A new hope

Wow has it been that long? 2 years and 5 months, to be exact. I must admit I forgot all about this blog and even took a break from  eve for the better part of 2016. But as you probably know, there’s that itch you get when away from the game too long. So i've been playing steadily again for the past few months.

I noticed this blog was still online and had the average visitor from time to time. And as I resubbed and being pretty active I decided to update this little page again. I know it doesn’t hold much of a significance in the eve community with the big sites like the imperium and Crossing zebras but it does remind me of the old days where everyone had his own blog and I like the nostalgic feeling of it.
So I guess as long a I keep playing Eve I will update this blog from time to time.

So what's been going on in my Eve career. I resubbed in august this year and this time I had a clear goal. I was going to use the first months to earn back and save up a considerable amount of ISK before venturing back out into null. I lost pretty much all of my credits and a big part of my assets was (and still is) locked down in some station in null sec. 

I started doing regular mining ops, station trading and some PI. Soon I was able to afford a freighter again for my trading alt so he could do courier jobs while I was exploring with my main.

I’ve been keeping this up for a few months and made quite a nice amount of ISK with only a few ships lost and also with the help of the Halloween Blood raider event.

So now I was ready to make my choice of what group to join. It took quite a while and I considered many of the large alliances but I finally went for Test Alliance. Not a choice I myself could have predicted but they are an established and pretty old group and always been the underdog in a way which I like so I packed lightly and set off to a new system in the Vale of the Silent to call home.

New grounds

Yes, I know, I'm starting this post the same way as I've started previous ones.
It's been a while since I wrote a post on here, a little bit more than two months to be accurate. But I guess a person has to have his priorities. So real life went down and pulled me out of space for a while. And to be honest, I haven't got the same time to put into New Eden since then. Of course all of this has had it's reasons. Going back to the beginning of april, I was doing pretty good as I had moved back to my null sec alliance who lived out in Syndicate and I was getting adjusted to my surroundings. But after a few weeks I received the message that we were moving out to Sov. null sec to give BNI a helping hand. As I had just completed the task of moving all my stuff I wasn't that keen on repeating the whole tedious process again. At the same time I wasn't able to be online for a few days, and when I did log in, there was no-one from the alliance to be seen. They all had moved to catch and most ops were going on at nighttime for me as I'm european and our main leaders and fc's are American. So there I was contemplating about what to do, but to me there weren't that many options as I was having less regular time to be online, so I couldn't participate in ops organized by our alliance. And of course when I did have the time, there were no ops planned.

So I left the game for a few weeks, being dissapointed and disillusioned, but soon enough space called out to me again, like it has done for over 2 years now. There I was, sitting in a NPC station deep down in Syndicate, with a large hostile German corporation who took over our home system. Not many options for me but to leave for high sec through a suicide jump.

With all my stuff pretty much locked down in null. I decided to start my own little corp and focus a bit  on the industry side of things combined with trading. I joined up with some old friends from back in early 2012 and hung out being a total care bear. Setting stuff up, looking for trade routes and doing some small ops with the 5 of us was fun but became a bit stale after a few months as you don't have the constant threat of null or the large amount of corporation members ready to join up. I've been struggling with this stalemate for a few weeks now, but as I'm only able to play the game on a casual basis I'm getting the impression, there isn't much else out there. Luckily I know that statement isn't true as you can do plenty of stuff in New eden while being a casual player. I just need to go out and set up a plan, guess that'll be my primary goal in Eve at the moment.

to be continued...

Keep that eye on local!

Having two screens can be a blessing but also a curse sometimes. So there I was ratting in asteroid belts on a very quiet evening in our home system in Syndicate. Everything was going steady and I kept my alt his station trading in check on my second screen.

After an hour or two of keeping both up it was time for some good old entertainment as I kept up ratting. So I started watching a few Conan videos on YouTube. It couldn't hurt that much as it had been quiet in local all this time.

Things went fine and my focus on local started to fade slowly as it was starting to get late and I was getting tired.

A random glimpse on local made me spot a single neutral, but as we are nrds in our system I didn't move to safety directly. He entered grid in what seemed a few seconds after I noticed him and scrambled me in an instant. Luckily I was sporting a heavily armoured Hurricane and my attacker just a crow but still I was stuck. The moment he scrambled me other neuts started popping up in local.

With a pumping heart and suddenly feeling very hot I contacted my alliance mates in our chat channels as I wasn't on comms. After some desperate messages and getting on teamspeak as fast as I could my mates started warping in and fighting my attackers consisting of three crows and another ship I can't remember.

I managed to warp away after they dropped scrams and we killed one of the crows. A mate lost his Algos in the fight but we hit them back when they docked up. They reshipped in destroyers but that wasn't enough to counter our 6 thrashers on the undock.

At the end some went their way in their pod or some woke up in a fresh clone but the important thing was that we had some goodfights and content on a quiet evening. Still the lesson learned for me that day was never go out ratting without being on comms and don't lose sight on local. Simple and obvious things but easily forgotten when feeling safe and cozy!

Updated my CSM 9 list, only 4 to go!

Updated the CSM9 section, with the first 5 candidates I support!

Check it out!

There's no place like...

I can't seem to decide what my main focus is in eve. After almost  2 years of playing I've been carebearing in high sec with mining and doing missions.  I've been active in null sec engaging in  pvp and I focused on exploration a while right after the odyssey expansion. But I can't seem to find a home system. I went back to null sec for a while but the overcrowded systems in providence made me regret that decision pretty soon. So a few days ago I started to move back to high sec to keep my alts company and to help them out doing various things. One of those things is mining gas. I haven't been in many wormholes during my eve career but Ive been scanning them down and exploring them a bit with my alts but as they are mainly industrial characters and have no to little fighting skills its been hard clearing the data and relic sites from the sleepers. So that's what I've been doing with my main lately, clearing sleepers from exploration and gas sites for my alts to move in and mine or to hack some modules. As I said I've never been much in wormholes and the easthetic about them is really appealing to me, but as I stated before in this entry I can't seem to keep my focus on wormholes alone. For instance mining gas was cool for a while and made me some nice isk but I couldn't keep it up for more than 2 hours. When that much time has passed in one play through I need to change up my activity or else I get bored. And that's a bit my curse in this game as every endeavour seems to take ages. Still I keep on flying around and doing my thing, always aching to try new things out.

Something to listen to

Well, I guess I am not your most typical eve player. For one, I dont like to be talking about fittings all day. I know my way around the modules to make a decent fit. But I'm not really interested in getting a bonus of 5% dps or getting the max out of my capacitor by trying out stuff on Eft. I also am very interested in the back story and lore about new eden unlike a lot of other players. It seems to me that most people dont even care or notice all the rich lore. I just finished reading the first book and I think it was an awesome story. It truly expands the experience you get when flying around new eden. Not only the books but also the free chronicles give you an awesome inside look on the culture and habits of the four main races. You can even combine it with your playstyle, for example reading them while mining or while you sit cloaked at a gate looking for reds. And even when that takes up to much for your attention you can listen to the audio version available through various kinds of podcasts. Like eve reader etc. I listen to podcast or audiobooks most of the time while playing eve because I get a bit worn out on the ingame music. Especially when you are stationed in null sec or in a wormhole.  So instead listen to the massive amount of eve online podcasts out there and learn a lot about the game and the players within it. This way you can also combine both worlds,  the player created one and the lore one. By the way, there are many podcasts like "legacy of a capsuleer" or "cap stable" who do interviews with the new candidates for thr ninth CSM. Check em out and don't forget to vote!

The B-R5RB Conspiracy

Huge ships have been blown up, tears have been harvested and Eve Online made the news headlines again. The B-R5RB battle happened exactly one year after the Asakai event, and if I put on my tinfoil hat for a second I’m starting to sense some strange coincidences around this event.

Let me explain. First of all, this battle at B-R5RB happened at the exact same day as that other huge battle in Asakai in 2013. This was a huge battle, the biggest battle ever in the history of Eve Online but the server did not crash and everything with the Tidi went fine. This is remarkable because of the problems the server had during the fight in HED-GP which was a less large battle by a long shot. Both fights weren’t planned but the huge one did not have any problems server wise. Of course the battle at B-R5RB lasted for a long while so that the ccp employees could reinforce the node and keep up with all the data but still… the difference between the two events is striking.

Then there is the subscription topic that has been heavily talked about in podcasts and in all kinds of articles and blogposts with the most prominent one on TM.com (http://themittani.com/features/falling-subscription-numbers-what-can-be-done). The subscription numbers have been dropping a while after the release of Retribution which was a huge success for CCP but Odyssey plus Rubicon were not as successful and there's been a little subscription drop instead of gain. This has been a topic for the first two weeks of January and lot's of people were thinking about how to get more people to join the game. Two or one week later, a huge battle occurs out of the blue and lot's of new players are pouring in at this moment.

Also there's the update on Rubicon released the 29th of january. Just at the same time Eve was getting headlines everywhere. This was just great for CCP as they could do a live event for the release. But they focused heavily on the new influx of players by explaining the player interaction like the CSM. The people from the CSM also just left CCP HQ because of the winter summit, right before the huge battle. So interviews with them were made so they could explain to the new players what CSM is all about. So a lot of focus on the new players, who are pouring in at the same time, what a coincidence!

And to finish the conspiracy theories, PL just made a deal with the CFC to evacuate their stuff out of the BR station that's estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of isk. My only guess the goons would do this is so they could do another great promotional battle in the future. It wouldn't shock me if the news came out later that CCP made a deal with CFC and PL to engage in a huge battle for promotional reasons. As all kinds of weird deals have been going on between CCP and player based stuff (SomerBlink anyone?).

Just to make something clear here, I'm not convinced this is the truth, but I've been thinking about these events and it's noteworthy to say the least. I just said to myself "That's some nice tinfoil hattery you got there, why not write it up?!" so I did!

From right under their noses

If I have to admit one thing about my current Eve career, it's the fact that I'm not making much progress aside from the daily PI income and adjusting my skills from time to time. I've been hopping between a few different corporations but not really finding a true home. Ah we'll see, at least I'm back in null which feels good. But sometimes, most of the time when you least expect it, something truly amazing and exciting happens in Eve.

But let's start at the beginning, I was still in my previous RP corp in high sec. bumming around, returning from a short exploration trip to Syndicate. It was a fruitless venture with only a few sites found and they turned up to be bait (only one or two containers left with at least one capsuleer in system, probably with an eye on the site).

So I went back home to safe Tourier ready to collect my daily PI spoils and log off as I was tired from work. It was on my way back with only one jump to go that I noticed a Yellow battleship wreck floating about 20km from gate with no one to be found on grid. I was awake and sitting straight in an instant, putting the pedal to the metal in my Mammoth to reship and return. Maybe I was able to loot the stuff before the owners returned or maybe it was already too late, who knows. I reshipped in my cheetah and made my way back as fast as I could. As soon as I entered system, I noticed a domi and cane from the same corp as the owner of the wreck who also just jumped in. I raced to my bookmark with a pounding heartbeat and arrived first as I seemed to be alone. Without wasting a second I looted the wreck which gave me a suspect standing, so everyone was free to engage me but most importantly it had a 35mill loot. Still I felt quite confident on surviving as I only had to make one jump to get to my home system and I had a cloak. It was only a matter to get out of the spot before the others arrived. And that's just what happened, halfway into my warp acceleration the cane entered grid with the domi close behind. Just in time to give them a quick wave in local and to haul ass back home.

With 35mil extra loot in my container and a feeling of excitement and tension I logged out with a smile. Stealing loot from right under their noses felt amazing and more importantly for once I didn't feel as a total noob playing this game.

I wanted to do a little shout out to my current corp. As I already posted in my last mail, I was missing Eve Online a lot while I was getting bored pretty fast playing other games.And while I was waiting for X-Rebirth I re-subbed for Eve Online, not really knowing what road I was going to take. Without having any plans, I got into contact with an old corp from Providence who were my neighbors when I was in the Of SoundMind alliance. This corp was RECLT Reclamations Technology and it was just being sold as the main CEO was leaving the game or going on another venture. The new Ceo, Etienne Saissore was coming from a role-play background and decided to change RECLT in an industry and trading role-play corp supporting the Gallente and Minmatar society's. I've always been very much interested in the lore part of Eve so it felt like a fresh start to join this "new" corp. We started out with two members, and through contacts in the roleplaying community new members joined pretty soon after. At first I felt a bit reluctant about living back in HighSec as the opportunities to make isk were a lot less than null. But I did not have the amount of free time I used to have to put in the game, so it is a better place to play Eve more casually. Also the fact that everyone in the corp is very friendly and the fact that the RP aspect isn't enforced upon you makes this corp a nice group to join as a new player interested in the backstory without being crushed by huge walls of text. And when I'm on I'm happy to help anyone out with questions or tips. So to all you new players out there still looking for a nice group contact us through the in game recruiting channels!

https://gate.eveonline.com/Corporation/Reclamation%20Technologies

I want to be a space entrepreneur again!

I got tempted this weekend to resub. It's been a month now since I quit Eve Online and I must admit that I miss it. As I already said before in the previous article I've been keeping up with all the news articles and other controversies spawned out of the New Eden Universe and CCP HQ and as you all know it has been an interesting month with the limited edition ships being handed out. Also a new winter expansion named Rubicon with an awesome new ship design for the sisters of Eve. But none of that was really the cause for me wanting to resub.

Also there have been some awesome and heavily anticipated game releases (for example GTAV, Arma 3, TW:Rome2, etc…)  and there are still many (hopefully awesome) games you should look out for in the near future (Xrebirth, Star Citizen, DayZ standalone, the new Wolfenstein, Thief, etc…).  They managed to pull me away from Eve as I've been playing pretty hardcore for over a year but seeing most of my finances and assets being destroyed was pretty devastating. I felt like I was going the way I wanted to and with the people I wanted to but then the Providence war came and shook everything around. So I mostly had to start all over again with my group in a very hostile space (Curse) with very little pvp experience except for blobbing in a medium fleet. So I left for some safer grounds. Being all alone again and not finding a corp which suited me was the final straw and I left New Eden to join some long time friends in other games.

So far it has been a blast, playing with people I've known for years combined with awesome games was a nice change from the frustration I was experiencing in New Eden.
Still something made me miss the Eve universe I once called home. At first I was unable to pinpoint the exact reason why I missed the game as I wasn't really interested in the new expansion or the events taking place while I wasn't online. But something kept on aching and finally I knew what I was missing. It's the pacing of the game Eve online has. Ok it's a sandbox and there are other sandbox games out there and you could state that you can always choose your own pace of playing in those types of games. Still I believe Eve online has something more, you are able to just sit around in your station checking prices or bumming around and still having fun and even making a bit of isk on the side. At first when I started playing Eve the pacing of the game was sometimes boring and long to me but I credit that to the fact I wasn't used playing games like this and now after what seems like a very long time not playing EVE, I'm starting to miss that. I even miss the times when I first started and joined a high sec, small care bear group. I find myself missing those times of  just having a chat with the friends I made in New Eden, checking my PI and market orders and just kicking it back not really doing much but still "playing" the game. And that's what I miss mostly just sitting there in front of two screens with an insane amount of windows with data open enjoying a cup of coffee. After playing games for over 20 years, Eve online is the only game that made me really feel like a space entrepreneur and I loved that. Maybe I'll rejoin you guys again sooner than expected!
To be continued...

Clocking out

So… it's been a while and for the little amount of people who check my blog out I'm posting this to announce my departure from one of the most immersive games I've ever played. I did not play for about a month and decided to my cancel my subscription as I'm not willing to pay for a game I'm not playing regularly. But I have to admit I'm pretty sure I will return to new Eden at a certain time as I kinda miss the vibe and I'm still actively following the Eve podcasts and blogs. Why did I quit? Well, after the Provi war with Sound, we started moving our corp around for a few times on a relative short period of time and it drained my wallet and left me burned out. I changed corp after a few nights thinking about where to go, but my flame was out already and I did not do anything significant besides moving to a new system and bumming out on my own in the previous home system of sound in Providence territory which was now desolate because of the recent war and battles that had been there. The thing I miss the most about this game was the group of people I was part of and the friends I made. But after the war most of them went their own way and left corp. So after a few weeks of being mostly on my own, I noticed I did not log on anymore and it stayed that way for about a good month now.
With my funds nearly depleted, friends gone and a new home system back in highsec I felt like I was back at the starting line where I took off from about one and a half years ago. All this left me frustrated and jaded and I decided to take my leave. I still keep up to date with everything happening in New Eden and maybe I'm coming back one day to do a little care bearing or manufacturing on my own but that won't be too soon. Still leaving this game was one of the hardest things I've done since I've started playing video games back in 1989. That fact alone should make it clear that Eve Online is a one of a kind computer game and definitely worth checking out if you haven't before.

Ps. I will keep on writing on this blog once in a while, updating my fiction writings and other stuff, so stop by here once in a while, don't be a stranger! ;)

Never bend the knee!

 With everything packed and valuable stuff moved out to high sec, I'm about to engage my previous coalition brothers from CVA. I truly liked Provi and to be honest I'm not keen on leaving this place we've called our home for a long time, but when things take a turn for the worse I stick by my alliance (of sound mind) and my leadership's decisions and we don't give into pressure put on by our coalition leader CVA if it's not justified.

Let me  explain a bit. I'm in Of sound mind, a small alliance who are part of the CVA block. We don't rent any sov but we've been very actively defending our territory from reds and we hold on to our NRDS agreement. The tensions with one of the blue corps "Volt" has been rising for quite some time now. It started when one of their guys made a mistake of putting up a public jump freighter contract for 0 isk which our CEO picked up. We got accused of stealing that jump freighter when we refused to give it back for 0 isk because stupidity should not be rewarded. After all the JF got returned for a pretty low amount of isk because of all the drama this event was causing.

Things calmed down for a while but the resentment from Volt towards us was very obvious. Nothing significant happened and we tried to stay out of the Volt territory and just minding our own business, trying to defend Provi from reds and helping out new players and neuts entering the region.

Nothing really happened for a while, but yesterday we got reset and set KOS by CVA
supposedly for killing the Volt player 'Heinrich Hoss' who was reportedly killing not-kos neutrals and excessively smack talking in local. Because of this our FC refused to reimburse the player and a shit storm started building up.

The Volt player started to cry to his diplos and the whole situation got out of hand from that point on.
In my opinion, it should have ended there, with the diplo explaining the player about his behavior, but it didn't. Volt launched a full on diplo attack and started nagging to the CVA coalition leaders.

The fact that CoreBloodbrothers, one of Volt's main FC's, ran for CSM8 and did not get elected when   one of our members, Ali Aras did, plays probably also a part in this whole story. We refuse to bend our knee just because of some power trip and jealousy.

Yesterday we received a mail that we were set neutral and had 24hours to leave our sov to CVA and get the hell out. We responded that we would stay in our home system until it wasn't accessible to us anymore and that fire would be returned to anyone shooting at us. 12 hours later we got set to red and Kos.

We won't win this fight, but we won't bend the knee!

Adventures in Provi

I really like my new home in Providence, it can be quiet sometimes but you never know when something is right around the corner ready to strike.

A few days ago, the scenario was just that. 
Everything was nice and quiet and an excellent time to do a little ratting. 
While dropping off my loot in station a friend of the alliance logged into our teamspeak and asked for immediate reinforcements. As there were only 4 people logged in I responded asap. So I hopped into my Hurricane and got updated on the situation while jumping towards the destination not really knowing what to expect. My targets were 2 stranded PL carriers of the Nyx type who got attacked by a bunch of blue frigates and everyone was calling in reinforcements to take these two giants down before more PL ships could arrive. After a few minutes of blowing away we managed to get one of them into half armor when suddenly space turned red. Carriers as far as the eye could see dropping out of multiple cyno's slammed on us as I was hanging there in my cane being baffled. I did not even try to escape as I was just amazed about the event folding before my eyes. I kept on firing, crossing my fingers that we could still take one down before being obliterated but alas. Still amazed of the sight I just witnessed I moved my pod out and headed home feeling dazzled and excited about what just had happened not even caring about losing a battlecruiser. 

The Killmail

Slamming on the breaks

Patience is a virtue, especially when you play Eve online but it's a trait I don't possess. I'm trying really hard but I keep on stepping over the limit of my abilities and paying for it. It all started when I just moved to Providence. I had the idea that making huge amounts of isk would be fairly easy by ratting as I heard the value of the loot was significantly higher than in high sec. So after moving I set off to the closest asteroid belt in sight. I was in my hurricane battlecruiser which was very badly fit but I felt confident as they were just rats and I had just about 10 million skill points. Fittings was still something totally unknown to me. Having spend very little time and interest in it as I was mainly focussing on industry and trading and had very little experience with pvp and pve. I managed to take down a couple of sansha lords and cruisers with a quick repair station detour but no big loot to be found only a few million and it took me some time to take them out so it wasn't that profitable. After repeating the same scenario for a few belts I asked around for a pve fit which was way better in tanking the sansha but I still had no clue what modules I had fitted. A while later my interest wandered off to the signatures i could find as my new pve fit was able to tank the belt rats easily. Hoping for a better loot, I warped to zero to a forlorn hub as a regular hub didn't seem that profitable. No need to look anything up on the wiki as they were just rats and I should be able to complete them easily by now, no? 
Seconds after landing, my shiny newly fitted pve cane got obliterated to space dust. This vessel had been with me for over the past few months and with no recent losses I was left feeling shocked. Then a lot of weird things happened simultaneous in my head also known as brain farts. I was feeling the regret of losing a ship that had been with me for a long time, but I also realized I didn't have the pve fit saved, so I couldn't just fit another one without acknowledging my derp to my new corpmates. So how was I able to loot my wreck the fastest way possible? I did have a cloaky probe lying around with some tractor beams fitted and the rats were about 80km off the wreck so I figured I had a good chance to do it. Don't forget that all these thoughts happened in a few seconds and my mind was overflowing with bad ways of solving this issue. So seconds after undocking I was in my pod again and feeling dumb like I've never felt dumb before. What the hell had just happened? It was clear that this plan wasn't going to work from the start and still I went trough with it being overconfident again. After experiencing some lessons in being humble I still seem to forget them in the heat of the moment, only to face palm about my decisions later. 

So here I was, two ships lost and still not much isk made ratting. I decided to grind the asteroid belts until I had enough skills to pilot a battleship but after a few days of constant belt ratting I was suffering from the daily grind. I made a little profit selling the loot and salvage combined with the bounty payments but it still wasn't much and a lot of hard (and boring) work. I even took a break from the game for a few days, to get motivated again and to have some extra time to continue reading the Eve novels. When I started playing again, I tried the focus less on making isk and isk per hour and made the decision to variate between solo pve and pvp/group pve so I wouldn't get burned out this fast. I still had my eye on the anomalies and after a few significantly more fun days I was able to fly my own battleship. Yet again pushing my limits I warped in the Forsaken Hub but this time at a distance of 80km. Unsurprisingly by now I received another spanking, but managed to warp out in time. Not giving up just yet, I started going for the regular Hubs, but it still took a whole lot of time to clear and again the bounty and loot wasn't that amazing. But I kept grinding while skilling up my artillery and large weapons skills. Days and weeks went by and the shameful event with the Hurricane was storaged in the back of my head and I felt much more experienced and even started to understand a bit more about fittings. It became clear quite early on that I couldn't to much besides regular hubs on my own and even while in group doing sigs I had to warp in the latest as I was the most harmful one of the bunch. As I already mentioned I had been focussing mainly on trading and mining so my skills weren't up to date to say the least. Still I kept on pushing the limit, trying to do sigs with just two battleships resulting in various forced warp outs for repairs and trying to complete Forlorn hubs on my own which took me ages to complete. So I kept going for the regular hubs as I put my skills under review still not earning the amount of isk I was expecting. One particular quiet evening an alliance member asked for some backup because he scanned down a combat sig. I volunteered and we met up outside on the gate. It was a Sansha combat site which (I don't remember the exact name) and we read the wiki page about it before activating the first gate.  The wiki page said the site had the possibility to completed solo except for the last room so we figured we might as well go for it with just the two of us. 
A few minutes in, my wingman started losing shield quickly as all the rats focused their aggro on him. I was doing fairly well but as the damage intake wasn't equally divided my partner had warp out not much later. Soon I had all the aggro on me as I was the only one left and my tank broke pretty easily. Still my armor repper was keeping up and I didn't think about warping away yet. A few seconds later I saw the Sansha battleships coming into range and what happened next happened in a flash. My armor went down in an instant but it kept stuttering back up in bits and pieces so I figured I had enough time to recall my drones before I jumped back for repairs but forgetting to start alinging was my demise and my tempest was transformed into spacedust. 

Again, feeling to confident, thinking I'd have enough time got me killed... The isk I lost didn't have much of an impact on my wallet, but still I was pushing my limits to far forgetting about all the thing's I've learned. So finally I slammed on my brakes and changed my way of playing. Isk per hour wasn't my main focus anymore and I started my trading alts back up to make some profits without having to rat for hours on end. I try to do much more diverse things and as much group based ops as I can and trying to wait patiently for my skills to increase and I must say I had the feeling something felt off my shoulders and I didn't feel the pressure to make isk constantly and was having way more fun playing in general. 

Low sec station fishing

I learned some stuff the hard way again. I was having a nice and quiet carebearing evening with not much going on. Things were looking good, I made a nice amount of isk this week and the goal of buying my first freighter was getting closer. While ratting with my main I had my hauling alt sitting around highsec with nothing to do. So I looked for some small courier contracts for him to do while I was ratting. After a few completed contracts I stumbled upon a new contract that had a nice reward of 20mil for only 6 jumps. I did have to collect the package at a low sec system, but that shouldn't be to much of a problem as it's adjacent to a 0.5 system and I had my trusty blockade runner. The collateral was 375mil which was quite much but I figured the goods must be quite valuable, so I accepted the contract and set off to the pick up point. While I continued ratting it crossed my mind that there could be gankers waiting at the gate, but I had already managed to escape blobs with my cloak numerous times. Reaching my destination I jumped the gate finding nothing on grid and only two others in local.  After docking up I immediately felt something wasn't right. The cargo consisted of miscelaneous junk not worth much and certainly not 375mil in collateral. Also there were only 2 guys in station, and I felt their eyes on me waiting for the moment I undocked. Not sure about what to do i figured to undock as fast as I could before they could form up on the undock. Maybe I could just make it with the speed of my prowler. I undocked and saw an empty overview, relieved, I made my final mistake by pressing jump. As soon as I started alining another ship undocked right above me. Another important factor in my demise was the type of station we were undocking out off. It was the Amarrian Vertical version, with the pin like antennas on the bottom where you can easily get stuck on, which was exactly what happened. I tried to correct my mistake by canceling the warp and speeding off with my mwd in another direction, but it was already to late. I got tackled, pointed and webbed and there was nothing for me to do but to watch my vessel being turned into scrap as the cloaking device had no use because the attackers got within 2000m of me. If I wanted to survive I had to speed out of the way of the station in a straight line as soon as I undocked and put on my cloak to warp away after. Having an insta-undock ready is the best way out of this trap but as I've never been in the region, that was no option. I'll make sure to set one up the next time I come across something dubious like this contract. My daily profits went out of the window and again I was cursing myself for not seeing through the scam. But with every loss I gained a lot of information about insta-undocking and learned of a new kind of scam so I guess it wasn't all in vain.   

Exploration revisited

It's been quiet here because I've been playing as much as I can since the release of odyssey. Being very wary about all the new features I saw during the demo on the fanfest stream and all the stuff I read about the new expansion. As I already wrote in a previous post, I didn't have much time to play Eve in the weeks prior to Odyssey and no chance to try out the new features on Sisi. So I took a few days off work following the release date so I had enough time to check it all out and make up my mind for myself.

It took a few days before my corpmates convinced me to try out exploration. I was prejudiced from the start. All I remembered from scanning was the tedious management of the probes and losing signals or being stuck at 94% signal. Also the only time I got close to a rage quit was while scanning. So without a desire to experience that again, I started my exploration odyssey part 2. Curious for the unknown I set off to some desolate low sec system, reading the tutorial by Ali Aras on Mittani.com on the way there.

The first thing I noticed was the easiness how everything worked. Probes went their way automatically and I didn't lose a signal once. Of course sometimes it can take a while to scan something down but the contrast in difficulty is like day and night. Guess the main reason for this is that it's only the first part of the job. With the signal at 100% I warped to my goal feeling a bit anxious as there was another neutral in system. As soon as the overview of the relic site popped up I noticed a Heron hacking. He noticed me in an instant and there was some nervous shuffling as we both weighed down our options. I decided to target the neut. This was pure bluff being only in a probe with no tank and no weapons except some drones but it worked and he warped off pretty quick. He did stay in system and I felt him watching me as I started my first hacking mini game. This was the moment I was the most afraid of as I hate mini games and puzzle games in general. But after cracking the final node I was convinced. The mini game can be played at a pretty fast pace and it's quite intuitive and self explanatory so you don't have to spend to much attention and time to it. As I started working on my second hack, local fired up with 2 other neuts and the Heron had returned to the site. This was getting tense, my hands started shaking as I did my best to complete as many scanning sites as possible before I get scanned down by the others and before my rival takes most of the loot. The feeling I experienced reminded me of a fight a bit. I felt tense, stressed and was multitasking as much as I could.  This was quite a bit of fun, trying to complete the mini game keeping an eye on my dscan, local and the other guy on grid was an amazing and stressful experience. After I started working on the third structure two others appeared on grid and I warped away as fast as I could, good thing I was aligned! No idea what happened to my hacking competitor just hope he got away too.

As my possibilities to complete the site were gone, I headed off to a blind alley system a few jumps away and repeated the process. After a few hours of exploration I returned home with a few hundred mill in cargo. Amazed at how much fun I had doing something I was so prejudiced about and hated before and even making some nice profit on the side I docked up and went to bed satisfied and ready to dream a bit more about spaceships!

Just a list

Lately I haven't been playing as much as I wanted to because of real life. 

A girlfriend, job and playing in a band doesn't leave me much free time to spend in New Eden. Still I try to get my daily dose of Eve reading a lot of different blogs, listening to various podcasts etc... There are so many awesome player created websites that I wanted to share a list with my personal favorites to give them a little promotion and it's is a good reference list for new players to get totally immersed in the New Eden universe so check it out!

Blogs:

eveoganda.blogspot.com

- Personal blog of pirate, artist and founder of Stay Frosty corp Rixx Javix. Entertaining reads

with a lot of Stay Frosty propaganda, art and all kind of creative stuff!

evetravel.wordpress.com

- An amazing travel guide about all the sights to be seen in New Eden. A very comprehensive 

list combined with a lot of screenshots created by Mark726.

rocwieler.com

- Roc's ramblings is very well written roleplay blog with mostly fan fiction partly based on 

  Roc Wieler's ingame adventures. He's also a talented musician and composer.

poeticstanziel.blogspot.com

- Wearing his heart on his sleeve, Poetic Stanziel's blog can be a bit controversial at times, 

  but inciting discussions and arguments I believe this can be a good thing. Almost daily updated and very active.

jestertrek.blogspot.com

- Jester's trek, CSM8 member and long time Eve player, has been keeping a very consistent blog about almost everything Eve related. 

warp-to-sun.tumblr.com

- Ali Aras another CSM8 member, focussing on the more technical side of things and tips for the newer player, if that's you be certain to check this out!

belligerentundesirables.com

- The pirate and awoxer blog extraordinaire. Very funny tearful stories about victims of Psychotic Monk and his friends.

scaurus.com

- Marc scaurus gives his opinion on everything Eve related

mabricksmumblings.blogspot.com

- Mumblings from the self proclaimed carebear Mabrick, mostly technical and game mechanics related posts!

themittani.com

- Don't think this site needs an introduction anymore, hugely popular with a 

lot of writers and daily articles reporting all the news and drama happening in New Eden.

Podcasts:

crossingzebras.com

- The best Eve related podcast ever, or so they claim themselves. But I must admit it's one of the best out there! A massive amount of quality podcasts to be found!

evereader.phoibe.org

- Zendane's Eve reader podcast is one of my favorites. Very high quality reads of different chronicles, layered with effects and multiple voices! 

  Big recommendation for people interested in the Eve lore.

shitonkugu.blogspot.com

- Not the most serious or organized one in the bunch, but always very funny and interesting to find out a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes of the big alliances

voicesfromthevoid.net

- A long time running podcast by the friendly Arydanika with interviews, stories and all kinds of stuff Eve related. Also check out her blog at andknowing.blogspot.com not regularly update but still a good read.

Abbath's backstory part 3: A wise investment?

“Well sirs, may I congratulate you with your fine purchase and assure you will be very satisfied about our ORE products. I hope we can continue working together and may there be a bright future for both of our companies!” A big toothpaste smile became visible behind an opened hand. Abbath didn't move one bit, sleazy sly salesmen were pretty low on his list, but Reak couldn't be bothered and grabbed the opened hand before the situation became akward. After all, ORE products have already proven their worth, so they couldn't go wrong with a set of two new retrievers. Hell, the yield alone should earn their isk back in a few weeks. After nudging Abbath to shake the man's hand they left with the contracts, anxcious to behold their newly accuired gold diggers. “Man, you have to start working on your social and business skills asap!” Reak smiled as he slapped his friend on the back of his head. “You know I hate those weazels and by the way you are the PR part of our company. You do the talking, I do the hauling and we both mine, that's the agreement!” grunted Abbath irritated. Reak backed off, “Ease out man, I was just playing a little joke on you! And to be honest you still need to interact with people to make this deal work! What's with you, stop worrying so much, we'll make the isk back in no time.” “Being a 60 million isk sitting duck isn't my idea of a wise investment” mumbled Abbath synically, “We have barely enough fuel and no funds for drones. My single autocannon isn't going to be there every time angel cartel shows up, not even to mention pirates!” Reak let out a honed laugh. “Pirates? Are you kidding me? We've been out in those belts for weeks and haven't seen a single soul besides other miners. I'm pretty confident we can pull at least one run off with our retrievers. And don't worry we'll get those drones asap.”

Risk in Eve

Something I've been planning for a while is to write about risk taking in the Universe of New Eden. Every game involves a certain risk while playing, maybe it's game money, stats or special items but almost always there's a risk of losing assets while you try to gain assets or complete mission objectives.
Eve online is no exception, in fact it involves the highest risk a player can put himself into. Almost every action you preform is risk-linked and the game punishes you hard for every bad decision you make and it's not simple to collect wealth. Not even to mention the player base griefers, scammers, thief's, spies, etc.

Because of this New Eden has become known for being a big bad world where you can trust no one or anything. Of course these are all ingredients for a great sandbox MMO experience but it also created this weird mindset into the brain of many high sec. residents.

I've lived in high sec for almost a year getting to know the basics and reading up and learning all kinds of stuff game related. It was all good, being a resident of a small mining corp I always had friends to mine with or do missions.

Still I wanted to explore and walk the line of what was possible and experience New Eden fully. Venturing through low sec wasn't something my corp mates endorsed and they would avoid every fight they could, even when we outnumbered our opponents 3-1. In a way I understood as every ship lost is a step back from your goal so every risk is being avoided.  But what's the purpose of making isk just for the sake of making isk? Veteran high sec residents (care bears) have the tendency to scare off the new players from doing anything outside of high sec as they predict a certain loss with every kind of venture out in the unknown. Only skilling up for a long time in combination with a T2 ship would get you out alive so staying safely in high sec is the best option. At least that's what they want you to believe or maybe that's what they believe themselves.  That's the impression high sec life left on me and I'm still trying to get rid of that false mindset. One time too many I've been sitting bored in my high sec station, scared of exploring my surroundings because of a false myth. Finally I left for null sec, never to look back.

I know Eve is still a sandbox game and everyone is free to choose the way they want to play, but the experience I got since I moved out of care bear land was way more satisfying for me personally and I kinda wished I made the move a few months earlier. So some advice for the new players, don't listen too much to al the scary stories you hear floating around New Eden and find out for yourself what's true and what's not. You will probably lose some ships but the learning process and experience is worth a lot more than a few million of isk.
 

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. 
~Pablo Picasso