Like a Virgin

It's been a few days since I posted, I am an artist irl and get slammed with Christmas commissions this time of year. It's great, but my time to blog is the first thing to go.

I have been loving Eve lately, again the idea to throw everything to the wind and reinvent my char has paid off in a resurgence in my interest and enjoyment of the game overall. There is a sadness that goes along with finding your passion becoming dull, repetitive, or uninteresting. It's great to know that setting a few new goals relieves that feeling.

I have been living in Black Rise for quite some time, the quick access to content was nice as a solo pilot, and it was easy blend in with the mess of militia in the area. Fighting both sides is good for content and kills, but eventually the area has become overrun with these giant groups of pilots, and being the solo guy is a lot more of getting blobbed that gf's. In addition to all that, many of the giant blocks, some former null groups, have chosen to make Black Rise their home, and the area is now more of the thunderdome that Providence ever was.

Feeling despondent and unsure where to go, I let out in an astero, making hundreds of jumps over several days, just looking into new systems and seeing areas of space I hadn't been to in a while, if at all. I took a few fights along the way, and had a few conversations in local, mostly with newer players, though more often than not the language barriers were to great to overcome. When will ccp release that universal translator?!?

Everywhere I went, folks are out doing pve. Far more than what I could see of dedicated pvp'ers. I have started to think that maybe there is something to that. I think it's hard to recognize someone elses style of gameplay as equal to your own without trying on their shoes. As experts in whatever profession we may have chosen, it's easy to see other styles as less involved, shallower, uninteresting, etc.

I'm sure that goes both ways, and the more I experience of the universe the more I realize that is an okay perspective. I might go so far as saying that hubris for your own style of gameplay makes you a better capsuleer and a more accurate depiction of an undying hot-shot pilot, at the top of the food chain in a terrible dystopian future. That hubris is much of the heart of Eve.

So, let's try that walk in someone else's shoes..

As is often the case when I star a new endeavor in the game, I felt the need to do some housekeeping and clean up my assets list. It's very easy to let get away, and I really had no idea what I even had, or where.

I started by consolidating assets from different chars all to one hauling char on one account, my only hauler by the by, who also doubles as a market trader, and theoretically can do industry, though that is something I have yet to explore. Many of these so called assets were just dumps of kill loot, but there were reships all over, along with a lot of randomness. I decided to dismantle my base in the minmatar/amarr system of Auga, as I haven't been back there to play much. Spending some time back there moving assets around, I think I am not the only one. I had over 100 ships there, as well as modules, boosters, ammo, caps, scripts, drones, and other expendables. Other than about a half dozen ships, I packaged everything up.

I took the hauler to each region, filtered my assets list by region, set waypoints to each station, and then let the computer set a proper course. In low security areas of space I sometimes used my main to scout. I had to break several gatecamps, and did lose one occator to a gatecamp in Egghelende, luckily it was on a return trip, with no loot lost.

After a few days I had gathered the bulk of my assets into a trade hub system and my market alt is getting a workout. In fact, I have been using my alts much more than my main lately, as they are the ones trained for all these alternate activities. It's been a lot of different playing with lower skilled chars, and it gives me a sobering reminder to what newer players have to work against.

As a newer player I had done some missioning in hisec while I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. I also did the required newbro exploration stint, and remembered enjoying it. Somewhere in there I remembered running ded sites, badly, and doing anoms for tics, also badly. But I have a want to rediscover this side of the game. I'm starting to feel like the more I can take advantage of, the more I will enjoy Eve, and the more longevity I will have.

From what I can remember, I used to do these ded missions in a raven. It's been a while since I flew a raven, so I wasn't sure if they were still good, but I fit one up anyway.

The area around Egbinger, in Molden Heath, was where I used to run pve stuff. It's right on the edge of null, and the escalations are great. I haven't been out there in a while, but I decided I would head that way again and set out without much research. That came back to bite me pretty quick.

Even though I was using a cloaky scout alt, I ran into a really advanced set of gatecamps and foes very quickly into lowsec. There was no gatecamp, but a flurry of activity said that there were cloaky alts of their own watching gates around the region, and I picked up a tail. I quickly got aggressed by an alpha in a suicide rifter on gate, which gave me a logoff timer, and combat probes in local meant I wasnt safe at a tactical. With several ships ready to land with me at the next gate, and no structures available, I pulled a crazy ivan. Warping to 70 of the next gate in this bottleneck system, I dropped a bookmark about two seconds before landing, creating an on-grid ping in line with the last gate. The enemy fleet landed at zero on the outgate, and they burned toward me. Warping to my on grid ping made it look like I was warping back to the last gate and every pilot took the bait and warped back. This gave me enough time to take the gate and dock.

It took days to get that raven out of there, and at the end of the day, turns out it really sucks for pve.