New Eden

My general impressions on Odyssey are in a previous post. This is my "what I did in EVE last week" post. Which, with an expansion coming out during that week, is quite related. The first thing I did, as a lot of people, is get a scanning frigate and go see how that changed, since it was, after all, ostensibly a focus feature of the expansion.

I scanned down a Combat Site right in the system I base myself in, switched to my trusty cruiser, and for once completed it first. Someone went to it after me, but they left after I grabbed the pass items. I am not entirely clear how that works, but I got to the end, and got a Daredevil blueprint! I manufactured the ship and it is not in my hangar. I could sell it, but I don't need ISK that much and maybe someday I will use it for something.

After that I realized that since NPC were supposed to be removed from lowsec Relic/Data sites, I could try my luck with that. Since I still get attached to ships, even little T1 scanning frigates, I bought a new one. For a change, a Heron, since apparently I trained Caldari Frigate IV at some point. And it does have an additional middle slot, which I put a scanning upgrade in, nano structure in low, no tank or guns, and went for lowsec.

In particular went along the path to New Eden. I am not very strong on EVE lore, since the sandbox approach minimizes the impact really. But why not. There is stuff there, like the monolith and the violent wormhole thing. And not very many players there. In three hours or so I managed to run quite many sites and get about hundred million ISK worth of loot. Fairly good success in going though second difficulty level minigame, although occasional failures happened. Managed to return without incident.

The ISK per hour might not be that great, compared to min-maxed mission running or whatever, but considering I got all than in a T1 frigate with three levels in most relevant skills it is pretty great. Exploring is now a viable career for new players, and encourages them to get out of highsec.

Speaking of lowsec, I got back to the cruiser I stashed there, and hit some belts. On the second one after Odyssey I encountered the new tags4sec NPC. And the tag sold for twenty million. After a few days. I haven't seen them afterwards, so that might have been very lucky, but then I don't clear belts very efficiently, because there are too many people around.

There is also the blue ice anomaly in one of the system. Which no one seems to mine ever, because lowsec. I am kind of tempted to get a Procurer in there. I actually bought one, because why not, but there seem to be a perpetual gate camp on the route. Today they even locked and scrambled my frigate as I was moving though. Using a frigate rather than a shuttle because I want to carry at least some of the loot from ratting. I got away, because I used two stabilizers and they didn't have a faction scram, but still, annoying. Sooner or later the frigate is going to get it, which is not a problem as such, but losing the implants would be worse, although what are the odds of losing the pod in lowsec not AFK? Unless they bring out the smartbombs, which is possible since I think there was at least on battleship there.

Mining ice doesn't seem to be very constructive, ISK-wise, especially in lowsec, but it is just something I want to do because it is there. Hopefully a Venture can carry ice in its ore hold, because otherwise I am not getting a block out of there. Assuming I can get a procurer to the system at all. It is often completely empty, so I should be able to mine a block or three. Just because.

I wonder if moon changes combined with the nullsec war will increase the price of T2/T3 ships and components enough that people will start to actually care about their ships. Or maybe gatecamps are so low risk that they don't lose their Tengus and stuff like that ever. But I looked at the prices, and right now you can make, with a high-skill character, enough money to buy and fit one of those with few hours of L4 mission running. Which seems like it screws new players who can't fly those things. I know right now I could afford better ships than I can fly. But on the other hand I can't afford to lose best ships I can fly repeatedly. Risk management in EVE is all kinds of wonky.

Although one of these days I want to move a battlecruiser into lowsec and do some of those anomalies. Assuming there is a hole in the gatecamp. Not on a weekend, I guess. I could go somewhere else, but that would require effort and reading maps. For the number of lines maps in EVE have there is an amazing number of chokepoints.

I guess I am annoyed by gatecamps because they make moving though lowsec not so much impossible, as really tedious. Especially without a second account. And I don't plan on paying a second subscription or playing the game enough to get a PLEX a month, at least not anytime soon. Moving not in the sense of travelling, where you can scout a route once and then travel fit and have a good chance of getting where you want to go if you are paying attention, but moving between systems to rat or whatever.

Although I have to try that once. Is an overheated afterburner enough for a cruiser at least to jump back before they can apply enough DPS to kill me? Depends on who "they" are, I guess. I still don't really have a good feel for how much DPS is a lot, how quickly it can be applied, and so on. The numbers seem to vary wildly between sources, and there are too many variables to calculate anything with any degree of accuracy. The general consensus though seems to be that damage has increased faster than effective hit-points, and most player-versus-player fights will end very quickly, to the point where a small gang can one shot smaller ships.