Tag: EVEOnline

Feeling Rushed? Do some Exploration

EVE is not the sort of game that lends itself very well to randomly AFKing all over the place. I mean, in some aspects it does, but not really. Not if you actually want to make good ISK, at least. Yes, technically you could sit around in high sec all day and shoot rocks, and be mostly safe (never 100% safe, there have been HS gankers in my systems lately going after the ice folks) but there’s not a lot of ISK happening with regular asteroid belts, either.

When I know I’m going to be to/from the computer, I normally settle in for some exploration. Having covert ops is a must, I do this sort of exploration either on my tengu, or my helios. The helios is a far lower value ship and does data/relic sites fast and simple – other times I want a little combat mixed in, so I’ll use the tengu.

I warp 100km away from the site, then burn away and create a bookmark 150+km away so that the containers are still on grid, but I can warp to them individually. I check d-scan every few seconds as I do all of this, and I’ll just casually warp from perch -> container -> hack -> loot -> perch. Then repeat. If something comes up IRL, I can warp to the perch and cloak. If I complete the site, I rename the perch into a safe, and I use that if I need to get away from people / rats (especially in the helios). You can’t be uncloaked by mobile disruption units in a wormhole, you CAN be decloaked by other players if they happen to run into you, and that’s why I don’t hang around the wormholes themselves. The chances of someone running into me in a safe are pretty slim. I have sat AFK for hours before when RL wouldn’t let me play but I didn’t want to fly all the way home / log out. Of course if something were to happen and I *was* decloaked and killed, that would all be on me. It’s never 100% safe. Stuff happens. Be prepared to lose ships.

Still, I find doing exploration (specifically in wormholes) incredibly relaxing. Some times it takes me a bit to find a good (ie: unoccupied) site, but at least I don’t have to worry about randomly stepping away.

What’s your favourite thing to do to relax in EVE Online? Let me know in comments, and as always, fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 31: One Month In

I’ve now been based out of an Orca in a random wormhole for just over a month. When I started this challenge it was pretty much on a whim, after having debated with myself about whether or not I wanted to set up a POS. After looking into it (and how much attention a POS could potentially draw to yourself) I decided that living out of an Orca would be a much better idea for my situation. My wormhole has a static high sec connection, and each day brings about a new adventure.

I’ve started using combat probes any time I’m out, and I tend to keep my tengu uncloaked if I’m doing gas huffing or mining on my alt account. I’ve seen people peek into the hole, see my combat probes, the tengu, and the prospect, and they immediately leave. That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Sometimes something bigger will come into the hole – some encounters with Wingspan, and the Wormhole Police, and those guys know what they’re doing far more than I do, so I will warp off to a safe and cloak myself in those instances. I rotate through my safe bookmarks, any time there’s a relic/data site I turn the perch into a safe. Throughout the day I’ll scan down any new signatures that show up, and I clear out the ones that have expired. I have a shared bookmark between my accounts so they can all access whatever is up.

I’ve stopped doing PI in the wormhole I live out of, and instead I’ve moved it to the Wormlife Freeport that I’ve been using. It feels ‘safer’, and so I have two PI alts parked there. Once a week they check to make sure the wormhole is quiet / as safe as it ever is, then they fly around to each of the POCO, collect their goods, and pop out through the high sec static to drop off their loot. If the connection is close to home, I’ll just have them bring it the rest of the way, otherwise I leave it in an NPC station and pick it up later with my marketing character (who is also training into blockade runners).

I’ve started running the combat sites out of C1-C3 wormholes. I feel a bit foolish, but I had no idea that ‘blue loot’ is actually stuff you can sell to NPC for a static amount. I’m pretty sure I’ve been selling mine to players for below average prices. Even better, there’s an NPC station in my high sec home system who accepts them. It’s basically a bounty system but with an item that could potentially be pillaged (or lost) rather than straight ISK. I am not sure if these anomalies escalate, if they do I have yet to see one. I like that it’s guaranteed ISK (unless you get killed, of course) and I realized that the Tengu is actually the perfect ship for what I’m doing. Almost. I am concerned about adding too much bling, so I’m still swapping out for both relic / data analyzers, and I also added a salvager to swap into at the end of the combat sites – it’s not a lot of ISK, but it can add up, and it’s also stuff used for crafting.

Speaking of crafting, that might be something I focus on more in the upcoming weeks. My hangar is just full of BPO / BPC that I’d like to make better use of. A lot of industry is for very low profit, but I’m pretty sure I can find ways to reduce my overhead costs.

As always, fly your way! o7

Local? Not Me

I’m not a huge lover of PVP which makes my decision to play EVE a bit of a confusing matter, I know. Don’t take that to mean that I’m a pushover, though. While I may not actively go out and hunt people, I will employ tactics to protect myself, or to protect a site I want. Here’s what I mean:

Yesterday I was in a WH with my Tengu. I have it fit for combat, but brought along a mobile depot and some relic/data scanner II in case I wanted to swap out. Jumped into a WH (it was right off of HS), there was someone in their capsule in there. Thought that was interesting. Then they jumped into their metamorphosis. I mostly ignored them, scanned down the sites, found three non combat exploration sites (of course I did, since I was fit for combat it just makes sense that I’d find no combat). I took out my combat scanner probes so I could figure out where they were. I also uncloaked, since I was parked in a safe with nothing on d-scan, and they didn’t have probes out, I wasn’t feeling too rushed or in any sort of emergency.

They called me out in local – which I’ve never seen anyone do in a wormhole before. Doesn’t mean it never happens, just that it’s rare. In a WH your local is blank – until you talk. When you talk your picture will stay there in local until you leave / log out & back, etc. It gives hunters some extra knowledge about you. I went to zkill and checked this person out to judge how dangerous they were. No significant solo kills to note, a few group kills, lots of NPC deaths. I decided they were probably harmless. I thought it was cute that they said “I see you” – when I was in a safe, nothing on d-scan. They were just trying to get me to reply, which I didn’t do. Instead I left my combat probes out, and went and set up my mobile depot, swapped out to a relic scanner, and did the sites I had scanned down. I checked d-scan the entire time, used the perch method for extra safety, and cloaked a few times here and there.

Eventually, they left (or logged safely, or whatever) and local was empty once again. The loot wasn’t particularly tasty from the sites I had found (I think it came to around 70 million ISK) but I was glad I stuck to it and didn’t let myself be driven off by someone talking in local. If I had of said something, they could have checked out who I was, and seen that I was 100% carebear with zero kills to my name.

You don’t have to engage in toxic behaviour to play EVE – despite the PVP. Consider your ships are ammo, don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose, and learn the tips & tricks to staying alive. The game has been so much more fun for me this round because I’ve been taking the time to learn all of that stuff. Who knows, maybe I’ll change from my carebear ways in the future, too.

Fly your way! o7

EVE Economy Review: May

I figured I might as well do an economy round up for my ISK earnings in May – these will be slightly higher than my ISK earnings in upcoming months because I had some big time collateral that I sold. I sold a spare Orca (and instead bought a porpoise), sold my tengu (and then bought it back at the end of the month, when will I learn), and bought two Ishtar after getting them blown up (next one I’m building myself, not sure how/why but I have a BPC for it so I might as well).

The above screenshot shows one character, but I actually earned 1b on the other account, too, bringing my total earned to over 7b for the month – very pleased with that. Unfortunately also not sustainable at current levels, but gives me a nice bit to work with moving forward. Ideally I’ll pay for 1 account with PLEX/ISK conversion, and my main account I’ll continue to pay for with RL money. Anyway, where did the money come from / go?

2b came from ratting, that means NPC encounters in space. I did a mixture of this each day, hoping for escalations. Sometimes I got lucky, other times not so much. 2b came from industry / marketing – I’m including PI in this. That means selling drones, selling ships (I didn’t sell many), selling consumables, and I did learn station trading. I also sold a few skins I had kicking around. I think with the changes coming to customization on the 11th of June that the skin market might take a bit of a dip. Thankfully I didn’t stock up on any of those, it’s just items I had sitting around in the hangar. PI was the largest money maker in that regard. Moving to a Wormlife Freeport has been absolutely essential in this process, as doing PI in highsec with 15-20% tax each transaction is absolutely horrible. A little over 1b came from liquidating items I had in the hangar, that includes the Orca, a Tengu (like I mentioned, I bought that back, eep), and some modules that I wasn’t using. I’m trying not to stockpile things too much – and I am absolutely failing at it. I never know when I might need a specific item / fit for a new ship I want to try out. It is what it is.

Exploration rounds out the rest of the ISK profit – keep in mind this is ONLY liquid ISK – this does NOT include inventory value, which I also stocked a lot of because I wanted to keep a lot of exploration items for crafting. I did some mining in there too, but again I’m keeping that for my own crafting use.

One thing I’d like to learn about / maybe do is reactions. I have no idea what these are, or how they work. I’m not sure if they’ve always been a thing, or if they’re ‘new’ to me like compression was. I hear it takes a bit of ISK to invest, and it’s a long term process. Aside from that, I don’t have the faintest idea.

I’d also like to expand my BPO library. Everything I own is already max researched, and while I’ve added a few basics (like the ammo I use, etc) I haven’t picked up anything of extreme value for some time. I’ve looted a few BPO too that I have yet to craft, some are not profitable so I won’t bother, but some are a few million ISK profit for each, and I’d like to clear them out of storage, too.

Overall? I would say 100% of the skills I’ve learned in WoW marketing transfer over to EVE. The products may be different, but the methods of obtaining items and crafting them into other items and then placing them on the market remain the same. In EVE you have a lot more competition since there’s 4 markets in 1 giant server (for the most part) rather than individual servers, and there’s far fewer players in EVE than there are in Warcraft, but I feel like I’m making it work just fine, and coming out ahead in ISK is a good indication of this. At least it’s fun, and honestly, that’s all that matters.

Fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge: Day 25 – Locked out of the Hole

Today marks 25 days living in a wormhole (an Orca as my home base). So far I haven’t come up against too many terrifying situations, but there have been a few close calls. These close calls change day to day, sometimes my connections are to empty lands and I never even see anyone, sometimes they lead to nullsec, lowsec, or near Jita – those days are busy. I’m extra observant and vigilant on those days.

Today I took a bunch of items to high sec to leave for my marketing character to deal with. This character just stays in an NPC corps station bound 90% of the time. She’s trained up a bunch of marketing skills, and she’s also trained in some hauling skills, nothing fancy (for now). When I went back to the WH to jump back in – it had closed behind me while I was doing my thing. Now, this isn’t really a big deal because I always have 2 other characters still in the WH who can probe the new HS entrance, but there’s also a chance that it’s really far away from where I got locked out from, and that was the case today. Since I’m so used to scanning down everything I don’t even bother caring too much if a hole is EOL (end of life).

47 jumps later, I was back safely in the wormhole, surrounded by the comforting black darkness of an empty local channel.

There was a C5 connection that lead to mine, so I decided to check it out. Unfortunately it was a chain that had been picked clean, probably a WH corporation lives up there some where. I followed it for a while, C5 which lead to C5 which lead to C5 which lead to (you guessed it) another C5. When I turned around to head back home, the exit was gone. No big deal, I scanned down a LS exit instead, jumped into that and got lucky, no one was around. Two more jumps lead me back to HS, and 14 jumps lead me back to my WH. It was a lot of traveling and very little profit, but that’s OK. Not all days have to be all about the ISK. Speaking of, I’m doing very well on that front, too. I’ll post more details about that in the future.

What exactly am I doing in this WH? Well, so far I’ve been doing gas huffing, combat sites, mining, data & relic sites, and just general exploration. Each day everything is new, so if there’s people around I tend to either leave up the chain to find some place quiet, or I wait it out. I’m trying very hard not to draw attention to the fact that I’m living in the wormhole, which is why I’m not putting up a POS, and living out of the Orca. The POCO I’m using has low taxes, and PI has been treating me very nicely. So far, this experiment has been lovely! YMMV though, I know from experience it’s difficult to give up the inferred “safety” of high sec.

Fly your way! o7