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

Keep on bumping

Being excited isn't that bad but being too excited is. Moving to null sec and the prospect of battle made me the latter one. I just finished my last hauling trip moving all my assets to my new home when a final call for a roam in chat corp chat drew my attention. I signed up, ready to plunge into pvp headfirst. Immediatly after, I realised I had no fitted ships ready and starting throwing modules in a rifter as fast as I could. As my first time out with my new corp, making a good impression was essentia so the last thing I wanted was to keep them waiting. Everything looked okay, the frig had some dps and decent hp so I undocked  as as the others were already waiting for me in a nearby Pos. Not even nearly unodcked I noticed my empty inventory... No roam can start without being able to reload so I redocked again cursing in silence. A few seconds later I was on my way to the fleet. The fc already inquired what took me so long, so I was really pressured to join the group asap. Finally the pos came in my sight and dreams of future adventures in null began to form. I was excited when we jumped to the first gate. Then I noticed another fatal error in my fitting. In my haste I managed to forget to fit points and/or webs while being in a tackle frigate. The feeling that came over me was indescribable, how could I be so stupid. (Insert face palm here.) I decided to keep quiet and tag along. Besides our fleet consisted of 2 other tacklers and 4 cruisers meaning plenty of webs and scrams. So we roamed around for a while and scouted ourselves some juicy targets sitting about 20 km of gate. Our scout went in first while we warped to him at the moment he landed on top of them. Of course one of the first orders i got was to point and web the targets while they started to face us. The group consisted of 6 battlecruisers and with no other options I started to bump the primary targets. A few of the battlecruisers were transformed to dust and the enemy started to burn towards the gate. I bumped as many as I could and the emergency solution was working pretty good. I even became the enemy's primary for a sec, what finished me off pretty quickly but was also their final mistake as our cruisers had more time to move in and do damage. The fight ended with 6 battlecruiser kills vs 2 frigs and one cruiser lost which is a nice result in my book. Pretty satisfied I returned home. And still a bit embarrassed about my derp fit I immediately started getting a few pvp ships fitted the correct way and ready to go so this could never happen again.

Don't fly around in your house

After an extensive period of mining I started getting more and more interested in the market. I wanted to keep progressing in making Isk so this seemed the logical next step. With a few hundred million in my wallet I started station trading like a nutcase in and around Rens. Hours were spent in front of market and wallet windows trying to keep maximum orders out. Slowly but fairly I started making my own little bit of profit but the buy orders didn't get filled in fast enough. Having wandered mostly in and around Heimatar I decided to take my trading to the next level and left rens for the infamous system Jita.

I didn't really know what to expect. I've been there before on two brief occasions but only for picking up some stuff and I hauled ass out of there as fast as I could. But to my surprise nothing happened on the way there. I started setting up my buy orders again and put my alt into the dodixie trading hub to sell the imported stuff. The pace was picking up and the profits rolled in. I noticed Jita wasn't that big of a deal as they made of it in all those stories I've read. Countless of hauling runs went spotless with almost never anything significant to report. The few times I was targeted I managed to warp away in time before the lock on. Starting to feel comfortable in my runs, I thought I could outrun any encounter as long as I stayed on keyboard. So the money train rode on and I accumulated some various contacts of traders and manufacturers.

On a certain day I received different contracts of modules in bulk amount at a very low price. I couldn't be more excited, especially when I calculated an estimated profit of half of my wallet. But first I had to scrape every Isk I worked for to complete the contract. That wasn't that big of a deal, all the modules were T2's and in high demand so I should make my money back pretty fast. The only thing left to do was to transport it all from Jita to Dodixie. I managed to put it all into a wreathe with nothing fitted besides 3 cargo hold expanders. After all, I managed to do numerous hauling trips with this setup so why change a winning formula. Without thinking about it much I undocked and headed for Dodixie. I pressed Alt Tab after increasing the audio volume so I was still able to hear the targeting sound if anything should occur. I kept switching between screens every time I jumped so I felt pretty secure.

After a while, almost half into the trip, I entered a new system and started to initiate the warpdrive to warp to the next gate. I was checking some market prices and my screen was cluttered with windows but I was still able to focus on the overview and local. As soon as I decloaked came the targeting warning. No problem I'll warp away in time. But then a few things happened all at once.

I had engaged in warp but there was a bang a tenth of a second before I jumped. "Hm…", starting to close a few of my windows I saw my mail symbol blinking. I received a notification that I had acquired kill rights on someone. I still didn't fully realize what had happened. At first I thought concord killed him and I got kill rights because he tried to target me. Guess that illustrates my knowledge of the crimewatch at the time.
Just to be sure I closed all my windows interrupting a clear view of my ship and started to zoom in. And there it was, a shiny green pod still in warp and more than a third of my total assets or 780 million isk blown to dust.

How could this be? No way I was targeted this quick. All the different feelings I experienced at that moment left me in shock. I didn't know what to feel, anger or just amazement that a game can leave such an impression on its players. When I woke up from being paralyzed I contacted my previous attacker to inquire about what,just had happened. He kindly explained to me that he received buffs from a friend to be able to target that fast. He also scanned me a few jumps earlier with a passive targeting system fitted so I couldn't notice him.

I thanked him for the information and crawled back to my home station in Dodixie, face-palming the whole trip.
So kids, don't transport all of your assets at once in a T1 industrial buy at least a Prowler.

Launcher problems

Yes, my launcher didn't work either yesterday. To be honest I too was pretty mad about it like so many other players were. I came home from work an hour early, excited to play Eve but wasn't able to log in. After a mad post on the forum, I started reading up on various fixes and after some fiddling I finally got in. In total it took me about 30min. Of course this shouldn't have happened at all if the launcher was tested extensively. But after cooling down for a while recollecting my thoughts, I started putting it all into perspective. Is it truly possible to make your updates work on every single setup these days? I'm no system specialist, but after all it was pretty simple to bypass the launcher. This was probably not the case for everyone, but reading all the enraged comments on the forum thread made me start to wonder why people used the words they did. There were some pretty offensive posts with accusations towards CCP and even some threats so I was a bit baffled about the sheer amount of anger on that thread. Starting to put it all into perspective I wondered if the previous negative events like the summer of rage and other malfunctioning updates made the players act the way they were acting. Including the fact that the Dev. team and CCP in general have a pretty close relationship with the player base, I got the impression people dared to accuse and insult the developers in a huge wave of resentfulness. To make a long story short, I had the impression that when you create a close relationship with your player base as a developer, it's harder to keep them satisfied and with any hiccup you get a shit storm over you because the players feel they know the developers. I believe some players even think CCP owns them in some way of another. Personally I think we should give CCP some slack as they aren't a huge multi billion corporation like Blizzard or the likes. Then again maybe I have grown a bit too forgiving after playing all the bugged out Elder Scroll games for years.

Music to fly spaceships to

When I started playing EVE, music to accompany me on my first steps in New Eden was very important. The extra dimension it gave to the game was amazing. From the start me and my RL friend turned off the standard Eve music and put on classic albums like "The 2001 space odyssey soundtrack, Star trek soundtracks or Floyd's "Dark side of the moon". The latter was a rediscovery for me in a way as I had not listened to the album for years. For weeks I played Dark side and Meddle back to back over and over while mining, missioning and getting to know Eve in general. These were both so amazing albums that fitted nicely into the Eve universe (at least for me they did) and they enhanced my gaming experience for a great deal. I've been thinking about music and Eve lately because I tend to play without any music as I'm on comms as soon as I log on to the game and started missing it in a way. I just think it isn't that handy to have music blasting while getting orders from your FC. So once in a while when I have to do some hauling in high sec or other solo stuff, I turn up the graphics and put on the Floyd, crank it up and just enjoy the beauty of both worlds!

Abbath's backstory pt 2: Grinding them rocks

At last it was done, the final log entry of today's extracted ore had been filled in. Abbath let out a deep satisfied yawn while he leaned back in his chair.
Mining wasn't a particular hard job, but it consisted of many man hours a day and he was feeling it. Glancing out of his little office window he could see his hoarder being loaded for the transport trip tomorrow. The station workers just started their shift, but for Abbath, the working day was over. Heaving himself out of his chair he checked the time and cursed silently. "Damn, late again. Hope Raek is still hanging out in the bar"! He quickly put on his jacket and started to stroll towards the exit of the office.
 
"Man, 30 million isk profit divided by two, in just over a week, that's quite the sum!".
Just thinking about so much isk made Abbath feel like he was walking on air. Still he had to keep his feet firmly on the gound, after all the cargo had not been delivered yet. He almost forgot about his first hauling run and it made him feel anxious. 4 jumps in total from Reset to Hek wasn't something to be taken lightly and he had to do that route three times to complete the contract.
There haven't been any incidents yet, but Hek housed people of all sorts and like all the main trading hubs also many scammers and gankers. The fact that Hek is located in  0.5 sec. made his anxciety even worse. Not to mention he had to explain himself to his partner and friend Raek if anything happened.
 
Buried in thought he entered the station's bar. The place was buzzing, conversations, arguments, shady deals and laughs in all kinds of different dialects and languages pulled Abbath out of his bubble. "Finally! There you are! Out of nowhere came Raek, already with two drinks in hand. "I was just thinking about leaving if you didn't show up soon"! "Many numbers to fill in, ey"? He smiled and poked Abbath in his side. “Come, I've kept a free seat for ya!” When no reply came he laughed even louder. “Haha come on my friend, I can't believe you're so wound up about this hauling trip. Thing's will end up fine, I'm confident that I'll have my share of the profits by tomorrow evening.”
 

Code blue

Ever since I started doing some pvp and roaming in low sec, I acquired a new kind of hobby: collecting frozen corpses. It's been only recently that I noticed them floating around mostly because of my overview setup and I was intrigued to say the least. With no real purpose or value they still have something about them. Every corpse can tell a story of their own and can be quite interesting when you search the character on the killboards. And just the fact that you can keep and collect players dead bodies appeals to me in some weird sense. As my station container was getting filled with frozen corpses, I started to wonder if there isn't anything you could do with them. When I started looking around the internet for some kind of use for these meat popsicles I came across different articles about frozen corpses and it became clear that I wasn't the only one interested in those stiffs floating around. First I came across the Evelopedia page called Body mining. It was mostly a storyline and background explanation about the industry of biomass, but still interesting to find out about. Also the chronicle "Lost stars" about the shocking truth of quafe+ was quite entertaining.

The second link I found on the subject was the capsuleer cemetery on one of my favorite sites Eve travel.  For you who don't know this one, it's about (as the title already explains) traveling around New Eden, best to be described as a guided tour doing all kinds of sightseeing and giving a lot of background info. Combine all of this with some nice pictures and you've got an amazing site! Props to Mark726!  Now back on topic, The capsuleer cemetery, painstakingly maintained by Azia Burgi, is a POS dedicated to the fallen clones, each with their own casket and custom epitaph. Today it sports ECM and gun batteries to protect the graves after a couple desecrations of different groups. It's located at Molea II, Moon 1 in the Khanid region.
Go and pay your respects! I surely will!

The third thing I came across was the story about Eve's own corpse bride. An engaged couple with a rather peculiar wedding proposition. I won't elaborate to much on this as it would spoil the story a bit.

But still I had no real purpose for my little army of dead flesh. There was nothing to be found besides some old posts about ideas of being able to biomass the corpses but that never saw the light of day.
I guess I'll be filling my freezers with dead flesh till that day comes.

Reflection on my first mining days

I haven't mined in quite a long time, but when I stumbled on this rock, it made me smile and think back of all the hours I've spent in asteroid belts. Mining while watching our favourite Tv-shows seemed the only right way to do it. I remember me and a mining buddy watching the same Episodes of Louie Louie at the same time while being on skype laughing our asses off!

Oh how little did we know about New Eden, sitting for days on end in 0.9 highsec space mining and barely seeing any other players coming by. It was all so naive and peacefull, it's amazing how my surroundings and the understanding of it have evolved so much.

The first blow

Intro: My adventures in EVE are primarily dealing with losing ships as I'm still quite a new player with a little less than a year of experience playing this wonderful scifi game. When reading all of the amazing adventures other players had I started to think of my own memorable moments and I noticed that the ones that popped into my mind dealt with mainly losing ships in the most stupid and idiotic way. I think they are pretty funny now, although at the time I was pretty devastated, even if it was my own dumb fault. I do not think my adventures are special in any way, still I wanted to show to mostly the new players, that you can have exciting moments in Eve without being at huge battles like the one in asakai or having skills that would take a newb ages to train for, just losing a ship can be an awesome experience too!

One of my earliest memories in the game, goes back to my first months of playing EVE. I joined a small mining corp and mined for days on end with my newly acquired friends. Everything went quite ok without any bumps in the road. I never experienced any can flippers, griefers or any other evil I was so heavily warned about so after a while I got the mindset that all the stories i read and heard were exaggerated in a way - in other words, I started to get cocky. I joined up with my friends doing my first lvl 4 missions in a hurricane with just enough skills to fly it and barely enough knowledge to survive. I managed to almost destroy my newly acquired vessel on it's first run when i charged head first into quite a big group of npc's like some space terminator leaving my more experienced friends behind me. Of course all the npcs started to focus fire on me and soon enough I was being targeted by about 30 rats at the same time. I managed to warp out with my hull at 50%, my heart beating like a pneumatic drill and sweating like I just ran a marathon. The hurricane with fittings was a present from my CEO and I managed to almost blow it up in the first few minutes on its first run. I never quite experienced this kind of feeling while playing a game. The experience reminded me about the excitement I had many years ago when I played my first fps games over a LAN-network.

Realizing I needed more experience doing PVE and fighting in general, I started going for the Sisters of Eve epic Arc missions which were quite a difference from the lvl4's I experienced earlier. Everything seemed to be way easier and I felt I was overpowered in my trusty cane. I started to get bored and didn't even read the mission briefings. After all, you just had to warp to the deadspace area, stop your engines and start shooting everything you encountered right? This wasn't quite the case as I was about to learn the hard way soon after.

So another boring mission came along and cocky as I still was, I didn't read the mission log and jumped right in a new deadspace area. This time there were a lot of npcs on my overview at about 100k distance, but I was sure my cane could take on these easy noob missions so I turned on my mwd and charged them. I also remember to wonder why some of the red icons in my overview were bigger that the others but thought "meh I'll just kill them all". As I started to get into range it dawned on me that something was wrong. The first enemy volleys started to hit and I was staring at my pod in just a few seconds of battle.

I felt like I was nailed to the floor or better, sinking in my chair. Because of my arrogance I lost an approx. 60mil isk present in a record time of just two days. Turns out I charged into a massive npc fleet which I just had to scout and report back because I had no chance of winning. That would've been obvious if I just read the mission log prior but as you all know by now that didn't happen.

My pride got dented severely as I had my first ship lost and not even to a real player! After that I made the promise to myself to think before I acted, as this wasn't a game where you can make mistakes and not get punished.
But of course there were still many hard lessons to come...