OGREI

I've recently moved into a new corporation, Omni Galactic Resource Excavation Inc.  Their headquarters in Brapelille are 15 jumps from where I used to live, and the place they're mining at right now for a contract is nearly thirty jumps out.  I've moved my most important stuff to Brapelille, a Mammoth and a Covetor to Kuomi, where they're currently mining, and have the rest of my stuff courier contracted to Red Frog Freight for whenever they can pick it up.  I spent maybe three hours moving, which isn't bad at all in the grand scheme of things.

I'm currently living in Kuomi, which is a 0.6 system in Amarr space.  There are quite a few nice things about  living here, actually.  Among them:

• The asteroids here are much better than where I was before.  Instead of Veldspar, Plagioclase, Scordite, and Omber, we've got Pyroxeres, Kernite, Scordite, and Veldspar.
• We're fairly close to the Amarr trade hub, making it easy to get anything we might need.
• Only two jumps out from lowsec.  I've been meaning to go on solo Rifter roams into lowsec for quite a long time.  Now I finally have the chance to do it.
• In Amarr space, meaning the SP I've put into Amarr ships will come in very valuable for missions and the like.  I don't think too many other people in my corp have it trained up all that much, although I could be wrong.  Amarr ships don't seem to be very popular for some reason.

Now for the nice things about the corp:

• They've got many more active members than my old corp. Granted, a lot of these guys are new recruits like myself, so my guess is that activity will taper off somewhat as time passes. But there were still 19 people in the corp channel last night, and I like seeing that.
• We held a pick-up mining up last night, and ended up with 4 mining ships being boosted by an Orca that was actually in the field with us.  I don't think I've ever been to any sort of op in EVE before, and it was very cool.  We mined out one asteroid field and were about halfway done with another when I had to log off.  And I actually had fun mining, which doesn't happen very often.
• They seem pretty well-organized and have good ideas for keeping members active.  One guy sent out a mail saying he would give a PLEX to whoever mined the most in the next month.  I think that this sort of enticement is a good way to keep people focused.

This post wouldn't be complete without thanking all of the people who helped me out in my old corp/alliance.  So Johann Rascali, Rastuasi, ZORRODEN, Hoss ... thanks.  You all taught me how to play EVE, and without your help I probably wouldn't still be playing this game.

Finally, I've gotten to the point where I don't feel like a newbie any more.  So this blog needs a renaming.

Finally an Update

Well, it's been a while, but I'm back again.

So, what's happened to me?

• I went the battleship route, and lost my Maelstrom on my first time out soloing an L4 mission.  Turns out I didn't really have the skills to come anywhere near to flying the thing properly and my fit was rather screwed up.  I took a two-month long break from EVE while my skills trained, and came back.  Now I have another Maelstrom that can tank what most L4 missions can throw at it.
• I can fly a Hulk, although I don't quite have the skills to use Tech II Strip Miners and crystals yet.  Still need Mining V and some of the asteroid-specific refining skills.
• I'm leaving my current corp, Crunchy Crunchy, for a place called OGREI.  I've moved all the essentials myself and have contracted Red Frog Freight to do the rest for me.  My current corp also got wardecced a few hours after I submitted an app to OGREI, which is too bad.  The excitement might have kept me in Crunchy for a while longer if I hadn't already been committed elsewhere.
• My Mammoth blew up this morning in a belt while I was afk.  I lost my Hoarder many months ago in a very similar fashion, so you'd think I'd have learned my lesson, but I'm afraid not.  Oh well.  It's not like Mammoths are too expensive anyways.
• I've gotten some Amarr ships.  I've got their T1 frigate lineup, an Arbitrator, and a Harbinger.  I think I'll be getting an Apocalypse soon too, especially as I'm now living in Amarr space.

Anyways, that's the grand scheme of how my EVE life is going.  I'll go into more detail on the corp change when I get around to posting next.

Tech II Frigate or Battleship?

So, I'm in a bit of a quandary.  Right now, I'm improving my mining skills, as a good source of ISK is always needed, but after I do this, I'm going to need to make a choice.  I know I want to get into a new ship class - the question is, what?  The two things on my mind are a PvP-geared Assault Frigate or a mission-running battleship.

Let's take a look at the rundown of the pros and cons.

Battleship (Maelstrom)

Pros

• It's a battleship.  It's big, mean, nasty, and I would feel great knowing that I own one.  When I started playing EVE, I thought that owning a battleship wasn't something I would ever really achieve, and if I actually got there ... well, wow, I will have impressed myself.
• Owning a battleship will put me on a more even footing with fellow corpmates and alliance members.  Currently, I run level four missions fairly often with a really nice guy called ZORRODEN, who basically lets me mooch off of his missions.  I can help out some in a Hurricane, but I could do a whole lot more with a Maelstrom.  Also, I'll finally be able to tank plenty of damage on my own without having to warp out once the aggro gets serious.
• I might be able to solo some level four's.  The harder ones like Angel Extravaganza are out of the question, but I'll be able to fit a Tech II tank, so I think I should be all right for the easier ones.  Even half the ISK from a level four is quite a bit, and the amount I would get from soloing them is massive compared to what I can earn now with level three's.
• Finishing up the basic Minmatar progression would give me a sense of closure over the whole thing, sort of a clean slate to go wherever I want.  I think I'll be sort of relieved once I'm out of the frigate -> cruiser -> battlecruiser -> battleship line.  My focus for my first eight months in EVE has been on climbing this ladder, and getting to the top and being able to look around more closely at my other options will be nice.  I realize that this is basically a self-imposed limit that's pretty stupid, but try as I might, I can't break it.
• I think it's what I *want* to do, if you know what I mean.  My gut feeling is to go with the Maelstrom and see how things turn out.

Cons

• A Maelstrom costs two hundred million ISK.  For me, that's a lot, as much as I can make in about five good days.  It also means that I have to be prepared to lose the thing as soon as I purchase it, which will be difficult.  I don't think it will crush me if I get ganked my first time out with my new toy, but it will be hard going.
• I won't have the skills to fly it well for a very long time.  T2 large guns alone is far over a month's training time from where I'm at right now.  I also need to work on my drone skills, navigation skills, and especially missile skills. However, my shield tanking is pretty decent, so for mission running, I should be all right on most of them.  In almost all the missions I've done so far, tank is much more important than gank.
• It will put me back on my plans to head into lowsec for a while.  I'll explain those in detail in a later post, but suffice to say that my schedule will probably be thrown back by at least two weeks if my calculations are right.

Assault Frigate (Jaguar or Wolf)

Pros

• It's cheap. A Jaguar is just thirty million ISK a pop, although I'm not sure about the Wolf.  I can afford to lose a few of them and it won't bother me very much.
• I've been vaguely wanting to fly Assault Frigates since before I got my first cruiser.  It's not a strong desire, but it's there.
• It will force me into T2 guns.  Considering that I always consider the "Recommended" certificates as a prerequisite to buying something, I will finally have the skills to use T2 Small Autocannons by the time I get into one of these.  I'll need T2 guns and ammo to go into PvP if what I've heard about it is correct.
• On the same note about the certificates, I'll have to train some Gunnery support skills that I've needed for a long time.
• The most important pro is that getting several of these is one of the several things I want to do before I head into lowsec.  It's basically sticking to the plan that I made for myself and not wandering off of it as I too often do.

Cons

• I don't want it as much as I want a Maelstrom.  Something in my head is telling me that this is the most important thing and that I'll be unhappy buying a Jaguar/Wolf before the battleship.
• I'm not sure which Assault Frigate I want - as far as I can tell, the Jaguar is more like a versatile jack-of-all-trades while the Wolf is a heavy damage-dealing brawler.  I can see where the Jaguar's extra mid slot would come in very useful, but at the same time I like the idea of hitting my opponent very, very hard.  I mean, the word "Assault" is in Assault Frigate for a reason.  If I end up buying the wrong one and then regretting it ... well, they're cheap, but still ....
• Although 30 million ISK is not all that much, I suspect it will begin to add up once I start losing these frigates in combat.  I've been thinking about using Tech II-fitted Rifters instead and just using Assault Frigates when a little extra muscle is called for.

Daily Update #3

I started out the day a little bit before downtime, with a bit of mining in my Covetor, then went ratting in my Rifter.  The rats were relatively plentiful, and I ran into one that dropped me some faction ammo as loot.  I've never seen faction ammo before, so ... sweet.  I doubt I'll be using it any time soon, but I guess it's nice to have around.

I finally fitted some Medium Cargohold Optimization I rigs on my Mammoth, which it has honestly needed for several months.  The cost was slightly shocking - 18 million ISK, putting me down to a wallet with just 35 million ISK inside.  I spent most of my morning running a single, very difficult level four mission with a corpmate and then salvaging it.  It got me about 30 mil from the bounties, reward, and salvage, so I was fairly happy.

After this, I hauled all of the minerals I had mined over to the nearest trade hub in my Mammoth.  I had about seventy thousand meters cubed, and my Mammoth only holds a little less than a jetcan.  The three trips of five jumps took about forty-five minutes, but the payout at the end was worth it.  I ended the day with about 112 million ISK to my name.

I did a little bit of mining in my Covetor, about half of a jetcan, before I called it quits for the day and logged off.

All in all, not very interesting.

Daily Update #2

A while ago, I promised to do daily updates when nothing really worthy of a full post happened that day.  Obviously, I've sort of failed at fulfilling that promise, but hopefully I can start fixing that now.

Anyways.... what happened to me today?  Really, not that much.

I spent a few hours mining in my Covetor and pulled in about four jetcans of ore, more than I've ever been able to do in one sitting before.  In general, stuff was pretty boring, but after refining the ore, the estimated price was 43 million ISK.  Considering it usually sells for a lot more in the nearest trade hub, I've made back all of the money I spent yesterday.  So, cool beans.

Annoying Loki

I had an encounter with a Loki today that showed me I have no idea what I'm doing with my D-Scan. I was sitting around in the early morning, right after downtime, and a guy belonging to what looks like a pirate corp jumps into the system.  It takes me about thirty seconds to check all his standings and his corp, which is way too long if you ask me, especially since at that hour we were the only two people in the system.

I use my D-Scan, but my settings are messed up and it doesn't work like it should.  It takes me another ten seconds to get it working properly, and I finally manage to see what sort of ship he's flying.  It's a Loki, which meant that I wasn't really in any danger from a gank, but I didn't realize that at the time.

He keeps popping in and out of my D-Scan every few minutes or so.  I know that he can't be jumping in between systems, because his name never vanishes off of local.  I figured he was just docking and undocking from the system's one station, but just to make sure I align to it and put D-Scan on sixty degrees.

He doesn't show up.

In the end, he left, but for the entire time he was in the system, I had absolutely no idea where he was.  I probably could have been dead several times over if he had meant me any harm.  As I later found out from people I was talking to, his ship was far more expensive than mine and posed no threat to me, but if he had had any bad intentions, my Covetor would now be forgotten space debris floating around an asteroid belt.

Lessons Learned

I asked a whole lot of questions about staying safe while mining and about the D-Scan, and I learned some very valuable lessons.

• D-Scan does not show range on objects that do not appear in your overview.  I didn't know that before.
• I should keep the D-Scan window below where I have local chat positioned, on the lower left side of my monitor.  Whenever I mine, I should always be using it.  I like to think of it as a radar warning reciever, the thing that tells aircraft if a missile or other aircraft's fire-control radar is trying to lock on to them.
• I should find a belt where the system's stargates and stations are all further away than the D-Scan's maximum range, and warp out if I see any combat ships show up.  If I can't find a belt that far out, I should drop the range on the D-Scan to be below the distance between me and the nearest gate or station.

Other Stuff

I forgot to bookmark a jetcan and ended up running around nearly every belt in the system trying to find it again.  Part of the confusion is that my corporation has bookmarks in the asteroid belts where they can be mined out without having to move very much.  Since I tend to mark belts by how many slots down they are in the drop-down menu, that means that "the third belt" can be two very different places depending on which menu I used.  I need to remember to save my cans' locations.

Covetors, Warriors, and Crunchies

So, today has been my first day playing EVE in about a month and a half.  I'm rusty but I'm having a lot of fun getting back into the game.

First things first.  The amazing friend spoken of in my post earlier today got all my Core skills up to Standard (look at the certificates if you don't know what that means) and trained up the prerequisites for both T2 Warrior drones and a Covetor, among other things.  Anyways, I had a lot of shiny new stuff I could use, which unfortunately meant I had to spend my shiny ISK.  I guess to get something shiny you have to give up something shiny?

All in all, I shelled out about fifty million ISK today.  For some of you, that might not sound like much, but for me, it's almost exactly half my savings.  With it, I bought a Covetor, five T2 Warriors for it, and a poor man's fit.  It's not exactly the most intelligent thing I could have done with my money, as I'll be able to replace almost all of the T1 modules on that barge in just a few days with T2, but I think I've already made up a lot of the price.

Covetors

Anyways, time for the ever-present fitting rundown.  I don't have a snazzy graphic for this one because I'm on an iPad and you can't really do that sort of thing very easily.

Do Not Pass Go (Covetor, Asteroid Mining)

High Slots

Strip Miner I

Strip Miner I

Strip Miner I

Mid Slots

Survey Scanner I

Low Slots

Expanded Cargohold II

Mining Laser Upgrade I

As you can see, this is hardly an inspired fit.  After the new changes to mining barges, which I really didn't know anything about at the time I made this fit, I think the Expanded Cargohold II is kind of useless.  I'll probably be replacing it with another MLU as soon as I can.  If there is a use for it, can someone tell me?

This Covetor hauls in so much more than my old Scythe that the two don't really compare.  I can fill a jetcan in about 30 minutes with this thing without even trying, while it took about 45 with my Scythe if I was really paying attention.  That's the other nice thing about the Covetor - the cycle is a lot longer on the Strip Miners, meaning I've got more time to check D-Scan and local chat, talk to corpmates, and do whatever else I want to before I have to pull ore from my hold into the jetcan.  The ore hold can also hold two Strip Miner cycles, compared to my Scythe, which could only hold one cycle of Miner II's.  Basically, it leaves a lot more room for me to mess up.  And that's good, because I mess up a lot.

I managed to mine two jetcans in about an hour and a half this morning, counting the time I used to piddle around with skillbooks and find my Mammoth, which I had left lying around in a forgotten station a few jumps away.  Overall, mining with the Covetor is a lot more profitable and a lot more relaxed than mining with the Scythe, and I like it much more.  I suppose I'm a bigger target for gankers, but I mine in a very quiet system where it's usually just me and the alliance members plus about three random people. I'm also sometimes in a group with more experienced players who have a better idea of when to run than I do.

Warriors

On to my new T2 drones.  Honestly, I've forgotten how my old T1 ones performed because it's been so long, but the T2's are supposed to be a big step up.  Either way, they've served me pretty well.

I was surprised to learn that the Covetor had 50 meters cubed of drone space, and I quickly filled half of it up with five Warrior II's. The other half I planned to fill with mining drones, but was surprised again when I discovered you needed a separate skill to fly mining drones.  So those will have to wait until I get around to training it.

Right after buying my drones, I warped into a belt and ran into five Angel Cartel rats.  Three were the normal combat frigates, but the other two were a miner and an industrial.  Unfortunately, I've forgotten their names, but I'd never seen either of those ship types before and I wasn't sure what they were.  Since those two weren't targeting me, I was afraid to release my drones lest they got a bit banged up.

Finally, I chose to just let the drones out and hope for the best. As expected, the three combat ships were easy work and I moved on to the miner and the industrial.  I finally realized what they might be when my drones destroyed the miner without it firing a shot, and my suspicions were confirmed when I asked about it in Alliance chat.   Unfortunately, the industrial warped out before I could kill him, but the miner had nice loot for a frigate.

Nothing too important, but I thought it was interesting.

Crunchies

All right, you might be thinking.  I get why you said "Covetors" - that's a mining barge.  And "Warriors," because those are drones.  But "Crunchies"?  What in the world is a Crunchy?

Good question.  My corp's name is Crunchy Crunchy, and I was trying to think up some nice-sounding name for this blog post.  I knew I wanted to talk about my Covetor, my drones, and my corp.  But "Covetor, Warriors, and Crunchy Crunchy" or "Covetor, Warriors, and Corp Stuff" didn't really have a flair to it.  So I will hereby call my corpmates Crunchies, because it sounded cooler in a blog post title.  I've got great priorities, no?

You also might be wondering why my corp's name is Crunchy Crunchy.  Another good question.  And the answer is that I have absolutely no idea.  I'll have to ask my CEO.

Anyways, time for me to get to the point.

My CEO and some members of the corp and alliance have decided to move into lowsec space.  Quitea few of them are veteran PvPer's - one has owned a Rorqual and some other capitals before, and participated in battles with scores of supercarriers involved.  So to them, lowsec probably isn't much.  Some of them went in, checked out the system we were thinking about, and all seems well, so some of us are going to be living over there now.

I have to say that I really like the idea of living in lowsec.  It's got more danger, but I'm surrounded by nice people who know a lot about this sort of stuff and are more than willing to teach me the ropes.  And I know I can make more cash in lowsec if we manage to get a mining op set up there.  I've wanted to PvP in EVE for a while, and now it seems like I may have my chance.

However, I have a few problems.  For one thing, I have no working microphone.  I bought a new one a few weeks ago while I was travelling (nice microphone for a price I'd never get back home), but then the airlines destroyed it by rough baggage handling on the flight back.  I've got nothing else that works, so that means I'm more or less unable to communicate quickly and effectively when I really need to.  I'm pretty sure I'll be able to pick up a cheap mic in the next two or three weeks, and considering I'm low on ISK right now, I might want to make a few hundred million to spend on new frigates and cruisers to PvP in.

The other thing I'm not entirely sure of is the distribution of corp members across our old base in highsec and our new one in lowsec.  I know some people have elected to stay behind, but I'm not sure how many.  I don't think I want to be out there without a few guys around to back me up, but my lowsec moneymaking potential will be seriously gimped if one member's decided to move into lowsec.  Currently, he refines and hauls my ore for me (same guy who was nice enough to train my skills while I was gone), and while I can do a reasonably okay job hauling to the nearest trade hub with a Mammoth, my refining and trade skills are terrible.

I'm not entirely sure what to do right now.  I think I'll clear up on the uncertainties I have on where everyone is going before I make a decision.  Right now I'm leaning towards staying in highsec until I can get another headset, though.

I'm back!

After spending seven weeks away from home, I'm finally back in my own house.  It's quite lovely really.  I was getting sick of travelling.  Anyhoo...

I got a new headset to replace my old one that hasn't worked in months, only to discover that the airline baggage people shattered the plastic attaching one of the earpieces to it.  Unfortunately, that earpiece also has the microphone on it, and I'm not sure if it works any more.  It was hanging by a wire when I took it out of my suitcase.  I'll try to glue it back to something semi-functional, but chances are I've just lost myself about thirty bucks.

I entrusted my account to a friend for the time I was gone, and he kept my skill training going.  I know that I can now use Tech II light drones thanks to him, and I've gotten a lot closer to being able to get in a mining barge.  I've got about 6.5 million skill points now if EVE Gate is to be trusted, which I sort of doubt.  Earlier it was telling me I had 12 million.  If said friend ever reads this, you are awesome.

As I write this EVE is about to undergo its daily maintenance, but I can't wait to get back into the game.  Hopefully you'll all be seeing an actual EVE-related post (imagine that!) in the next few days.

What I'm Doing

Y'all might be wondering why I haven't posted much in the past few weeks.  Well, I'm in Spain right now and don't have much time for playing EVE; also I don't even think I can get it working over here, although I might be wrong on that. I'll be here for another seven weeks or so; don't expect me back until August.  There's a chance I might get pleasantly surprised and find a way to play EVE, but I doubt it will be happening.

Drop the Hammer

On Friday, I boarded my first battlecruiser, a Hurricane.  My first impression of it was that it looked simply amazing compared to most Minmatar ships, kind of reminding me of an Imperial Star Destroyer without the prominent bridge.

I did a few important things with my Hurricane fit.  The first is that it's armor tanked; I've never done that on a ship before and I didn't really know how to do it.  I looked up a fit on Battleclinic that had an armor tank and a few likes, figured, "This guy must know more than me," and went ahead with it.  The second important thing is that I've gotten sick of artillery and gone back to autocannons.  While artillery might be safer, I find in-your-face autocannons that allow you to actually see the enemies you're shooting at much more fun to use.  And since it's a game, the point is to have fun, right? The final thing I've done is fitted it out with largely Tech II modules, something I've never done before.  I figured it was smarter to wait until I had my armor tanking skills up and I could use all of the Tech II goodies for my fit.

---

Drop the Hammer [Hurricane, PvE]

So, without further ado, here is my fit (and the ever-present picture).

High Slots

220mm Medium Prototype Automatic Cannon I [EMP M, Fusion M, Titanium Sabot M, Phased Plasma M]

220mm Medium Prototype Automatic Cannon I [EMP M, Fusion M, Titanium Sabot M, Phased Plasma M]

220mm Medium Prototype Automatic Cannon I [EMP M, Fusion M, Titanium Sabot M, Phased Plasma M]

220mm Medium Prototype Automatic Cannon I [EMP M, Fusion M, Titanium Sabot M, Phased Plasma M]

220mm Medium Prototype Automatic Cannon I [EMP M, Fusion M, Titanium Sabot M, Phased Plasma M]

220mm Medium Prototype Automatic Cannon I [EMP M, Fusion M, Titanium Sabot M, Phased Plasma M]

Experimental XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I [Scourge Assault Missile]

Experimental XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I [Scourge Assault Missile]

Mid Slots

Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
10MN Afterburner II

Low Slots

Medium Armor Repairer II

Armor Thermic Hardener II

Armor Thermic Hardener II

Armor Kinetic Hardener II

Armor Kinetic Hardener II

Gyrostabilizer II

---

I didn't actually realize the importance of the hardeners until yesterday morning, treating them more like an afterthought than the central part of my tank. To be honest, I never turned them on until yesterday, so they were basically shiny little module icons ornamenting my HUD and nothing else.  Basically, I was flying a tankless ship without even knowing it.

I started off on Mission of Mercy, a Level Two mission that had about 6 Mercenary Tech II Frigates and 6 cruisers.  Needless to say, they immediately began spamming missiles at me, but since every other Level Two I had done had been a piece of cake for my Hurricane, I assumed the same would happen with this one.  How wrong I was.

My happy-go-lucky attitude led to me almost losing my shiny new battlecruiser in its first few days out.  They were halfway into my armor in about twenty seconds, and I didn't even turn my repper on until they had done a sizable chunk of damage.  Stupidly, I waited until they had almost finished off my armor before attempting to warp out, with the result that I left with a flaming ship and came back with a 700k ISK repair bill. (I repaired the armor with my armor repper, but I don't have any hull reppers.)

After this, the only thing I could think of was to try to do a hit-and-run type of thing, where I would pick off one or two of their ships until I dropped the DPS to an amount my ship could handle.  I was generally able to take out two of the frigates before I had to warp out each sortie, and then I moved onto the cruisers.

Now I had a problem. My DPS wasn't high enough to take out a cruiser.  By the time I had knocked out one of the cruisers, the others would be well into my structure, and I would have died before I could warp out.

Desperate, I turned to my corpmates for help.  One of them knew that I had just got a battlecruiser, and said that a Hurricane should be able to solo any Level Two mission with ease.  I linked him the EVE-Survival page on the mission, and he replied that it should be no problem.  Then he asked to see my fit, which he said looked fine, and asked me if I had been switching out the hardeners to match the incoming damage type.  I said I hadn't been, but then noticed that the two damage types dealt by Mercenaries were the exact same ones as those I had hardeners for.

After turning on my hardeners, the damage dropped to an easily repairable level and I could finish the mission with ease. Lesson learned.

Other Stuff That's Happened to Me

• I lost my Hoarder to an Angel Nomad while AFK, but trained up to Minmatar Industrials IV and bought a Mammoth to replace it.
• I ran a lot of Level Three's and Four's with corpmates and other people I'm friendly with to get my standings up with Level Three agents near my home base.
• A corpmate traded my a bunch of BPC's for some mission salvage, so I can now make all the ammo I would ever want.  Two hundred and twenty five million rounds per BPC.

A Newbie's View of Inferno

So, Inferno has been out for a couple of days now.  Now, I'm a newb and not all that used to the old interface yet, so my reaction is a lot more positive than many people who I've been seeing on the forums.

The New UI

A lot of people have been hating on the new UI.  I really like it, though.  It keeps all my stuff in one place instead of having to use two different buttons for ships and items, something that I always found annoying.  The new filters make finding ammo, skillbooks, and modules in the morass of items I keep at my home base much, much easier.  My only real problem with it is that it is extremely slow to load compared to the old inventory, which leads to a few problems.

Just recently, I was doing a Level Two mission called "Stop the Thief" where I faced a lot of incoming damage from Mercenary Elite Fighter missile frigates.  I knew going into it that my artillery cruiser's DPS wouldn't be enough to cut down enough frigates before they got through my shields, so I decided to kill the NPC carrying the objective, who was conveniently named "the Thief," and take the item he dropped.  Unfortunately, when I finally managed to reach his wreck to loot it, I had to wait several seconds for the loot menu to appear, where previously it had popped up instantly.  This allowed the missile frigates to get in two more volleys against me, cutting about a third of the way through my  armor and costing a few hundred thousand ISK in repair bills.

Still, the new UI is quite nice and overall very functional.  Good job CCP!

The Missile Effects

Eye candy is awesome.  We all know that, and its awesomeness comes out in force with the new missile effects.  I wasted 144 Nova Light Missileson my CEO's Loki just to watch the pretty trails and explosions, something nice to do while I mine.  Now, I'm actually looking forwards to seeing a few rats around; it looks like Christmas at the Griswolds'.

The snazzy V3 launchers do look a bit out of place on the crappy old Minmatar V2 models though.  Looking forwards to the next update when Minmatar ships finally get V3 models.

The V3 Amarr Ships

They look wonderful, truly wonderful.  The gold now looks like real metal instead of that cheap plastic you find on kids' toys, and the tacky-looking blood red is now gone in favor of something more realistic.  In short, Amarr ships no longer look like oversized plastic toys and have finally claimed the glory they really deserve.  The glint of light off of the new silver and gold is almost as good as the shininess of new ISK in my wallet.

Everything Else

I don't have too much to say about the rest of Inferno, considering that I haven't really noticed it.  I know they made major changes to Factional Warfare, but I've never done that and don't really even know what it is.  I also know they switched up the wardec system, but I doubt my corp will be wardecced any time soon.  If we are, we've got a nasty surprise up our sleeve, so I'm not too afraid of anything other than maybe losing my own ship, which I accept is a possibility whenever I click the undock button.

Despite the people raging on the forums these days, I think Inferno is quite a worthy expansion.  I enjoy everything that CCP has done in it so far and look forwards to more updates like this.  Devs, good job taking EVE in the right direction!

Daily Update #1

So, I'm going to start posting these Daily Updates whenever no individual event worth a post has happened to me.

Some people are just really nice.  That's the main lesson I've gotten from my mining experience so far.  Several of my corpmates have been more than happy to haul ore, refine said ore, and even sell the minerals gotten from it for me, all at no cost to me.  I'm amazed that people offer to lose so much time on helping me make ISK that they could be using for themselves.

Other than that, one of my corpmates has set up a fleet that he lets me join whenever he is around.  Since we have a PoS and he tends to just sit behind the shields whenever he goes away from the computer instead of logging off, that means I get an Orca's lovely bonuses almost all day long.

Other than that, I've almost collected nearly a hundred million ISK, the first time I've ever done that.

Now for some other random news.

• I can now fly my Hurricane, but don't come close to having the skills to fit it.
• I bought and used my first Tech II modules yesterday.  Nothing very glamorous, just a few Expanded Cargohold II's to help out my Hoarder's puny initial 5,600 m3 cargohold.
• I got my first faction ammo off of a rat when I was flying around the belts in a Rifter.
• I learned how to use the scanner to find exploration complexes.  I'm not sure what ship I should use to do them when I get around to it, though.

Not much else to say for the past couple of days.  I'm downloading the new patch right now, though, and that should be fun!

Angel Extravaganza

This morning, I completed Angel Extravaganza (Level Four) with a lot of help from a friend.  It took several hours to do the mission and the salvage combined, but the half of the loot, bounties, and mission rewards that I received added up to about 15 million ISK.  I also passed 80 million total ISK today; for me, that's a lot of money!

Generally, my friend would take care of the larger ships like battleships, while I dealt with the battlecruisers and destroyers.  We both used our drones against frigates that appeared occasionally.  Meanwhile, I learned some valuable lessons.

• The frigates found on Level Fours tend to be more difficult to kill than the battlecruisers simply because my artillery does not do full damage to them.
• Even with a group of four 650mm artillery, I cannot do any meaningful damage to a battleship.
• I was locked by several spawns of the enemy ships, but I never once had trouble with the incoming damage so long as we took out the webbers fast.  Even though my Rupture is relatively slow at 474 m/s top speed, the battleships had trouble hitting me and their torpedoes hit me for less damage than a light missile.  So bigger definitely does not mean more dangerous.
• The battlecruisers were sometimes quite dangerous, but they had a paper-thin tank for their size, and once I got through their shields, I could often pop their armor and hull in one shot.  Quite a few destroyers also appeared in certain waves, but none of them ever got close enough to me to be able to fire their guns.  This makes me think that NPC battlecruisers and destroyers are glass cannons; although they can do some sizable damage, they die quickly and I should target them first to eliminate them before they get in range.

This is a rather short post, but I learned some things that I want to remember, and this is the best way to do it.

Allow me to throw a question at the crowd.  Any ideas for improving this blog, other than moving to Wordpress? I want to get a handle on Blogger's more limited features before I go into the complexities of Wordpress.

A Mining Life For Me?

I had almost all of Friday free to play EVE, and spent almost all of that time running Level Two missions in my Rupture.  I got myself up to about 52 million ISK at the end of the day from 44 or so million at the start of the day, getting standing with my agent up to 9.3.  By the end of the day, I had plenty of free ISK on my hands.

Today, I bought myself a mining cruiser, the Minmatar Scythe.  I tossed around the idea of buying the Scythe Fleet Issue, but decided against it after realizing that it had no mining bonus.  I bought the cheapest Scythe and modules that I could find, then spent much of the afternoon wandering around high-sec space collecting them.

I also did something rather stupid. One of the modules I had bought was in low-sec space, though I didn't know it at the time. I grabbed a shuttle and scouted ahead through the two gates I would have to jump through to make sure there were no camps going on, then simply took my new, shiny Scythe and came on through.  In retrospect, this was a pretty dumb decision.  Even though I hadn't encountered anything in my shuttle, that didn't mean there couldn't be a cloaked covert ops vessel waiting for me to come back in something more expensive and call in a few gun-toting buddies.  Luckily, I came through all right, but I was risking quite a bit just to avoid spending another 24,000 ISK.

Anyways, here's the fit I've mounted on my Scythe.  And a picture, because pictures are yummy.

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Cash Cow [Scythe, Mining]

High Slots:

Cu Vapor Particle Bore Stream I

Cu Vapor Particle Bore Stream I

Cu Vapor Particle Bore Stream I

Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher I [Nova Light Missile]

Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher I [Nova Light Missile]

Mid Slots:

Residual Survey Scanner I

Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I

Upgraded EM Ward Amplifier I

Low Slots:

Co-Processor I

Co-Processor I

Expanded Cargohold I

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The Scythe is a surprisingly agile ship that has no trouble tanking the frigate rats that show up occasionally in the system that I mine in.  I still use the missile launcher because I'd like the bounty, but it's really on the ship only for show.  If a ganker shows up, it probably won't really help me, and my passive shield tank is good enough to stop the damage I'm getting.  Still, it's nice to know I have teeth on my ship, however small they might be.

My Mining "Adventures"

I think you'll agree with me that mining is hardly the most interesting of professions, except when a ganker shows up, of course.  Needless to say, I kept a sharp lookout for gankers, being sure to check out local whenever someone new showed up. At one point, a whole gang of people who were red to my corp  jumped into the system, and I got out of dodge very quickly.  After an alliance member ran a D-Scan on them, he discovered that they were just running a mining operation in a different belt.  Still, I stayed on my toes until they left.  I didn't really have much of a tactic for dealing with them if one of them happened to show up at my belt, but I made sure to align to the station and watch my overview carefully.  Eventually, the reds left, and I breathed easier.

As the evening progressed, things got more fun.  I was whining in corp chat over the fact that it would take about 6 trips for my completely unfitted Hoarder to carry all of the minerals I had refined over to Hek, the nearest market hub.  A very nice corpmate offered to not only carry everything for me, but also to refine everything I had mined with his refining alt.  I got about 4.5 million ISK from the first haul, which was much more than I had expected.

Another corp member who owned an Orca fleeted up with me so I would get the bonuses that came with that ship.  Although he was afraid to leave our PoS’s protective shield and come to the asteroid field due to Hulkageddon, he was more than happy to have his Orca alt sit around and help me out.  Meanwhile, his main came along and orbited me in a Tech III cruiser, making me the safest miner in the system by a long shot.  With the Orca’s base bonus and his mining foreman link, I was picking up about half again as much ore as I would have normally.

Typically, I would have faced the problem of hauling the stuff back to the station in my Hoarder’s meager 5.600 m3 cargo hold, but my corpmate with the industrial offered to use his Mastodon to drop by and take my ore to be refined for me.  So I just got to sit there, mining away, while my two corpmates did half of the work for me and gave me all the profits.  And everyone thinks EVE is a dog-eat-dog game.  It can be, but there are plenty of wonderful people around too.

Meanwhile, I was learning quite a bit about large nullsec operations from my friend with the industrial.  Having spent a while there and caused almost 150 billion ISK worth of damages to enemy ships in fleet fights, he knew his way around PvP.  I learned about all sorts of cloaky shenanigans from him, like how to use a black ops battleship to jump in a fleet of covert ops frigates, force recon cruisers, and other cloaked ships.  Although this information probably won’t be of use to me in the immediate future, it’s certainly interesting to know.

The second haul earned me more than 6 million ISK, putting my day's earning at over 10 million and ending the day with 55 million ISK to my name.  My Scythe has already payed itself back, and I've learned a lot about the value of friendly, willing-to-help people.  If either of the two I'm talking about ever read this, thanks!

Random Question of the Day: How many Titans exist in EVE at the moment?  I asked my PvPer corpmate, and he wasn’t sure. 

An Armor Tank for my Rupture?

This morning, right before downtime, I was running some Level Threes with a friend in a Myrmidon.  He took a lot of the damage, but I was still occasionally locked by a few cruisers or a separate group that had spawned in and I had engaged on my own.

My shields generally tended to melt like ice cream in a microwave, and I had to warp out to a station a few times during the course of our little jaunt.  At one point, he remarked on how lucky I was that some tackler frigates hadn't targeted me.

Let's take a look at your average NPC tackler frigate, or at least average for ones I've encountered.  For you pros, go ahead and skip this paragraph.  You don't need it.  Generally, a tackler:

• is a Tech II version of a standard frigate design with a fancy-sounding name.
• packs some type of tank that my drones and missiles often have trouble breaking through.  There was this one particular interceptor that had such a tough tank all of my combined DPS could barely break it.
• flies faster than I do.
• orbits at close range where my artillery is completely useless.

Now, I don't really have a great strategy for dealing with tacklers on my own.  I can't heal damage any faster than my shield's base recharge rate, so when I hear the shield alarm, my general tactic is to simply warp away.  But when I'm targeted by a warp scrambler/disrupter, all I can do is switch on the afterburner and try to fly out of range.  The problem with this is that my top speed is just 450 m/s; most tacklers are actually faster than me and have no trouble keeping up.  I really can't do anything but pray I'll be able to kill them fast enough.  And since I have no real ability to fix myself up in the field, the battle basically turns into a "my DPS vs. their combined DPS" slugfest.  I can only fight and hope for the best.

An armor-repairing fit would allow me to kite their more damaging ships and actually be able to fix up much of the damage that I had taken.  In addition, since there are five low slots on the Rupture compared to only three mid slots, my buffer would probably be larger in addition to having the armor repairer.  This would mean eliminating the three gyrostabs and two tracking enhancers in my low slots, but since their effectiveness drastically decreases when I stack modules, I could still keep one of each and have three slots left to armor tank the ship. That's more than I currently have for my shield tank; the afterburner takes up one of my three mid slots.

This will also free up my mid slots for a stasis webifier if I need it.  Even though armor plating will slow my ship down, webbing annoying tacklers makes it possible for me to outrun them and engage them with my artillery.

The main problem I have is that I have absolutely no skills in armor repairing.  None at all.  I'm also not sure how this will affect the PG and CPU of my ship, since I'm already near the maximum that I can handle with my current skills.  Training up PG and CPU-increasing skills will help that though, and I have to get the armor-repping skills at some point.

I think I'll give armor a try.

Nailed It!

This is Nailed It, my cruiser.  The name might seem a little odd, but to me at least, the Rupture has always resembled a nailgun.

She's an artillery boat with some missiles and drones to help out when things get too close.  Ruptures tend to be armor tanked, but my fit is rather unconventional.  I've put a shield buffer tank and an afterburner in the mid slots and tracking-enhancing modules in the low slots.

There are six Warrior I light scout drones in the drone bay.  I currently have the skills to use four of them, and I'm looking to get up to Drones V as soon as possible.

The artillery is effective out to at least 49 kilometers, which is my maximum targeting range at the moment.  I'm looking to improve my targeting range so I can be able to hit my enemies even further away.  The missiles can hit out to around 17-18 kilometers, and my drones' command range is currently 35 kilometers.

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Nailed It! [Rupture, PvE]

High Slots:

650mm Medium Gallium Cannon I [EMP M]
650mm Medium Gallium Cannon I [EMP M]
650mm Medium Gallium Cannon I [EMP M]
650mm Medium Gallium Cannon I [EMP M]
Light Missile Launcher I [Nova Light Missile]
Light Missile Launcher I [Nova Light Missile]

Medium Slots:

Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Large Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I

Low Slots:

Gyrostabilizer I

Gyrostabilizer I

Gyrostabilizer I

Tracking Enhancer I

Tracking Enhancer I

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I recently went through a mission called Pirate Intrusion that gave me a few lessons on how to properly use this fit.  I warped into the mission, which began rather oddly.  Instead of all of the ships immediately appearing on my overview and beginning to target me, it was several seconds before the first group appeared, then about a second until the next group, and then another second for the final group.  Each group that appeared was progressively closer to me, so the first one to show up was furthest away.

At first, I didn't realize this.  I immediately began targeting the farthest group as soon as I saw them, but I was smart enough to unlock them and engage the closer threat when it appeared.  I realized that if the first and second groups (2 frigates and 2 destroyers) managed to get under my guns, they could cause some problems for me, so I made sure to take them out before going for the more dangerous but further away Chief Watchman cruiser.  My artillery made short work of the two destroyers, and my drones and missiles easily took care of the frigates.  After that, the rest of the pocket was a cakewalk.

I waited a bit for my shield to recharge, then warped into the second pocket.  I noticed that there were three destroyers and a cruiser in the group that appeared first, which was again the farthest out at 70 kilometers. I switched on the afterburner and headed towards them as fast as my ship would go.

Stupidly, I paid no real attention when three destroyers and a frigate appeared about 20 kilometers out, despite the fact that it posed a greater threat at a closer range than the ones I had taken out at the beginning of the last pocket.  I targeted two of the destroyers and launched drones and missiles against them, but I didn't bother using my guns - I was too fixated on destroying the three destroyers and the cruiser that were at this point still sixty kilometers out.

My secondary weaponry had managed to take out one of the destroyers when Group 2, composed of two Tech II frigates and two Tech I frigates, began engaging me from about ten kilometers.  By this point, I was already beginning to fire on the cruiser with my artillery.

The combined damage from the two remaining destroyers and five frigates quickly began to build up.  To compound the problem, my drones had gotten spread out over a few different targets, and were no longer doing very much to eliminate any of the incoming damage.  My missile launchers were shooting at one of the Tech II frigates, but it had a reasonably good armor tank on it and I was having trouble getting through the armor.  I knew I was in trouble, so I decided I would knock out the cruiser, warp to a station, and come back to try again.

By the time I killed the cruiser, the enemy ships were halfway into my armor and I was too worried about getting out alive to recall my drones.  It cost about 350 thousand ISK to repair the ship, and I lost two of the drones while I was gone.

So, what did I learn from this?

• I am not invulnerable against small frigates and destroyers, and I cannot ignore them.
• The biggest target is not necessarily the most dangerous target.
• Drones have an annoying tendency when left to their own devices to disperse across multiple targets.  I must manage them to maintain effectiveness.
• The combined damage of missiles and drones is not enough to fend off more than a few frigates.  I should group missiles and drones on a target unless I know it is extremely fragile.

The Short History of a Total Noob

Beginnings

I started playing EVE Online back in December, as a sort of Christmas present to myself.  My character is about five months old, but I've really only been playing for six weeks or so.  I'm still very much a newb, and ask dumb questions all the time.  Be warned that I may end up asking you guys more than a few.

As you probably already know if you read my previous post, I'm a Minmatar pilot.  I started off in the Military School and did the Career Agent missions in a system called Hadaugago, if I remember rightly.  I got stuck on the Exploration Career Agent and gave up after spending about an hour trying to probe for a signature, but I had little trouble finishing the other agents' missions.

After finishing with the Career Agents, I felt kind of lost.  I had heard of the Epic Mission Arc, but had no idea how or where to start it.  I didn't even know that there were things like agent levels.  I tried spending some time mining in a Burst, but quickly became bored after a few days.  Deciding that the time had come to move out of the NPC starter corp, I made a topic in the recruitment forums looking for my first player corporation.

Crunchy Crunchy - My Corp

A then-new corp by the name of Crunchy Crunchy saw my post and sent me an EVE-mail about joining. I didn't think too much about it.  They were the first people to ask me, and they seemed nice.  Luckily, I still don't regret my decision.

Being a new corp, Crunchy's chat was rather empty, but there were plenty of other people in the alliance who were old veterans willing to help me out.  A lot of the people were ex-PvPers who had gotten tired of nullsec and decided to start a more peaceful mining life, and all of them were quite happy to teach me the basics of the game and get me set on my feet.  One guy in particular decided to pretty much adopt me as his personal newb, and I got a free cruiser, a lot of ISK, and a lot of really helpful lessons from him.

Mission Running

After properly fitting out a Thrasher with his help, I set out to do some Level One missions.  My friend shadowed me for the first few to make sure I didn't do anything truly idiotic, and then I was on my own.  Level Ones quickly became easy for me, so I joined more experienced people on Level Three's and Level Four's, getting a whole lot of cash for doing very little other than getting rid of some tackler and E-War frigates that occasionally showed up.

I started on the Epic Mission Arc after about two weeks of grinding Level Ones.  The first handful of missions were very easy and got me far more ISK than your average Level One, but I soon ran into a certain mission called "Burning Down the Hive."  I faced my first warp scrambler/disruptor there.  My destroyer did not fare well, and I lost my first ship.

I recovered, but had no desire to return to that mission.  I still haven't, although I'm certainly capable of doing it now.  I spent quite a long time doing Level One missions in a Thrasher, and only just recently left my destroyer for a Rupture cruiser.

I got started running Level Two missions in the Rupture.  It was an artillery fit, not at all like the autocannons I had been working with earlier.  Without any missile skills other than Rockets and no drone skills whatsoever, I had to do some fancy flying to be able to lower my transversal enough to hit close-in frigates at all.  I also had to spend some time finding a proper orbit distance, although my corpmates helped me out with that.

Eventually, I trained up drone and missile skills enough that frigates weren't too much of a problem.  I began feeling rather complacent in the power of my death-dealing, flying nailgun (the Rupture does kind of look like one, doesn't it?) and stopped checking EVE Survival for mission details.  Considering I almost never read the agents' blurbs, this set me up for a fatal combination.

I went into Recon 1/3 without any idea that I was not going to come anywhere close to being able to kill all of the enemies there.  I went into it like a normal mission, and was able to tank the damage for a while until all of the ships had spawned in.  I could barely scratch the Arch Gistum T2 cruisers, but instead of wisely warping out once my shields began dropping precipitously, I tried to burn for the acceleration gate.

I made it.  Somehow.

Then I just sat there on the other side.  A whole bunch of ships spawned in, and knocked out the last bit of my structure.  I went off to buy another Rupture, and learned to always check EVE Survival before I went on a mission.

Looking back on it, this supposedly "short history" wasn't all that short.  Oh well.  This concludes the introduction portion that I had planned, so now we can actually get into the meat of this blog.

Meet Ilnaurk Sithdogron

Ilnaurk Sithdogron is my EVE character.  Since "a picture is worth a thousand words," here you go.

I'm a Minmatar character, currently flying a Rupture cruiser and living around the system Orduin.  I generally fly a lot of PvE missions with some very occasional mining on the side.  I've gotten started with Level Two missions fairly recently, which has been a great learning experience for me.  I've also done some of the Epic Mission Arc missions.

I belong to Crunchy Crunchy of the Peregrine Nation alliance.  I know the alliance is somehow affiliated with the Coalition of Anti-Pirates, but I'm not entirely sure where or how.  My corp has provided me with a place full of people far more experienced than I who can share their knowledge with me when I feel lost, and has greatly sped up my initial bumblings through EVE.

Now for some of the things I am completely clueless about.  Note that this is only a list of things that I know I am clueless about; there's probably a lot of other stuff that I haven't even heard of.

• Exploration.  I barely know how to work a scanner, and I've tried and failed to use probes on several occasions.
• Planetary interaction.  I don't even really know what this does for someone.  I've just heard it exists.
• PvP combat.  I know that it's very different from PvE and that it relies much more on high DPS than a steady tank that can take damage.  Other than that?  No idea.
• Research and development.
• Trading. Buy low, sell high is what economics tells me, but that's as far as my knowledge goes.

Well, that's me.  Rather boring, I know.

So. I have a blog.

Well, this is the first blog I have ever written.  I really don't have too much of an idea what I'm doing, but I guess I'll just learn through the experience.  I'll probably be doing a lot of format switching and all that kind of stuff to try to make it look better.

This blog is a chronicle of a newbie's journey through EVE Online, a timeline for both myself and anyone else who might be interested.  I'm hoping to be able to analyze my own skills more effectively and to more quickly find ways to improve by writing down my more interesting experiences.  I might be throwing some questions at you all sooner or later as well.

I named this blog "Sojourn" because I'd like to be able to look back and see all the little steps I've made in EVE.  Each one is kind of like a small foray into the unknown - some will work, and some won't.  But in the end, I'll be better because of everything I've tried.

Well, now the soul-searching artsy stuff is out of the way.