EVEOnline

A Night Exploring

stargrace May 4, 2024 0Comment

I wanted to try to make a little progress with the capsuleer event that’s going on right now – but I have to say, it is quite a slog. Basically, you collect what I’ll call T1 materials from sites, and then use those component to craft T2 filaments. Then you run the T2 sites, and collect materials to craft T3 filaments. See where this is going?

I decided to make use of some of my own filaments, the Noise-5 Needlejack ones. These drop you into nullsec, randomly. They’re supposed to drop you into ‘quiet’ areas, but things happen – like I was dropped into a 20+ Pandemic Horde alliance fleet. Whewps. There’s a 15 minute timer before you can use another filament, and in the meantime I was basically a sitting (cloaked) duck. I didn’t want to take a gate anywhere and risk getting caught (I’m in a corporation of one, and that never looks good) so I just stayed cloaked and eventually they moved off. When they did, I scanned down the sites in the system, looking for a wormhole to jump into. Didn’t find one, so I ran the relic / data sites that I found, and when I saw people poking in again I used another needlejack and jumped out. The next jump sucked. There were no signatures, and 5 people in system just hanging out. I decided to wait out the timer one more time, and the filament put me relatively close to ‘home’. Only 3 nullsec jumps out (and a single low sec).

I was in my speedy Helios, which is fit for this type of exploration and is not an expensive ship by any means. My only goal was exploration, and while it did take a fair bit of time, I think I did alright.

I have enough materials to craft one more ruined filament, and I have most of the supplies for a single devastated electrical filament. I know you can just purchase everything off of the auction house and work at it that way – and I know that I’m neglecting the entire combat side of things, but that’s how I like playing. I doubt VERY much I will get anywhere near the 5,000+ points required for the final items, but at least I’m making a little progress.

Fly your way! o7

GMs still Exist!

stargrace May 1, 2024 0Comment

** Before I start this post, I do want to say that I know I pretended to be new when I wasn’t, and that isn’t the greatest behaviour, but I *was* on a new account, and I thought it was neat that they reached out **

I have 3 EVE accounts. One account has my ‘main’, and is in a corporation of just me right now. I did try out Catskull Cartel but it wasn’t for me. That’s OK, not every corporation is going to be a forever home. I have a second account, far less skills, this account has my Signal Cartel (love this corporation, can’t say enough good things about them) character on it and two PI alts. The account has been around since 2009 or so, but I barely ever kept up with it.

Then I have a 3rd account, this one is brand new, and is linked through steam. I created a character on the account in the hopes of doing something completely different from the norm (for me, at least), and I wanted to get some blog posts in about starting a fresh account and doing the AIR Career path along with whatever happened next. I also wanted to see what was available as an alpha, and test out content without having the omega skills. I see lots of YT videos following this path, and I find it interesting.

While I was finishing up the AIR Career path a GM Maverick reached out to me, and asked how I was enjoying EVE. They said they saw I was a new player (the account is 41 days old, alpha). I didn’t mention that it was just an alt account, instead I went forward as though I was a new player. I explained what I thought about the introductory quests, and they offered some advice on what I should do next, and where I should go. The interaction was wholesome and I loved it, especially in an age where very few MMORPG have these sorts of interactions any more.

They gave me a few beginner friendly ships (the same ones the AIR Career will provide) and a Gallente welcome package, which was neat.

In fact, the more I play EVE, the more I fall in love with parts of the culture – and that’s not to say there isn’t also a lot I dislike about the culture (it can be pretty rough) but surrounding myself with positive influences has been key. Anyway, I hope GM Maverick knows that their interactions made a difference and were greatly appreciated.

Fly your way. o7

Spreadsheets? We’ve got Those

stargrace April 30, 2024 0Comment

I’ve been back in EVE Online since March 15th, and of course one of the first things I did was set up a spreadsheet to start calculating industry profits, and then another spreadsheet to calculate my total daily ISK earnings (across two accounts). We already know that in order to afford one month of game time, you need 500 plex, which (at the time of this post at least) comes to approximately 2.5 billion ISK. That means each day you’d want to earn roughly 84 million ISK in order to afford a single month of game time.

Earning currency doesn’t change much from game to game. Learning the markets takes time, but you already have a pretty good foundation if you’re already doing it elsewhere. It’s also not reasonable to expect a brand new player to be earning as much money as someone who has been around for a number of years and knows how to optimize (and who also has higher skills in the game, and higher skills in general). Most of the ISK on the main account (account E) came from industry. I’m just shy of the 2.5b mark for the month, but considering I just returned to the game, I’m very happy with those earnings. The ISK earned on my second account (S) is from selling off components of a package I got (I think I got the platinum bundle?) which included skill injectors (I sold them empty, I can’t afford to give up skills). Those numbers are highly inflated, and shouldn’t be considered ‘real’ numbers considering the lack of effort I put forth.

It does give me a nice nest egg. I’ve got a few months of game time on each account, and enough ISK to invest further into industry. I need to swap some PI around on my 2nd account, right now the components I’m making have almost zero market in my system, and while I know a lot of people adore the instant shopping in Jita, I prefer to stay away and sell slower (but for a slightly inflated price). Figuring out what sells, is the new game.

In the meantime, there are the constants. Ammo, drones, and a few meta ships. Consumables always seem to do quite well and you can really push out some nice numbers. I live in a system that happens to have ice mining, so I’ve started selling items related to that – and people are buying, even though they’re a higher price than other systems. The next challenge will be to beat this months earnings.

Fly safe! o7

My First Superior Ghost Site (sort of)

stargrace April 26, 2024 0Comment

Even though I’ve been “playing” EVE since 2009, this is the first year I’ve attempted to actually do more than just run NPC missions and explore high sec. I’ve had the skills to fly some pretty hefty ships (boosting orca, tengu, etc) but I’ve had no idea how to actually make use of those skills or what content I could actually accomplish. I’ve been afraid of ghost sites since I heard about them, and I normally leave them alone and avoid them once I’ve scanned one down – but it turns out that I could have probably handled them. There’s just one issue, I still don’t really know / understand HOW. There’s this uniwiki page about ghost sites which I’ve read through, but putting what you read into practice is a whole other thing. Here’s how yesterday went.

I found a WH off of my home system, a simple C2 with not much going on. Scanned down some connections inside, found one to nullsec (I avoid these, I feel so exposed in local I have rarely ever hung around in null) and then found another connection to a shattered C2, bingo!

Jumped in there, and I decided to take my combat probes with me first to see if anyone was hanging around. Maybe flush them out (or scare someone else) I found some mining drones that someone had left behind (yoink!) and not much else. Swapped back over to my regular probes, and found a few relic/data sites – one was a superior pirate site. Interesting!

I was terrified of losing my ship, the Tengu is expensive (I can afford to replace it, but that’s not the point). I had also removed the painter & one of my mid shield boosters (the wiki article suggests armor tank but my tengu is fit for shield so.. shrug) in order to fit the relic/data scanners. I have been contemplating crafting / buying the zeugma analyzer which is both data/relic in one, but they are SO expensive and I’m honestly not sure I want to justify the cost only to have it blown up. Anyway. I warped to the ghost site.

I did not have a cargo scanner with me, so I just hauled ass to the nearest can and hacked it. My hacking skills are pretty good, despite being ‘new’ to all of this I have a lot of scanning/hacking skills maxed out and the rest is just me learning how to play the hacking game better/faster. My heart was beating so hard in my chest! I didn’t really know what to expect. I decided to do things the easy way.

I hacked the can, succeeded at it, pulled out 90,000,000 ISK worth of loot and immediately warped away after that very first can. I know I could have tried to hack a second can, I could have probably even tried to tank the rats / explosion, but I just wasn’t sure what to expect, or when to expect it and I didn’t want to have to replace the Tengu (price tag of around 1.5b). I’m still incredibly happy with that haul, and I think I’m happier NOT knowing what was in the rest of those cans. I escaped, survived, and it was awesome.

After the rush from that site, I decided to try my hand at another site – which I’ll write about tomorrow. It wasn’t nearly as dangerous (well, it’s jspace, everything is dangerous) or as profitable, but it was still another ‘first’ and a lot of fun.

As always, fly safe! o7

Thoughts on Equinox

stargrace April 24, 2024 0Comment

CCP released a video yesterday that announced the next expansion – it’s called Equinox and it goes live June 11th – exciting! The video talks about redefining nullspace, four new ships, enhancements to the AIR program, automated moon mining – and my favourite feature, a new extension to SKINR.

• Design at your fingertips: The new SKINR interface introduces a robust palette of design elements, consisting of basic and metallic nanocoatings as well as patterns, alongside five customization slots for each SKIN design, four for nanocoatings, and one for patterns. Use your creations to express your unique identity and share them with other capsuleers.
• Sequence and share: Gathering design elements and sequence binders allows capsuleers to sequence ship SKINs, for themselves or to sell to other pilots. Sequencing costs are based on a tier system and calculated in PLEX based on the rarity of design elements and complexity of the SKIN, and your creations can be sequenced in bulk for your own fleet or your corp.
• Organized collection: A new cosmetics collection makes it simple to keep track of SKINs, components, and emblems. Applying SKINs and filtering through your collection will be easier and more enjoyable than ever with the new updates.
• The Hub awaits: Visit the Paragon Hub to buy, sell, and trade SKINs and components. A platform to showcase designs or discover the perfect look for every fleet, the Paragon Hub offers an easy-to-navigate interface and opportunities for budding designers to make a name for themselves, not to mention untold riches.

I’m very excited about this change. I love player created content, and I absolutely want to try my hand at designing patterns. Other things were also mentioned, like new anomalies, the ability to create sovereign hubs in space, new resources, and new encounters. For someone like myself, who hasn’t been around the block a time or two before during an EVE Online expansion release, these all sound like pretty neat things. Given that I HAVE been around the block a time or two before when it comes to MMORPG expansions in general, I will (as always) take a “let’s wait and see” approach to all of it. I do like that they don’t leave us hanging forever, June 11th is just around the corner, and I should be able to fit it in with all of the World of Warcraft stuff that is also going on.

Excited? Not? Let me know in comments, and as always, fly safe! o7