suitcase challenge

Suitcase Challenge Day 63: Finally

When I returned to EVE online in March, I had no idea what I was looking for or what I hoped to accomplish. Normally when I “play” EVE, I jump in for a month and then would find myself at a loss on what to do, and I’d wander off. This time for whatever reason the game has staying power (combined with the fact that no matter how much I try, I just can’t seem to get interested in Warcraft these days, Plunderstorm really did a number on me) so much so that it’s 4 months later, and I’ve just picked up 6 months of game time on two of my accounts. That’s pretty neat.

Anyway! My Orca is still safely living in her wormhole. I’ve been doing a little bit of mining, a lot of PI, some anomalies, and I continue to work on my market character along with my ‘main’ who is doing industry. I was thinking of trying mercoxit mining, but I have no idea what sort of ship fit I need for that, I just know that when I run into it, I can’t collect it with my strip miner II modules. It probably has special ones. Also something about spawning gas that harms you as you mine it? Interesting!

I’ve stopped trying to fly the biggest and best ships out there (note: I’m not even close to flying anything big anyway) and instead focused on flying what I can, well. I finally finished training biology V on my Signal Cartel character, which means I was able to pick up the Neural Lace ‘Blackglass’ Net Intrusion 920-40 implant, and oh my this thing is lovely. It lets me basically 1 shot any of the bad virus’ that show up on the mini game when you’re doing hacking. My helios is still my ship of choice. That little ship is amazing. I’m also still really enjoying my Tengu for C1-3 and while I know there’s more ISK if I were to do harder things, I’m happy and having a lot of fun with what I’m doing so far.

There’s less than 1 month left for my Suitcase challenge! I can hardly believe where the time has gone. As of today, I’ve been to 198 systems, and visited 143 unique wormholes. I’m not sure what I’ll do once the challenge is over. I might just continue to live in the wormhole, or I might try something new. Maybe I’ll sell the Orca. It doesn’t get a lot of actual use, since I don’t want to lose it. It feels strange to keep a ship around with such high value but with very little use. I guess we’ll just have to see!

Fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 50: Backing Away… Quickly

OK, I know the screenshot above is really messy, but I wanted to make an attempt at showing what a typical game play period might look like for me when I have nothing really in mind and want to explore data/relic sites (non combat). I’ve been contemplating trying to move to a new wormhole but I am pretty specific about what I want. This day was a whole lot of ‘NOPE’ and some close calls. So I left my ‘home’ wormhole (it’s covered up, and this post is postdated so none of these connections will be this way when you read about it) and jumped into a C2 with a C1 / H connection. There was nothing much going on there, so I jumped into a C1 that had no statics at all. Maybe I’ve just never paid attention before, I didn’t know there was any such thing. There was nothing there, either – but it did have a connection to a C3 that looked promising. Unfortunately that C3 had a nullsec connection – and they had been hot and heavy on the combat. Kitchen Sinkhole, Fraternity, and Salted Fish Alliance. I accidentally ran right into their little war going on, so I immediately popped back into that C1 with no statics. From there I popped into a C5, which is a fine wormhole if you’re looking to go after gas, mining, or combat anomalies, but the data/relic sites are actually combat sites and not cans – not what I was in the mood for. I knew I’d have to scan my way out of there and find something better.

It had a C4 static, but there was also another nullsec entrance, and I decided what the heck I’ll pop out – YIKES. Immediately I was in B-7DFU which had 44+ Goons just.. there. I popped right back into that wormhole so fast, I was terrified that someone would have spotted me and followed. Thankfully I had already scanned down the whole C5, so I was able to pop over to the C4 static instead. No one followed me (to my knowledge). This new C4 had a C1 and a C4 as statics. I wasn’t interested in the C4 because I knew there wouldn’t be any relic/data sites to make use of, so I decided to explore the C1. No recent kills to be concerned about, most of the deaths on dotlan looked like NPC kills. There was also very little of interest there. Shoot. I was starting to get tired and really had nothing to show for my adventures. I decided to pop into the LowSec connection and see what was around. It was empty! Unfortunately there was also only a single relic site with a few million ISK worth of items. After a few minutes, a marauder popped in so I cloaked and waited to see what he was up to. He dropped some drones so I figured he was ratting, and as soon as I uncloaked in my relic site he scooped his drones and left. I took that as my hint that he might be back in something that was meant to smush, so I once again dove back into the wormhole.

This time I went into a C2 that had a C5 and a nullsec connection. Neat. Also highly valuable as far as wormholes are concerned, there were people living there. FOUR buildings set up – but they haven’t been active lately. In fact, it looks like they had a bunch of people griefing them in early June, they lost a bunch of POCO in the system, and then The Initiative and The Tuskers Co. had a bit of a brawl in there too. No action since June 14th. I wanted to go nose around the buildings, but instead I was distracted by the EIGHT relic / data sites that were in system. EIGHT! FINALLY! Jackpot.

Finally, almost 300 million ISK in my haul, it was time to find a high sec connection so I could dump it off to my market character. Then I’d have to use my scanning character to figure out where my static HS lead to, and make my way back to my orca suitcase. All in all, it was a pretty profitable day, a nice break from gas, and I got to see some cool people doing cool things (and then I promptly flew away before I was discovered, as is my way).

Fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 43: How’s it Going?

It’s day 43 of living out of an Orca in a random wormhole with a HS static. Things are going well! ISK making is down from last month but honestly that was very expected. I’ve had less time to play, and less luck with exploration. I’ve also only got 2/6 of my characters doing PI – I’d like to get that to at least 4/6 this month but time is a rare commodity.

I’ve been killing sleepers to get the ‘blue’ loot (sells to an NPC). did a lot of gas huffing, a little bit of mining (this was mostly for my own industry needs and not for selling), and spent a lot of ISK on BPO & skills. I’ve gotten some good data/relic sites, but the lower ISK this month is due to a lack of time, and nothing more.

I had gotten a few rig BPC from a site, and also had to pick up the skills that let me craft them. Sold them for a nice profit. Like I thought, regular skins have gone down a lot in price which I expected with the release of the skinr tool. I still have not explored that yet, but I can understand how people who fly the same ships for years might be interested in a new look. My industry is still being completed in high sec, so I have to keep a close eye on profits and taxes and all the rest of it. FUN!

I am not a fan of the new daily goals. I dislike that it is more of a monthly combination of actions, and I really dislike what CCP wants us to go after as goals. Today it’s scan down 2 relic sites, damage other capsuleers, and earn 50 LP for any corporation. The simple one was to destroy 25 non-capsuleers, which is what I did. Hunting down relic sites in specific is annoying, and while earning LP is ‘easy’ it’s also something I would need to go out of my way to complete. The goals are character specific, another issue I have with them. They used to reward 10k sp daily, and were brought back down to 5k sp daily because there’s ‘goals’ now, after 3, 6, 9, and 12 days. I feel more obligated than I was before, and more resentful. I’m hoping this isn’t the final iteration of the dailies, and maybe CCP gives them some extra attention (again) in the future. It would be nice not to have to leave the WH every time I want to complete a daily.

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

Suitcase Challenge Day 10: What Have I seen?

So far the Orca is still alive, and I’m still living happily out of my wormhole. PI is all set up on 3 characters, and I’ve set it to a 2 day schedule so that I don’t have to constantly tend to it. So far that seems to be working for me just fine. I do have to say, the amount of materials you get outside of high sec is astounding. The planets are bustling, for a much higher risk, of course.

My suitcase life has settled into a comfortable routine, that I hope to expand on as the days go by. I log in, scan down any new signatures while frantically checking the space for anyone new. Some days there’s someone meandering around but most days (when I’m around at least) it has been empty. I do a few gas runs (ninja huffing, I just huff until the rats show up and then I leave) and I started doing some mining. Exploration is still my preferred activity.

Pictured above is one of the neat Wormlife Freeports that someone mentioned to me on Mastodon. I took a little break and docked up, and just spent some quiet time looking at eve.

I find life in the WH very relaxing. The ‘out of sight, out of mind’ saying holds true here, because I can’t see people on local my anxiety is quite lessened. That doesn’t mean there is no one around, I’ll probably wear a hole in my keyboard from mashing the V key (d-scan) repeatedly while I’m out and about, but I’m not flying anything I can’t afford to lose – minus that Orca, who stays stealthed or logged off 99% of the time. I’ve made a habit not to venture to the bookmark location unless I absolutely have to swap out a ship or drop something off.

I’ve been using Pathfinder to map my routes each day, and for finding my ‘safe’ way back to high sec to drop off PI components. I’m only making P0 and P1 at the moment, normally I’d do P2/P3 on a factory planet, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, quite yet. Keeping it simple seems to be working.

What adventures will come next? I have no idea. We’ll just have to see!

Fly your way. o7

Nomadic Gamer