Strep’s Throat Noise

Well it’s been a minute since I last wrote, but so much has gone on in the last few weeks that I thought, “HEY!” why not just wait until everything is calmed down and then you’ll have a LONG blog to write for all the boys and girls.

Well first off, my corp (Yes I am a CEO), WAS in an alliance but after being told to move to low sec only to find out we were pretty much the only corp there and was never much back up in sight, I was pretty ticked and I talked to the heads to see what we were doing about it.  It was decided that the area was just too full of pirates to have a real operation with only a few corps in the area. (Strange it being our supposed HQ, way to control your alliance idiots!)

So, we packed up our POS once again and head to Gamis to stage a leap into 0.0 and be surrounded by blues, but of course the powers the be didn’t research it enough and take note that Goon was moving back in the area and the system we were moving to was a HOT BOX of action..  So once again, we tore down our POS and moved for nothing, and I pretty much had enough and left the alliance because we already lost so much ISK not having our labs up and running.

One good thing that did come out of that alliance was a bunch of new friends and I was able to get quite a few kills in my little Ishkur.  I’m a pretty impressive PVP’r in that thing when I try

So we moved back to the system we know in high sec and set up shop and running  our little operation there like it was before the idiot alliance and have already recruited some great guys.  I was approached by a huge alliance because a friend of mine is in it and now we’re just waiting for approval to move in there and help out.

I’m moving my corp into the general direction of a Merc Corp specializing in stealth bombers (THANKS PODDED PODCAST!) to help break up gatecamps, because bombs are just so much fun.. and quite effective if done right.  So I’ve been taking my boys into low and zero to get their feet wet, and we’re doing great. Even set up some intricate networks of bookmarking systems on some gates so a 4 man bomber squad can warp to designated numbered spots, and have multiple runs from all directions, without decloaking each other.   Even if it doesn’t kill anything (which I’m sure it will), it will cause damage, panic and confusion and then the big boys can come in and finish it off.  Mission accomplished.

Then of course being only a few weeks from a Dreanought, I can see myself helping in the take down of POS’s that shouldn’t be there.

Anyhow, we’re keeping the member count of my corp small because we all enjoy the family feeling we have and we can all centralized our training to complement each other in a fleet.  Once we’re all ready I’m hoping to have a small gang fleet that’s ready for pretty much anything.

Next Blog I will have another tips for the new player as it was fun to do and I still have much to share

Till next time!

There are  few things that I had to learn on my own when I first started EvE but WISH I had known from the get-go, things that had I had known them, I’m sure I would have made a lot more ISK early on and advanced a lot quicker in the game. So, I will share what I was taught in my early days of my first corp and things I learned on my own that will help the recent newcomers to EvE. (Things I have also taught all my new recruits since then)

1. Mining - **Veldspar & Scordite in High sec are the highest ISK per minute ratio right now.  Most new players have no idea what to mine and think that because it’s the most common ore as in its description that  it won’t be worth much, but because your mining lasers can pull more units per cycle and it weighs generally next to nothing so you can hold more of it in your hold and therefore get more units per mining run.   Some people will tell you “OH NO, get omber or whatever because mexallon (ie.) or whatever is worth more per unit.  Sorry to say, but you won’t as many units per minute  and when ISK / Minute is broken down.. Veld and Scordite are the way to go in high sec for new players.  Hell even guys who can fly a Hulk can make 18million or more in 1 hour of mining.  **Correction thanks to Ashireka who gladly pointed out a great website to get the ISK/m3 rate for each ore type, link in the comments 

   I would also like to add that these are great for relatively new players because as a miner the skills needed to process them are either generally already done, or much easier to get early on, depending on your career path you chose at the beginning.

1. Salvaging - I didn’t learn anything about salvaging until weeks after I started and I really wish I did.  The sheer number of ISK you make from selling the items you get from salvaging wrecks is monstrous compared to what those early agents pay for level 1 missions.  Learn how to use a Salvager early on and you’ll thank yourself.  Also, learn how to use a Tractor Beam early on as well, it will make salvaging so much easier.
2. Skills & Implants- Another thing that I wasn’t really aware of and not giving much direction in the tutorials of the game is how implants work, what slots are for what and how they help.  I didn’t know right away that by adding attribute points to your character through implants it could literally shave hours, if not days, off of skill training, and on top of that, most pilots don’t know to get ALL of their learning skills up at the beginning.On top of that, I didn’t know about the setting “Show all skills that you can Currently train” in the settings area of the skill character sheet.  Click on this and it will show you all the skill books you can buy and train at that moment.  I encourage to get all the skills listed in the Learning section to level 4, and then more skills will appear and get those up to 3 at least as well.  You’ll thank yourself once again.A program called EveMon will actually tell you what learning skills you should learn to get the ship you want to fly or item you want, and it will even tell you what learning skills you should have to make getting that ship or item even faster.  Get that program NOW! It’s quite easy to use.
3. Contracts - One good way to make money with your first hauler is to run courier contracts for not only your corp (I’m sure CEOs love a guy that will haul stuff from one place to another for them, for a small fee), but most new players are unaware that there are PUBLIC contracts in New Eden from dozens of corps looking for some poor sucker to transport goods for them, and they pay well.
   • Click on the contracts tab on the left of your screen above the Map button
   • Click on the “Available Contracts” tab
   • Change the View section to “All regions” or “Entire Region” depending on how far you are willing to travel to pick up something
   • Change the type to Courier
   • Hit the “Get Contracts”

   This will show you a plethora of contracts in the area you selected, where to pick up stuff and where it’s going, how much cargo room you need, how much the reward is and how much collateral you need to put down on the contract in case you don’t finish it or end up losing it. So if you have enough ISK to cover the collateral and can make an easy million or two..Go for it!!  Things to watch out for? You Ask?  Well, if the route of the haul takes you through low security space or 0.0 space you could very well lose your ship and your collateral, which means big losses.  So open up each potential contract and view the route and the pick up and destination carefully, you can show info on all of them.  Stick to high security if you can, and make sure your ship has enough room to carry it all in one shot.

4. Medical Clones-  the tutorial of the game when I started lightly touched on this subject, but I don’t think enough because I’ve come across many recruits that had NO idea what I was talking about when I mentioned upgrading their medical clone.  Your medical clone is where you appear when you die or get podded in space.  It’s like a new YOU waiting to be activated, should your current self die (so yes, you are immortal.)If you travel to stations around you, you will notice that some of them have Medical icons, and in there you will see your current medical clone, how many skill points it holds, and where it’s located in New EdenIf you open up your character sheet, your current amount of skill points will be displayed at the top under all your info, and your medical clone skill points maximum.  If your current skill points are HIGHER than the medical clone maximum, then when you die, your skill points will DROP to the maximum that the new body can hold.  THIS IS BAD! Corrected as per a great comment from Ix Forres below..“If your medical clone is, say, a clone grade alpha (800k or so SP max) and you die with, say, 40ish million SP, you won’t lose all of it. The skill with the most skill points in will drop down half it’s SP, I believe- for most higher level pilots, this means your Racial Battleship V skill drops to IV and you get to do another month of training. Sucks, but not as much as losing everything would- a month is a pain in the arse (believe me), but losing 40mSP to forgetting to press a button would be a bit much even by EVE’s standards.”So make sure you are always aware that your medical clone is upgraded to hold a number HIGHER than your current skill points.Now, most people say, ‘well why not just get a really high skill points medical clone since they are so cheap?’  Well this is true for industrialists and people who don’t venture into low sec/0.0 at all, and who do not engage in PVP where you can be podded. But people who do, will end up dying frequently early on, and so wasting money on a medical clone that holds millions more skill points more than the one JUST above your current base is really… a waste of ISK.  So just buy the the clone at the bottom of the list as it is generally always the next step up from your current skill points.  I do believe you can never downgrade your clone, so don’t worry about it. Just keep an eye on that.  I believe even your character sheet will have your Medical Clone in red if it needs upgrading.
5. Last but not least… Autopilot is NOT your friend.  All to often I hear of pilots who are lazy and decide to take their hauler full of stuff through high security space from one place to another thinking they are safe.  Get in the habit of setting your destination and manually warping to 0 to each “Next destination” gate you see in the top left.  Also the next gate will be colored gold in your overview.  And the reason I say this you ask??!!!  Suicide Kills.   Even in high sec you are not 100% safe.  There are pilots who will gladly lose their ship to Concorde for unlawfully attacking you, just so they can kill you before that happens, and generally have someone else waiting with them to grab your stuff from your wreck, especially if it is worth a lot more than the ship they just lost.So don’t do it.   I speak from experience..Autopiloting brings you 15km from the gate, and you slowly crawl towards it, giving Suiciders ample opportunity to scan your cargo and kill you.  At least jumping to 0, you can jump through the gate quickly if this happens, and they cannot follow you.

That’s pretty much some of the basic things I wish I knew starting, so hopefully I just made a newbies day just a little bit easier

Cheers

Well last night even though I was completely exhausted I decided that I was going to re-probe my home system and see what I could find.  And boy, am I glad I did.

I found in one system:

1. A wormhole leading to Rancer
2. A wormhole leading to the Khanid System
3. A wormhole to unknown which in turn had 2 Ladar, 1 Radar FULL of Sleepers, 1 Belt, another exit leading to our enemies backdoor and found one of our alliance members in the system with them (spy maybe?)
4. 2 Ladar systems
5. 3 Radar sites (I had an alliance member come clean them out and share the find with)

So, I gave the intel to a higher ranked alliance member and told him about the Blue I saw amongst the reds, and I’m sure he’ll be doing an investigation.

Then from lack of sleep the night before I had to dock and get some shut eye.  I’ll see if I can get in the wormhole space tonight and take on some sleepers

If it’s still there when I get home… hopefully.

Well I haven’t written in a long while because so much has gone on in EvE that I wanted to wait until it was all settled to write some glorious stories.

First off, let’s deal with my one big Epic Fail that actually had me laughing quite hard at myself a couple of weeks ago.  As everyone in my corp and alliance and previous corps know that I am a probing and scanning expert and can generally find anything within 30 seconds in a system, but I have literally NO pvp experience.  So I was in my Hi-Sec POS system and decided.. “Hey, Why not look for a wormhole to get some PVP experience without having to travel 30 jumps to get to my alliance HQ and try it out there”, and that’s what I did.

I found a wormhole in that system (thankfully) and bookmarked both sides (of course, you’re stupid if you don’t) and sure enough there was a exequror class cruiser sitting at a planet which seemed AFK, so I then headed back to get my Ishkur ( i love it btw).  I thought – Great.. my first PVP kill and had the intention of podding him just so I could get my hands on my very first PVP kill frozen corpse. Kinda like a trophy really.  Hockey Players generally keep the puck they score their first NHL goal with, so why not do this.

So I charged back to the Cruiser and orbited to see if he was going to fire…nothing.  I let my 5 pretties loose and told them to engage, locked him down and unleashed hell, hitting him quite hard actually.  And withing a few seconds he was dead.  Expecting this to wake him up and have him run I locked his pod and waited to see if he was in fact going to respond (possibly for ransom), but nothing came of it.  So I let my pretties (drones btw) end his existance in wormhole space.  I looted his ship which turned out to have a lot of salvage from sleepers and of course grabbed my first frozen corpse. I was so full of adrenaline, my heart was racing and I was shaking from my first real PVP experience where I was actually engaging.

With my new salvage and corpse of my first PVP kill I set a course to the wormhole exit to get it back to HQ and dock.  Upon arrival of the exi……..ummm… where’s the exit??
DOH!!!!!!  the wormhole exit collapsed, a major detail I overlooked.   I literally started busting at the seams with laughter as I now realized I was stuck in a wormhole without a probe launcher, and none of my corp mates could find me or was even online. So the only option I had was to say goodbye to my new trophy and my ship by taking the 4 min countdown of shame and self destruct.  Even in the loud laughter, I was aching in reality as a stupid error just cost me my first trophy and a heavily fitted tech 2 assault frigate. But, that’s what EvE is all about and I quite enjoyed my first real engagement.  Since then, I have had 3 kills in the new low sec region and no losses, one of which was a 3 year veteran of the game ratting in a belt in a rifter.. a prime target for the shiny new Retro-Bution II to mop the floor with. (of course the lost one was titled with ‘I’).

This weekend I took a full day and took down our small POS’s in high sec and in the low sec region and sold them to buy a Large one to replace the small one in the low sec region as we decided to just move there permanently.

Great week.

more to follow…

Well i bit the bullet and got a new computer with an intense graphics card and I can now view Eve in all its HD glory with all the settings maxed.. and was i missin’ out.

Everything from mundane tasks, to ratting to engaging.. is smooth and flawless and i am kicking myself for not doing it sooner.

10 days to Covert Ops / Stealth Bomber ships…   WHOOT!!

Which reminds me, I can envision myself sitting in a station, reading a book day in and day out learning the skills to fly them ahah

Maybe with a little Bach playing in the background…

So some people may wonder how I got into Eve, well probably no one is but I’m going to write about it anyways.

I am an international DJ and producer that travels the world playing my music live for all the boys and girls to dance to.  I have several records out and I guess you can say a small celebrity in the scene.  I am featured on Myspace as one of the leading Canadian Artists in the Techno & Hard House genres and rightfully so.

Anyhow.. with the many travels I undertake and the many hours of downtime I had last year touring Europe, I decided to give Eve another try to help pass the time away, and as I’ve said in the previous blog that I just couldn’t get it and listened to Crazy Kinux, Crovan, and AlSedrech give me their wisdom.

And of course I became hooked….

And here we are, and loving every minute of it.

btw.  Covert Ops Cloaking Device now in use, WOW!!

My First Blog!!  EVER!! So bare with me

I’ve been in Eve for well over 3 years on and off, usually not getting past the trial period because the game was just too damn confusing, and of course I had no idea how to join a corp, or even do anything more than mining with a bantam or equivalent.  I was also fitting my ships wrong because I didn’t understand the ship bonuses or what weapons fit better on the racial ships.

In December of 2008, I watched the Alliance Tournaments with experts Crovan and Kil2 giving expert advise and found the Drone Bay podcast with Crazy Kinux, Crovan and Al at !!THAT MOMENT!!, I understood the game.  I immediately signed up again and took their advice and I have been playing ever since.  Thank you guys!

7 months later, I run a small RL friends corp (I got some friends hooked)  based out of The Forge (industrialists), but of course my friends wanted to do some more killing so we joined an Alliance based out of Molden Heath and things are great here.

As far as plans for myself, I have always been a fan of stealth.  I was a fan on ninja’s growing up and my favourite console games are Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid, so I LOVE to sneak around undetected.  At this moment, I am 9 Hours from a Covert Ops Cloak and I will be putting it to good use with 12 Days away from a Stealth Bomber & Covert Ops Ships, because using bombs just sounds so enticing even though the Alpha Strike they had before is scrapped.  I’m looking forward to being a Cyno Pilot / Scout as my probing and scanning skills are stellar already from my days in my first corp on QR (probing was so much harder, so i have the techniques!).

I hear that scouts and scanning/probing pilots are a much needed commodity in Eve.