Ah. It’s amazing how much more relaxed I feel, even in planetary life knowing my wallet has been filled with some isk. The exploration has been good to me lately. I decided to take a few more interesting risks than I had been in the past. Most notably, diving into class 3 wormholes on my own to harvest their blue loot. It’s amazing actually how often empty wormholes seem to crop up. I managed to dive 3 in a week, inflating my wallet but about 300 million isk with just a few hours of work. Honestly it was nostalgic to be back in the C3’s. Constantly hitting the directional scanner and cursing the sleepers for their infernal neut and weapon’s ranges.
All in all it’s been a good month, topped off by a rather successful roam lately that landed me on the top damage for a killmail against a Legion. That felt pretty good. The corp I’m currently with is fun to fly with, but they seem to lack a degree of vision. Sure roaming around killing everything we come across is fun, but at the end of the day, I just don’t care that much about my killboard. I’d rather be fighting for something, a cause, territory, anything! So I’ve decided to do something I’ve thought about doing for a very long time.
Go back to Amarr faction warfare. I put an application in for a light roleplaying Amarr FW corp today that seems promising. No telling yet how it will turn out but hopefully I’ll have something new and exciting to look forward to this year!
I’ve been on the front for weeks now. It’s time to take a small break and head back to safer regions and resupply. My industrial infrastructure is still in tatters from the move out here and I’m really hurting to get that income source back up and running. I grab my blockade runner and head back to hi-sec.
It’s easy to find a space to setup shop. Only 2 jumps from my lo-sec entrance, with plenty of industry facilities around. Not to mention a plethora of active miners that don’t mind striking up a conversation in local. It’s always a nice way to pass the time. I’ve been dabbling with the idea of making some higher tech drones, considering how much I seem to rely on them day to day. The lower tech version are incredibly easy to make, and if I take the time to setup some planetary harvesting teams I should be able to make what I need without busting the bank. Maybe I can even turn a profit if I haul them out to lo-sec hubs for sale.
But first, I need some mineral stockpiles. I dust off the ole mining Hulk. I’m always amazed I can fly one of these considering how much of my time is spent training weapon skills. I warp to a few belts looking for some promising looking rocks and setup shop. I’ll never get over how strangely soothing this sight gets…
The ship decelerated from warp with a soft whump sound. Urd Voiddaughter had just arrived at an ancient Angel mining facility. He glanced over the instruments in his cockpit nervously. The system was becoming active but it didn’t seem that anyone knew his little gem was here. He was convinced to make the most of his discovery. Scanning probes were blanketing the system, but there were over a dozen signatures in they system. It would take a significant amount of time for anyone to scan this particular one down. Still, he would have to work quickly to analyze the relics hidden within the complex before him. He targeted the nearest object that looked to be of value and moved in for a closer look.
*Whump*
I looked up from my comms at that all too alluring sound. The sound of a carefully laid trap springing. The frigate-class ship that had just entered the area sat approximately 25 km away from my cloaked Nemesis stealth bomber. I double checked my cloaking device to ensure it was still functioning properly keeping me off of anyone’s scanners. I have a nasty habit of bumping into stray debris fields at the most inopportune times. The Probe began moving towards something that had caught its eye. He had no idea I was there. No idea that he was quickly closing on my exact position. I moved my hand over my console, and hovered the slightly shaking appendage over the target lock button. It’s been too long, I thought too myself. Too long to be this worked up over a single Probe.
Urd locked onto a storage facility’s computer console and began decrypting the security systems contained within. One last check of the scanner. Still blank. He had run into another explorer about an hour ago. An experience that left him frazzled but not deterred. Most exploration ships in these parts were of little to no real threat. Their ships were calibrated to scan and hack valuable computer banks and focused little on offensive modules. Still, even a single turret, missile launcher, or drone would be a problem for his ship’s weak defenses. Speed was of the essence, time to break this mainframe’s…
My ship decloaked in a shimmering of light. The computer locked onto the Probe’s hull almost instantly. An array of rocket launchers were unsheathed from my hull as the warp disruptors immobilized the Probe’s engines. I hesitated a moment. My finger over the trigger button. I paused in a second of regret for the poor helpless ship caught in my cross-hairs. A quick smirk stitches its way across my face and I hammer the trigger button. “He should know better” I say to myself. “Too many people looking for easy money these days.”
I had just cleaned up the mess from the careless Probe’s demise when a second ship exits warp a few clicks from my position. “This is a popular stop tonight!” In an instant of intense deja vu the Helios rockets towards my position. “God, it’s like these guys have never flown in lo-sec before!” I chuckle to myself as rockets spill from my ship’s hull and obliterate the enemy’s frigate. “25 million isk in 15 minutes. I’ll take that.”
I re-engage my ship’s cloaking device. The ship phases out of existence as I point the bow towards home.
Hey all! So I’ve been on jury duty for the past month which has given me a good deal of downtime from work. And since the girlfriend was away for the holidays and all, well…I honestly didn’t have any excuses not to play. It’s been fun getting back into things in Eve. I haven’t played in a long time and a lot has changed. A LOT. But it seems to all be for the better. See y’all in the sandbox!
Last weekend Azx had an idea. Azx had a wonderful…awful, idea.
I have it on good authority that this is exactly what Azx looks like
“Let’s do a battlecruiser roam, I’ve had this Ferox around for way too long.” I foolhardily agreed. Actually I was pretty psyched about the idea. I hadn’t flown a Prophecy since the changes to the ship’s bonuses. It had gone from a primarily laser boat to a drone boat and I was interested to see what kind of fit I could get on it with all my new maxed drone skills. I was pretty pleased with the fit. It wasn’t ground breaking but had about 700 dps and an effective tank of something like 80,000 hit points. Not great, but not easily ignored either. And I was planning on losing the ship so what the fuck do I care?
We fit out and headed to lo-sec. Our first encounter was…odd.
Basically Azx got caught on a gate. But, the Vexors we were fighting started killing an Omen that we thought was with them. Then, basically, they all left. We had no idea what was happening. We were just trying to get dps on the closest ships before Azx died. And boy was he going to die if they had just kept at it. We were confused but it seemed like the tank on his fit was legit. Vexors can spit out some serious dps and seemed to handle quite a bit of it. And we managed to get on the Omen killmail so yay!
Our next fight went a little better. We caught a few guys, we think from the previous group, on another gate. We primary a Cerberus and manage to break through his tank and take him down. The fight went really well, right until Azx parked his Ferox in a stargate and got stuck! Getting stuck on an inanimate object is always embarrassing, but can be downright lethal when you have enemy ships landing on you. For some reason though they didn’t engage us and we headed to a station to lick our wounds.
The final battle went about how I expected the night to go. We warped into a hornet’s nest and were obliterated. I’ll say I thought we put up a pretty good fight all things considered. We made a few mistakes, but that’s what pvp is all about. A lost ship is only painful if you don’t learn something from it. Every fight you’re in is a lesson, and the more you analyze you’re performance afterwards the better you get.
I for one need to learn to OVERHEAT MY DAMN MODULES. I don’t know what it is, I just can’t seem to remember that it’s available to me. I even have thermodynamics trained to V! Anyway we had a blast and I managed to get some decent videos of the fights. All in all a great way to spend some time on a rainy weekend!
I’m sure it’s not news to most of you that CCP is planning on announcing their 2013 winter expansion in just a matter of hours. I’m so on top of my shit that I’m just getting around to posting about it now! Anyway at 20:00 Eve time, tune in to the CCP twitch channel for the official presentation. Should be pretty awesome, there are a lot of things to look forward to.
In other awesome news, SOMER Blink (it’s a lottery website that uses real ISKies to bid on real in-game items. Seriously it’s awesome, go check it out) is having an EVE Vegas Blink Blast Party (whew!) where players can win CURRENTLY UNRELEASED ITEMS!!! These include Guardian-Vexor’s, Tenth Anniversary Collector’s Editions, Golden Magnates, and Ishukone Watch Scorpions. Seriously these are awesome items and you’ll definitely want to get in on the chance to walk away with any of the prizes. Not to mention watching your wallet evaporate while gambling at work is really really fun, if not terribly productive for your employer.
And finally, on Friday September 27th, at 20:00 UTC, the mighty devs themselves will be stepping into our world. CCP Unifex will be leading a developer incursion into an unknown lo-sec system, and they’re planning on packing some serious heat. The full fleet fit isn’t know, but there will be at least three Marshal class CONCORD SWAT battleships in the mix. These events are always a blast (or at least that’s what I’m told), so try to get out there and pod your least favorite devs!
I went home for the weekend and it was relaxing and great, but the whole time I was really itching to get back in the pod and go hunting. A lot has happened over the course of the week in-game, but I’ll get into more of that in the next Announcements thread I publish. For now it’s time to recap a great roam Azx and I went on last night.
Things started off the way they typically do on our roams. We met up at our favorite staging area in our Crucifier and Merlin and started cruising through some lo-sec systems looking for prey. Prey needs some context though, since it changes with every fleet composition you play. For us we were looking primarily for other frigates, or heavily turret based cruisers. This fleet has already taken down an Omen and I would very much like to see it run up against a Rupture or Thorax. While the blood lust draws us out time and again, we’re also out tonight to make some money. Clone pirates are top on our priority list, making us a cool million just for popping them and dropping some tags worth a few more in the process. But tonight things are dull. The belts seem empty and we come across system after system of pilots napping in stations.
After about an hour we’re starting to lose our focus and energy levels drop. We haven’t found any clones and the pvp targets are just as scarce. Finally we warp in to a backwater system and find a Magnate on scan. Magnates are not known for their military prowess so my guess is this guy is looking for data and relic sites. Ok well that and the fact that there are a bunch of core probes on my scanner suggest that. We buzz around the system trying to figure out where he might be. I launch a set of probes myself as I narrow in on which signature I think he’s working on. That’s the great thing about this fleet, my Crucifier has an empty high slot that we can fit a probe launcher into for just this sort of occasion. I get a hit in 2 scans and I’m off to see if I can catch me a hacker!
Sure enough the Magnate is hacking a can and I somehow managed to land within 3 km of him! I fire up the old warp disruptor and launch my probes while calling in Azx for support. The Magnate decides he’s not interested and warps away. Which is annoying, since I know I had a solid lock and disrupted him. Lame warp core stabilizers. Oddly enough the pilot of the Magnate deems his stellar performance worthy of mocking me in local. “You gotta be faster than that kiddo.” Something about being called kiddo by a guy flying a Magnate is…insulting to say the least. Luckily my quick wit came to the rescue! “Don’t know how much faster I could have been, seeing as how you were locked and pointed. Not much I can do about warp stabs.”
Good one Vult.
The hunt continues with us coincidentally following the Magnate through a few systems. We manage to find a clone so at least the trip has yielded some income. But just when we were about to give up hope, we find a Retribution ratting in a system all by his lonesome. A quick d-scan sweep and Azx is in warp to a likely belt and sure enough lands on our target! The fight is on and I punch the warp button to lend a hand. Azx’s tank is robust to say the least, but the Retribution is a tough nut to crack and can dish out a good deal of dps as well. I land about 20 km from the fight, lock the target and engage my tracking disruptors which immediately reduces the amount of damage Azx takes. But there’s little time to congratulate each other as another pilot enters the fray. A pilot from the same corp showed up on local as soon as we engaged the Retribution and sure enough an Incursus lands on our belt just as we finish taking down the first pilot. There’s not much he can do, the fit is a sad one, and he’s horribly out matched by our drones, tracking disruptors, and the Merlin’s tank-of-doom. He pops as well and the celebrating really begins! Retribution Kill, Incursus Kill, make sure to check out the killboard regularly! It should be heating up in the very near future.
Sorry guys don’t know why my mic still isn’t coming through on the videos, they definitely export with my banter!
A double kill to finish off what started as a horribly slow roam! Not too shabby. The loot is lackluster, but the kill mails are worth more than all the ships involved combined anyway. We haul the loot out and call it a night. Poor Azx always playing so late just to roam with me! Certainly appreciated, was a great way to spend a Sunday evening!
Some more time in lo-sec today. Azx is around while most of the corp is out of town. We spend a fair bit of time looking around for something to do. The belts seem empty, nothing is very interesting from the probes. Looks like it’s going to be a slow day. On top of all that we’re too far from the trade hubs to blow some money on new shiny ships!
Unsuspecting Imicus
After a while we manage to find a lonely Imicus trying to hack a data site. I quickly probe her down, but she cloaks after seeing my probes I guess. Drat! I head to the data site anyway to hack it myself. Lo and behold our Imicus uncloaks in the site with me! She is racing towards the last loot box but with some quick math I give Azx a distance from myself to warp to. He lands about 10 km away. Needless to say he makes quick work of her.
After that things get really quiet. We both decide to log for a while and I head out for a long overdue jog. I grab some dinner and log back in many hours later. The less than exciting static connection is still up to my disappointment but I head into lo-sec again to see if I can find a fight.
My Pilgrim enters warp and before long I find a Moa ratting. A Moa is an awfully juicy target for a Pilgrim. I d-scan him down to one belt and decloak in warp to him ready to blast him out of his ship. I’m a hair too late though and he warps to the next belt. I give chase but can’t quite get him there either. He heads to a gate and jumps through with me in hot pursuit.
We uncloak on the other side and I see that he’s aligning to another gate. I warp there ahead of him hoping to get the jump on him on the other side, but he doesn’t follow. I warp back to 30 km from where I came from to find him at full velocity just flying aligned to the next gate. Smells like a trap, but if I can get him to attack me first, I would have the gate guns on my side and might get a kill before his friends arrive. You can even see in the video how long I hesitate before engaging, but engage I do! Sure enough local starts to spike and I start aligning towards the sun.
My drones are almost through the last of his armor but I am out of range of his point, and he is out of range of mine. Oddly we both manage to get out with our ships intact. It was a fun engagement and I’m happy to have made it out alive. Although a faction disruptor purchase may be in my very near future…
I’ve been out of town for the last week on a work assignment. After getting back I’ve had very limited time to get into Eve. Lot of things I need to take care of in the real world before being productive in a fake one. So I find myself with some time today and decide now is as good as any to get some time in the pod.
The home system is very quiet with just our static connection and a relic site to deal with. All that can wait, I’m hungry for a fight and I’m not going to find one here. I grab my ratting Arbitrator and head out to lo-sec to see what I can see. I cruise through the belts for a while looking for clone rats but don’t manage to find anything more exciting than a few battleships. My security status finally jumps up to 1.0! Huzzah!
As I cruise around the lo-sec chain I find a system with one player in it. He has a suspect timer so my curiosity is immediately peaked. I can engage him on the gates and not get blown out of the sky by the security guns. He also happens to land right at the same gate I’m jumping through! Ho ho! Looks like a fight is on! I shed my cloak launch my drones and warm up all the combat modules I’ll need. He uncloaks and the fight is on!
But it doesn’t last long. His missiles annihilate my shields and I’m quickly running out of armor. I have my lasers and missiles firing and the drones seem to be doing good damage, sorta. Oh wait, they actually aren’t attacking at all. I’m trying out some new hotkey combinations and I must have hit something wrong because they’re not engaging at all. That’s embarrassing. I’m also now very much aware that I have a tracking disruptor that my whole tank is sort of based on, and that’s not going to help too much against this missile boat. Why exactly am I fighting this guy?
The ancillary armor repper does wonders! It somehow kept me alive for quiet a while. I’ll definitely be equipping those to my pvp ships more often! In fact the pilot of the Caracal even messages me after the fight saying how impressed he was with the repair unit’s performance. But even that boosted armor income isn’t enough and I lose my ship. No big deal, that ship was build to get destroyed and I’m glad to have tested the ship’s ability a bit, although maybe telling the drones to attack would have changed things slightly. Live and learn! Luckily no one was there to see it right?
If nothing else it’s good for a few laughs. I’m still working on the quality and stuff, but I think they’re fun to watch regardless. I’ll see if I can fix them as this experiment continues. If you like the blog be sure to subscribe to Vult’s youtube channel. I’ll be trying to post a lot more of these up in the future!
I haven’t really used this blog to promote happenings in the game on a scale outside of my own corporation. But I think this is still a work in progress and the announcement today about the new CCP live event for July sounded really cool, so I’m going to see if maybe this becomes a thing. After all I’m a fan site and promotion of the game and it’s events comes with the territory.
Anyway like I said this even in particular sounds pretty cool, if for no other reason than I think it’s some good thinking outside of the box from CCP. For official details on the event check here. The idea is pretty basic. You are tasked with taking some screenshots of various landmarks of New Eden. Things like Caldari Prime, the CONCORD headquarters, or the Jita Monument. It might not seem overwhelmingly exciting, but I think it’s a really clever idea. Especially considering some of the landmarks are in lo-sec (I think?). Not to mention the fact that all the images you need to get are posted on a website. You can be sure some gangkers are going to setup shop around those landmarks and have some fun.
Check the site for official rules and the prizes list. They honestly aren’t too overwhelming of prizes, but considering the low investment of time and resources on this one you can’t expect a pirate faction battleship. Kudos CCP, I really hope to see more of these kinds of events in the future!
I logged on tonight and find a Cheetah on scan immediately! I have enough time to grab my oracle before he launches probes and I’m on my way to our C4 connection before he cloaks. I should have enough time to catch him as he retreats after scanning. Although once I get to the C4 wormhole I see that the connection is ready to collapse at any moment. I see a third un-scanned signature in the system and figure this Cheetah pilot is probably not from the C4, I bet that unknown sig is another wormhole.
I head back to my hangar and get back in my scanning ship. I head out to a safespot and throw my probes out over the system, quickly resolving a new wormhole. I bookmark it and head back to my tower’s warp in point. See, we have a bunch of warp disruption bubbles around our tower with a bunch of anchored cans sprinkled around to hopefully pick off snooping covert ships. And surprise surprise, our Cheetah friend just appeared on my overview. I watch him struggle in the bubble for a few seconds before our tower’s guns free his capsule from his ship.
Oh shit…
I chuckle to myself at the noob-ish fate of the enemy pilot. With his system’s wormhole discovered I grab my sniper ship and setup on station to monitor any activity from the hostile system. After a few minutes I haven’t seen anything and curiosity gets the better of me. Time to suit up the Anathema again, and see what I can see.
What I see is a big sign that says get the FUCK OUT OF HERE! A huge fleet is sitting on the hole, drones out, logis and interceptors at the ready. Holy crap am I in a bad spot. Thank god Bob found me worthy to spawn me a mere 4 km from the hole. I immediately jump back to my HQ system. A few hostile ships are already there. A bubble somehow is up already, I punch my MWD and pick a direction away from as many ships as possible. As soon as my cloak is up I switch directions, just in time as an interceptor zips by within 7 km of my ship. I align and warp away and breathe for the first time in a few minutes.
Dyin’ never looked so good.
I decide I should keep an eye on them for a while and warp back to 100 km. Unfortunately that bubble thing they put up, well it sort of sucked me to within 10 km of their fleet. I’m not so lucky this time. The bubble has me, my ship explodes and it only takes a minute for them to pod me. I have to say, as much as losing 100 million isk in implants hurts, the new death animation….is sick.
Capsule in the Void 