A New (Alt) Life

I’ve decided to have a PvP alt that I’ll be concentrating most of my attention and training time to from now on. I’ve decided to use my alt Celest Zephyr as my PvP alt as she has yet to start training on anything, so she is brand-new and uncorrupted (but I’m thinking she may try out piracy).

During this past week or so, my main’s corp has been war dec’d by some serious folks and we expect the war to drag on for a while. Since this corp is a industry-based corp with few members with PvP experience, most of us have been hiding in station, using alts to mine and etc., or have not logged on. I thought this was a good opportunity to start my alt training and preparing for PvP.

I’ve had Celest Zephyr do the rookie training missions, mostly to get as many skill books for free as possible, but also to get some ISK. As soon as she did have enough money, she bought a Rifter and trained to fly it. She first fitted the basic modules as she was training up, but now she has fitted it with Meta 3′s and some 4′s. She is on her way to be able to fit T2 modules on it, but that is at least a month away.

Already, while running training missions, Celest pirated. She found an Executioner abandoned at a planet, so she stole it. Yeah, I know it isn’t much but she’ll either sell it for a little cash or melt it down and sell the ore. Either way, it’s a little easy money. I’ve decided that Celest will not use my main as a sugar daddy; that she will earn her own cash for her expenses. But then again, maybe she will receive a few large monetary gifts from a secret benefactor. It will help her become better skilled more quickly and be able to afford better equipment. Still have to think about that.

As Celest has just finished up the basic training for her Rifter and finished running the training missions, I’m trying to decide what to do next. I’ve been thinking of applying for Red vs. Blue as I’ve heard they are a great way to learn PvP. Or I may try to find a pirate corp that will have me.

The Drake Trap

During my hiatus over the last two months, I logged onto Eve only to do PI and to keep my skill queue going. During this time, I thought it was a good chance to try something new and started training for the Caldari Battlecruiser, the Drake. I’ve now completed the required and suggested training for it. So last week I bought one and the mods for it. The ship, the insurance, and all of the mods put a big dent in my newly-rejuvenated wallet. I wanted to put only T2 mods on it put cannot yet for heavy missile launchers and shield mods. I’ll be training for the T2 variants next plus training for T2 heavy missiles for an added punch.

I took my new Drake outside on it’s maiden voyage and ran a L3 mission. I was very impressed with the shield tank on it. I then tried a L4 mission and again was thrilled with the shield tank and not even having to warp out once to charge my capacitor.

 

During the past week or so I’ve run a handful of L4 missions and have proved my Drake in PoE battle. It has my respect in it’s ability to take lots of punishment and punch right back. (Though I do find the cycle time for heavy missiles to be agonizing slow at times.) I find it an excellent ship to run L4 missions in order to earn ISK. Regardless of the money I spent on the Drake and it’s mods, it paid for itself after two missions. I look forward to using it to increase my wallet capacity in the future and now kick myself for not training for the Drake earlier.

With that said, I can see some potential down sides to the Drake. With it’s unreal tank, pilots who fly it exclusively may fall into “the Drake trap”, as I want to call it. That is to say they may start to forget or not learn how about other ships’ strengths and weaknesses and how to fit other ships well.

To me, that is not enjoying the Eve universe’s ships to the fullest potential possible. I want to learn as much as possible the difference in ships’ designs and how to play to their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. So for me, I’m going to watch myself to be sure I use the Drake as only an ISK machine to build up my wallets. At least for now. I haven’t explored how it does in PvP combat yet.

A Wild Hiatus

It’s been over two months now since my last blog post. And let me tell you, it’s been one of the longest two months of my life.

In case you have been hiding in a worm hole for the past two months, both in EVE and in RL, Japan had a massive earthquake on Friday, March 11, 2011 and then parts of Japan were hit by huge tsunamis, wiping out entire towns and killing a confirmed 14,755 people with thousands more missing. The tsunami also severely damaged a nuclear power plant, causing a near meltdown, the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. As a result of the nuclear crisis, radiation was released into the air and sea, affecting the food supply. Also, there was a severe power shortage in Tokyo and surrounding areas and rolling blackouts were planned and occurred for about three weeks afterward.

http://gravity.fm/wp-content/uploads/pray-for-japan.png

I’m living near Tokyo, so this disaster and resulting problems affected me. I’ll be posting my experiences and more in my personal blog, http://tenkiishi.wordpress.com. Due to the uncertain conditions during this time, I severely limited my Eve Online time (I was feeling bored with it anyway) and logged on only to keep my skill queue going and to do PI. During this time, I was able to complete skill training for the Drake. After selling all of my PI-manufactured products I had accumulated during this period, my ISK wallet was happy and healthy.

I was very touched by CCP and the Eve Community in their response to this disaster. CCP for doing a PLEX for Japan campaign drive and the response of the community by donating over USD $44,600 in two weeks.

From an Eve player in Japan and

from the people of Japan, thank you!

My Journey Across The Thin Blood-Red Line of PvP

I feel that I’m drawing closer and closer to the “dark side” of Eve. For over a year now I’ve been a good carebear and avoided PvP as much as possible. But now I’m bored with running L3 missions, exploring, and mining. I can work on L4 missions but I’ve lost so many pricy BSs on them that I don’t really want to until I have built another BS. Manufacturing is OK but involves mostly waiting; first for the required materials to be accumulated and then for the jobs to finish. I am starting to feel the need for some excitement and the little PvP I’ve experienced has shown me that PvP can be very exciting.

As I said before I’ve avoided PvP as I consider myself still a newbie and very inexperienced in Eve. But there has been times when I’ve been forced to into PvP.

My experience with PvP began during my first days as a new pilot. I wandered into low sec after ignoring the warning that popped up before jumping into low sec. I was promptly blown up as I sat at the gate wondering where to go.

My next experience was in high sec space where I was jet can mining in a cruiser and a can flipper came along and stole my ore. I promptly targeted him and fired on him and he in turn blew me out of my ship. That was how I learned about can flippers and griefers.

For a while, I would go into low sec and rat or run missions. As it was low sec, I knew enough from guides and blogs, to keep watching the directional scanner and local for threats. What I didn’t know was how to tell if someone is a threat AND is coming for you until they had landed close to me and locked me up with warp disrupters. By then it was too late. I lost a few ships before I learned these lessons.

I grew to where I felt comfortable to go into low sec as long as my ship was properly fitted and I took great care. One time, as I was ratting, a pirate landed close to me in the asteroid belt where I was shooting rats, locked me up, and warp disrupted me. I happened to have a multi spectrum jammer fitted and was able to break his lock and the death grip on my warp drive and warped away to safety. Since then, I now usually fit muti spec jammers on my ships when I go into low sec, just in case. This has saved my old, slow Bestower that I use to pick up PI stuff and loot from ratting a few times, to the astonishment of the pirate who thought they had me.

My first real scrape I got into happened this way. I again was ratting in low sec when a pirate got the drop on me and had me warp disrupted. I decided to go ahead and fight back as the opposition was in a frigate and I was in a BC. I had an MWD fitted so I fired it up and told my ship to orbit at around 12 KM. The pirate then fled. I reason that he must have had ACs or blasters fitted for short range fights so got scared and ran when I moved out of his optimal range. That was my first real fight and I count it as a victory as I was not looking for the fight but was not blown up or ran away.

I also did participate in a POS bash that my corp did against another corp’s POS in our corp’s WH system. I flew a Myrm and lost it to the POS guns before we were able to take them all out. I managed to grab another Myrm and returned to help out put the tower into reenforced mode. We came back a few days later when it came out of reenforced mode and blew it to pieces. That was an interesting experience but could have been more exciting if the opposite corp had decided to protect their POS with their own fleet.

Last night, I snapped. Feeling reckless, I fitted up a spare Thorax cruiser with a few T2 mods but mostly T1 items and went into low sec for some PvP action. I didn’t care if I lost the ship as I had renewed the insurance on it and I could quickly build another if I wanted. I didn’t find a fight with the exception of a very experienced pirate with a -10.0 security status in a Tech 2 BS who hunted me for a while. I was feeling reckless but not stupid and wanted a more even match, so I avoided him. After about an hour in low sec, I had to go to bed so I went back to high sec without firing a shot except at some rats.

Better luck next time, I hope.

Meet My New Alt, Celest Zephyr

With Hulkaggedon still going on, I’ve had to find other things to do than the usual mining when I don’t want to run missions. PI is a good distraction but once the planets are set up, it only takes about half an hour to pick up the extracted resources and drop them off at my industrial planet for processing into the final P2 products and to get my extractors going again.

In my last post I included a link for a faction standing repair plan. I decided to start doing this for the Caldari and Amarr factions which have a standing order to shoot me if I enter their space. I want to participate in our corp mining ops, which are now being held in Amarr space, and I also am thinking about starting mission running for Caldari agents. I’ve been working to get Diplomacy up to L5 and will have finished in just a few hours (by the time I post this, it will have been completed). Just by getting it up to L4 has given me a -4. something standing with Caldari so I can now enter their space. I’m close to having a better than -5 standing with Ammarr also and have been running some L1 missions for an Amarr agent to help raise it, but so far its not moving up. Guess I’ll have to wait to see where Diplomacy 5 puts me with them.

Last night I created a new Alt on my account. I named her Celest Zephyr after this blog to reserve the name. I wanted  to make her Caldari, which I had thought had Japanese-looking features but none of the Caldari bloodlines looked remotely Japanese. So I had to make her Amarrian, which has a bloodline with Japanese-looking features. My wife (who is Japanese) was passing by the PC when I was trying to decide on a look, asked if it was going to look like her. I thought that was a great idea and so modeled Celest after my wife as best as I could. I thought it was very successful and does look a lot like my wife. My wife thinks otherwise and told me to erase it. LOL!

Here is Celest Zephyr:

My new alt, Celest Zephyr

 

Right now, I won’t train her for anything; she just exists to reserve the name of this blog.

 

A Little of Nothing

So I missed a posting last week, I know. As I said in my last post, my enthusiasm for Eve has diminished. I have been logging in almost every day to check my training queue, do PI, and run a few L3 missions every now and then. I even braved it to salvage the wrecks from these missions afterwards. But I find these L3 missions routine and boring whereas L4 missions are usually too hard, especially in my Myrm battlecruiser. The most excitement I’ve had in Eve lately was redoing a couple of my low sec PI planets from scratch. And while I was in low sec dropping off a command center on a planet and picking up the material excavated from yesterday in my Bestower, a pirate found me and ransomed me. He was very civil and didn’t even fire at me, just locked me up so I couldn’t warp away and let me go for a measly 5 million ISK. Which is a good thing as I am very low on ISK right now and couldn’t afford a larger ransom.

I said that I felt my desire to play Eve has diminished but I think it is coming back thanks to some other Eve player blogs that I read yesterday. Most are on a blogging list that CrazyKinux keeps, as well as some other blogs that he linked but aren’t on his blogging list. Some of these are excellent guides to a few activities I’ve felt I need to do. Like this post on doing solo PvP. Or this one on rebuilding faction status (want to rebuild my standing with Caldari) or doing Epic mission arcs or COSMO missions (something I’ve wanted to try since staring Eve but didn’t know where to go to get these missions). I’ll start these this week, I hope.

These past few weeks, I’ve been playing another MMORPG. No, not World of Warcraft but The Lord of the Rings Online. I find it quite fun with less planning an thinking involved and more action. However, I’m not ready to subscribe to it but prefer to play for free and use the in-game points that I earn by completing special deeds or by splurging $20 to buy enough of these points to last me for a long time (I think). But as much as I like LOTRO, I will return to Eve. There are aspects of Eve that I enjoy that is not contained in or is limited in LOTRO. For example, in Eve one can manufacture or “make” anything as long as you have the skills to. With LOTRO, you’re limited to three classes that are related an cannot make anything outside or these classes or is a higher level of expertise than you are currently at. Everything else you have to buy from NPC vendors or buy from other players at an auction. I’d rather make a lot of these things that I use but cannot as my manufacturing class is different. So I’ll continue to do both Eve as my main game and LOTRO when I need a distraction.

Another One Goes Pop!

I wrote this up earlier this past week, but forgot to post it. Oops!

Last week I decided to tackle the L4 mission, “When Worlds Collide”. I found this to be one of the longest lasting missions that I’ve ever tried. There are two groups of pirates that are many kilometers apart and both are far from the warp in point. I could take both of these groups out with little difficulty, having to warp out only two or three times to recharge my cap. The big problem was that my Megathron took forever to reach any of the groups (I didn’t have an AB mod on) and my limited time to play Eve. So the on the first day, by the time I took out these two groups, my play time was almost over so I decided to salvage and call it a day. I got my Noctis and salvaged all I could see. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a MicroWarp mod works in the mission.

The following couple of days was very similar to the first, running out of time and then salvaging the wrecks of the pirates that I had destroyed. I did get to warp to the next room from the Serpentis gate one time and managed to clear those rats but again had to stop there and salvage before quitting for the day.

On the third day since I started the mission, I had more time and was determined to complete the mission. I cleared both pirate groups in the first room and went through the Serpentis gate to the second room. I had my drones out, my shield was at zero and armor about 25% gone. Then my computer decided to conk out and when I got back into Eve, I found that I was in my pod. The rats had taken out my Megathron while I was out of it thanks to my computer going down. That was my last BS I had so I quit the mission and went to bed.

So as you can see, I’m not having too much luck with battleships. I’ve never lost so many ships in one class before as I have with BSs.  I’m getting frustrated with BSs and Level 4 missions; maybe I’m flying the wrong type of BS. And they’re so expensive, not just the hulls but also the mods to fit them. Plus I don’t dare fly a BS without insuring it and the platinum level premium adds to the overall cost. The only positive thing with my latest BS fiasco was the insurance payout, I had enough to buy a Hulk, so I bought one. But with Hulkageddon looming, I’ve decided not to fly it but to keep it until after it’s over or I may sell it since I expect Hulk prices to be high after Hulkageddon.

I also almost lost my Bestower, the one I just bought to replace the one I lost to my stupidity (see my last post). I went to low-sec to pick up some PI goods from my colonies in the low-sec system. On the low-sec side of the gate when I jumped in, sat two player pirates. I gave the command to warp to one of my safe spot bookmarks but I didn’t think I’d make it since the Bestower takes forever to get up to warp speed. Luckily, the pirates must not of been paying attention and they were slow to start targeting me but I was warping away before they locked on. I made it to my safe spot, quickly warped to my planets, picked up the goods, and warped back to high-sec. Whew!

Right now, I’m doing some occasional mining but probably won’t do any more until after Hulkageddon is finished. I need to build another Megathron so I need to mine lots of Veldspar and Scordite. But I’m also playing another MMORPG, Lord of the Rings Online. So as far as Eve goes, I’m logging on just to do PI stuff, check my training, and read Eve mails before logging off. So for those of you who are mining, hauling, or salvaging, be careful out there and make sure your insurance and clones are up to date. And for those of you hunting during Hulkageddon, good luck to you!

Grrr….Expensive Mistakes

During the weekend I had a Megathron manufactured and I fitted it out to run Level 4 missions. I ran my first mission in it today, “Damsel in Distress” and I took great care with it during the mission by warping out when my armor was half gone and my capacitor close to empty. I finally finished destroying all of the henchmen and was searching for the damsel by blowing up the structures.

Since destroying the structures was taking some time, I went to my browser, searching for an overview setup guide for a corp member. When I went back to Eve, I was surrounded by NPC battleships and my hull was half gone. I couldn’t get my Meg pointed and warping away before it exploded and I was in my pod. I had been using Hammerhead II drones for more DPS against the structures and I could hear the NPCs firing at my drones, destroying them one by one while I sat there in my pod, not being able to do anything.

I made the 5 jumps to where I had another fitted Meg and warped back to clean up the NPCs and finish the mission. I took more care this time and was ready when another group or two of NPCs spawned, defeating them after warping away a couple of times to repair and recharge. I eventually found the damsel and got her aboard safely and returned to base and my reward.

I boarded my Noctis and went to the mission site and salvaged everything, including the items that survived from my destroyed Megathron. In one of the containers from a structure were some prohibited drugs but I scooped them into my Noctis, thinking that my security status is too high anyway and I can afford to have it knocked down some and maybe make some extra ISK. About the time I ended my warp to the jump gate leading to my base system, my computer crashed and shut off.

When I got it back on and logged into Eve, I found myself in my pod next to the wreckage of my Noctis. What?!! I then saw the Notification in Evemail that prohibited items were detected and removed from my ship. Ah, the Gallente Federation must have destroyed my ship. I didn’t know they’d do that; the couple of times before when I had brought in illegal items, the items were removed and my security status took a couple tenths of a point hit, no big deal.

I warped to my base and got into my Bestower that I use for hauling. After undocking and jumping through the gate, I  retrieved the wreck of my Noctis and dumped all of the contents into my hold. Immediately I got a warning message that i had illegal items. But before I could react, I was being targeted by the Federation ships and they opened fire. My Bestower didn’t last long and there was nothing I could do before I was once again in my pod. I checked the contents of the Bestower wreck and found there were two illegal drugs there. So all of the illegal drugs were not detected and removed the first time.

I did eventually get another ship and salvaged my wrecked ships but left the drugs there and abandoned the container. The rest of my session time was spent replacing the Noctis and Bestower and their mods. Fortunate for me, I had just renewed the insurance on my Bestower and had purchased full insurance for the Megathron. Unfortunately the Noctis’ insurance had run out so I just got the minimum for an uninsured ship. But I also had rigs installed on all of these ships and my Meg had Tech 2 drones and some Tech 2 mods. I don’t know right now exactly how much I lost in terms of ISK but it hurts.

So pay attention out there and don’t transport illegal items in high sec space.

Weekend Activities

Last weekend I didn’t spend a lot of time online in Eve but I accomplished a lot in the time that I did. Or at least I completed a lot of preparatory work so I will make some serious ISK (at least I hope) so I can buy me a Hulk in the near future.

I did a few level 3 missions on Friday night and Saturday morning to get my standings with the Federation Navy up. I then  gathered up my ore and salvage and took it to my manufacturing station. On Sunday, I took some of my BPOs to a low sec station to research the ME and get that up to higher than 0 level. Currently, I am able to do only 4 research jobs simultaneously but I plan on improving that by training Laboratory Research. The low sec station I use has the lowest wait time for ME jobs that I’ve found so far but still my four jobs will take 46 days.

I decided to take some of my PI produced goods to Dodixie to check out the prices there. Wow! I can sell for much higher there! I’m kicking myself now for not selling there earlier. I did have one scary moment when I undocked and some suicide gankers started shooting. I was flying my Bestower and it kept butting against the station when I tried warping to my exit stargate. Luckily they weren’t shooting at me and I was able to get out of Dodge before they exploded a smart bomb. I can see I need to get a BM set up to warp to as soon as I undock from that station.

"Who's scruffy looking?"

While in Dodixie, I bought a Megathron BPC since I’ve decided to build my BSs for running L4 missions. Ive found out the hard way that Megarhrons are expensive (I’ve lost four or five already).

In my last posting, I said that I may take another look at the char creator to redo my main character. Well, I did redo it and spent some time at it. But when I was finished, I didn’t like it; I ended up liking the one I did the other day better. So here’s the new Tiberius Akika. He’s not clean cut  with longer hair and unshaven. Hey, he’s a pod pilot so why should he shave? His pose in this shot makes it look like he’s uncomfortable with having his picture taken. He’s very independent, surviving on his skills and luck. I like it!

NOTE: Sorry about the low quality graphic. My machine has to be set to low quality or it has problems. I’ll be trying to get a high quality one.

Incursion Expansion Ordeal

Expansion day has come and went. Hope everyone is up and running now that a few days have passed since then. Here’s my experience on the expansion.

I got home from work around 9:30 PM and tried to log onto Eve. Oh it’s still down due to the expansion upgrade. I tried a few hours later before going to bed and got the prompt to download the new client version, clicked “Yes”, and etc., etc. Whoa, 2 hours to download! Everyone and their slaver must be downloading right now, thus clogging up the pipe. I’ll try it in the morning as my eyes are already beginning to close.

The next morning, I repeated the above steps. Still almost 2 hours to download. Must be a big update; I don’t remember the Eve client taking that long to download before. Since I had to leave and wouldn’t be home until late that night, I just let it download and install while I was gone (I did set my computer to shutdown after 3 hours so not to drive up the electric bill and incur wife aggro).

As I mentioned before, I was excitedly looking forward to the PI features being added and had little interest in the character creation. So when I got home that night, I logged in and, unlike the majority of players, logged into my main character without creating his new face, being content with the shadow box for the moment. PI had indeed changed; I felt that I was learning it all over again with finding the most effective spots for my extractor heads and all. It took me the past two nights and this morning to experiment and figure out what I think is the best way to extract. But just this morning I found that a couple of my Extractor Control Units were not routing the stuff anywhere. Before the expansion, after selecting the extractor time, you’d get a window saying where it was routing to and if it wasn’t set, “Not Routed” would be in an easy-to-see red. Now, you don’t get the routing window unless you click the Routing in the ECU. For forgetful noobs like me, I need that warning.

Last night, after feeling comfortable with PI and after setting it up for a one day test run, I decided to try the character creator for my main. One word sums up my experience. Frustrating. I think the biggest reason was my computer, a two year old  low end HP laptop that overheats easily. With all of the high quality, detailed graphics, I think the character creator overwhelmed my machine as the creator was slow and jerky and took forever to load the changes to the avatar. Also, there were next to none onscreen direction so I mostly had to figure out by experimentation what a choice did. The detail choices were often a picture thumbnail slideshow that showed two or three options at a time and you have to scroll horizontally through them. Mine kept scrolling to the end too quickly for me to see and click an option. Instead, I had to choose an option at the end of the slideshow and wait for that option to be applied to my character. Then I would have to repeat the steps until I found one that I liked. The slideshow were useless to me but I do see that they can be very helpful. My biggest disappointment was the lack of choices available for each detail. I wanted to make it look like my original profile picture but no sideburns could be found. I then wanted to make him a fat, ugly, older man (who says that capsuleers are all young and good looking). But none of these details were available. Maybe in the future. I took my four pictures with different poses and backgrounds, but again due to the lack of instructions on screen, I ended up selecting the worst one. Not wanting to go through all of that again, I am leaving it as is for until we are able to redo in the char creator.