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.

Down the rabbit hole...

It may not be exactly the same type of hole, but I believe the title is quite fitting for the situation that Marek currently finds himself in. But before I begin, let me share a little information about the mysterious Amarrian known as Ebon, Marek Ebon.

(Author’s note: as much as I would often love to drift into ‘in character’ commentary, and may do so in future, the majority of my posts will be strictly ‘out of character’ unless stated otherwise. I’ll most likely mark these with an ‘IC’ tag or something similar. If my writing style does drift between the two into a somewhat ‘grey’ area then I apologise, and hope it isn’t too off-putting. I’m always open to constructive criticism in the comments section, so please feel free!)

As a new player to EVE (prior to all that ‘New Player Experience’ jazz), I found the character selection a little confounding (heh, can you guess it’s my favourite word?). So Marek was a mish-mash of things that I thought were cool in EVE, things that I thought were cool from a bit of RP that I used to do in WoW and things that I felt would be cool if I got into the RP side of EVE, which I haven’t done as of yet. Also, at the time I was particularly drawn to the look of the Amarr ships.

Marek was created with that jumble of ideas in mind and flitted hither and thither between training for different things as I found my way in New Eden. He underwent many periods of inactivity whilst other characters took centre stage, but was also my go-to guy for a lot of my pondering moments when I thought ‘hmm, that’d be good to try… I’ll go get Marek’.

So, when the opportunity to enter the corp wormhole surfaced (finally a high-sec entrance that isn’t 20 jumps away!), Marek was naturally my first choice. So without wishing to rip-off a popular story that later became a popular film too much, there is a certain sense that I’ve been flung down the rabbit hole and now everything is… different.

For a start, our wormhole POS is actually the first one I’ve ever seen, let alone the first one that I’ve had to live out of on a semi-permanent basis. I’ve already started to miss the little things about station life, but the feeling of having that high-sec exit despawn was both peculiar and rather exciting. I’m making the most of Marek’s trip to Wonderland though and have been familiarising myself with wormhole life - scanning sites and exits, hitting the directional scan rather excessively, and finding a new-found appreciation for the Covert Ops Cloaking Device II.

Last night I fitted up a sturdy Harbinger and took on some Sleepers with a corp mate. It was certainly an experience, I can tell you. The Harbinger’s tank was impressive in the first instance, but soon became wholly inadequate, and my fellow pilot and I engaged in a tag-team sort of system to take the heat off. Eventually after a couple of hours I hopped back to the POS and fitted for some remote repair – this allowed my corp mate’s tank to hold out long enough for him (my DPS was severely lacking) to finish off the rats. Once they’d been dispatched, it was simply a question of the salvaging and the hacking, which I bravely stood by and watched…

It’s been a good first couple of days in the wormhole – I know exactly what skills I need to train now, so I’ll be looking at getting those within the next week, and then it’ll be a trip out to Empire space with a shopping list as long as this blog post to make sure that I’m fully prepared.

I just hope we don’t have any odd visitors wishing to involve me in an oddly skewed, sci-fi version of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Although it does raise the question of what the EVE answer to ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ would be – anyone know if the Caldari Navy are keen authors?

Fly safe, and I'll see you on the d-scan.

A little more detail...

Well my last post was a little sparse in terms of the above mentioned and often appreciated detail, so hopefully this one will tip the scales back in the favour of you information lovers out there!

So, last time I mentioned that I’d made the move to a new corporation. But, in the interest of detail, let me tell you a little about my old corporation, which I was rather fond of. The short-lived Jucucu-Wix Inc. [JUCU] was home to myself and a good friend of mine, and served as our own little haven away from the hustle and bustle of the larger corporations. We ran some missions, we mined some ore and we had a good laugh. It was all fun, but a two-man corporation can become a little lonely, especially when one of you is out-of-game for a while or has other commitments. And this seemed to be the case for us. I was struggling to find the motivation to do things. I’m very much a team player, and I was seriously lacking a team.

In one of my regular ‘argh, there are 250 unread posts in Google Reader that I need to get through’ moments, I stumbled across this post over at Carebear in disguise. Intrigued, I resolved to get in touch in-game and see if we had similar goals. A few short chats later and the TransMiners [TM-50] corporation ticker was proudly displayed next to my jet cans as I filled them with ore. The corp is just what I’ve been looking for, really - small enough to retain that sense of community and team work, but with enough direction to give me a goal to work towards and give me a reason to log in.

Of course, I’m still settling in and finding my feet in my new surroundings, and my own play time has taken a hit recently with some awkward happenings outside of New Eden, but I do think I’m going to like it here. If you think you might be interested, I'd encourage you to read the post I linked to above, and get in touch to have a chat!

On a sentimental note, the [JUCU] banner still flies (albeit limply), with my friend choosing to remain in the corporation for now. And I have a rarely-used alt taking up residence there too, that’s when he’s not sitting in an Atron in-system with Maurice making sure that all of Mr. McPhee’s leadership and yield-boosting skills are being utilised to the full.

That's enough detail for now - I hope any of you who are reading this out there have been pleased with my attempt – hopefully you’ll see lots of interesting posts (packed with detail, naturally) from my new home in TransMiners now that I’m fully functional in EVE again.

Until then, fly safe!

Some changes

Well, it's been a busy week in and out of game for me.

Out of game I've had a few things going on and haven't really had too much time to log in, but when I have been around I've mainly been working on getting myself set up with a new corporation. When I started the blog a few weeks back I was in a small 2-man corporation made up of me and a friend of mine. We were enjoying pottering around in a quiet corner of Gallente space for a while, but I was struggling without having anything real to work towards.

So I made the decision to move to a new corporation. I'll follow up with another post concerning details and such when I'm a little more settled in the new place, but it certainly feels a little more active. It's still a small group, which I like, but I think there'll be more room to grow and hopefully achieve some more goals.

Anyway, just a very short update. Hopefully there'll be more to come when I have more time in game and start joining in with some corporation activities.

Until then, fly safe.

EVE Blog Banter 16 - What Have You Got To Lose?

Welcome to the sixteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: “Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?”

My first attempt at this Blog Banter business, and the topic seems quite fitting, given my recent return to EVE and the new approach that I'm adopting (or trying to, at least!).

In the good old days, I mostly sat in station, spinning my ships. The corp is running a mining op? I'll sit in station. The corp is running some missions to get standings up? Yeah, I think I'll sit in the station. Wait, we're moving to null-sec? Okay, I'll... sit in the station. The corp is having great fun in null-sec? Yeah, well these Level 1 missions are really important. And now I'm going to sit in the station.

I think you get the idea. Basically, I wanted to do all those things, but I was worried that I was too much of a noob, didn't know enough or didn't have the skills to contribute. So I ended up doing only what I was comfortable doing, watching all the new recruits with much younger characters than mine hop into a Rifter and head to null-sec to join the fun. Eventually the game got stale for me and naturally, I quit. Why didn't I just get involved?

What did I have to lose? A bit of ISK, perhaps a bit of pride?
What did I actually lose? A whole load of time, and I missed out on a whole load of fun.

So, fast-forward to the present day, and I'm attempting to put that approach behind me. This game is there to be played, and there are a number of ways to play it. But to do any of them well, you have to get involved. Join a corp, ask stupid questions, get blown up, get podded, lose some ISK. have some fun, have some banter and know that you're getting the most out of this awesome game. I fully intend to learn from my mistakes above, and hope to get out there and enjoy things a little more.

So, new players out there that might be sitting in station when an opportunity arises, ask yourself... what have I got to lose?

Fly safe folks, and when you pod me after blowing up my laser-fitted, hull-tanking Dominix, give me a 'GF!' in local whilst I wake up in a station with a warm, fuzzy feeling that at least I tried.

Other participants in this month's banter:

• Yarrbear Tales
• Rantuket
• Hands Off, My Loots
• A Merry Life and a Short One
• A Mule In EVE
• The Planet Risk Show
• Zero Kelvin
• EVE Opportunist
• Diary of a Space Jockey
• EVOGANDA
• Into the Unknown With Gun and Camera
• A Memoir From Space
• Death’s Sweetest Kiss
• Prano’s Journey
• Freebooted
• Learning to Fly
• Caldari Outcast
• Autopilot Disabled
• Finders & Keepers
• Kirith Darkblade – EvE Pirate
• Facepalm’s Ramblings
• Nullsec Carebear
• Roc’s Ramblings
• Flashfresh – A Pirate
• The Clan Oriana
• I am Keith Neilson
  
  More to follow...

Back to mission-running

My new net connection was finally hooked up this week, so I managed to get some decent time online with a stable connection, rather than a friend's less-than-reliable WiFi. I felt that missions were a bit of a risk with all the lag and disconnects that came with that connection, so I spent most of my time mining instead. However, that's all changed now that I'm up and running properly again.

I decided to celebrate by doing my first level 4 mission in about a month. So out came Carmelius and Marek, the mission-running duo. Carmelius in his Dominix and Marek supporting in a Hurricane. I was a little rusty on the combat side of things (I know they're only NPCs but hey, I'm slow) but it didn't take me too long to get back into some sort of rhythm. Carmelius warps in, grabs the aggro and then sets the drones to work. Marek joins him shortly afterwards and sets his own drones to work, whilst tearing everything else apart with his autocannons. Once they're done, they both jump into their dedicated salvage Destroyers and salvage and loot quick-time before the ninjas arrive.

I managed to work my way through the series of 'In the midst of deadspace' on Wednesday, and whilst there were no bounties available (I was shooting Caldari and Amarr ships), the loot and salvage added up to a nice pile of ISK. The only problem is now decided what I'm actually going to use the ISK for!

And therein lies my current problem. Which direction to take in the game? I can run level 4 missions without any trouble now (unless I get complacent) so that's a good money-maker, but what's the use in being able to make cash if you have no reason to spend it? I think I need more of a focus, maybe:

• Manufacturing?
• Wormhole living?
• Trading?
• PvP?

Not quite sure which path to take yet. I guess I'll meander around for a little while longer until I decide!

Mini mining op

So with Marek’s mining barge skills advanced enough for him to hop into a Retriever, I decided it was time he joined Maurice on a mini mining op. I’m not sure two miners can really justify the title of an op, but it’s about the most I have at my disposal right now.

I got a little paranoid about my extensive jet-canning after reading Mick Flaherty’s ‘How old is old enough to know?’ post over at Life in the Hole, and decided that Carmelius could take a break from studying Drone Interfacing V and hop in his Iteron III to come and help too. It’s a quiet system, but with two miners I stood to lose a lot more to a pirate than I did with one.

So we got to chewing through some rocks. Marek’s mining ability isn’t great, and it made me think back to the early days of Maurice’s mining attempts. Thankfully Maurice can bring in a lot more ore, so we were able to get through our little section of the asteroid belt in just over an hour. We even had a fleeting appearance from my corpmate mining in his Exqueror before he moves onto a barge in the next few days. Didn’t spot another capsuleer for the entire night, so the cans would have been safe. But I guess it pays to get into good habits early on.

Perhaps not the most thrilling of nights in New Eden, but helped me to get to grips with running three accounts at once and learning (or re-learning) a few aspects of the game that had drifted from my mind over periods of inactivity. Hopefully with a few more of these ops the corp can build up a nice stack of minerals or ISK in preparation for whatever we decide to do once we’re properly on our feet in EVE again.

Safe travels!

In the beginning...

After becoming severely addicted to many of the fantastic EVE Online blogs out there, I figured it might be a good idea to start my own. Just reading about other players' experiences in the game adds huge value to EVE for me, so hopefully one day people might read of my own humble adventures and gain some sort of enjoyment.

So, a little about me then. I've been playing EVE on and off for about two years, but that really only equates to a few months of active play time, what with starting, quitting, real life issues, starting again, internet issues, quitting.. I'm sure you know the drill. So here I am again, consciousness transferred into two (occasionally three) separate pods:

Maurice McPhee - a miner and industrialist hovering around 8m SP at this point in time. Rarely out of an industrial ship unless he's grinding level one missions looking for the elusive 'Break Their Will'...

Carmelius Hove - a mission runner, currently doing his best to tear apart Serpentis ships in his work for the Gallente Federation.

Marek Ebon - the very definition of a support character. Generally helps out the above two with whatever they might need, whether it's mining support for Maurice or some extra fire power if Carmelius gets into a sticky situation.

I'll be focusing mainly on these characters, and the game in general, for this blog, whilst at the same time trying to figure out what path I'd like to tread in New Eden.

For now, fly safe!