need and PI products are selling quite well. I have never really required another character on my account because you can only have one character training at a time and you can quite literally ‘do it all’ on one character. It just takes a lot of time.

My new corp and I didn’t work out so I moved back to the smaller one I’ve been a part of for the last year or so. I should have known better, it’s rare that I play well with others (there’s a reason I run my own guild in WoW and EQ2 after all). Long story short, I thought I was joining a friendly casual guild but when I joined and lost my hulk in their sector I received some not-too-kind emails stating that I was making their killboard look bad and even implying that our own members may shoot me down just to prevent this from happening in the future. I understand that everyone has their method of playing the game but as a member who had been there less then a day (and personally, I don’t give a hoot about killboards) I found this discouraging. I never pretended to be anything other then a carebear gamer (in EVE at least) who spends most of her time mining, inventing, and doing PI, whether or not I lose a ship shouldn’t be that big of a deal. It is EVE after all. It happens.

Anyhow. I can continue to spend my time in game doing what I do, which is supplying other players with POS bits, selling ships, drones and other crafted items. All from the comfort of the small but friendly corp that I started out in. I’m just not a blood thirsty player, and I don’t pretend to be.

Kasul managed to probe a nice mining site this morning which was a lot of fun. I’m still trying to get the hang of probing, even in my Helios I have some issues finding good sites. It takes a lot of practice. Thankfully he has no issues with probing for sites for me and I split the profit of anything I mine. He has a little hulk he takes out when he has the time, and I go to the site in the Orca as well as the Retriever (which will eventually be a hulk on my second account. In 18 days or so). The Orca takes care of any rats that wander into the system and it’s a nice hour or two of relaxation in the mornings.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! I apologize for the lack of posts lately, but I have been dealing with real life (it crops up from time to time) so I haven’t been posting as often as I’d like. Hopefully things will quiet down after next Friday and I should be back to my daily blogging schedule. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Flying The Skies #Tweetfleet #EveOnline

stargrace October 22, 2011 0Comment

There’s been a lot of talk floating around lately about CCP and their recent layoffs, 20% of their staff were let go. My heart goes out to those people involved as it certainly could not have been an easy decision. Going forward CCP has vowed to concentrate on those things that they should be concentrating on, and not spreading themselves so thin. This has brought about a lot of snark from the usual suspects, but I’m ever the optimist and will just have to wait and see how things go.

Today I decided to activate my second account again after having only been back for one day. My second account acts as a hauler account typically, but before I stopped playing last time I had set it to learning to fly a hulk. My main account owns and flies an Orca,which can get pretty dull when you’re not filling it up with ore. Ideally I would probe for grav sites and head out in the Hulk, leaving the Orca close by so that I can ship the ore some place else afterward but that’s a whole lot of work. I’d rather take advantage of the fleet bonuses and use both the Orca and the Hulk at the same time. It will be 20 days before that’s set to go so in the mean time I’ve been harvesting in my retriever which isn’t nearly as fun but it gets the job done.

In the mean time I’m working on my standing with both CreoDron and Astral Mining Inc. CreoDron is the corporation that my R&D agents are associated with, having more standing with them means I can work with better agents. Astral Mining Inc is the corporation I want to earn LP with so that I can purchase some pretty things in the future. I’m working with L4 agents for CreoDron and L1 (for now) with Astral, hopefully I’ll get them both higher before too long. I enjoy mission running, it’s quite calming (where I run them at least) and lets me take in some pretty sights.

I’m also still working on PI daily, as well as my invention and production. I’m waiting for a copy job to go through (13 days) and wondering what I want to build next. I’m quite happy with my selection of ships at this point in time but I could do some work on fitting them all properly. Most of my ships are a mish mash of bits and pieces that I’ve pieced together, a combination of items available by skill and by availability. I also spent some time switching ships back and forth between my accounts, so getting everyone their own ships is high on my list of priorities.

It feels really good to be playing again. I didn’t even realize how much I missed flying the skies until I was back. Sure, there are some less than savory folks out there (50 million ISK in order not to get podded? I think not) but it adds to the atmosphere of the game.

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

o/

What Is It About EVE? #EveOnline #TweetFleet

stargrace October 20, 2011 1Comment

Once more I have been pulled into Tranqility by the lure of – well, nothing in specific, in fact it’s something I can’t quite put my finger on. I received an email from CCP stating that I could log back into EVE for only $4.99 for my first month  back, and the price was just too good for me to resist. Before I knew it my finger was on the activate button and I found myself in game trying to remember what I was doing before my break. Playing EVE is like riding a bicycle, you take a few minutes wobbling around and then it all comes flooding back. I had docked at the headquarters of Genovian Holdings Inc. (my current tiny inactive corp) and the first thing I noticed was that our HQ was gone, items missing, and corp wallet empty. It took me a few minutes to figure out what had happened, and by then I had already frantically tweeted to Petter (CEO) wondering if we had some how been stolen from. Turns out being inactive is bad. We couldn’t pay the rent due for our HQ and thus we lost our hangars. I’m not sure if everything in them transferred to me, but 600 of those items did and I found them in my inventory.

I wouldn’t mind being in a more active corp, but I’m nice and cozy in my high sec space, aside from some wurmhole exploration I tend to stay that way. My ‘gaming’ involves a lot of invention and manufacturing with some mining runs thrown in there for good measure. I have never been one for a lot of killing, although I am working on fitting my dominix for some ‘pew pew’.

I updated EVEMon and saw there have been some changes, both to the program itself (which I use for skill tracking) and the API from CCP. I can now track and view multiple things involving my character like research and standings. Right now I’m working on propulsion jamming IV, and then it’s time to work on energy systems operation. I currently have 24 skills at level V with 13 million SP spent. Not that much compared to some players, but a comfortable amount for me.

I haven’t checked on my PI yet, but that will be next on the list as I ease myself back into things. I was manufacturing items for drones and then selling those drones in Jita on a weekly basis to fund my wallet and I’d like to get back into the habit of doing that (along with some invention). I was also working with an agent or two on some missions, but I have no idea what faction I happened to be working on (or why I was working on it) so that’s on my ‘to do’ list. All in all, it feels great to be back. I think it’s the sandbox flavor of the game that keeps pulling me in. As any long time reader of this site knows, I am really not a fan of any science fiction what so ever. It typically puts me to sleep. EVE, somehow, has managed to beat those odds.

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