EVE – Page 27 – A Pixel Nomad

The Most Annoying Quest I’ve Done (so far)

It is day one of my attempt to work towards a Stratios BPC – and of course I didn’t research everything properly, but oh well! I’m going for it. This BPC is sold from the SOE LP store, and while I have done the SOE introduction quest chain (there’s 52 quests, it’s a lot) it doesn’t count as LP missions, so I have zero (I believe). I have lots of standing with them though, yay. I searched for the nearest SOE agent and off I went – not realizing that they’re not really a regular agent, they were part of an event chain. I believe it is called Minmatar COSMOS? Whewps.

It was here that I came across the most annoying quest I’ve done to date. The first two missions were simple, transfer some infected militants, kill some things, and then I reached the 3rd and final quest which was to obtain a random drop from Cybertron Patrol/Sentry/Watchman. The thing is, this quest chain went from holding your hand and telling you exactly where to go / what to do – to telling you NOTHING. I had to look it up on the wiki, and even then I got it wrong.

First, I had to figure out what the ‘Contested Minmatar Army Complex’ even was. Thankfully that showed up on the overview, I didn’t even know there were static types of events like this. I activated the first gate, and found myself in a room with two gates. None of the encounters were the one I needed, and my first time through I actually went to the wrong gate, and then spent an hour killing the wrong encounters – no bounty, no loot. Whewps. I warped out and started again. Activated the first gate, found the second gate in BEHIND the gigantic structure blocking my way, decided to stealth, made my way around the structure, and finally activated the gate to the ‘Overrun Security Corridor’ – where I attempted to kill the Cybertron stuff, but there’s all sorts of other things in there, including a group that were too close to where I warped in and were not what I needed at all.

I over pulled on my first attempt, and had to warp off after killing only one Cybertron. I am not sure what I had on me that didn’t like me, but something out of the group of 20 or so angry ships HURT. Due to the nature of gates, I couldn’t just go back to where I was, nope. I had to activate the first gate, sneak around the structure and activate the second gate, and then finally find myself (once more) in the room I needed. This time I was much more careful about my pulling. I killed 15 ships in the system – everything I could see – and did not get the drop.

I waited a few minutes, and a few more encounters that I needed spawned. Eventually, I managed to get the random drop I needed.

This quest was a pain in the ass! Between making sure I was ducking through the right gates, to making sure I was killing the right things (in a mess of other things) and the lack of actual direction or instruction on where I should ever be – oof.

I did walk away with another huge chunk of faction, and a storeline BPC that seemed pretty neat. I suppose that was worth it, but I was still frustrated. Tomorrow I hope to find my way to an actual mission giving agent who rewards LP so I can start that grind.

Fly safe! o7

Stronger Than I Think

For years now I’ve been training skill points in EVE Online, and while I don’t have hundreds of millions like a lot of people who have been playing since 2009, I do feel like I have an ‘OK’ amount (on my main account, at least). The problem is that all of the skill points in the world won’t give you hands on experience and so it’s very difficult for me to judge whether or not a site or encounter is too hard for me.

Since 2015 I’ve been flying a Tengu, but it wasn’t until this round of playing that I decided to spend most of my time in jspace – and even then, I have been incredibly cautious and nervous about doing much combat. Turns out I’ve probably been able to handle C1-C3 sites for some time, I was just too scared to try them. Yesterday I was looking for some relic/data sites to complete on my Tengu, but instead I found nothing but combat sites. I decided ‘why not’ and went for it anyway. The system was a quiet C2 with no one around. I knew people had been there earlier because I found (and then rescued) their drones that were floating away in space. It was just some tech1 drones though. I made short work of the site with very little issue and walked away with 20 million ISK – It’s not the min/max ISK making that people like to dive head first into but it was fun, I learned a lot, and over all that’s a win in my books.

I’ve been talking on Mastodon to some lovely EVE players about what I’d like to work on moving forward. Even though it’s a lot of bling, I really want a Stratios. Instead of just going out and buying one – I thought I could do some dedicated work towards purchasing one. Then Alex suggested that since I enjoy the industry side of things, I should try to earn the BPC from SOE and BUILD my own.

YES!

This idea REALLY appealed to me, I still haven’t done the math on the cost of crafting one vs. the cost of purchasing one, but ideally it SHOULD be cheaper to craft (that isn’t always the case). I think this would be a perfect way to work towards a goal and save a little (or earn a little) ISK. I’m going to get some math done and then hopefully have a string of posts about this newest adventure in the future.

As always, fly safe! o7

My First Superior Ghost Site (sort of)

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

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

My First Shattered Wormhole

Unfortunately I didn’t get into EVE yesterday until just before bed, so I didn’t get a lot of time to explore – but as I left my home in high sec (flying the astero that I won), I figured I had enough time to get a little bit done. I’m so glad I did. I scanned down a WH in my home system and it lead to – another high sec system. So far I’ve never had that happen, I was curious about where it was possibly going to lead, maybe it gave a short cut to some place neat – so I jumped, and found myself around 35 jumps away from home, in a quiet area of space. No one else in local. In that high sec system there were a few more signatures, so I scanned them down and one of the first ones I found was a shattered wormhole system!

I wish I had more time. I jumped in and things were quiet. For a few minutes I just warped around, enjoying the views. There was a beacon, an ice field, and a shattered debris field. I couldn’t scan down all of the signatures (I really wanted to) but I found a relic site and made short work of that, at least.

It was so pretty. I would have loved to stay and scan down more of the signatures, but alas, real life has me waking up early these days and I had to do the grown up thing and get some sleep. It was still pretty exciting.

Speaking of exciting, I’m looking for EVE twitch streamers to watch – if you know of any, let me know in comments! I’m not much of a PVP player, but I’m looking for calm and relaxing streams, family friendly would be great (but I know that’s not always possible). Like-minded folks who spend their time exploring, hacking, pveing (whether in high, low, or null doesn’t matter). Mining, Industry. Those types of things. One person I was watching last night was flying around high sec in a stratios doing ghost sites – woah. They had over 2 billion ISK in their hull from their pillaging. It was neat. Ghost sites are a bit out of my range at the moment, but I’d love to get there eventually. I know the stratios is an expensive bling ship, and there are other ways to work a ghost site, but I’m still new to all of that.

I also watched another streamer who was doing data/relic sites in jspace and I was amazed at how FAST they were. I feel like I’m very slow when it comes to the mini game. I try to be fast, I’m also using d-scan in between every move I make which I know slows me down (but also keeps me safer). They had a smaller audience but I really enjoyed learning how they handled relic/data sites and exploration in general. Since my time is so limited I tend to warp in, bookmark the exit, check for life, and then scan down a site or two until I find a relic/data/something of interest. I don’t scan down the entire system, because sometimes by the time I do that I have to AFK / log for a bit. If I just scan as I go, I usually have time for a bit of ISK making before real life drags me away. On longer game play sessions I would probably adjust this.

Any way, it was a lovely night exploring – and I have some ship goals to work towards.

If you’re looking to return to EVE or maybe to try the game for the first time, keep in mind that you can get 1 million skill points (new and returning players can each get this, one time only) and I have a link on the right hand side of my site you can use! I’ve been back in game for a little over a month now, and it has been a nice addition to my regular gaming habits.

Fly safe! o7