Stargrace

Naming my Ships

I am not the most creative person when it comes to thinking of names for my ships in EVE Online, so I tend to go with some sort of theme. For the past year, I’ve been naming them after the date that I set them up to fly, so I can see how long they last before I lose them. After all, ships are ammo. My little helios pictured above is an exception to this rule as I named it before I came up with this new method, so it’s called ‘Sushi01’ – the 01 means I haven’t lost any – yet.

Today is PI day (I do basic PI maintenance every day, and then I ship everything out on Mondays) and right now I have over 1b ISK of PI in the wormhole because last week I couldn’t find a high sec connection that I wanted to deal with. The last one I found was 47 jumps from where I needed the items to be – nope. Not doing that in a squall. I do not store anything in the Freeport except for a single spare Epithal. I have three characters living there, two remain in their own Epithals, and the third one is typically in a Helios and swaps out when required (that character is on my 2nd account, and actually has some skills). I was thinking of getting a prospect or two set up but to be honest I very rarely ever come across any gas in this freeport or the connecting holes so for now I don’t think I will bother. Two of my PI-only characters are on my main account, and I’ve slowly started skilling them into some basic things but they only have 3-4 million skill points, so they don’t do much else. Since I am usually actively playing on that account with my main, it’s not a big deal.

The second account is a mixture of characters. One is my signal cartel character that I hope to re-join with (I was removed for inactivity when my MIL passed away because I didn’t notify them first and I took a break), one is my market character, and then the third character is a bit of a jack of all trades. They’re most frequently used as a miner, but can also fly some basic combat ships. Nothing fancy.

Anyway. Naming ships. Do you have a method that you stick to? Or do you just name it whatever pops into your mind at the time? Let me know in comments, and as always, fly your way! o7

It’s PI Day!

Once a week I collect all of the planetary interaction items I’ve created for the week and haul it back to the Wormlife Freeport I’m using as my home base these days. I don’t like to keep anything in the wormhole for that long, so my next step is always scanning down the highsec connection, and checking to see how many jumps it would be to my market character.

My Jita market character can fly a squall, and I normally use the MWD+Cloak trick to jump to and from where ever it is I need to go. If the market character is within 20 jumps of my wormhole exit, I consider that pretty good.

Today, it was 47 jumps away (I prefer to take the safer routes with my market character). In that case, I’ll leave the items in my epithal for a little while longer, and scan down the highsec connection each day until I find one a little bit closer. It’s not that much of a rush.

At Home in a Wormhole

Right now I’m living in a wormlife freeport where I have PI set up. I have three characters there, two are used for PI and have some basic ship skills (they can mine both ore and gas) but are not used for anything fancy. The 3rd character is my main exploration character, who also lives there for PI but typically lives out of a helios. When I was playing last I had grand ideas of setting up my own structure in a wormhole, but I’m not sure if that’s something I still want to do. It might be time to go backpacking again, and settle myself in my trusty Orca. This is a challenge I had done in the past, and is something I really enjoyed doing.

In the meantime things have gone back to my old routines. I log in, complete my PI chores (once a week I haul everything back to my station and then have my market character pick up the resources to sell) then do my dailies. Sometimes I’ll go exploring, other times I’ll do a little ratting. My market character is also my mission runner, right now she’s doing L3 distribution missions – really nothing fancy at all. It’s pretty close to Jita, so there are always a lot of other players around.

I’ve practiced the MWD+Warp trick again until I felt confident that I could traverse the universe with this method and remain relatively safe. It’s just muscle memory, after all. The biggest issue I’ve had is forgetting to bring things with me that I need, or just figuring out where all of my stuff is and what I was in the middle of doing last time I played.

Industry? I’m hesitant. Do I want to start making consumables again? Maybe I should get into reactions. There are so many options!

Still, it does feel nice to be playing again. I’m sure it won’t take me long to figure out what it is I want to be doing or working towards.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. Fly your way! o7

Back in EVE? Back in EVE.

In March of 2024 I decided to return to EVE Online, having played off and on since 2009 (but never feeling like I actually achieved anything). This time, for whatever reason, things stuck.

I will say there’s a lot of negativity in the community overall, and it’s not always a friendly place for female gamers – but – I managed to find a few good friends that I get along with very well, and I think that is a big reason as to why I’ve stuck with it. Even though I did take a 3 month break at the end of November.

Anyway. I’m back in EVE. I have three active Omega accounts (again) and while I need to wait 30 days before I can re-apply to Signal Cartel (if I decide to, I am unsure) I have been trying to decide what else I would like to do. Besides ISK making, of course. I picked up with my spreadsheet again so expect an update on that. I’m quite pleased with the liquid ISK I’ve made in the last year, even with my break.

I started off with the easy things. I have a porpoise and two retrievers, and I went mining. Warp core stabilizers apparently changed. Not a fan of that. You can only equip one and now the item is something that needs to be activated once you’ve been caught. Then you attempt to warp again. Mining is still in a pretty pitiful state, but there’s rumor that March 12th is going to bring about some news. Honestly, I’ll believe it when I see it.

The universe itself hasn’t changed much. Apparently before I quit I went on a selling rampage and I got rid of a lot of my ships that I had, so I had to spend some ISK to fix that. Did a little ratting. Nothing fancy.

I haven’t done any WH exploration yet. I did get PI set up, and I have been using the new planetary industry templates that you have to toggle on within feature previews. They’re a good start at reducing the tedium of PI, but could still use some work (IMO). Still. It’s something.

Let’s see how this round goes. As always, fly your way! o7

EVE, Wurm, Warcraft – and an Update

I haven’t been very good about blogging regularly for a while now, there has just been too much going on in my day to day to set aside the time for it, so I won’t promise that I’ll be any better about that, but I do still hope to do some semi-regular updates about my gaming adventures. After all, the blog will be 19 years old in June, and that’s something to celebrate. So. What’s up with me?

First of all. I was having a LOT of issues with my web host, and I’ve decided to just migrate back to good ‘ol wordpress. I know they’re the evil corporation of blogs, but they’re also one of the easier ones for me to shuffle off to, so that’s where I’m at. My previous host kept shutting my blog down as AI bots were crawling it constantly creating a bunch of inflated traffic. Then they removed my ability to post pictures (unless hosted at a place like imgur) and still the problems were not solved. I’m paid up until November, so the old version will remain, but all the updates will be here going forward.

EVE – I started playing EVE again. No surprise there. Due to my inactivity I was removed from Signal Cartel (no malice there) and I cannot rejoin until 60 days has passed since I was removed. So far it has only been 32 days. I’m undecided as to whether or not I will re-join. While I do enjoy the corporation, I cannot guarantee my activity levels, and that’s not fair to the corp, really. For now I’m in an NPC corporation and still living in the Wormlife Freeport. I’ve been testing out the ‘new’ feature of PI templates, which is pretty cool (it only took 15 years) but it will also take me some time to create / save templates. Still, I’m thankful that PI got any sort of attention at all.

Wurm Online – Still working on my deed, Quail Landing. This is a castle deed attached to the mainland of Independence. I also created my 3rd deed, over on the Exodus server. This is just a retreat type of deed for when I need a change of pace, or am looking for something ‘new’ to do for a while. Upkeep is set for the next year, so even if I don’t use the deed I can just keep it there and forget about it until I’m feeling that itch again. Yesterday there was a green dragon slaying over on Release that was quite fun to attend, and I also participated in my first rift (well, sort of) this week. I couldn’t attend the actual combat portion, but I did help complete two of the colossus which are part of the pre-event. I earned a lot of rift points, and some rift materials (used for runes). It was fun!

Warcraft – Sadly Warcraft has been my neglected MMO at this point. I keep waiting to hear more news about things like player housing but I feel so out of the loop and I just haven’t had much motivation to log in. When I do log in, it’s for some simple collecting, or just updating a few things. I haven’t done anything re: making gold, or the economy. I think a large portion of this is due to still not finding my ‘people’ in game. I do not have a community I belong to, where as in both Wurm and EVE, I have a somewhat large community of people I can talk with and interact with at any one given time. Still, I’m not ready to cut ties completely. Especially with housing just on the horizon.

Playing anything fun? Avowed? Palworld? Waiting for the latest expansion to your favourite game? Let me know in comments – or as always you can find me these days over on Mastodon and Bluesky.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!