EVE and I – Part 05 – Silent Night

When we last left our interpid capsuleer I was complaining that I wasnt really getting the return I wanted in my mining efforts. Unfortunately while I’ve done a number of things to address that I havent had a huge amount of success. On the other hand I have killed a lot of pirates, a lot a lot. So when I logged off the last time I was ready for a bit of a break from the game. But the next day (well technically later that day) Patrick, as always, pulled me back in. He needed help with a mission and I kindly decided to help him out. Of course the fact that I owned a destroyer entirely bereft of armaments or any kind of defense meant he was going to have to wait a little while for that to happen.

2012.12.20.01.00.14So while Patrick headed out to watch the big screen adventures of Hobbit’s I took a break from mining and decided to outfit my destroyer. You dont see many people raving about how good the Amarr Coercer (see right) is for anything other than salvaging. It was a pain in the arse to find any kind of suggested fittings. To be honest suggested fitting (i.e. fittings used by other players and uploaded to various websites and databases) are often of little worth. They generally include the easy to decide on obvious stuff (weapons, ammo, etc.) and dont pay a lot of attention to the more difficult to decide on low and mid slots (or even worse contain rigs which cost up to three times the price of the ship itself). Anyhow a bit of experimenting later and my destroyer was all ready to go. I still wasnt pushed on doing any mining or hauling so I continued with the Sisters of Eve epic story arc, which generally involved shooting a lot of pirates. As my new destoryer had an engagement range of 23KM that usually meant popping the little fuckers from miles away. Which was nice.

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Later on Patrick came home and we quickly did the mission he needed a hand with. Taking down the charming gentleman shown above. Once he was dead and Patrick had jetted out of there I salvaged his ship and got some nice salvaged loot (I’d used seven of my eight high slots for lasers and the last for a salvager which lets you process wrecks for, well, salvage). That was really all I’d intended to do, I only logged on to give Patrick a hand. I did one or two more missions in the Sisters of Eve arc and then headed to bed.

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Thursday I logged in to find a some nice christmas gifts waiting from CCP, the best of which was an implant which gave +3 to Intelligence. Implants are a pretty big deal because the only way to speed up your training time is to use an attribute remap (and you only get one of those every 365 days) or to slap in an implant. My current goal is to get a basic +3 implant for all five stats (well maybe not for charisma), either way they cost around 10 million each so having one of them out of the way for free was great. Thursday night/morning I spent doing the Sisters of Eve epic story arc. Which is long, very fucking long.

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However it is also failry lucrative as well. Each mission has a sizeable cash reward and the “Do within X time” bonus usually doubles that reward. I wont go into the details of each mission, because a) they are often quite similiar, b) rife with spoilers and c) I dont really want to. The story is interesting but nothing mindblowing and is presented in a very dry and, upon relflection, fairly unengaging way. It had some good bits and some cool looking bits. But Im hoping the higher level epic arcs are better. Anyway all of the “phat lootz” meant that I could pick up the second of my four/five planned implants. A +3 to Perception knocked something like two weeks or so off the years training time. Largely because perception is so important to all the piloting stuff which my plan focuses on.

 

2012.12.21.06.33.31That took several hours and brought me back around through night into early morning. While I was flitting around doing missions I was also (as always in EVE) training skills in the background, getting my Mining up high enough so that I could upgrade my mining lasers to Tech II versions allowing me to mine even faster. This lead to random detours where I’d use EVE-Central to source out the cheapest (well the cheapest safe and relatively close) source for whatever it was I wanted to buy and off across the stars I would go. I need to get a faster ship because jumping can be tedious as fuck (and Im too parnoid if it even goes through one sector of low-sec space to let the autopilot handle it).

As well as squandering my hard won coin I was trying to work out what my next step was going to be. Back when I was just getting into the game I planned out a rough ship progression based on what I thought looked cool, according to that the next class I should train for would be Cruiser and the next ship I would be getting would be the Maller.

 

2012.12.21.06.37.06Unfortuantely all available information about the Maller and fitting it suggsted it was fairly shit for PvE (and most other things other than heavy bait tanking in PvP it seems). On the other hand the Arbitrator cruiser is supposed to be not only signicantly better for more or less everything, its also supposed to be one of the best cruisers fullstop. Now I dont think it looks shit, but it does look a little boring. So I was, and am, torn. Do I purposefully cripple myself to get the cooler looking ship? Do I go with the boring looking but mechnically superior one? Complicating the issue is the nature of both ships, the Maller is a typical Amarr ship i.e. armour tank and lasers. I’ve already got the core skills and the support skills at a decent level. On the other hand the Arbitrator is the first of the Amarr ship’s to disply the Amarr “sideline” in drone boats. I have very few drone skills so getting them up to a decent level will take longer. But on the other (yes I have three hands) hand larger classes of ship, like battlecruisers and battleships, will need drone skills (as will any mining or salvaging ships I use) so its no like the skills will be wasted.

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For the moment it’s a moot point, I don’t really “need” the ship until I get to Level 2 missions and I havent even done any Level 1 missions yet so theres no need to rush ahead of myself. As I neared the end of the Sisters of Mercy ESA I actually got a request for a side storyline mission (the way missions work is that for every 16 normal missions you run for a Corporation you get 1 storyline mission which has better rewards, and more importantly, a nice big bump in standing with the corporation and its faction). Which I ran quickly before getting back to trying to finish off the main epic story arc

 

 

After some delicious sleep, no, thats a lie, any benefit I got from the sleep was sullied when I was awoken by that fucking dog’s hateful barking. I feel like I spent a lot of time logged ino EVE today without getting anything at all done. I spent some time fannying around looking for a good deal on various ship upgrades and skill books before getting back to finish the last chapter or so of the Sisters of Eve ESA. The difficulty gets kicked up a notch here towards the end. I managed to finish the subboss without a huge amount of trouble. After getting continually fucked at long range I loaded the most powerful short range lasers I could afford/use and flew literally fight next to the bastard before I lit him up. Sadly the same tactic didnt work on his boss so I had to call in Patrick to return the favour from the day before

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Once the story arc was complete I realised I had random bits of shit lying in spacestations all over the place (as the story arc drags you all around the major factions areas of space). I know I could have just ignored them but it pissed me off. So I wasted, what was probably a stupid amount of, time ferrying everything back to one of my two homebases. At this point I decided I’d go back to mining for a bit, I’d picked up some Miner II laser’s for my Venture and I figured I’d also pick up some Giant Secure Containers and try some GSC mining. But I forgot I needed the skill so I had to traipse across a few systems to pick up the skillbook for that (I think my new rule will be, each jump has to be worth at least a 10% drop in price). Then I realised, shit, the only ship that can carry three containers is my Bewstower (i.e. my slowest ship). But wait, I could now use Expanded Cargohold II’s to carry at least a fourth GSC. So off I set to get some Expanded Carghold II’s, then to get some GSC’s. It was then that I noticed unassembled the fucking things only take up 300m3 of space not 3000m3 (doesnt matter Bestower is still the only ship I have that can carry them).

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Rventually I had my Bestower outfitted with Expanded Carghold II’s and four GSC’s in the hold. So I headed off the the asteroid belt I’d been using for the past while and started anchoring my GSC’s in space. Which was when I discovered that a) it takes 60 seconds and b) it cant be within 5KM of anything else in space (which is super convenient in an asteroid belt). But I persevered, which is why I was filled with…joy when I spotted another player just as I’d anchored the fourth one. Another player in a fucking Retriever, i.e. a big ass specialised mining ship. Fuck and shit. The bastard could mine much quicker than me so I figured I might as well try somewhere else, so took another five minutes to recollect all my GSC’s. Then (clearly gripped by madness) I decided to scout out the eight asteroid belts in the system in my slow as fuck Bestower. Many, many tedioud minutes later I’d found another asteroid belt with some Fiery Kernite (best ore I can realistically get at the moment). When some pirates appeared. As my Bestower is entirely unarmed I fled, switched to my destroyer, went back and killed the pirates, flew back out in my slow ass Bestower…only to find that cockbox in his retriever mining there now.

 

 

2012.12.22.03.13.36I’d had enough of this shitty solar system. So off I went a jump or two away to another solar system, checked out the asteroid field’s there. Seemed to be a (very small) amount of fiery kernite there. But wait, there was no space station in the solar system which makes setting up a base impossible and creates big delays in returning the ore. So I went back to my main mining station, back to my old asteroid belt. Haha, no player in sight, fucker must have gone to bed – weak. So I get up my GSC’s, anchored them in space and went back to the space station. Swapped into my Venture and headed back out to get my mining on. I was probably two minutes in when the fucker in the Retriever reappeared. But at that point I didnt care. I just kept on mining. Seems that he was just mining whatever, not concentrating on the Fiery Kernity like I was (and like he should be). Which meant I didnt have to waste all that time dicking around. Fuck you EVE, FUCK YOU!

As I’ve been typing this I’ve been mining away in the background. Despite discovering that there was an ingame notepad and calculator (which are super useful) I forgot to note what time I started mining. Hopefully I’ve a screenshot with a timestamp. At this point I’ve filled the four GSC’s so all that remains is filling the hold of my Venture, heading back to base and heading back to collect the GSC’s in my Bestower. At that point I’ll have to decide what to do about selling them. I’m hoping that for all this hassle I’ll have earned more ISK/hour than I did from the mining earlier in the week. I fear however that I will not.

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So my direct actions aside after a week with EVE how do I feel about it? Well I’m enjoying it so far. Further analysis will need to wait till tomorrow when its not nearly 6 in the AM. I’ve also put together a few handy hints and tips for new players (as a few people have mentioned theyre going to check out EVE over christmas) and my thoughts on the mobile support apps that are available for Android and iOS (as well as EFT for the PC). So with this done I’m going to finish off mining, write out the list of ingredients for christmas dinner that I said I would buy tomorrow but will now pawn off on someone else, and go to bed.

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