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.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
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!
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!
Sunday, June 2, 2013
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:
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Jester's trek, CSM8 member and long time Eve player, has been keeping a very consistent blog about almost everything Eve related.
- 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!
- The pirate and awoxer blog extraordinaire. Very funny tearful stories about victims of Psychotic Monk and his friends.
- Marc scaurus gives his opinion on everything Eve related
- Mumblings from the self proclaimed carebear Mabrick, mostly technical and game mechanics related posts!
- 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:
- 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!
- 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.
- 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
- 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.”
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