Venture Adventures!

Recently I've been quite taken with the idea of hopping in a Venture and doing some gas mining. I've always liked the expedition frigates since they were introduced, though I'd never really done much with them aside from one stint of low-sec gas harvesting. However, that was a good while ago (circa 2016, I think) and gas harvesting wasn't particularly profitable back then.

Since coming back I'd heard a little bit about ninja gas huffing in wormholes - basically this is hopping into a wormhole, scanning down a gas site and harvesting it for 15-20 minutes before the Sleepers arrive and crack open your pod to feed on the squishy goo inside. At least, I assume that's what they do.

I hopped into a nearby wormhole in my Buzzard and scanned down a couple of gas sites. The hole seemed quiet - nothing on d-scan, no structures etc. It was just a Class 1 wormhole, so I assumed it was probably unlikely to have someone living in it, as the sites tend to be less valuable and often not worth the risk of losing a ship to a cloaky T3 cruiser.

I jumped back to my home system to grab my Venture, and off we went. Once back in the hole I sat at a safe spot for a while and did some d-scanning - I also popped to a few different spots in the system and did some more d-scanning, but all seemed quiet.

The first site just had a small gas cloud - perhaps someone had been here before? Still, it didn't take long to get through it - I was probably out of there in 10 minutes - well before the Sleepers would arrive. The second site had two fairly large clouds so I was keeping an extra close eye on the timer, along with d-scanning every few seconds to look out for signs that someone else may be in the system - scanner probes, ships etc.

Unfortunately, even the most vigilant d-scanning isn't always enough. About halfway through the second site a Tengu uncloaked and made pretty short work of my poor Venture. I managed to get my pod out, thankfully, and quickly ran back to the security of high-sec space with my tail firmly between my legs.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/92453866/

I spotted the Tengu pilot on the other side of the wormhole and we had a bit of a chat. I always like to do this after someone has killed me - it's usually a good learning experience. Turns out that he'd been in the wormhole and scanned down all the signatures while I was out switching to my Venture. So he knew exactly where to find me when I was gas harvesting, and didn't need to give away his presence by dropping probes etc. I was probably only gone from the hole for about 30 minutes in total, but that was enough. This was quite comforting for me as there was little else I could have done, really - it's all just part of the risk of going into a wormhole in the first place - you never know who will be lying in wait, or how long they've been there.

Still, my assailant was very polite in our conversation, and I got my first WiNGSPAN delivery notification, so that was a new experience!

In terms of loss, a Venture isn't too pricey, and I've built up a bit of an ISK buffer over the years, so a ~30 million loss isn't the end of the world. I'm not sure I'll jump straight back into wormholes right away, but there's more I want to try with this plucky little mining frigate yet.

Notes from the past

Usually when I return to EVE from a long hiatus, I spend the first few days (or even weeks!) trying to figure out what I was doing last time I played. Hours spent trawling through my assets page trying to work out why my stuff is scattered halfway across New Eden. Scrolling through bookmarks, old mail messages and killmails trying to piece things together.

This last hiatus was a particularly long one, and I hadn't blogged since 2012, so there were no clues to be found in these pages either. I remembered some things about my last stint in New Eden, in particular losing a large chunk of ISK to a gate camp (as mentioned in my last blog), but some of the more nuanced stuff eluded me. Things like what I was planning to do, what skills I was training and why, where I had my home station and why... lots of things that I couldn't figure out!

Then the other day I was going through all the menus in the neocom thingy, trying to find the jukebox (I guess that died a long time ago, huh?) when I stumbled across the Notepad. Honestly, I'd forgotten there even was a notepad in EVE, so I was curious to see whether I'd ever written anything in there.

Lo and behold there were actually notes in there! Some API keys, some notes about a wormhole system I must have lived in at some point... and two others that seemed very intruiging.

It appears that past me had thought it would be helpful to write down his plans and what he was aiming for. December was clearly the time I felt most reflective... or maybe it's just something about the winter that makes me want to play EVE? Anyway, the notes themselves were all about what I was planning, where I was and what I was training. Basically the exact information I'd been trying to pull from the depths of my memory for the past week!

So 2014 me wanted to get into Covert Ops ships, mining frigates, battleships and Tech 2 cruisers. I have a vague memory of trying station trading and being awful at it, and to this day my only experience of 'noob pvp' has been me exploding while frantically clicking buttons trying to run away.

Fast-forward to December 2016 and we've got a bit more information here. Seems like I was only an Alpha Clone at the time but I definitely remember upgrading to Omega at some point. And I definitely made it into Covert Ops ships because that got me blown-up in null-sec just before I stopped playing last time.

It's pretty interesting to see my thought process of what to do, as they're all the same questions I've been asking myself this time around too. I've definitely managed to consolidate my assets this time, so that's an achievement of some sort... now I just need to figure out the rest!

I was really happy to find these notes - I find EVE incredibly overwhelming a lot of the time, so being able to have something like this, even if it's a bit lacking in detail at times, was a great find.

I'm not sure if this will have been interesting for anyone who happens to stumble across this blog, but I'm planning to continue writing little notes to my future self while I try and figure out what to do next!

Back in action

Hello fellow space-people.

I am now back in-game after a lengthy hiatus, and thought it might be nice to fire-up the ol' blog again. I think this is probably more for my own enjoyment of EVE rather than anything else. I like going back and reading about what I've been up to, and if anyone else enjoys doing the same then they are more than welcome.

The un-blogged era

The last post in this blog was back in 2012, but my last action in-game was late 2016. I'd returned in the usual fashion, after a friend had started playing again and was having a great time. 2016 was the year of the infamous 'This is EVE' and I have no doubt that it helped to bring me back to the game. I still get goosebumps when I watch that video - "OH MY GOD THAT'S A TITAN!" - love it.

However, my 2016 stint in EVE followed a familiar pattern. I logged in and immediately felt overwhelmed. Questions I'd asked many times in the past came back to me:

• What should I do? 
• Where should I go? 
• Why am I playing?

If you read through previous posts in this blog you'll be able to see the pattern.

Still, back in 2016 I was determined things would be different. I was going to try some new stuff, go to null-sec, not be so afraid to lose ships...

And I actually did all of those things. Exploration was the new thing I tried, and I liked it - it was something a bit different to just mining rocks all day or running missions. And I did it in null sec too! The first time I'd ever spent any real time there. And I also lost some ships.

My biggest and most painful loss was my Covert Ops Frigate packed full of exploration loot, around 600 million ISK worth. That was a lot of money to me, and it was quite difficult to watch it all go up in smoke.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/58016984/

I got caught in a gate camp trying to get my stuff back to high sec to sell. I'd never seen a gate camp before so had no real clue how to get out of one.

That loss sort of took the wind out of my sails a bit. I drifted around in the game for a while longer after that, but I was mostly back to playing skill queue online, and eventually just drifted away again.

Present day

Fast-forward to now and, honestly, I've no idea what's brought me back. I've been working from home a lot due to the pandemic, and EVE seemed like a good way to pass some time in the background on slightly quieter days. I'm currently taking things nice and slow whilst trying to get used to everything again.

So far I've done a little bit of exploration, wandered through a few wormholes, and spent a good couple of days consolidating all my assets. I've got a couple of thoughts in terms of what to do next, but I'll save those for another blog when things have become a little clearer.

For now, it's nice to be back. See you out there!

Daylight!

Well that rabbit hole was pretty interesting. After my mini adventure (which I'm sure is just a normal day for most wormhole dwellers or even EVE players in general) things got pretty quiet in the hole. I was a bit stuck really - Maurice isn't very well-rounded in terms of skills at the moment, with most of his 12m skill points in industry or mission-running combat skills. This meant no scanning skills and very few 'exciting' ship skills. Couple that with the fact that I arrived at the wormhole in an Ibis and you've got a bit of a limited scope of activities.

I decided to head back to empire space and come back to wormholes in the future a bit more prepared. The trouble being that we didn't have a good exit for a few days and my inability to scan anything down led to a weekend of floating around at the POS. Thankfully on Saturday night we found a way out into low-sec which I grabbed with both hands and made the 27 jumps back home.

I do feel a bit like I've emerged back to the surface after being underground for a few days, my eyes desperately straining to readjust to the bright lights. I mean, the light is pretty much the same, but hopefully you get the idea.

The corp is moving to Caldari space from Sinq Laison, so I'm mostly just preparing for that - pulling all my assets together and getting rid of anything I don't absolutely need - more than one 19 jump trip in an Orca wouldn't be particularly welcome! I'm looking forward to the move though - the corp is growing and I'm hoping our new home will allow us to do more things together - I'm hoping to be able to contribute as much as I can too, so we'll see how things turn out.

Hopefully I'll get the move completed tonight and can start settling in... again!

Fly safe, and really, listen to people when they tell you not to go into wormholes without scanning skills!

Back down the rabbit hole

A short while ago (okay, exactly two years and seven months ago) I made a post about my first ventures in wormhole space. It was quite the adventure for a pilot who'd only ever ventured out of high-sec once (with disastrous consequences, I might add). Sadly it was to be a short-lived trip into the unknown as my corp at the time went under not long afterwards, and eventually my time in EVE soon dwindled into nothing. But, fear not, for I have ventured back down the rabbit hole... and here's the story.

Now, at this point I'm going to point out that I'm not always the most pro-active player in a social sense. That's not to say that I don't enjoy talking to people - it's actually one of the things I enjoy most about the game - but sometimes I'm not paying attention or I'm not feeling very sociable or, if it's someone I don't know, I might even be downright shy. So when I decided to say hello to a fellow in alliance chat (which I never usually talk in), I hadn't expected it to consist of more than the following:

Alliance chat fellow > o/
Maurice McPhee > o/ alliance chat fellow

But, to my great surprise, we actually struck up a conversation, which went something like this:

Alliance chat fellow > Oh no, all the grav sites in our wormhole have been popped. Do you want to come and mine them before they disappear?
Maurice McPhee > Yes.

Okay, so I didn't transcribe the whole thing, but the above is essentially how it went. Except I wasn't really as cool about it. In fact I was positively uncool about it and spent much time fretting and panicking and asking 'but what if everything explodes?'. But eventually, I like totally said yes.

So I hopped into an Ibis and made my way the 12 or so jumps to pick up some bookmarks from friendly alliance chat fellow, which led me to the wormhole entrance. They're quite pretty really, aren't they? Anyway, I jumped in thoroughly expecting a barrage of death and mean things on the other side, but it was actually quite serene. I had a couple of systems to hop through and ended up in friendly alliance chat fellow's 'home' system - a C4 with a static C4, if that means anything to anyone.

An important point I somehow missed from the conversation above is that I was here totally alone. Friendly alliance chat fellow had to go away so I was to be mining by myself. However, this was okay as nobody really goes to C4s and wormholes are actually quite safe when compared to stepping out of your front door or driving a car, right?

So, safely at the POS, I stopped to get my bearings and found an empty mining ship. I hopped in a Retriever - I figured as it's likely to explode anyway then it's better to explode something cheap, even if it does mean a little less reward in terms of isk. Everything seemed to be going fine as I prepare to warp to the field to chew some tasty high-end rocks, although something seems to be missing...

Uh oh. Friendly alliance chat fellow has forgotten to give me the bookmarks to the grav sites. And poor Maurice doesn't have any scanning skills. This could be somewhat awkward. I assume at this point that I'm clearly being stupid and the bookmarks will be stored conveniently in one of the hangars or arrays or whatever the hell else they have at this POS. After systematically checking each and every structure or floating-in-space-thingy that might be able to store anything, I'm stumped. I'm in a wormhole with no scanning skills and the only bookmark I have is the one that leads back out the way I just came in. This trip down the rabbit hole is looking slightly uneventful.

BUT WAIT. Seriously, just wait a minute, it's about to get slightly less uneventful.

An alliance mate arrives! I haven't talked to this one in alliance chat so I can't say whether he's friendly or not, but I already talked to one stranger today so why not try two? I strike up a conversation, which goes something like this:

Maurice McPhee > o/
Second stranger I've spoken to today > o/
Maurice McPhee > Do you have bookmarks for the grav sites?
Second stranger I've spoken to today > Yes.
Maurice McPhee > Can I have them?
Second stranger I've spoken to today > Yes.

Sorry, I know that whittled on for six lines of dialogue, but I didn't want to miss anything vital out like I did earlier on. Essentially I followed him to the grav site and we mined and mined and hit the d-scan about eight million times and then mined a bit more. It was all quite uneventful actually. But like, the good kind of uneventful where I don't die.

During this period of blissful uneventfulness I decided to read a few guides about how not to die in wormholes and all of that sort of thing (especially this page over at K162space, which is a very good blog, might I add. It also links to Islands Among The Stars by ArcDragon, which is pretty much all you might need to know about wormholes, probably). I realised I was actually quite enjoying my time in the wormhole and started to believe that my doom might not be quite so impending after all.

I took a little break to eat food and then decided to get back to the mining. The wormhole was filling up (with other friendly alliance people, thankfully) and everything was just dandy. Though apparently a Buzzard - which I later discovered is a type of ship in EVE - had been here earlier poking his nose around. We decided to continue our little mining expedition, but d-scan was being pinged more fiercely than ever. We had eyes on the entrance to the wormhole as well, so there was no possible chance of exploding, right?

Well, at approximately 7, 154 units of Hedbergite a lot of things happened all at once. It went something like this:

7,154 units of Hedbergite + 0.5 seconds > 'wormhole activation!'
7,154 units of Hedbergite + 0.76 seconds > d-scan shows ships that sound mean like Killathron and Damnation and Buzzard... okay, Buzzard isn't as scary, but whatever.
7,154 units of Hedbergite + 0.94 seconds > Warp to POS.
7,154 units of Hedbergite + 0.95 seconds > No, seriously, warp to POS.
7,154 units of Hedbergite + 0.955 seconds > OMG SERIOUSLY WARP TO POS WARP TO POS WARP TO - oh, okay I'm warping to the POS.
7,154 units of Hedbergite + 0.9555 seconds > Killathron, Damnation and SCARY BUZZARD arrive at the grav site, just in time to catch the exhaust fumes (yeah, do they exist in space?) from our Retrievers.

Now, all of that probably happened in a bit more than 0.4555 seconds, but it felt pretty snappy at the time. I hadn't actually realised how close we'd come to total annihilation until strangers two, three and four told me the full extent of what happened, but yeah, turns out these angry-sounding ships had wanted us dead. Us? Peaceful miners just trying to make a living? But WHY?

Anyway, we waited a little while and then finished off our little mining expedition. It was all rather exciting. And now that I've finished rocking back and forth in my chair and clutching pictures of my loved ones, I think I might do it all over again.

Fly safe, and STOP TRYING TO EXPLODE ME.

Re-settling

At this point I'm still settling back into life in EVE after being away for quite some time. I've actually been away from gaming, specifically online gaming, for a little while too, so everything feels a bit strange. Currently I have that familiar feeling that I've had many a time before with EVE which is... what the hell do I do now?!

So I've joined myself a little mining and industry corp with Maurice, and it seems like a nice place to get used to things and get back on my feet. There's a bit of a time zone difference at the moment, but the corp seems to be growing so I think that will improve as time goes on.

Essentially I've just been doing some standard carebear stuff in high sec since coming back, so nothing particularly exciting for anyone who happens to be reading this. Eventually I'd like to do something a little more interesting rather than just selling my minerals, so I'll be doing some reading on research, invention, manufacturing and the like to see if I can make a start somewhere there. I may also give my new CEO a nudge to get some advice.

Right now Maurice is locked away in his quarters reading about Caldari Battleships and how the hell you're supposed to fly them. I figured it'd be useful if I wanted him to move to more challenging missions in the future. He pretty much exhausted most of what I wanted him to learn about mining a long time ago, so I thought a bit of combat training wouldn't go amiss.

So yes, just a brief update on where I'm at. I'm hoping the updates will become more frequent and varied once I start exploring the various things that New Eden has to offer in a little more detail.

Fly safe!

Two and a half years is nothing when you're immortal

So, almost two and a half years have rolled on by since my last post here - it seems like an eternity, but when you consider it in the scope of the entire universe it's actually a really short period of time. So the universe would probably consider this blog to be quite frequently updated. That's if the universe ever thinks about this blog, which I dare say it doesn't... I imagine it's probably got more important things to think about.

Not a lot has happened for me in New Eden in the last two years - mainly because I haven't really been there. Ships have been collecting dust in hangars, asteroids have gone un-mined and NPC pirates have been floating around in deadspace pockets shrugging their shoulders at the fact that nobody has come to blow them up yet.

Still, I've made a return. I'd like to say a triumphant return, but it's probably the other way round... I think it's more that the call of New Eden eventually wore me down and I gave in. So you can consider this as me crawling back on hands and knees, beaten and bedraggled from my time away, begging for you to take me back.

It's been interesting to get back into the swing of things though - a lot has changed in the game with updates and various things, but I won't go into detail as I'm sure I'm one of the least knowledgable people on that subject right now. My old corp, Transminers, has bitten the dust, though that was the case anyway when I went inactive. But, I've got myself a new little group and it's a nice atmosphere, and that's what I'm after, really. More detail about that in another post, probably.

I've whittled my number of accounts down too - I'm only using Maurice McPhee now, and trying to round him out as a character so he's not just about mining and industry - one (or both) of the others might make a return in future, who knows?

So, there we are, an update after such a long time. I'm still not sure what the hell I'm going to focus on in this strange and (for the moment) unfamiliar universe, so that's mostly what I'll be rambling on about.

Fly safe, or however you like, really.