Days 19-21

Where to go from here?

I completed my trial to PLEX challenge with 3 days to spare. What to do now? 

Well I spent days 19-21 just messing about in game and doing stuff in real life. I actually bothered to learn mining frigates to level 1 and did a bit of semi-afk mining while cleaning my apartment as I was hosting guests. I also began doing DED complexes in my Mauler and in the first 3/10 I came across I found a Centi-A module worth 90 million. Pretty good going for 10 minutes in high sec and it was even in my home system. Bonus. 

Real life will be catching up with me soon so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to play in the coming month. Hopefully enough to maintain the account and maybe even enough to begin an indy alt. 

I think my next challenge will be to have 1 billion in liquid ISK. It's not a huge achievement to aim for but I feel I should shoot for attainable goals with my upcoming busy schedule. Even at the end of 21 days I had 150 million liquid ISK and a PLEXed account so lets see if I can get the rest!

Day 18 - The final push

Nearly there.

2 great days in a row where on a couple of hours exploring an a couple pottering around hauling and/or selling stuff meant I was very close to my target by the time day 18 came around. I thought I'd try for a final surge over the finish line and complete the challenge with a few days in hand.

I had a few sell orders to update and I even cancelled a couple of buy orders in Amarr that were obviously not going to fill any time soon after I'd been massively outbid on them. This put me around 20 million closer in liquid ISK 20 minutes after logging on. All I need is one good exploration haul and I'm golden.

Before setting off I checked up on my PI planet and began another round of Felsic Magma extraction which I routed to my Silicon-making machine. Unfortunately I couldn't do much more than that because of the CPU limitation of the level 1 command centre which I can't upgrade on a trial account. Soon though, I'll be able to.

Next I planned out a circle route on the star map and undocked in my Imicus. The feeling of reaching the end was definitely upon me but I tried to stay careful and fly safe. No use in getting into the habit of making mistakes at this late stage.

Something quite funny did happen after a few jumps though. Well, I thought it was funny so the average person probably wont but I entered a low sec system with 2 others in local and began scanning. The star map showed the area was pretty inactive with very few jumps made in the last 30 minutes and zero ships lost in the last hour and only a couple lost in the last 24. I found a site and warped to it. There's an Astero there hacking a can and before I've even finished my warp to let me warp away he's gone - blowing the can in the process (reminiscent of me a few days ago and a Probe.) He must have been watching the overview ever since I entered local because he was lightning quick escaping. There are two reasons I found it funny. 

Firstly, in a one on one match up I'm probably going to lose to the Astero every time. He has more drone cap than me and I'd imagine better shields and with the Amarr frigate bonus, certainly better armour. So him fleeing from my highly intimidating Imicus is amusing. Secondly, he blew the can meaning he'd already failed once. I would have thought if he was comfortable flying an Astero around low sec he'd have high enough skills for the tech 2 variants of most things including Analyzers and his higher skills would mean easier hacking games. I would have thought it would be very difficult to fail a low sec hack but maybe he just had more money than sense and didn't mind flying a 70 million ISK ship with sub-par skills when a 400k ISK ship will do almost the same job.

So yeah, mildly amusing - I made a guy in an Astero poop his pants.

I continued on my way but actually had to have a pit stop to drop some loot off because I was running low on space. I'd started at 7:35 and all of the above happened in the first 20 minutes so at 7:55 I dropped off 21 million and had a bit of a break to grab food an make coffee. About half an hour later I undocked again and went through a high sec portion of the round trip which netted me a further 11 million after 40 minutes. Into low sec. After another 40 minutes I was carting 28 mil around and 20 minutes after that my round trip came to its conclusion with 46 million in my hold. A total of 67 million in 2 hours of flying with a bit of a break in the middle. 

Now it was time to go and sell. I flew up to Jita and starting offloading all my wares. Right click, sell. Right click, sell. Right click, sell... etc. etc. 

My wallet flashed wildly. I open to reveal...

796 million ISK

I check the price of a PLEX.

794 million ISK

Woo! Mission accomplished!

I didn't actually buy a PLEX then and there. I had a mind to start investing the money in order to make more over the remaining 3 days of my trial but at the time I logged off because real life called. I was out for around 6 hours and when I came back online I thought things through a little more. Granted I could probably make more ISK and set myself up a little better for the future of my playing days but I also wanted the trial restrictions lifted so I could learn cloaking, PI related skills and also contracts. 

I checked around for the best price on a PLEX and it turned out to be 783 million in Dodixie. Quick trip over to Gallente space and I had 30 days additional playing time and was a lot poorer for it.

Mission accomplished in 18 days out of the 21!
Day 18 total: 1 PLEX and 12 million ISK

Day 17 - The end is nigh!

Seems I'm getting very close to my target.

Yet another low sec run this morning. It was better paced than yesterday's run but for the most part, uneventful. The only real highlight was being "followed" by a Tengu. We crossed paths multiple times as we both weaved our way in a big circle. Only ever saw his ship at a gate and never in any sites but it was strange. I assume he was looking for combat sites but maybe he was hunting frigates. 

Got back round to home base with another 40 million or so in loot and loaded up with the 90 million from the last two days. Back into the hubs to sell up. Again I bought a few things in Amarr to transport up to Jita but again the trip was uneventful. I docked in Jita, set up a few sell orders mixed in with selling straight to other players' buy orders and opened my wallet.

700 million ISK

Getting close! I checked PLEX prices.

793 million ISK

Well at least they've come down slightly from the 800 they were a few days ago but I'll have to think about where to actually buy one.

I logged off for a while but checked back later to find a lot of my sell orders had gone so I ended the day even closer to my target.

Day 17 total: 710 million ISK

Day 16 - Sunday, day of rest my a....

Good thing come to those that wait

Another morning run out into low sec. I had a long (50 jump) route planned out and a real feeling that I could edge within reach of my PLEX goal with another good haul. In the couple of high sec systems before reaching my low sec target I scanned down a few sites and got in a bit of early looting. Nothing spectacular but a steady start at least which continued through the first few low systems. A couple of sites here and there, more loot for the loot god. That's about where the good part comes to an end. 

The next string of systems were barren. Some systems were occupied by several people so I gave those ones a miss and the rest were pretty much devoid of anything, players and anomalies alike. In a stretch of around 15 systems, mostly 0.3 and 0.4 with the odd connecting high sec system I found less than a handful of sites and the ones I did find were about as barren as the systems I was scanning in. 

Not good. I was still flying with about 20 million in the hold so it wasn't all bad but hitting empty after empty after empty was demoralising and frankly boring. I persevered however and was rewarded in the very last low sec system of my trip! 

3 anomalies and a bunch of normal combat sites. I warped to 100km of the sun and began scanning, one eye on the currently empty local. The first site, much to my joy and amazement, is a relic site. Yay! I hit warp to and began scanning the second anomaly. While speeding over to the first can I discover that site number 2 is a data site. More yay! I scan the can and have to look twice. That's a lot of Intact Armor Plates. I crack it open. 20 million! Even more yay! MWD over to can number 2 probe scanning away at anomaly 3. Cargo scan can 2 and discover more goodies at the same time as discovering site 3 is another relic site! More yay that you can possibly imagine! Crack the can, grab the loot. Rinse and repeat. 

Site 1, 23 million ISK. Warp over to the data site. Hack the cans, grab the loot. Another 8 million. Things are finally coming up Spaktula. Site number 2 cleared. Warp to site 3. It was at this point that I remembered about the blog so actually took some screenshots of site 3. 

Here's a couple of examples from site 3 of what you can possibly find while low sec exploring:

I was rather pleased to say the least. And all of this came from the last system. I guess the game decided to reward me for my mindless scanning of wormholes and DED complexes with some nice juicy hacking sites. Also it's really not bad ISK when you consider the low skill requirements and the fact I'm in a ship that costs 20 times less than the contents of one of those cans. 

I made my way back to home base with 80 something million in the cargo hold. Deposited it there to await transportation at a later date and moved on to something a little different for a while.

Planetary Interaction (PI) is something I've so far glossed over but am vaguely interested in getting into. After some brief reading up (but no where near enough) I bought a command centre, a new Magnate and 4 tech 2 cargo expanders to transport said command centre. If I wasn't on a trial account I would have just bought a cheap indy ship but meh. Turns out with all the reading I didn't do I missed several key aspects of setting up a successful colony but I actually lucked out a bit. I won't go into too much detail but scanning properly, checking tax rates on the customs office and a multitude of other things are actually pretty important. 

I'll probably go into a bit more detail with my PI experience at a later date but for now it was a 2 million ISK sink that will hopefully start making money in the future once I've learned more. Worst case scenario is that I redo the whole thing. 

Anyway, not a bad day. Much closer to my target with plenty of time left to achieve it. 

Day 16 total: 560 million ISK

(90 million unsold)

Day 15 - Just a short one today

Early start, early finish

I had real life things to do today (like watching the mighty Arsenal play) so I only played for an hour or so in the morning. It was a fairly underwhelming journey to be honest. Because I was already in Jita I thought I'd give exploration a go in Caldari space. I think I found a whole 1 relic site and it was one of those where 3/4 cans were empty. Well, a couple of hundred thousand is better than nothing but after 10 systems I gave up and headed back down to home base via Amarr. 

That trip was slightly more productive with several sites on the way leaving me with around 10 million in my cargo hold. While this was happening I was also getting the occasional wallet flash from my updated Jita sell orders being bought. 

After reaching home base I logged off 12 million richer with some unsold stuff stashed away for a rainy day. 

Day 15 total: 560 million ISK

Day 14 - A trip to the hubs

Selling all my stockpiles and doing a bit of trading

Only played a little today. Using eve-central I looked up the best prices for all the items I'd stockpiled and with the info I carted 15 million or so up to Rens to sell. In my eyes the difference between there and Amarr or Jita was enough to warrant the 10 minutes it took to get there and back again. 

Next I loaded up the rest and carted it over to Amarr. There I sold another 10 million or so but also bought out a bunch of sell orders on items I could sell in Jita. It was a big chunk of my ISK and I went down to 220 million in my wallet. I was in 2 minds about carting all of that to Jita. Getting suicide ganked on the way would really screw me over and undocking would be the most dangerous part. 

Rather than risking all my eggs in one very squishy Imicus-shaped basket I decided to just make 2 trips. I undocked with 150 million in cargo and warped off successfully. Got to Jita unmolested and suddenly my wallet was looking healthier. I headed back down to Amarr and picked up the rest and again nervously undocked.

Yeah, nothing happened. Sorry. It would have made for a more interesting read if something had gone wrong but in reality it was an uneventful trip. 

I did have a bit of a dilemma when I got to Jita though. The item I'd bought in Amarr would net me a 150k profit per item (factoring in tax as well) selling to buy orders but after the 3 highest had been filled the price would then drop to just above the Amarr sell. Basically I could single-handedly crash the Jita price by 140k with just the contents of my cargo hold. 

Do I sell for the quick ISK and then not have as good prices in the future or do I wait, hope no one else fills those orders and that someone else places buy orders to replace them. Speculation or quick ISK. The more I thought about it the more the quick ISK appealed. I'd been trading in that item for at least 10 days in Jita now and from memory there had been no new buy orders at that price since I'd been trading. It was therefore unlikely someone would put in a high buy order for them when there was a 40k difference between the highest and next highest order with the highest only have 20 odd items left. 

I sold up and crashed the price. It will probably take a while for prices to get back to that level if they do again but the difference now was worth it for me. I'll just move on to a new item to interhub trade and any that I find through exploration will just be sold at a slightly reduced cost. I normally only find 4 or 5 a day where as this trade was more than 100 of them.

I logged off in Jita and went to do things in real life.

Day 14 total: 548 million ISK

Day 13 - More low sec

Stockpiling stuff to take to the hubs 

Another low sec route today. Only 25 or so jumps but I've found that with the times I'm playing (mostly early morning EU time) there's not too many people around and plenty of anoms spawned. There were some decent sites and plenty of loot.

A few jumps in I scanned down a site where I needed my "squished" probe formation. Just as I was finishing off the scan someone else pops into the otherwise empty local channel. I returned my probes and opened D-scan and warped to the site. First can, failed the first attempt. Not even from being distracted by checking D-scan every 5 seconds, it was just one of those attempts where nothing you do will ever get you to the end. Not even by being lucky and picking the only route through. It was a can where after the first 2 empty nodes it was nothing but anti viruses, firewalls and restoration nodes one after another blocking every single path. Great start. 

Attempt 2, still checking d-scan every 5 seconds. I crack the can and as I do there's a targeting bleep and there's a warp scramble attempt on me. How the hell did he sneak up on me when D-scan was blank of probes 5 seconds ago and 5 seconds before that and so on... Never mind. I warp off, trying to get the contents of the can at the same time but this time it didn't work so a couple of million in loot lost. As I warped the guy posts in local "how many warp stabs? 2? 3? 4?" It was quite funny because someone else had just jumped into the system and was witness to this chat exchange. I replied with "11" which got a laugh and then the new person posted and "epic fail" pic I assume aimed at the failed ganker. 

I stuck around in that system for another minute or so to chat. I mentioned D-scan not showing any probes. The guy mentioned stealth probes... are they even a thing? Really, I have no idea if it was just a joke or if stealth probes are real. Can anyone enlighten me? 

After that quick chat I then warped off to continue my route. Not much in the next couple of systems but towards the end of the route I started getting more sites. All in all a 2 hour trip (with a 30 minute break in the middle for repairs and food, so 1h30 flying time) netted me 38 million. 

After a real life break, I did an hour long round trip in the high sec area of my home space and found another 12 million before heading back to the station to unload and log off. Tomorrow I'll probably head to the various hubs and sell. Rens isn't too far from my home base so if anything has the best prices there it's only a 4 minute trip either way and then I can sell the bulk in Amarr or, more likely, Jita.

Day 13 total: 420 million ISK

(80 million stockpiled)

Day 12 - My Facepalm Day

Today is the day I bought a shiny new cruiser - if only it had been under better circumstances

Yesterday's low sec run was so prolific I tried again today. I've gotta say, it wasn't so successful. There were a combination of factors to this lack of success. Firstly I was tired, secondly I wasn't in a great mood (possibly related to point one) and lastly, I got blown up by another bloody POS defence system -.-

I mean, you would've thought I'd learnt from the last time. Obviously not. I'd already hit several sites and was carrying 40 million in cargo so I was kind of pissed off that I'd done it again. I bookmarked the location of my wreck though and searched the market for a ship I could fly in nearby system that wasn't obviously price gouged. I ended up buying a Maller in the same system for 12 million so picked it up, warped to my wreck, took the 18 million that dropped and got out of there before I could start getting shot at. From now on I'm going to avoid using moons as my safe spots while scanning, too much risk of becoming target practice.

Next I flew over to Amarr to buy and fit Imicus mark 3. Hopefully I won't lose this one. I din't bother selling the loot yet as I wanted to go and finish the SOE epic arc now that I had a cruiser. I fitted it out and flew in the direction of Arnon. Mission accomplished for Chasing Shadows. Dagan on the other hand was a bit more problematic. My dps wasn't good enough to take him down but then again he couldn't get through my shields either... and I have an armour tank. Luckily for me I got some help from a guy in the Eve Uni chat channel. I apologise for not remembering his name but it wasn't Heo (who has a thing for killing Dagan.) I'd highly recommend joining the E-uni chat channel, it's friendly and there's plenty of people from all areas of the game so a great place to ask any question you might have. There's also much less trolling that in rookie chat which is also a nice bonus.

Epic arc completed, I delivered Dagan to the Minmatar official as my standings with them had tanked since doing missions for Amarr and I like having the option of selling in Rens and Hek. After that did a few combat sites in the Maller just to get a feel for it. It's an awesome tank but a little too slow for ratting and missions. I'll probably keep it for the time being though, it looks awesome and tanking is kinda fun. 

It was very much a "break even" kind of day. I did come out ahead with 30 million sat in Amarr waiting to be sold but with fitting the Maller and doing mostly combat related stuff after the loss of the Imicus, my wallet was pretty much where I'd started at the beginning of the day.

Day 12 total: 420 million ISK

Day 11 - Finding a new home

Low sec: A money maker ripe for the picking

My last couple of trips to low sec didn't exactly go well. The first where I got shot at by the only other person in local but escaped and the second being blown up by a POS defence system that I didn't realise could shoot that far. Third time lucky right?

From my last excursion into null I'd left some stuff in random stations and I ended up using one of these as my home base. It turns out it's a good system to begin exploration from as there's a couple of different "round trip" paths I can use depending on the day and how many people are in the area. There's also a lot of low sec systems in the area and it's these I was going to explore today.

Off I go then. It's worth pointing out that my sleep pattern is pretty messed up mostly due to work so I play at really odd times, again it was fairly early morning and on a Tuesday so there were maybe 16-17000 people online. Quiet then. Most of the systems I hit were completely devoid of people so I scanned and looted all the sites I came across. After 20 minutes I was up to 20 million in cargo. Awesome. 

4 or 5 systems in and someone pops into local while I'm scanning. I warily continued and found a data site and began with the first can. Just as I cracked it a ship warps in. Crap. I warped out immediately (managed to grab the loot first) but saw as I was leaving that it was only a Probe. Not so scary. Still, better to be safe than dead and frozen floating in space right? 

There was a Relic site in that system too which I'd already scanned down. By this stage of my playing "career" I was pretty proficient at multitasking so usually when I'm in a site I'm already scanning down the next anomaly. This speeds up the process hugely and it's pretty safe to do as long as you keep an eye on local and your overview. So I warped to the relic site and began cracking cans assuming that the probe would appear in a couple of minutes. There were 2 cans left in the previous site plus I assumed the guy was fairly new to scanning so wouldn't be scanning while hacking. 

There were 5 cans in this site and I'd hit 3 of them before the guy warped in. This time I didn't bother warping out and he went for one can while I cleaned out the other. After that I already knew the remaining anomalies were combat sites so I jumped to the next system. As I'm in the first relic site I find, the same guy jumps into the system. This is going to turn into a race. I cleared out the site leaving one "carbon can" so the site remained on his scanner and warped over to the next one. Cleaned it out and jumped to the next system.

A minute later and he's there too. I hope he liked the gift I left him. I'd already established by the time he jumped that of the 3 anomalies there were no hacking sites. Next system. He obviously put 2 and 2 together at this point and realised I'd either cleaned out the good stuff or there were no sites because he jumped almost immediately after me. Again, I scanned down and got to each site before he could, leaving the empties and collecting the good stuff.

Unfortunately after that system we parted ways. I went right and he must have gone left (or back) and so my fun was over for the time being. I carried on through another 8 or 9 systems, none of them with hacking sites, before finding a nice juicy system with 4 sites. Yum. Just those 4 sites were another 20 million. My round trip was coming to an end and I was back in high sec by this point. I got back to my home station with 80 million in my cargo hold. Better than null and without the stupid gate camps to boot. 

I quickly checked prices online and carted all the loot over to Jita via Amarr. I'm starting to love low sec!

Day 11 total: 420 million

Day 10 - The spending spree

A day spent in High-Sec, yet massively profitable

Null sec is fine, no where near as bad as the reputation it has but I needed a day away from constantly looking over my shoulder and quick improvisation. A leisurely cruise around high sec in a ship generally not worth ganking should do it. As a general rule of thumb data sites are more profitable in high sec than relic sites while the opposite is true in low and null. Good thing I was getting a lot of data sites then!

After a couple of hours of uneventful exploration I headed to Amarr to pick up a bunch of stuff that had come from buy orders and then onwards to Jita. My wallet was looking very healthy and I thought it was about time I should get some +3 implants. A quick search gave me some odd results. For example, some of the +3 implants that give additional bonuses were 2-3 million cheaper than just the basic +3s. So yeah, I now had random bonuses to an attribute I don't need (something to do with ewar) from 2 of my implant slots, 2 with normal +3s while I just stuck a +1 in the Charisma slot.

So nearly 40 million dropped on implants but the stuff I'd carted up from Amarr sold for about that too. I then went back down to Amarr with a bunch of stuff I'd bought in Jita and set up sell orders for it all. A steady stream of wallet blinking began as I set out to do a bit more exploring. Once the flashes died down after a couple of hours I knew I'd been undercut so headed back to Amarr to sell some of the loot I'd found and update orders.

Generally you can make a lot of ISK station trading by just updating orders once or twice a day but I suppose at the moment I'm impatient. So whenever I'm close and it's not too far out of the way I head to the hubs and update. 

More wallet flashing.... yay. Both buy and sell orders were filling nicely and I wasn't even getting undercut that often. 

Really not a bad day. Lots of money spent but even more made to give me a +60 million total from yesterday.

Day 10 total: 340 million ISK

Day 9 - Early Morning Null Run

Told you I had plans for exploration today.

On the back of my previous success in null sec I wanted to try again, surely the first time wasn't just a fluke getting in and out with no problems? It was just after 7 a.m. local when I left Amarr, this time going for a different route that last time. It was 20 odd jumps to get to my point of entry and along the way I did some scanning as there were an unusual amount of signatures. I ended up with a full hold after 9 jumps so dropped it all off at a random station and carried on. Another few jumps and I had to do the same again! Now I know why most people leave the Positron Cords. Finally at 8:30 I get into null.

Things got hairy immediately. I came out of the first stargate 10km away from a group of warp disruption bubbles and a guy in a Navy Issue Raven. This is going to be fun. I warped off but not before he pretty much insta targetted me and tries to warp scramble. Warp Core Stabilizer I for the win. I came out of warp close to the next gate and I have no idea if it was the same guy or just his friend (there were 2 others in local but I didn't really have time to check the names) in another Raven who sets his drones on me while trying to gun me down. Luckily he's well out of range and I managed to MWD over to the gate and jump just as his drones got to within 5km of me. Close call but the first gate camp escape of the day. I kind of imagine the guy in the Raven being like that Star Destroyer Captain from the Empire Strikes Back; "Our first catch of the day"...... /Ion Cannon

Moving on. I flew deeper into null finding a lot of systems empty of life but not of cosmic anomalies. My planned route was 50 odd jumps and would eventually take me out of null in a different place to where I came in. Like last time I encountered quite a few unmanned bubbles but most of the players that entered local were gone just as fast as the arrived. 

The actual relic and data sites weren't too bad. Better than last time at any rate in the sense that there were fewer empties and those that were empty I was weeding out with the cargo scanner. I ended up finding quite a few BPCs. Things like Integrated drone blueprints. While they're not worth huge amounts they were all 60 run copies which go for a couple of million each. Once I'm PLEX'd I'm hoping selling all of the BPCs I'm finding in bulk via contract will at least net me a good portion of my next PLEX. 

After about an hour I was flying around with an estimated 40 million in cargo plus the worth of the blueprints so I felt it was time to head home a bit early. Mostly because it was Sunday and I thought it was likely that things would get busier soon. At the time I was in a system that was 'out of the way' as in, the systems either side had a direct stargate to each other so unless you you needed to be in that system, you would generally fly straight past it and not pay it any mind. I warped to the gate from the data site I'd just cleared and hit an unmanned bubble. Problem was, it wasn't "un-droned" There were 7 or 8 drone npc's waiting around and they looked angry. Choices choices. Do I warp out, go back and hope the stargate from the previous system to the system I'm going to isn't camped. I could, but from what I remembered there were players in local so chances are it is. The only other option is to burn through and hope the drones don't get me. 

Option 2 seems like the quickest way at least. I hit my MWD and off I shoot at 2500m/s. At 50k I get targetted. The drones close. 20km to the gate and the frigate size drones catch up to me. My shields go down at 10km. 2km and my MWD has about 1 second left of the cycle so I can't warp out. My Armour is at 40% left.... and I jump. Phew. Still flying. I warp off from the gate and head ever closer to high sec.

6 or so systems from "safety" I hit a highly populated system. My heart sinks. I'm already too stressed to deal with the inevitable gate camps. Lets get it over with then. I warp, hoping to just get a clean jump. Ahh, giant blue bubbles.... I'm 40km from the gate, no players visible but that doesn't mean much in this world of cloaking devices. I warp to a planet and burn away from it to give me time to plan my next move. 

At this point I get a "o/" in local chat from one of the residents. I reply with "Don't mind me, just trying to avoid being blown up by you guys." No response. D-Scan shows a couple of T2 frigates in the area but no one had scanned me down yet. There was movement though with ships coming in and out of D-Scan range. After a couple of minutes I thought to myself, "why not." So I warped back to my target gate and hit the bubbles. This time 15km from the gate so I just burned through unopposed. 

2 Jumps from safety and it all goes South. I enter the system. One person in local, fair enough. Warp, hit a bubble and the guy is on me almost instantly. I mean, it sucks but at least he's competent at what he's doing unlike everyone else that's tried to actively gank me so far. So I'm 60km from the gate, no chance of getting out of the sphere to warp away because there's an Interdictor ramming me from behind. MWD on and I try to get to the gate. You know, maybe his tracking is really bad or something... Well, not much to do in the end but wait for the inevitable. I was 30 odd jumps away from home base so once my poor Imicus was finished off I didn't even try and escape the pod kill. Here's the kill mail. Most of the good stuff was destroyed, oh well. 

No complaints from me about the kill. I'd probably been riding my luck for too long as it is. If I'd have known more about bubble camping I think I might have survived, I definitely would have done things differently. So while 40 million wasn't a huge setback in the grand scheme of things it was demoralising. Then again, I think of how easy it's been so far getting to 220 million and the ease of even getting that 40 million in loot in the first place and realise it's not all that doom and gloom. 

I wake up a jump away from Amarr in my shiny new clone and head off to buy an new Imicus. "Why do we fall  Bruce?" Batman quotes aside I went back out into the big wide World and scanned down some sites in high sec. Some pretty decent ones too including a 10 million relic site. After the events of the morning, that in particular made me feel much better. To top it all off, during my trip to Jita I came across some implants that had a lower Jita sell than Amarr buy plus I invested in a 52 mil implant that I later sold for 63 mil in Amarr. A quick 15 million ISK profit off that journey after taxes.

Even with the setback, I came out of the day well ahead of where I'd been in the morning. The goal looks very attainable right now.

Day 9 Total: 280 million

Day 8 - The wonderful World of Saturday

Honestly, another slow day.

A few more buy and sell orders filled over night meaning I could update new ones but other than that I decided to take a bit of a break from exploration so bought and fitted a punisher for some level 1 Caldari Navy security missions. Why Caldari Navy? Jita... An effort to slightly reduce tax rates on my trading.

The punisher, using a fit similar to the basic PVE fit here, is fun to fly. Getting up close and personal and then armour tanking the crap out of incoming damage was a welcome change of pace from scanning and can cracking. 

Other than a few level 1's the day was uneventful. I flew back down to Amarr with a some of the items I planned on flipping for profit down there and logged off after listing it all with the intention of getting down to some serious exploration in the morning. I only have 2 weeks left after all and my liquid ISK was slightly less that a third of what I needed to buy a PLEX. Thankfully prices were coming down ever so slightly though so I was looking at the possibility of getting one for 775 million rather than 800 million. Still time for prices to go up again though.

Day 8 total: 220 million ISK 

Day 7 - Friday; The mullet of the week

Business end at the front, party at the back.

Another uneventful day as far as blogging goes unfortunately. I didn't have a great deal of time to play today but I did do a spot of both trading and exploration. 

The most interesting thing to happen was finding an implant on the market of which the sell price in Amarr was 150k cheaper than the best buy price in Jita. So I of course bought out every single one that would make me profit after tax calculations and flew the 9 jumps to that most wretched hive of scum and villainy. 5 or 6 million profit off that item, plus the tens of millions of exploration loot I sold wasn't bad for 10 minutes of jumping. I mean, I know more established players can make that much quicker but as a new player every little helps. I could also have listed the implants as sell orders but honestly the volume of past sales wasn't reassuring so I was more comfortable just selling to buy orders rather than waiting for a) people to buy the implant or b) people to 0.01isk undercut. 

While in Jita I placed some more buy orders on items I could transport down to Amarr on my daily trip back and flip them there for between 30-120k profit per item. And these were items I was buying for 5-10k. Such a huge discrepancy between the two main hubs but great margins for me and on a route I'm already taking daily.

Just as an aside, I won't be keeping track of exact amount of buy and sell orders because it all moves very quickly so my daily ISK total will only be what I have liquid in my wallet or, if I start stockpiling before selling, unsold exploration items. Although technically anything can go wrong on the way to sell so I might not even be comfortable giving that total - don't want to jinx it :)  Not listing buy and sell orders will mean the ISK total won't reflect exactly how much I have until I cash out so it might seem like I'm not getting anywhere. Don't worry, I am!

Day 7 total: 200 million ISK

Day 6 - Not much to report

A day spent pottering around

A short entry today. Real life was more important. Makes me feel old to say that.

It was business as usual though really. I ended up with 30 million from a couple of hours of high sec exploration and put in a few buy orders in the region of 20 million. Some of the other items I'd previously had on buy orders that had filled ended up selling while I was flying around looking for juicy relic and data sites leaving me with 20 million profit in liquid form for the day.

All in all, not a bad turnaround for the amount of effort I'd put in and I should be able to flip the buy orders from today for around 35 million thanks to good margins. I'll be doing a post focussing more on trading as a supplement to income soon so keep an eye out for that.

Day 6 total: 180 million ISK

Day 5 - Low sec hurts

Good thing I had insurance.

Well after yesterday's good fortune I thought I'd try my hand at low sec exploration as I started playing just as it was getting to peak time and I didn't feel inclined to risk being caught in null just as everyone logs on. My buy orders from the previous day had almost all filled apart from a couple that had just been outbid. So before leaving I listed up a bunch of sell orders in Amarr and went on my merry way. 

The first low sec system I jumped into was populated so I hopped over to the next to find it empty of people but full of anomalies, just how I like it. I warped to 100km of a random planet and started scanning. Suddenly my shields are gone followed shortly by my ship. Err... Oops. Turns out there was a player owned station 250km away from me and apparently the guns CAN shoot that far. Luckily there was nothing of value other than a 700,000 ISK ship (including fittings.) It was mostly my pride that was hurt. Another lesson learned - stay away from player owned structures in low and null unless you're supposed to be there. 

A few jumps later and I'm back in Amarr. This was a good opportunity to try out the new idea I'd been playing around with. Magnates are great, I like the look of them and they do the job they're supposed to very well. However, after my time in null yesterday I couldn't help but feel a cargo scanner would be a massive help. 

Sometimes you'll scan down a site only to find 2 or 3 of the containers have been emptied out already leaving only the ones with worthless items or those that are empty and uncracked. It's hugely frustrating to enter these kind of sites but it's a lot better when you're the one doing the cherry picking. A cargo scanner will tell you with 100% accuracy what is inside the relic or data cache. Some people will say otherwise but I've cracked open containers the scanner has said is empty and it's been empty. In fact, every time I scan a container, the contents are always the same as the scan result. Every. Time. 

Now unfortunately the Magnate only has 3 mid slots and those mid slots are always going to be used on a Relic Analyzer, Data Analyzer and Micro Warp Drive (or an afterburner, but lets face it - MWD's are more fun.) Typical to Amarr ships the Magnate is also loaded up on low slots which are also useful but probably not quite as necessary as mids on an explorer. 

Lucky for me I'd already learned Gallente Frigates and trained up to level 3 in preparation for this change so for the time being I'll be flying an Imicus. More specifically this is the fitting I'll be using. Less Nanofiber in the lows but you in theory spend less time in the cosmic site because you're cherry picking the good cans, and less time in the site means less chance of being scanned down by people intent on ganking poor beginner explorers which means a lower chance of that extra agility actually coming into play. 

I ended up doing a few high sec rounds for the rest of the day. This isn't as lucrative as low or null but it's much safer because who's going to risk the wrath of CONCORD over a ship worth less than a million which may or may not have a decent amount of cargo. You can get about 10-12 million ISK per hour and while it's not guaranteed, it's a VERY achievable goal. Low and null are more like 20-40 million and 40-80 million per hour respectively but you do have to be very watchful of what's happening around you. Along with the high sec exploration I had my sell orders supplementing my income and by the time I logged off I was happy with where I was at. 

*One tip with the ship fitting - if you're only doing high sec exploration you can take the warp stabilizer either offline or just replace them with more Nanofiber, it'll only slow down your scan time in high sec and won't benefit you*

Day 5 total: 160 million 

Day 4 - Lets try some null sec

Null sec - it's not as scary as its reputation

After the frustration of wormholes yesterday I thought I'd take a more direct route to null. Using this ship I entered null sec for the first time. My first pvp encounter came at the first gate. I didn't see what ship it was that tried to warp disrupt me as I whizzed past but I do know they were a complete failure. 700k Magnate 1 - 20+ million ganker 0. 

The next couple of systems had one or 2 players in so I skipped them and carried on deeper into the unknown. 3 or 4 jumps later and I hit an empty system with no fewer than 8 anomalies. Fun. Out came the probes and I began scanning. A wild relic site appears! I warp to it and begin hacking the containers. In theory it should be "excavate" for relic sites but it just doesn't fit, so hack will do. It's then I realise just how much harder null cans are than high sec. High sec I can do the mini game in 8-10 seconds, hit every anti virus and still have enough coherence to crack the system core. Null sec containers on the other hand are fairly brutal. I won't lie, I blew up a few cans and lost what I'm sure were potential fortunes. Others that I did crack had nothing or, even worse, that eternal raspberry towards all explorers; carbon. 

That's not to say I didn't get anything worth while. Far from it in fact. For every blown up can I was still managing to loot 2 or 3 non-exploded ones which amounted to a fair sum. My problem with some of the cans was however not necessarily the difficulty of the mini game at my skill level but also the distraction of other players entering local chat. Every time that happened I was so intently checking my overview and d-scan I was making mistakes. From the classic "clicking one too many nodes after you've already found the system core" to "I really should have cleared that anti-virus that was next to the most likely place the system core would be before clearing out other nodes and hitting a restoration node." 

In the end the trip turned out to be fairly uneventful. I came out of a couple of gates into unmanned disruption bubbles but then again it was a Tuesday morning by this point so I doubt many people were online. In total my trip was 15-20 systems long, I had one attempt on my life which I successfully escaped and I ended up 80 million worth of loot in my cargo hold. Not bad for an hour and a half on a 4 day old character. 

The rest of my play time today was spent figuring out where to sell. The prices in Jita were quite a bit higher than anywhere else so I made the trip up there. I also set up some buy orders for equipment I knew I'd be using on my ships. This would be my "in" for trading which I'd be using as a more passive form of income to supplement the exploration I'm doing. I decided if I'd be making at least one trip a day to Jita to sell, I may as well buy stuff cheap there too and transport it down to Amarr so I browsed the market for likely items using eve-central to check against Amarr prices. I came across a couple of high volume items with a decent margin (around 45% so more than decent) and placed orders.

Time to wait for the orders to fill! I logged off to get some sleep, feeling very pleased with myself. All was going well in the quest for a PLEX!

Day 4 total: 130 million 

Day 3 - Wormholes take 2

Wormholes aren't all that bad... just a waste of time as a 2 day old character.

Lessons learned from yesterday and in my new shiny Magnate I decided to try again with getting to null sec space via a wormhole. It was easy enough to scan one down about 8 jumps from Amarr in 0.7 space. 

Bookmark. Jump. Bookmark. I'm in and check D-scan which shows a few sleeper npcs and not much else so I begin scanning down another exit. Find one and with a quick check of the info see it leads to wormhole space. Bookmark. Jump. Bookmark. Find another exit, more wormhole space. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes I was scanning down more than one exit in any particular area in an effort to get... well... somewhere. 3 more wormholes and I was getting frustrated. Almost to the point of just giving up and jumping back the way I came to at least go and do something productive. I scanned down "one last site" - that mantra you quietly say to yourself as you feel this next one will be it - and amazing! It goes back into K-space. Granted it's still high sec but I'm happy with anything at this point. It could take me to the other side of the galaxy, to a pocket of high sec surrounded by low/null sec but no. I jump through and end up 4 jumps from my point of origin -.- 2 hours wasted. 

At least I know wormholes are a waste of time at this stage of the game. You need to have more of a plan that "I hope this high sec wormhole leads to null eventually" I won't be messing with wormholes again, at least for a long while. They're too time consuming and with little reward other than the possibility of "safe" passage to null. 

I went off and did some standard exploration from here, checking out some systems in the area the wormhole had pooped me out in. I set up a route which took me through a couple of low sec systems as well. It was late night and not too many people were online so I thought I should give it a go. A couple of systems in I entered a low sec system sandwiched between 2 high sec. Those being the only way in or out. There was one person in local but I thought I'd try and scan down some of the 8 or so anomalies that were showing. I launched probes, warped to 100km or a planet and began scanning, the usual ritual. Before the probes even finish their first scan there's that noise again and someone's attempting to warp scramble me as they move closer to begin the attack. I Just warped out to the next system, collecting my probes along the way. So far a 50% gank survival rate!

I have no idea how they scanned me down so quick. The only plausible way I can think is if they were cloaked at the gate and saw which way I was headed and followed a few seconds later. Either way, I survived and finished the rest of the route without incident. 

If I hadn't spent so much time in the wormhole I think my profits would have been higher today but as it is I finished the day on 40 million. Not too bad for a 2 1/2 day old character but I was looking for more. I did a couple of security mission in my destroyer as a change of pace and then logged off to get some sleep. Big plans for tomorrow... big plans.

Day 3 Total: 40 million ISK

Day 2 - How not to wormhole

Let the scanning begin...

Refreshed from sleep and ready to go, I logged in to find several skills relevant to scanning had finished training over night. However I continued with the Sisters of Eve epic arc up to mission 46 - Chasing Shadows. I actually lost my Coercer as I attempted the mission because I managed to get it stuck inside the star base while orbiting my target and couldn't warp out before exploding. Frustrating but amusing at the same time. More lessons learned. 

A trip back to Amarr later and I flew out in a new Coercer and cleared out a few combat sites and salvaging the wrecks just to make a bit more ISK while I waited for Hacking to finish. An hour or so later I was back in the station fitting out a Magnate, my current ship of choice for exploration. A Data and Relic Analyzer I, Core Probe Launcher I and an Experimental 1mn Afterburner were all I was using but it was enough to begin with. I did a bit of research into what low slot equipment I could use and began training some more skills so I could eventually create a fitting I was completely happy with.

A few jumps away from Amarr I began scanning. Still with fairly low skills and no real scanning upgrades on my ship a few some were difficult to pinpoint including a couple that weren't possible with any amount of tweaking. If you're just getting started with scanning and wan't to know more check out my Scanning Guide. Still I continued for a while and ended up with a few million in loot.

By now I was fairly confident in my skills but EVE has a way of building you up to smack you back down. I kept coming across wormholes while looking for the juicy Data and Relic sites and I couldn't help but be curious. I'd read bits and pieces about them; that some players spend their entire game life in wormhole space and that you can traverse great distances of normal space by finding wormhole entrances that take you far far away. Sounds fun right? Well I though, "why not." Found a random wormhole, jumped through. 

In hindsight I probably should have done more research but more learning from more mistakes. Seeing no one in local chat (first mistake - you don't show up in wormhole local chat unless you actually talk - but I didn't know that at the time) I began scanning. I found another wormhole entrance/exit and bookmarked the one I'd entered from. You should always bookmark wormhole exit locations when you're inside them otherwise if you need to make a hasty retreat you're pretty much screwed. Jumping through the new portal I again see no one in local and happily launch my probes and begin scanning. Just as I'm readjusting the probes for a second scan there's a noise and my shields and most of my armour is gone. Two seconds later and I'm in my pod. I had just about enough wits to jump through the wormhole I was next to but I'm closely followed by my assailant flying a Proteus. Luckily I'd bookmarked my way in so warped away and back into normal space. 

Back to Amarr I go, tail between my legs. At least my skills were finished training for all the low slot equipment I planned to fit. So out comes the wallet and I buy 2 Warp Core Stabilizer I's and Beta Hull Mod Nanofiber Structure

I hit a few more high sec Data and Relic sites before going to bed with mixed results. Some of them were a let down with empty cans abound or merely a unit of carbon or two. Others were fairly awesome, for high sec at least, with several million ISK worth of loot in one can. I logged for the day after flogging my wares in Amarr several million better off, a multitude of lessons learned and the desire to improve on what I was doing.

Day 2 total: 21 million ISK

Spaktula's Scanning Guide

A lot of information on scanning on the various eve wiki sites is outdated at time of writing so I thought I'd put together a quick guide on how to scan down cosmic anomalies. Some of the methods I use might not be the most efficient but once you've been scanning for a while you get to know where the anomalies will likely be so I take a lot of shortcuts. This guide is written primarily for someone just starting out so I've left the shortcuts out :)

Firstly you'll need a ship with at least a Core Probe Launcher I or better and some Core Scanner Probes or better. A ship with bonuses to scanning strength might also be useful such as a T1 frigate (Imicus, Magnate, Heron or Probe) but if you're scanning for combat sites those ships won't last long.

In your ship, open up the Probe Scanner window:

If you're in a system with scannable anomalies you should end up with a window that looks like this:

Next, get in the habit of flying safe. If you end up scanning in low or nul sec space you're generally an easy target in an exploration ship as you have paper thin defences and are likely too preoccupied with scanning down sites or hacking cans to notice other ships flying in.

There's a process I go through when I enter any system in my exploration ship. I always have the probe scanner window open so I know if there are any worthwhile sites to scan for a start. If there are, I pick a spot in the solar system, usually a planet or the sun and hit "warp to 100km."

As my warp drive kicks in which disables the "recently jumped through stargate" cloak I launch my probes. This is just a time saver and it helps in high sec as well as nul or low where time efficiency is your best friend (that and warp stabilizers.) In low and nul, once I've hit the scan button (most left hand of the buttons in the picture above) I close the map quickly and choose a planet, asteroid belt or stargate directly away from where I just warped to and hit "align to" and then activate my micro warp drive (or afterburner if you don't have a MWD) to put some distance between me and where I warped so anyone warping to the same spot will end up several hundred km away.

Of course you can skip that step if you have a cloaking device but still, launching your probes as soon as you arrive in the system and warping to another location means you won't get decloaked by your own probes getting too close.


Onto the actual scanning. I use the pinpoint formation almost exclusively. I find it's just the easiest to use for me although I'm sure there are other ways to do it. Your probes have already been launched by now so open up the solar system map (button on the far right of the previous picture.) With pinpoint formation up it should look something like this:

The process changes somewhat as your skills increase as you can take more shortcuts and still scan down a site. Things like Astrometrics, Astrometric Rangefinding and Scanning Rigs for when you've learned Jury Rigging help immensely.

Essentially you need to centre the cluster of probes inside the red sphere you're aiming at (this can be difficult if there's a lot on top of one another) and enlarge or occasionally decrease the radius of the scan by clicking and dragging the side of one of the blue spheres which should change the scan size of all of them. The best way to centre the probes is to level out the camera horizontally and move the cluster up or down until it's on the correct plane as the middle of the red sphere. Next move the camera directly above the probes and slide them across until perfectly centred.

*pro-tip* double click on the white box to centre the camera on the probes or, once you've gotten to the "red dot" phase, double click the anomaly to centre the camera on it. I honestly didn't figure that out for 3 days and it would have saved a lot of hassle.

Hit the "Analyze" button and something like this should appear:

Centre on the red dot, decrease the scan radius by one size by clicking and dragging the blue spheres. Scan again and the signal should increase, hopefully even high enough to show what kind of anomaly it is.

Obviously ignore any sites that aren't of the type your specifically looking for and move on to the next anomaly.

Sometimes you'll get 2 red dots for one anomaly. This means only 3 of your probes are in the right place and so it gives you 2 possible locations. Generally speaking, the one closest to the orbital bodies is going to the be the right one to scan, but sometimes the game likes to confuse you. Just use the above method on your dot of choice and scan, if there's no signal then move to the other one with the same size scan radius. Either way you'll pinpoint it eventually.

Red rings on the other hand are bad in all senses of the phrase. Getting a red ring on a scan means 2 of your probes picked up the signal and you'll have to move the probes over, usually with the same size radius, and scan again until you get a red dot.

Occasionally you'll come across a site that seems impossible to scan down. For this you'll need to move each probe manually. To do this, from the pinpoint formation zoom in a bit and hold down the shift key. This lets you manipulate each probe individually. You need to, for want of a better word, "squish" the pinpoint formation. There has to be some slight overlapping otherwise the scan just wont work but aim for something that looks like this:

You can save this formation as you'll need it more than once even at higher skill levels. In low and nul sec space there are some pretty difficult sites to scan.


Well I hope this helped any budding explorers, and don't forget to check out my other blog posts.

Day 1 - How to grow a Spaktula

Character creation... oh the joys of too much customisation. 

I always have an idea of what I want my character to look like in any game with this level of customisation but it always turns out completely different as I get sidetracked by amusing moustaches....

After a little while of playing around Spaktula Gargantuan was birthed from a vat of goo, a suitably intense portrait was captured (as seen on the right side of this post) and I was ready to begin my journey to riches!

Last year I went with Caldari because after all the reading you do about the game, the name Jita IV gets bandied about a lot so I thought at the time it would be best to play as the race that starts in that area. However I ended up spending most of my time in Amarr as it's frankly a MUCH more accessible station in which to station trade. I use the word accessible in the sense that you don't get undercut every 30 seconds when placing buy and sell orders so you don't have to spend time babysitting your investments too much. Also I find the profit margins are higher in Amarr although granted the volume of sales is lower but it all evens out in the end I think.

For this character I went with Amarr, not that it really matters as in EVE you can choose any race and still go to any of the other race's territories as long as your standing (reputation) is high enough for them not to take pot shots at you as you fly past.

The tutorial and then career missions took me most of the evening. I started at around 9pm local time so 7pm EVE time. If you're just starting out or thinking of starting the game I'd really recommend doing all of the career missions as it gives you valuable experience in several areas of the game which can help you choose what to do and it also gives you a bunch of free skill books and quite a bit of ISK with which you can buy and fit out a decent ship.

After the career missions I flew off in my new shiny Coercer destroyer which was honestly terribly fitted but with half a day worth of skills I couldn't do much better. I was basically running 5 guns and 3 salvager I's. I did a few level 1 security missions which I breezed through and then started the Sisters of Eve Epic arc.

Why aren't you exploring? I thought this was all about exploring? I hear you cry. Well I needed to train the relevant skills as I couldn't use some of the ship equipment I needed and shooting stuff was more fun than mining in the interim.

Top of the list of things to learn was Archaeology and Hacking. I'd say these are the most important skills as you can't crack open the any containers you may find in scanned down sites if you can't fit either a Relic Analyzer I or Data Analyzer I which require Archaeology and Hacking respectively. I trained Science and Survey up to 3 so I could learn Archaeology but I then had to wait for Electronics Upgrades to be trained before I could use my Hacking skill book. 

After finishing Archaeology level 1 but before I'd learned Hacking I went on my forst foray into the big wide world of exploration. I scanned down a couple of high sec sites just to test the water so to say. I met with some success but came across more Data sites, that I obviously wouldn't enter, than Relic sites. There were also a couple of Relic sites I just couldn't scan down and no amount of tweaking the probes would get me above 80% scan strength. The joys of having low skills :)

Never mind. Tomorrow is a new day and there's plenty of scanning to be done and ISK to be made!

Day 1 Total:

6 million ISK