Organizing All the Things

It’s really no big surprise that one of my favourite things to do in EVE is to organize. Whether it’s my ships, their fits, my hangar, or industry – I spend a lot of time sorting through things and organizing them. Last night I decided to focus on the ships. I stripped those I’m not actively using so I could take better inventory of what I have, and I wanted to make sure I had complete fits for those I do use. I know I could just share items between ships but I’m not really a fan of that (plus I end up losing / forgetting things). I’d like each ship to have its use and fit it for that use. I’ve also been thinking more about WHAT ships I’m using, and how expensive they are vs. other ships that might be able to handle the same things that I’m already handling. Especially if I’m going to risk losing that ship. In 3 more days I’ll be able to fly the Tengu again (I can already fly it, but I’m waiting on some weapon skills) but the Gila has been great at handling what I need it to handle and it’s not nearly as expensive when all is said and done. I also have a myrmidon, and the Dominix (which I believe I was going to upgrade to a Sin, I have the blueprints for one, at least). Then there’s a catalyst, and even a tristan rounding things out. I’ve got a prospect I’m hoping to take out gas huffing (finding gas has been a difficult task for me as of late) and there’s the venture, too if I want to go even cheaper.

It’s better for me to practice and learn in these less expensive ships, and then when I feel more confident I can start using the better ones. My EVE tasks are not exactly limited, even by using a less expensive ship, and it should give me some experience and confidence.

Industry is going pretty well, I have lots of drones and ammo for sale each day, and they’re moving even though I’m not selling in Jita (I really didn’t want to make all those jumps just for a handful of ISK, I’d rather sell closer to home). I haven’t managed to get my R&D faction up yet, but I know if I just plug away at it slowly the faction will come. I keep getting distracted by other things in space (like that escalation from yesterday).

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

My First Escalation!

I’ve been doing some faction raising (remember I have one R&D agent who is still L2 and I want L4) and in between those missions I’ve been doing HS ratting, the ones that show up on your overview when you’re in an area. I’m not sure how many I’ve done now, but it’s a fair amount – and today I got my first escalation! I had to look it up first, because I didn’t want to jump 4 jumps away just to have someone else complete it while I was OTW, but I guess they’re specific to you (that does NOT mean you’re safe, someone can warp in on you easily if they’re looking for you) but since it was in HS no one was looking for me (I hope). It was a few thousand ISK of loot, and of course some great kills. I had to complete it in multiple stages, passing through a gate each stage, and handle a handful of encounters. The Gila is a lovely beast for HS, but I do wish I had a salvager fit to it, because letting all those wrecks sit there made me a bit sad – I understand it’s better to complete these missions fast and move on to something else for ISK/h but I’ve never been much of a min/max player, and I use those components for industry.

I went back afterwards with my salvaging ship just as a way to unwind and to take some pretty screenshots.

Speaking of industry, it was a very good week! I sold all of the drones I made, even though I had priced them above others in the market. I am not quite making enough for a PLEX, but I don’t really know if that’s my goal or if I’d rather just keep myself in ships and continue to buy my game time the good old fashioned way.

Losing the Tengu right at the start of my adventures really put a large dent into my ISK earned, but at least I’ve had a week now of gains in the green instead of in the red. It’s not the billions of ISK others talk about, but I’m still pretty happy with my time invested vs. ISK earned given that I tend to avoid PVP as much as I possibly can (I know this is EVE, I’m still going to play in the style I enjoy most).

Safe flying!

Day 12 (Still Flying)

I’ve fallen into a comfortable routine in the mornings now when it comes to World of Warcraft & EVE. I check my industry, put new stuff in if I’m able to, check my PI, and then do a bit of ice mining until the two belts in my system are depleted. Once a week I travel to my PI planets and shuffle bits around, and once a week I head to the market to re-list and sell. In between all of that, I’ve started ‘ratting’ which basically just means killing NPC (I kill the ones I find in anomalies / signatures). In 4 days I can start flying my newly fit Tengu (hopefully an improvement over the one I was flying in 2015) and in the meantime I’ve been flying a perfectly apt Gila. I did end up losing a Helios this week to a data site when some very nasty NPC spawned and 1 shot me. Helios is not an expensive ship though so I replaced it and moved on. Ships are just ammo, as the saying goes.

For the past week I’ve made more ISK than I’ve spent, so that’s good. I’m experimenting with industry quite a bit, seeing what sort of markets I can find myself in. I’ve also joined a corporation, although I am not entirely convinced that they’re a good fit for me I think it’s more to do with being awkward and not necessarily a ‘them’ thing. For now I continue to lurk and learn, and explore aspects of EVE that I know I enjoy.

The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

I’ve been killed more in EVE this week than I have in the previous 12 years I played – and that’s what feels like it has changed (to me, at least). Yesterday caught me off guard. I plotted a route some where and one of the sectors it had me go through (even though I do have ‘high sec only please’ turned on the mapping – was 0.4, which was in the middle of a huge war that I absolutely had no place in. I wasn’t expecting it at all (in hindsight, I should have probably expected it). 0.4 is lowsec, and dangerous even on the best of days, let alone days when there’s massive amounts of people all over the place (hello weekend).

Now, ideally, I could have just turned around and left right back to the safer side of things, except I wasn’t expecting a bunch of people to be RIGHT there all pew pewing at one another – so I panicked, and of course just sat there like a lump on a log until I was blown to smithereens. Bye bye Tengu 2.0. I think the kill thing said I was shot by 7 different people. Nice. Thankfully I was not carrying around anything of value this time around.

The famous motto in EVE is to never fly something you can’t afford to replace. I know this, and I could afford to replace it, so I did. I decided to go with a different fit this time around though and it’s going to take me a few days to get my skills up to snuff (14 days, in fact). In the meantime, I decided to get some ice mining done. Nice, quiet, high sec ice mining (just watch out for the diamond rats). After, I did scan the sites around my home hoping for a WH with a gas site, but I didn’t have any luck. I did find a high sec relic site, but it had less than 100,000 ISK worth of stuff, gross. I still stand by the opinion that being in WH is far safer than being in lowsec.

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

Organizing Those R&D Agents

Today I decided it was time to look into my R&D agents, see who I was working with, what rating I was at with them, and shuffle things around so I was working with the highest levels that I could. Right now I’m using R&D to craft drones which I then sell for a bit of income. I personally only have 1 ship fit for drones and I use it very rarely, I prefer the missiles I use with the Tengu. Anyway, two of my R&D agents are L4, one is L3, and one is L2. I want to raise up the faction that’s at L2 so I can work with a higher level agent, but the ONLY agent I could find is in a 0.5 section, and of course I tend to have horrible luck with those places. It’s 9 jumps away from home, which isn’t horrible all things considering, but I did want to be cautious. I only managed to do two security missions there before I had to head back, but I do plan on flying back out later today to get a few more done.

I also started making a chart for my ISK earnings & hangar value. If I want to pay for game time with PLEX, I would need to earn on average 83,000,000 ISK a day for 30 days. Right now I am obviously in no shape to do so but long-term it seems like a neat goal, since I’m all about the gold making in World of Warcraft, some of those skills should transfer over to EVE too. We’ll see. It has been a VERY expensive month so far because I had to insure my ships, and while I am making more ISK than I’m spending, it’s not by that much at all.

Hopefully getting on a schedule for PI & industry will help that out. I also started doing some gas mining, which I’ve never done before even though I had trained for it. Yesterday I was flying around trying to find a gas site (instead I settled for a relic site in a C3 wormhole) but I haven’t had a lot of luck. I’ve also been working through the application process to join a new corporation. I had been in my last one for 12 years, but it’s no longer active, and while I know it’s not absolutely essential, an active corporation is something I wanted to experience. I’m still waiting for an invite now that I’ve gotten through security, but I’m hopeful.

I still feel much safer in a wormhole than I ever did in ‘actual’ space (hi, lo, or otherwise). Maybe it’s just because I can’t see local and it’s an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ sort of situation. I don’t see that changing any time soon. In any case, fly safe and happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.