The balancing of PVE in EVE is not linear. I find it is either easy, or you must be aligned to warp out. I have been reminded of that with my new character. A new hull or module or skill update can turn a difficult task into a routine easy one once you cross over that threshold.

I put my new character aside and went back to my main in the last week. It has been many years since I have run a Level 4 mission, and I wanted to revisit them.

I started with trying to find a location to work out of – but the logical ones near Jita were frequently camped by gankers and griefers (G&G’s). The occasional sight of combat probes popping up on scan and related killboard records showed they were not just docked up.

So once again I had to look for less ideal backwaters. Thankfully I was able to use the research and experience of my second character to narrow down my options, and after a couple days of scouting and living out of, had a quiet system to move too.

I think my last Level 4 mission ships were a Rattlesnake and a Nighthawk. I started this time with a Ikitursa – the Triglavian Heavy Assault Cruiser that you can set up to better handle tracking disruption and jamming, which makes short work of L3 missions.

[Ikitursa, L4 Missions – Cheap]

Damage Control II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Entropic Radiation Sink II

10MN Afterburner II
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Republic Fleet Large Cap Battery

Heavy Entropic Disintegrator II, Meson Exotic Plasma M
Small Tractor Beam II
Small Tractor Beam II
Salvager II

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump II
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump II

Hobgoblin II x5
Hammerhead II x5

720M ISK, 27.7K HP, 499 EHP/s tank, 296-884 DPS, Cap Stable, 550m3 and 8s align time

It worked well, although it was a little slow against Battleships.

Next I tried the Leshak – the Triglavian Battleship. You need to swap a middle slot but can still handle tracking disruption or jamming.

[Leshak, L4 Missions – Cheap]

Damage Control II
Large Armor Repairer II
Large Armor Repairer II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Entropic Radiation Sink II

Domination 100MN Afterburner
Republic Fleet Large Cap Battery
Republic Fleet Large Cap Battery
Tracking Computer II

Veles Supratidal Entropic Disintegrator, Occult L
Salvager II
Salvager II
Small Tractor Beam II
Small Tractor Beam II

Large Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit II
Large Capacitor Control Circuit II

Garde II x4
Hobgoblin II x5
Hammerhead II x5

833M ISK, 77.8K HP, 558 EHP/s tank, 874-2275 DPS, Cap Stable, 933m3 and 12s align time

You had to be more careful about agro than in the Ikitursa, because the battleship took more damage, but it was much better against the battleships and handled cruisers at quite short ranges, with plenty of drones available for the frigates that got close.

And last of all, I got my first ever Marauder to try.

[Paladin, L4 Missions – Cheap]

Damage Control II
Corelum C-Type Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Corelum C-Type Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Core B-Type Large Armor Repairer
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II

100MN Afterburner II
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Cap Recharger II
Republic Fleet Large Cap Battery

Bastion Module I
Mega Beam Laser II, Gleam L
Mega Beam Laser II, Gleam L
Mega Beam Laser II, Gleam L
Mega Beam Laser II, Gleam L
Small Tractor Beam II
Small Tractor Beam II
Salvager II

Large Capacitor Control Circuit II
Large Capacitor Control Circuit II

Hobgoblin II x5

In Bastion Mode –
1.73B ISK, 114K HP, 1,171 EHP/s tank, 1725 DPS, Cap Stable, 1,125m3

In Normal Mode –
1.73B ISK, 80.6K HP, 485 EHP/s tank, 912 DPS, Cap Stable, 1,125m3 and 11s align time

In bastion mode this is a very fun ship, and with a little range obliterates NPCs.

I did not go with a Micro Jump Drive – in the missions I have run so far with a little care about agro and taking out high DPS opponents first, I haven’t had issues with my tank.

While I went for a cheap fit, you still have a target painted on your back flying a Marauder, so I am watching local and d-scan much closer whenever I undock in it.

So, all three options work. I might pick and choose depending on which mission I run.

Meanwhile my second character almost had their first big loss. I have been running Deepflow Rifts when I find them – a cosmic anomaly which involves you fishing through a rift in space with your tractor beams. They are worth around 25M ISK for 25 minutes effort, so good money for Hi-Sec.

There is a gotcha – each tractor beam you use causes instability in the rift. Normally it is 16% for one tractor beam, which quickly drops back to 0. For two tractor beams you hit 33%. For three tractors beams it is 50%. If you hit 100% a surge occurs and a wave of Rogue Drones appear which do a lot of damage.

I have been using my exploration Sunesis with two tractor beams. I had just purchased myself a mobile depot to use to fit 3 tractor beams to it in space, when I found another site and decided to use my Noctis.

And it worked as I expected. 4 Tractor beams hit 66% instability. Until they hit 100%. Despite care and not recycling until instability had dropped back to 0%, on one cycle it went from 50% to 100% when going from 3 to 4 beams.

The drone swam that appeared quickly started chewing through the tank on my Noticus. I had been collecting pulled cans by flying to them – which meant I was actually up against the rift, and the Noticus couldn’t align to warp out. Webbed, so moving very slowly, I ended up struck bouncing at 95% warp. It looked like it was done for until it finally bumped along far enough to warped out.

I don’t really like the notion of there being rules which are randomly different, but I guess I learnt a lesson not to be complacent. I went back with my Navy Caracal to try and clear the spawn, but I found they were really quite hard to kill and I had to warp out.

The undocking and learning continues.

(My fits are just basic examples which work for me. They are usually on the cheap side, flexible, one size fits all – and are not best of breed.)

…

This is about my 20th post since the Catalyst expansion interested me enough to revisit EVE two months ago.

…

My wife’s 12-month contract had a short extension but is finishing next month. She is moving on to a new 12-month contract elsewhere. It is the hardest job market she has seen in more than 30 years of working. Companies seem to be retrenching and cutting back left right and center.

…

My job was meant to finish up but was extended for a couple of years.  The contract renegotiations were apparently brutal, with a long fruitful relationship permanently damaged. Organisations seem to be screwing over their staff and their suppliers.

…

I think I mentioned that I was having performance issues when running two clients undocked at the same time. It has been limiting my EVE play.

My PC has an Intel i7-14700K, 32GB RAM, runs off m.2 SSDs and a pair of GeForce RTX 4060s. Not top spec, but I assumed it should handle two EVE clients running in 3800×1980 windows ok.

Turns out it can.  I just need to remember to allocate each client to a different graphics card. It defaults to the same one.

…

I have remarked in the past that concentrating on EVE can be difficult with my family. They still keep me busy, but generally I no longer need to drop everything immediately.  These last couple months have helped prove that.

(As I typed that I could hear my daughter baiting my wife, and the raised shrill in my wife’s replies.  I had to immediately stop typing and go and distract both from the clash they were about to have.)

…

For a while there it seemed CCP were pushing towards all stations being player owned. Then in their ever-changing rules, they made them easier to kill so that they were not something you wanted to rely on. They then removed some space and trade routes through the Triglavian invasion.

As I played EVE less, I consolidated my characters and their assets into Jita. I did not want to return to the game at some point in the future to find everything lost to rule changes.

In the last two months I have had to branch out and try and find new locations to live out of, moving away from Jita.

…

I have spent 2 months now operating anywhere up to 20 jumps out from Jita.

While there are plenty of gankers and griefers, and they are active in the areas where people travel or loiter (more than I remember them being), there are not all that many of them. It is the same groups and the same people. I have been diligent in monitoring the Killboards and setting negative standings, but after a couple of weeks I rarely came across new ones.

Meanwhile over the last two months I have run several hundred exploration sites. Aside from some cheeky behaviour during the Nexus event, every player who has warped in on me running a site has warped out again.  This includes data and relic sites with unopened cans.  I don’t ever recall Hi-Sec being so consistently considerate and polite.

There are many very old characters flying around Hi-Sec, avoiding drama and not bothering anyone one. I presume, like me, that they are keeping themselves amused.

I have two EVE accounts with characters on them.

On my oldest account I have:

. Main – 19 years and 4 months old with 428M Skill Points.

They have every skill in game at rank 4 or 5 except for Advanced Doomsday Operation and Capital Jump Portal Generation. Aside from some T2 Capital modules, they can fit every module and fly every hull in game.

. Alt 2 – 8 years and 11 months old with 26M Skill Points.

Setup to fly most T2 Amarr frigates and cruisers.

On my second account I have:

. Alt 1 – 16 years 4 months old with 55M Skill Points (although 9M unallocated)

This alt is a jack of all trades with some trade, PI, fleet, corporation and structure management skills, plus can fly most T1 frigates, cruisers, battlecruisers and industrial hulls.

. Alt 3 – 54 days old with 5.8M Skill Points

This is the character I have been playing most days for the last couple months.

If needed, I pair Alt 1 up with my Main.

I used Alt 2 to help Alt 3 with some of the new player AIR Career tasks, but I spent time on the weekend visiting Alt 2’s assets and moving stuff around. I will have Alt 3 support Alt 2 more moving forward, although not with ISK generation.

On Alt 3 – I want two bases of operation for my new character – one for building Caldari / Amarr standings, and one for Minmatar and Gallente.

No matter what else I get up to, I want to be able to jump clone or shuttle my way into these systems and have the tools I need ready for basic ISK generation.

My initial location in The Citadel has worked out well. It is not too far from Jita; there is a good assortment of close services and agents, the gankers and griefers do not visit all that often, and the locals are quiet and courteous. The only issue is that exploration content is heavily run.

After a couple of mis-starts, I have settled on a second location in Metropolis. It is twice as far away from Jita, and the services and agents are not as close. However – it is extremely quiet, systems go weeks and sometimes months between Player vs Player deaths, and I can commonly run exploration sites one after another for as long as I can handle.

I liked it so much, I set my home station there.

As I remarked before, setting up two somewhat mirrored bases has been expensive. The biggest cost and the mini project I just completed was setting up a Noctis in each location.

I salvage almost all my wrecks, and it earns me 150%+ on top of the bounties. The Noctis with its extra long range and fast tractor beams, makes this process so much easier. It is however – even with a T1 fit, my most expensive ship hull at 116M ISK. Times that by two. So, I have been busy grinding through 232M ISK of earnings.

Right now, the character’s wealth is at around 800M ISK.

I need another Kikimora – which even with low skill points, has been great for Hi Sec content. I might need to work on training into some T2 tanking modules since it is a touch squishy.

I am also considering swapping the Caracal Navy Issue and Omen Navy Issue for a pair of Vedmak’s.

It has been interesting trialing different hulls and tactics and approaches to generate undocked ISK for this character in Hi-Sec. The lowest income at this point is from missions – which are mostly just L1 and 2 for the Daily AIR rewards. Mining and combat anomalies earn around 5 to 10M ISK an hour. Cosmic Signatures and Escalations earn 5 to 40M ISK an hour. I have had one-hour worth 150M ISK, and several worth 50M ISK. This is still mostly with T1 modules and hulls and rank 3 skills. I have been surprised at what you can do with such a young character.

The undocking continues.

My wife has been doing her usual holiday catchup with friends.

One said that her husband had no friends, never went out, and just played computer games in his spare time. She asked if I had any friends.

My wife said we had joint friends and that I had friends of my own. While I did not catch up with my own friends all that often in person, I communicated with them and family as often as daily.

When she recounted this to me, I pointed out that the husband might have online gaming friends.

My wife gave me a look that suggested those were not real friends.

People seem to underestimate how much gaming friends – or acquaintances, can fill a male’s social or connection needs.

I am gaining familiarity with some of the pilots operating in the same areas I am. When they are online, what ships they fly, what they tend to do in space. Familiarity though is not a connection. I have been going to the same coffee shop for years.  I recognise all the regular morning patrons. Sometimes we might smile and acknowledge that familiarity – but we never sit down at the same table and speak to each other.

I only have one in game connection now – someone I was in a corporation with many years ago.  I have primarily used my new character since I returned, and that toon is not in the chat channel where I keep in touch with them. I don’t commonly interact with anyone else.

I have moved my new character into their own corporation to cut back on taxes.  I have not decided if I will join another player corporation or not. I am not sure I have that much time to invest, or if I want to risk the drama.

The EVE Bloggers I follow are an unusual familiarity / connection to the game that I am not sure how to categorize. There have only been a handful of times that I have noticed a blogger flying by in space – but you know some of their story and you know they are out their undocking and doing things. I have been hailed a handful of times in space myself, or more often received an EVE Mail from people who have come across this blog. As I have remarked, blogging and blogs have probably been the key thing to have kept me connected to the game for this long.

I don’t think I have used a single T2 module yet on the new Character.

I have trained up skills for specific ships and fits, but mostly my approach has been to buy all the available cheap skills and inject to rank 1 or 2, then train to rank 3. Over only 42 days I have picked up around 140 skills, covering a lot of the basic hulls and small to medium fittings, with 5.1M SP (0.3M Free).

Armor – 9 / 14
Corporation Management – 2 / 5
Drones – 11 / 28
Electronic Systems – 4 / 15
Engineering – 9 / 15
Fleet Support – 0 / 20
Gunnery – 12 / 65
Missiles – 9 / 31
Navigation – 7 / 15
Neural Enhancement – 3 / 9
Planet Management – 0 / 5
Production – 3 / 13
Resource Processing – 10 / 35
Rigging – 4 / 10
Scanning – 7 / 7
Science – 2 / 43
Sequencing – 0 / 16
Shields – 10 / 13
Social – 5 / 10
Spaceship Command – 21 / 90
Structure Management – 0 / 7
Subsystems – 0 / 16
Targeting – 8 / 8
Trade – 4 / 15

Ignoring Shuttles, I have 20 fitted hulls across 2 main areas of operation, one near Jita in Caldari space, the other 20 jumps from Jita in Minmatar space.

They are broken down into:

Frigates
Magnate (Hauler)

Exploration Frigates
Endurance

Destroyers
Coercer – Salvager (x2)
Kikimora – PVE
Dragoon – PVE
Sunesis – Scan / Exploration (x2)

Cruisers
Caracal Navy Issue – PVE
Omen Navy Issue – PVE
Exequror – Hauler

Mining Destroyers
Pioneer (x2)

Mining Barges
Procurer (x2)
Retriever

Haulers
Bestower (x3)
Sigil

For every in-game ship I need, I sit down in Pyfa and check my options across every race in my price range. I don’t recall ever using Navy Hulls before, but they have given me the boost required to get into the Hidden / Forsaken / Forlorn versions of the hi-sec combat anomalies without a long grind for T2 fits.

I had settled on the Omen Navy Issue for harder Guristas sites, which worked well. It did not work as well against Angels, so I have a Caracal Navy Issue for those.

I am hitting a funding problem though.

The Kikimora I picked up for DED / Escalation sites that were limited to Destroyer hulls cost 58M ISK. The Caracal Navy Issue was 49M. The Procurer was 57M ISK x2. Grabbing some of these more expensive hulls and setting up effectively a mirror image second base of operations has drained my wallet to near zero several times.

I hit a brick wall of boredom a couple of times while grinding up ISK again. I am going to have to step back and take things a little slower.

Here is my Caracal fit – I went passive just because.

[Caracal Navy Issue, PVE]

Damage Control I
Ballistic Control System I
Ballistic Control System I

10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Alumel-Wired Enduring Sensor Booster, Scan Resolution Script
Missile Guidance Computer I, Missile Range Script
Enduring Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender

‘Arbalest’ Heavy Missile Launcher, Nova Heavy Missile
‘Arbalest’ Heavy Missile Launcher, Nova Heavy Missile
‘Arbalest’ Heavy Missile Launcher, Nova Heavy Missile
‘Arbalest’ Heavy Missile Launcher, Nova Heavy Missile
‘Arbalest’ Heavy Missile Launcher, Nova Heavy Missile
‘Arbalest’ Heavy Missile Launcher, Nova Heavy Missile

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

Warrior I x5

49M ISK, 27.2K EHP, 87 EHP/s tank, 228 DPS, 450m3 and 6s align time

CCP rewards aggression, bullying and theft – preferably if you gang up with others to do it. They also provide mechanisms that allow and reward players for ganking other players.

I can see a wide range of reasons that validate this – not the least being that EVE would not be EVE without it.

The rules and their balance around this game play have ebbed and flowed over the years, but generally I feel CCP favours those who destroy over those who build. I don’t play EVE as a destroyer – but it amuses me to find my own solo way around in such an environment.

Unfortunately, it also suits griefers.

By griefing, I am talking about players who gain pleasure from upsetting other players. Not for profit, land, politics, or historical grudges – but being titillated by the tears.

And you might think – so what?

I often wonder at people who publicly celebrate and crow about their griefing successes. It is textbook sadism – deriving pleasure from inflicting suffering on others.

And you might still be thinking – so what?

Studies show people with generalised sadistic traits are more likely to engage in criminal conduct, the criminal conduct they do is likely to be better planned than average, they are more likely to end up in jail, and they are more likely to be aggressive and violent. In short, I don’t gain any joy from interacting with that sort of person – in life or in game.

For years I have ignored most of CCP’s events because they tend to attract griefers. They are not there for the event content, but to make content for themselves out of the artificial congregation of players.

This year I got involved with the latest Winter Nexus event as an experiment with my new character – what could a month-old toon do?

I briefly read the official descriptions. There appeared to be daily log-in rewards, plus combat sites, mining sites, hacking sites, exploration sites and roaming NPCs situated in Ice Storms that had sprung up across space.

The daily log-in rewards were available to everyone, with a possible 525K of skill points and 26,500 EverMarks up for grabs for players with an Omega account. That is a lot of skill points for a new character. The combat sites indicated you should have a T2 fitted Battleship – so I ignored those for obvious reasons. So, I decided to start with the mining sites.

The sites in Empire were called Fading Volatile Ice Fields. They were found in Ice Storms, more regularly towards the center, less often on the edges of the storms. They were behind ship restricted acceleration gates and were made up of a semi-circle of 20 blocks of ice around an NPC who you turned the ice into for reward crates.

I used up a bunch of unallocated skill points and half my wallet balance to get into a Procurer – the tanky mining barge. However, it wasn’t very efficient because it moved much too slowly within the sites.

I then switched to a Retriever, using up most of the rest of my wallet. This moved quicker and held more ice before having to return to do a hand in, but the 2+ minute activation times for the miners could be gamed by the Endurances with their closer to 1-minute activations.

So, I made some ISK, consumed the provided Expert System to temporarily get the required skills, and purchased myself an Endurance. This small, fast Expedition Frigate was used by 80-90% of those running the sites. The speed to move around, get to the Ice, re position and respond to the actions of other players, and to do hand ins meant this hull was substantially more effective (and fun) than the Mining Barges.

While most ice mining participants were surprisingly courteous, I still had to repeatedly adjust my play to them.

I started by finding sites in the center of the storms where they were more numerous, but so too were the competitors. Normally this was not a problem, as each site might have 6 to 12 mining ships all spread out evenly munching on their own Ice, only moving to mine the same ice as the field diminished. But you also regularly found groups mining – particularly boosting Porpoise with 6 to 12 Endurances, all with similar character and hull names. They would move through the sites hoovering up Ice in just one or two cycles for each. So, I moved to sites further away from the storm center. These popped up less often, and inevitably had a rush of competitors, but you could get a quiet period with just a handful of other miners to make some progress in the event.

I started with storms which were closer to Jita, but there were a noticeable number of Gankers and Griefers about. Solo and in gangs. I saw evidence on Killboards, in space wrecks, remarks in local, and witnessed it first-hand multiple times. For the most part you could avoid them – but at times they camped undocks and acceleration gates so you could not make things entirely safe.

So, I moved further and further away from Jita. The further away, the less of this coordinated behaviour I ran in too – but it was not particularly safer as there were now lone-wolf pilots who I had not previously flagged as negative contacts.

I didn’t get around to the Hacking / Exploration content. I did not have a lot of ISK or unallocated skill points spare to investigate them, and I wasn’t that enthused for grinding through the event point rewards.

I didn’t mind the mining sites at a conceptual level – and I enjoyed the process of working out the basic efficiencies of what to run them with, how to run them, and how best to deal with other players. I think I ended up with 150+M ISK and 250+ event points.

If I had mined in low-sec it would have been more rewarding, and even more rewarding if I was in null-sec. That makes sense, although ironically, those in protected null-sec space likely faced less risk than I did.

So, I was impressed that a 1-month-old character could get involved. Next time around I might be able to investigate the other sites.

I have had to change my mouse cursor to yellow. I was too often losing it across my 6 screens. I suspect there isn’t an option to do that in EVE, but I will have to check.

My new character has made its 1-month birthday. I was not overly active in EVE since my last update, so the statistics did not change much. I ran my daily goals, did some mining, and started investigations into a second mission hub.

Skill points went up to 4.1M (427K Free), mainly due to Winter Nexus daily login rewards.

Wealth increased 10M to 470M (147M ISK Wallet, 323M Assets), with an extra mining destroyer added.

I am pleased with the wealth accumulated in only a month, given it was not a grind / slog to get there. I expect things will slow down, but it is a solid base to work from.

One aspect of EVE that I don’t think the new player experience explains well enough is faction standings. As I gained positive standings with the Caldari faction by running their missions, I started to accumulate negative standings with the factions who do not like them. If you let these negative standings get bad enough, it can result in those Factions attacking you in their space.

The main empire faction with negative views of the Caldari is the Gallente Federation. If I balance my mission running between Caldari and Gallente, I should maintain access to all Empire space.

The mission hub I found for Caldari has been excellent. L1-4 of different types in a small area. It is not too busy, and the gankers and griefers visit but are not a constant presence.

The first possible Gallente mission hub I checked out was mainly for mining agents. I found gankers and griefers were a regular presence, including seeing them using combat probes to scan down mission runners and attempting to gank them. This also wasn’t just about profit, since the Killboards showed they targeted new players in cheap hulls as well. Some of the gankers that I watched in Local were 10+ year old characters that I recognised. There wasn’t much chatter – but it felt toxic.

I might have to keep on looking. I might also have to pay attention for longer to what EVE in Hi-sec is really like today.

So, what’s next? I need to step back and do more with my main character, so progress on this one will slow but it won’t stop. Aside from setting up a balance of mission agents, I am thinking about the low-level COSMOS agents, and low-level Abyssal space content. I also have more thoughts on the new player experience to get back too.

I can not believe the number of stations that get destroyed by asteroids that you have to go out and mine…

I don’t always do this – but I do want to acknowledge the start of 2026.

I do not recall a time in my life when evil had so much power in the world, where there was so much social disharmony, so much disinformation, so much blind ideology, and so much corruption in our institutions such as democracy and capitalism. I can see the sinking ship / everyone for themselves mentality all around me.

Having said that, I lead a quirky but charmed life. It is by no means perfect or entirely happy, but it would be a rare day indeed that someone in Australia could claim to be having the worse day out of the 8.2 billion people around the world.

So, I will try to enjoy and appreciate the day to day and continue to prattle on about the solo playing of an MMO internet spaceship game.

The other day CCP released some infographics showing what the most undocked ships were in 2025. I wondered why CCP did so without explanation because it made the player base look like Carebears, which is not what CCP has been pushing for years.

Of the 12 slots – there was 1 PVE ship, 1 Hauler, 3 Exploration frigates and 7 Resource Harvesters.

(I did not include Pochven – which were 3 PVE/PVP hulls – Barghest, Loki and Vargur. I don’t believe the average player visits regularly, and it is a more unique location/culture.)

Logically many are at the top because there are limited and shared hulls for things like mining, which would boost their numbers when compared to the frigates, cruisers, battlecruisers and so on that are spread across each race and different focused weapon systems.

Still – it does suggest a lot of players are regularly flying Carebear ships.

CCP’s commentary seems to suggest that the Catalyst expansion has been a notable success – which is amusing as it was primarily focused on Carebears. I believe CCP would have a more vibrant game – to the benefit of all, if they continue to focus a bit more on the substantial number of Carebears who undock.

I noticed last week that a couple of mercenary corporations are clearing out Upwell structures from the pocket where I am located.  They were all for small or Carebear corporations, including assets of the group who was mining the Mordunium belt I mentioned the other day. That group has lost around 18 Hi-Sec structures over the last few months.

There is no evidence that the structures were defended – maybe one or two used their fitted weaponry, but there were zero losses amongst the attackers. Most structures were only fitted with their rigs and quantum core, suggesting the owners had stripped them.

The quantum core drops ensure a pay day for attackers. I presume the mechanism was put in place specifically to do that. The Structure turkey shoots are a PVP version of resource gathering – auto shoot, get a set reward, with a small chance of a loot pinata drop. They are just farming other disinterested players instead of NPCs. 

I do not know why anyone would use Upwell Structures in Hi-Sec unless they had at least a dozen half competent pilots keen to defend them.  The killboards show groups of as little as 2 people who roll through constellations collecting quantum cores without appearing to be hindered.

Another example of CCP’s wonderful gameplay.

I had two attempts made to take my Customs Offices. I had my main and alt cloaked nearby in combat ships while I was war dec’d.  The first attempt was by a small group – and I took the opportunity to kill an AFK attacker. It turned out they were not interested in PVP either – so retracted the war and left me alone.  The second group brought more than a dozen hulls to each kill, so I could do nothing about it. They even hung around as they anchored their own offices so I couldn’t get a cheap kill.

I note a large number of Custom Offices are owned by the Hi-Sec Gankers and war declarers. I like the irony that Carebears who use the structures are funding the Gankers who come kill them later.

My new character is fast approaching its 1-month birthday. While I have not managed to undock every day, I have put some solid hours into it.

As at 25 days old.

3.4M Skill points (37K of them unallocated)

459M Wealth (143M ISK Wallet, 316M ISK Assets)

2 Mining Barges
1 Cruiser (PVE)
4 Destroyers (PVE + Salvage + Mining + Exploration)
2 Frigates (Salvage + Haul)
2 Haulers

The in-game client thinks I have 510M in wealth. Sometimes the discrepancies come from its tendency to overprice some items, particularly Skins and SKINR materials. Sometimes reconciliation seems askew. When I sell something the wallet increase seems to impact wealth quickly, but the removal of the sold asset is not immediately accounted for.

I have looked at

AIR Introduction (100%)
AIR Career Agents (100%)
AIR Career Program (2,650 of 3,000 points)
AIR Daily Goals (2-5 a day)
Epic Arc – Ore – Fractured Legacy (100%)
Epic Arc – Sisters of EVE – The Blood Stained Stars (100%)
L1 & L2 Security and Mining Missions, with access to L3
Caldari State Standings to 1.97 (For agents and fee reduction)
Belt and Anomaly Mining
Winter Nexus Ice Mining
Exploration– Hi Sec combat anomalies and signatures, Relic and Data sites
A small amount of Industry and Trade

I have also been setting up the UI from scratch and getting used to the interface changes, slowly updating the various third-party tools and websites I use, and setting up lots of new low SP ship fittings.

The way all the introduction content and balancing has been done has meant I haven’t really felt like ISK or Skill Points were a major impediment to doing what I wanted in this first month.

For ISK the daily goals have been good money earners and bookmarking and going back to salvage wrecks still earns more than the original bounties or agent rewards. Exploration drops have been good, and mining is reaching the point where it helps the wallet balance. The Winter Nexus daily rewards and more recently running some of the event mining content has also helped the character’s wealth, including getting 20 PLEX.

I have been able to scan down all Hi-Sec exploration content and clear all Relic and Data sites using level 3 skills and cheap T1 equipment, and Sister of EVE Probes.

With similar set-ups I have been able to run all combat missions to L2 (not tried enough L3 to confirm comfort levels), sites to DED 3 of 10, and most solo anomalies.

You do have to pay attention as there are some brutal sites in Hi-Sec, including even wormhole entrances guarded by high end NPCs.

I am not sure what this would all look like to a brand-new player, but if they were methodical and interested, the solo starting process is substantially better than what it was when I first started 19 years ago.

A Mordunium ore site popped up in one of the local systems. I had never heard of the ore before – it refines to Pyerite. The site also contained Hedbergite, Omber, Scordite and Pyroxeres.

I enjoy the randomness of ore sites more than normal belt mining, both as they are visually a little different and as you sometimes get to mine asteroids not normally available locally.

I have up to this point been fairly generalist in my skill training. I have got to rank III in most skills I have needed. The exceptions were targeting skills, hull upgrades (IV) for the armor compensation skills, drone V to access 5 drones and some of the support skills like drone interfacing, and mining IV for the mining destroyer.

One of the local corporations came out with industrial command ships and mining barges. I stayed on the opposite side of the belt, but they inevitably made their way to me and quickly hooved up whatever I was working on. Unlike exploration and combat sites, I don’t view that as untoward or rude.

My Pioneer was chugging along with a yield of around 10m3 a second, but some of my silent companions would have been mining at closer to 30m3, and presumably with mining wastage on top of that. (I haven’t worked out precisely how mining residue (better if it was named wastage) works. I will have to check the mining ledger once I start using equipment that causes it.

The Pioneer has been a fun little low SP ship.

[Pioneer, M 02]

Mining Laser Upgrade I
Mining Laser Upgrade I

1MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
ML-3 Compact Mining Survey Chipset
Medium Shield Extender I

EP-S Gaussian Scoped Mining Laser
EP-S Gaussian Scoped Mining Laser
EP-S Gaussian Scoped Mining Laser
Salvager I

Small EM Shield Reinforcer I
Small EM Shield Reinforcer I
Small Thermal Shield Reinforcer I

Hobgoblin I x4
Mining Drone I x4

But sharing the belt with others got me thinking – what do I need in skills to fly a mining barge, which one would I pick and how would I fit it, what processing skills would I need to improve my earnings, and how much ISK would all this cost. That kept me busy during two sessions of mining in the Mordunium site, and another session later in an Omber site.

Thanks to a large amount of free SP I have covered all the skills, now I need to sort out buying one. That will leave me ISK poor.

Because mining – particularly at this point, is a low earner, I ran some combat sites to generate more ISK for this project. I ended up getting my first escalation – to a 4/10 DED Guristas Scout Outpost.

My little toon is far more capable than I thought it would be – but there seems to be a threshold where you go from relaxed and coping to “oh fuck”. The DED site was well past that threshold. My Omen could only handle the DPS of two of the cruisers at a time. In fact, clearing the first room required a lot of manual piloting while sitting on 80% armor damage and picking off targets that strayed off by themselves. I did not even try the second room.

My new alt is now 20 days old.

2.9M Skill points (680K of them unallocated)
64M ISK Wallet (201M ISK income / 137M ISK expenses)
176M ISK Net worth

1 Cruiser (PVE)
4 Destroyers (Explorer + PVE + Salvage + Mining)
4 Frigates (PVE + Salvage + Mining + Hauler)
2 haulers

I made two notable investments in the last few days. The first was an Omen cruiser for missions and combat sites.

[Omen, Omen PVE]

Damage Control I
Medium I-a Enduring Armor Repairer
Compact Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Compact Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Extruded Compact Heat Sink
Extruded Compact Heat Sink

10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Alumel-Wired Enduring Sensor Booster
Large Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery

Focused Anode Medium Particle Stream I, Standard M
Focused Anode Medium Particle Stream I, Standard M
Focused Anode Medium Particle Stream I, Standard M
Focused Anode Medium Particle Stream I, Standard M
Focused Anode Medium Particle Stream I, Standard M

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I

Hobgoblin I x5

18M ISK, 10.5K EHP, 82 EHP/s tank, 186 DPS, 400m3 and 7s align time

I have never used an Omen cruiser before. The biggest impact has been on the speed of doing low level content – and that relates to increasing the longest range (at current skill levels) from 23.5km to 48.6km.

This flexibility and speed has opened up the in space Anomaly PVE content. There is so much competition for these sites that it is rare to find one empty and for it to stay empty while you run it. So, you need to get in quick and clear it quickly. The Omen has allowed that.

I am doing without difficulty the:

Tier 1 (Hideaway) (level 1, level 2 (Hidden) and level 3 (Forsaken))
Tier 2 (Burrow)
Tier 3 (Refuge)

I still need to test the Tier 1 Level 4 Forlorn sites, and the Tier 4 Den sites.

The second investment was a Sunesis destroyer exploration ship.

[Sunesis, Exploration]

Damage Control I
Small I-a Enduring Armor Repairer
Upgraded Multispectrum Coating I
200mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates

5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Relic Analyzer I
Data Analyzer I
Scan Rangefinding Array I

Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Salvager I

Small Emission Scope Sharpener I
Small Memetic Algorithm Bank I
[Empty Rig slot]

Hobgoblin I x4

29M ISK, 6.3K EHP, 29 EHP/s tank (not cap stable), 77 DPS, 600m3 and 4s align time

There are a lot of new or changed exploration content since last I looked, not all of it available to solo players. The Homefront sites for example – which are for 5+ pilots and which I thought were never being run since they never disappear. But I have since noticed a group of 3 pilots in the local area who run them together.

The primary reason I went for the Sunesis over an exploration Frigate are the new to me Deepflow rift sites. These require tactor beams. They also seem to stick around for a while, but I think I earnt about 18M ISK from the one site I did run.

One thing about how busy space is.

I am a courteous explorer. If I warp into a site and someone is already running it, I will warp out. If a pilot shows me the same courtesy, I quietly add them as a contact and give them a +5 standing and an associated label. In future I treat them with extra respect and if I know they are working through a system I might just move on to the next one straight away.

If a pilot warps into a site and starts running it while I am / makes a rush for any named loot, I quietly add them as a contact and given them a -5 standing and an associated label. And then at every opportunity I do the same in return, making a point of going out of my way to find and run their sites.

I will say – despite never before seeing so many people competing for sites at all hours of the day, that the politeness levels are also higher on average than I have seen before. I wonder if it relates to a majority of pilots flying ships named in Chinese characters. In a similar vein, I have never seen so little chatter in local.

My wife refuses to charge her iPad. She comes into my study, puts it down on my desk and says it needs charging, then walks out.

This has been getting more frequent and she has been complaining. Her iPad should last around 10 hours of normal use, so I presumed she was on it at least that much a day. It certainly seemed like it. She assumed her iPad was faulty.

Today her complaining reached a certain threshold in my brain so I was triggered to do something. I pointed out there were usage and battery statistics I could check. I was rewarded by a sudden look of discomfort.

It turned out we were both wrong.  She used her iPad 4 to 6 hours a day. Half as much as I had assumed, but twice as much as what she thought.  The battery was being used up fast by Safari – because it had 75 tabs open. I know it was 75 as I counted aloud as I closed each one.  So hopefully that was the cause and solution to her battery running flat so quickly.

My wife then said I was not allowed to tell anyone.

My new alt is now 17 days old. The stats –

2.5M Skill points with 650K Free
30M Wallet
120M ISK income
90M ISK expenses

1 Cruiser (PVE)
3 Destroyers (PVE + Salvage + Mining)
5 Frigates (PVE + Salvage + Explorer + Mining + Hauler)
2 haulers
127M ISK Net worth

I have mostly been working through the AIR Career Program since the last update. I have broken several of my rules in the process.

First – I have mindlessly rushed a bunch of the tasks, instead of taking it slowly and methodically. Some I think I can be excused for, such as having to run 20 Distribution missions. But I need to ensure I focus on the journey with this character, not a destination.

Second – I have wasted ISK unnecessarily at times, with a 19-year-old character mentality instead of a 17-day-old one. Two of the Career tasks are to mine and refine Kernite. There is no belt Kernite in the area I am in – you must wait for anomalies to pop up. The mining task was covered because the mining mission ore Lyavite is counted as mining Kernite.  For the refining task I could have gone hunting for Kernite in space, but instead I purchased it locally off the market. I lost about 1M ISK in that second process – fine for my main character, but I should have been more thoughtful with the new Alt.

Third – I have dragged in one of my Alts to help when I said I wouldn’t. There are a lot of Career tasks that require you to do PVP. My Alt has been logging in, accepting duel requests, and gets damaged or drained or disrupted as required. This has also highlighted that I can’t run two EVE clients at near 4K and maxed out settings on my PC without a bit of stuttering. I need to go look at dialing back some graphic settings.

Interestingly I have almost solely been using this new Alt over the last couple weeks, and not my main.

The little pocket I have established myself in has been great, relatively quiet and with all the industrial and agent resources I have needed. But I am surprised at how hard some of the exploration tasks are to complete. There is a constant flow of old pilots in Tactical Destroyers and Orthrus looping through the constellation running low level exploration content. The basic Hideaway, Burrow and Refuge sites last bare minutes, while the harder sites my Alt cannot handle are left alone. Occasionally someone in a Marauder will come through and clear out the harder content. I may have to move further out from trade hubs to be able to access low level exploration content more reliably.

The game client says my character is 11 days old, has 1.5M SP, and is worth 113M ISK.

I have spent a couple days consolidating – collecting loot and salvage, revisiting initial ship fittings, skill training, and low hanging goals.

One of those things was installing a set of +1 learning implants and finding some basic skill hardwirings. It is still odd / refreshing to have to consider the price of things. I could have gone with +3 implants but then used up much of my liquid ISK.

The AIR Daily tasks are surprising rewarding – 500,000 ISK and 500 EverMarks each. The stretch monthly goals can include an 8,000,000 ISK reward and a block of Skill Points. One of them that comes up is to Manufacture an item. I went and purchased 2 shuttle blueprints.

One I started to do Material Research on – to make them cheaper to build in future. The second I put in a nearby manufacturing facility with a bunch of Tritanium I had collected. Now it takes me a minute or two of effort to manufacture an item and earn 500,000 ISK when it is a daily goal. Shuttles are also easy to sell and always useful.

The boost to standings from the Sister of EVE Arc made a difference to what agents I could start with. The level 1 and 2 mining missions are easy. The level 1 combat missions are almost always easy – but some of the level 2 require thought. An 8K frigate rat can take a few hits to take down and require consideration of turret tracking and so on.

At this point I need to see how exploration goes, find specific career goals to chase down, and see what the character can do in the Winter Nexus.

While there are highs and successes and proud moments, my neurodivergent wife, son and daughter maintain their steady flow of fuckery, with a healthy dose of shittery thrown in for good measure. There is no finish line with this – it will go on forever. For my own sanity I have made a point to find time this year to play computer games more often.

I decided to now try the Sisters of EVE introductory Epic Arc called The Blood Stained Stars. I’ve run it before once or twice, but so long ago I couldn’t remember the details aside from a fight near the end where the NPC has a very strong tank.

I picked a Dragoon to run this Arc with. I have never flown it before, and I did not notice it being used by other people running the Arc with me. There was a strategy to this choice which paid out at the end.

[Dragoon, SOE Epic Arc]

Damage Control I
Small I-a Enduring Armor Repairer
Extruded Compact Heat Sink
Compact Multispectrum Energized Membrane

1MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Eutectic Compact Cap Recharger
Small Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery

Small Focused Anode Pulse Particle Stream I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Anode Pulse Particle Stream I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Anode Pulse Particle Stream I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Salvager I
Salvager I

Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Processor Overclocking Unit I
Small Capacitor Control Circuit I

Hobgoblin I x5

2.45 – 3.68M ISK, 5.5K EHP, 35EHP/s tank, 104 – 157 DPS, 300m3 and 6s align time

I did read comments where it was suggested the Arc could be run in a few hours. I took my time to read the storyline, looted and salvaged all my wrecks, and looked at the scenery. It took me 3 sessions of a couple of hours each with one hiccup.

Early in the chain I warped to an agent in space to hand in a mission. The agent said they were busy talking to another Capsuleer – although I was the only one on grid. Then the mission completion window popped up. My hand-in item was still in my cargo hold, but the agent would not speak with me. I flew back to the overall agent for the chain, and they would not speak with me either. I gave it some time to correct itself, which it did not, so I had to log a support ticket. Two friendly GM’s quickly reset that part of the chain for me and I continued with no further problems.

There is a lot of couriering and moving around and you get to see a fair sampling of Hi-Sec, but you do get a bit of combat. Here I wasn’t sure what was going on – because my less than a week-old character with less than 1M SP handled situations I would not have thought it should have. I didn’t know how much of this was influenced by my knowledge of fitting and flying, and how much were gimped and overly weakened opponents.

There were only a few points through the main chain which required much care. A couple times where you could agro a lot of DPS if you didn’t do some mediocre kiting, and one NPC which drained your cap. This was one of the reasons I took a boat with drones. Missiles would also have done the trick.

There was only one battle which had me scrambling – the final fight against Dagan.

I went into this fight with around 105 DPS according to the Pyfa fitting tool. While I could tank the damage from Dagan without much problem, I would only get to scratch his armor during short gaps in his own active tanking.  So, I then went to my backup plan.

I retreated and went and fitted faction crystals to my guns and selected drones with the best damage type. I would have also gone to shorter range more damaging pulse turrets, but there were none in the area. I returned but while it was an improvement, it was still going to take a very long time to win.

So, I went to the backup to my backup plan. I had already amassed around 250K SP of free skill points from the various daily and AIR career rewards. So, I trained Drone IV to V, and the supporting drone skills which I had already pre-purchased to at least rank III. I also increased Amarr Destroyer to rank III and trained a few other low hanging Gun skills and in a few minutes got my DPS up to 150. The battle was then shortly over.

The main reward, which new players won’t really understand the benefit of, was a somewhat free boost to the standings with one selected faction. I also picked up around 15M ISK in salvage and loot, and maybe around 15M ISK in bounties and mission rewards.  By the end of the run my client said I have 1.3M Skill points, a wealth of 82M ISK, and a Caldari State Faction standing of 1.93. There were also a couple storyline missions that popped up.

That is a surprisingly good starting point for a new player.

Look but don’t touch.

Dagan – done in by hoarded free Skill Points.

There were two little moments that stood out. One of the GM’s gave me some helpful tips which possibly alluded to maybe the problem was me not handing the missions in correctly. I wanted to say I have been playing the game for 19 years and know a bug when I see it, and that I had already read lots of posts about it happening while trying to help myself, but then I realised I didn’t care if the GM thought I might have been a moron. The second was the final fight took longer than I had anticipated, and I ended up only getting to bed at 2am. Been a long time since a computer game kept me up so late.

There are gaps in my playing as I switch characters and real life intervenes, but the block of logged in sessions I am going to call Day 4 came to pass.

I am suffering from jump fatigue from my moving operation, but I make a start on reviewing and setting up ships.

I need to identify the most effective options for hauling, mining, exploration and PVE, and work out what sort of containers I will use in station to store assets.

I am surprised at how often the enduring, compact, and restrained versions of modules are both better and cheaper than the standard T1 module.

I set up a Bestower industrial to be able to haul 2 station containers around at a time. Tank is not really a factor as it won’t be carrying anything of worth, and I won’t be able to fend off griefers anyway.  It is tokenism.

Damage Control I
Type-D Restrained Expanded Cargo
Type-D Restrained Expanded Cargo
Type-D Restrained Expanded Cargo
Type-D Restrained Expanded Cargo
Type-D Restrained Expanded Cargo

10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Medium Shield Extender I
Medium Shield Extender I

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I

3.68M ISK, 5.4K EHP, 22.1K m3 and 15s align time

I will also use it for short range movement of Ore and Minerals.

While playing around with ship fits for a character with limited funds and less than 1M Skill points is intriguing, I also want to ensure I earn a couple daily rewards and do something in space, so I decided to tackle the new mini–Epic Arc from Ore – called Fractured Legacy.

I grab a Venture, do a little research, and head over to the starting system.  You need basic hacking skills and a module, a propulsion module, and to be able to train the Mining Destroyer skill you are rewarded with.  I had 100K Free SP already so I could do that without having to wait.

It was a straightforward, visually interesting, and easy arc even for a 4-day old character. The rewards were great at this point – a free Pioneer Mining Destroyer and skill book and an additional 7.5M ISK.

Parked at the AIR Station waiting to go.

Getting a chance to look at phased asteroids.

Flying the new Pioneer.

At this point my character’s wealth was sitting at 45M ISK. That took a lot less effort than the first time around I played.

It might just be how my mind works, but I have never found the EVE in-game map to be particularly useful in giving me a simple overview of where I am in the game world.

It is apparently mathematically correct, but I often have to rotate the map after each jump to help with my situational awareness.

So I – like many people – instead used the 2D maps on DOTLAN.

With the catalyst expansion CCP has finally implemented something similar in game.

It allows you to zoom in and out, and select and favourite a whole heap of in game statistics.

The information can be used for both good and evil, and you have the ability to save a favourites list.

There are issues with it. The links between regions is frequently messy and hard to follow / understand. The map realigns to the edge of the region every time you dock. It realigns to your current location when you undock, or you can click on the “focus on current location” to realign it manually each time, but it irritates. Also if you have your map open / floating, it does not re-open between client sessions.

Where I love it though is being able to add it to the mass of windows I have open in my client (work in progress on the new toon) to keep track of where I am and what is going on around me.

And it is lucky it is now available, because after years of use, DOTLAN’s level of onscreen and pop up ads has got to the point where it is irritating to use and can occasionally cause browser freezes and slow downs.

This only scratches the surface – but I have used the in game map more in the last couple weeks than I have in the previous 19 years.

With some ISK in the bank and a collection of shiny new ship hulls, it was time to escape the career school system and find a new home.

I pulled up the trusty dotlan evemaps website, and taking in the main trading stations, the hi-sec routes between them, and the ganking choke points such as Uedama and Gheth, I went looking for suitable pockets to live out of based on statistics like the number of jumps, player and NPC kills, what agents were available and so on.

What I was looking for recently for my main character was not the same as what I was looking for this new character, but the previous research sped up this search.

The new location picked was 50 jumps from the old.

I purchased a Bowhead for my main recently, to move cheap hulls around in bulk. This was a perfect opportunity to use it, but unfortunately my rule for this new character was no help from the old.

It made no logical sense to fly my cheap hulls one by one to the new location, so I needed to sell most of my newfound loot, fly over, and re-buy what I needed at my destination. Then it dawned on me.  I couldn’t afford to do that.

I scrambled to learn some skills to increase the number of trades I could post, but all the taxes and fees on them were at the highest levels they could be. I would also be without the ISK for these ships and modules until they sold.  When sold, I was probably looking at a minimum 10% loss.

In the end I moved 3 ship hulls and sold the rest, making around 300 jumps in one day.

Setting up in the new location I made a point of polishing all my fits – and then hit another block. I couldn’t afford optimum fits. For example, a had to settle on a salvaging frigate instead of a salvaging destroyer, as tractor beams are too costly. I can do without for the moment.

There were all these compromises and restrictions around my wealth and skill points.  It gave me flashbacks to the EVE of old.  I didn’t mind that.

Meanwhile on my main character I had spent 10B ISK in the previous month, and several million unallocated skill points. I purchased the before-mentioned Bowhead, and a Freighter, and any skill I was missing which I immediately jumped to rank 4 in. Anything I was experimenting with I just purchased, often multiple options to try them all.

It is a very different EVE experience.

For as much as I can justify $0.96 a day for two EVE accounts as being cheap entertainment, it was still $340+ worth of transactions in one go to pay for them to each have a year subscription. That was a risk.

One reason I wanted my second account activated was to create / run a new character from scratch. Initially it is to refresh my knowledge of the game by running the new character tutorials and career agents. Later I might try something like Faction Warfare, or joining a corporation, or just being less risk averse in how I play them.

I have some rules. The character can have full use of the Omega training for the year and any daily rewards. It also cannot receive any support from or join with my current characters.

The other character on that account is my main Alt.  I think they have around 50M Skill points, with a further 8M unallocated. I have a couple of MCT (Multiple Character Training Certificates) on that account and will keep an eye out for when they go on sale. I should be able to run this new Alt and maintain a useful support Alt on that one account.

My thoughts from the first 48 hours.

. I created an Amarian character because I prefer lasers.

. The character design process appears unchanged. It works ok. 

. I missed creating my portrait during the process – but I was able to go back and do that via the character customisation services in station. I think you could miss creating your portrait and not realise it was a thing.

. While creating the portrait, I realised I wasn’t entirely happy with the character’s lips.  I cannot change it however without purchasing a Character Resculpt Certificate. That costs 140 Plex or 700M ISK. That is steep and irritating, especially for a new player. I mistakenly had the vague belief you had a period of grace with this resculpting, so I was not as careful as I should have been. (I suspect that was only from when it was first released!)

. Because I know how to play EVE, there is no way for me to truly comprehend how effective the new character introduction process is.

. The initial AIR tutorial was fine. It does a nice enough job highlighting in blue what buttons to press, gives you a basic overview, and has some nice visuals to zoom in and out of. It is also the first of 3 ship and 1 pod death it sort of pushes down your throat.  “See, dying isn’t so bad. Here, die again.  Not so bad as I said.”

. It gives you varying degrees of warning about when you will lose a ship, and you can fit and insure appropriately to minimise the impact. New players however might not pick up the warnings and lose ships they have become attached too or taken a while to setup.

. Once you do the initial mini tutorial (which you can skip) you are pointed towards the Career agents. Mine were all in a system a couple jumps away. I ran them all in just over a day. It would take longer if you had not played EVE before. I didn’t mind them. There were a couple where I could see a new player could become lost, but in the more complex areas they pointed you towards help videos, and a quick google search would resolve any other roadblocks.

. I was only in the career agent system for a couple of days. It was busy, but I did not notice anyone griefing new players.  There was a fair bit of market gouging – but I happily paid double or triple for T1 modules in station to save me 20+ jumps. At times there were mining fleets with Orca boosts clearing out belts. Maybe they felt safer in the system?  There were always mining sites behind restricted gates, so new players were always able to gather required resources even if the belts were empty.

. There wasn’t all that much interaction in the system. The occasional person offered up services such as “cheap” skill books or free ship hulls for newbies, but I never saw them answered. Just before I moved on, I noticed one new pilot asking if anyone would dual them.

. The “Track” option on missions worked well.  It did, however, randomly turn off, which could confuse new players. I am tending to use mission tracking on my main now. It saves having to look up destinations and stations to dock at.

. Aura was ever helpful, as was the mission tracking, and the agent pop ups, and the in-mission character pop ups. Sometimes though they confused things. Several times they did things like insist I install a civilian version of a module even though I already had the T1 version. You could get around this by manually selecting destinations and what not, but there were a few times when I wondered if a mission would break.  (They didn’t.)

. I just threw a base skill plan at my character and haven’t worked on their skill plan yet. This was an area they might have done a little better introducing. The same with implants, although you do get a couple basic ones given to you so that might trigger self investigations.

. Being in space and doing things had you interacting with the AIR Daily Goals. These replaced the daily log in bonuses and are surprisingly lucrative, especially for a new player. With a few minutes’ effort you could commonly earn 1M ISK+. You could also use EverMarks to pay for some of the goals you would not normally complete. Make a mild effort for a couple of weeks within a month, and there are reasonable ISK and SP payouts.

. Using the AIR Career Agents also got you interacting with the AIR Career Program. These provide a whole heap of mostly little rewards for completing actions.  Many just occur as you go through the agents, some you will need to plan and make an effort to complete. If you are not sure what to do when you first start out in the game, it isn’t a bad source of goals and reward.

. The opportunities interface is a bit cluttered, and the agency interface shows its age. They should probably be merged and neatened up, but they do make it somewhat easier to find things to do in game.

. After a couple days I ended up with 475K SP of trained skills and 125K SP of unallocated SP. The base skills provided covered almost all my needs to be able to do the career agent missions. In fact, I was surprised to be able to use salvagers, so I felt like I had a very good starting point.

. There is probably an order to do the career missions so that you always have the right ship and equipment at the right time, but I grabbed hulls and modules off the market at inflated prices whenever it was convenient. At the end of the process I had 12M ISK, 11M in Hulls, 1.5M in Modules, 3.5M in Loot, 8,500 EverMarks, and a small amount of LP for a couple mining missions I ran. So maybe around 30M of wealth for my first two days in game.  It is a good base to work from.

So next I need to relocate – to any area with appropriate missions to run, belts to mine, somewhat near a trade hub, and with access to low sec.

An EVE Subscription month is 30 days, and a year is 360 days.

If you pay for your EVE Subscription by the month, it is about $30 AUD.

I have historically purchased yearly EVE Subscriptions for my main account.

Based on today’s exchange rates, a year Subscription costs around $220 AUD. That equates to $18.30 a month, or $0.60 a day. A good discount over monthly.

It does not take much to get $0.60 of entertainment value in a day out of EVE. Even if I don’t log in, I will inevitably read The Ancient Gaming Noob’s daily post or see something on social media and at least think about it.

Reflecting on it in a different way, my almost daily café coffee and cinnamon donut is $5.20.

To make this self-justification equation better, I generally buy my subscription during sales. This year there was a discount during the Black Friday Sales of 25%, plus some PLEX, plus some SKINR Supplies.

After being relatively busy with EVE over the last month, I made use of this sale and added another 12 months of Omega time to my main.

360 days for $170 AUD, or 30 days for $14.15, or 1 day for $0.47.

There was also 1,000 PLEX. That would cost $69 AUD at full price and is currently worth about 4.8B ISK. So that makes the equation even nicer.

The SKINR supplies were neither here nor there – worth about $80M ISK and dropping when I looked.  They might return more ISK if I look to sell in 6 to 12 months.

Overall, the deal was nice enough for me to resubscribe my second account.

I don’t tend to use PLEX – maybe the occasional well priced SKIN – but I guess it is good to have some in the bank.

(* Some of the monetary calculations are a few percentage points out. Some are based on what I paid on my credit card, some are based on Google’s exchange calculations, and there has also been some minor rounding.)

I am still logging in daily and working through the various changes introduced with the catalyst expansion (and before). I will get around to writing down my thoughts on it all later.

I just wanted to mention something that has genuinely surprised me.

I am still paying close attention to the pilots who come and go from the area I am playing out of, flagging the Gankers and their scouts, and those who are courteous explorers and those who are not.

My main EVE Toon is now over 19 years old, and if I remember correctly has been subscribed for almost the entire time. He will have clicked over 422M Skill points by the time I submit this post. I would think such an old toon in Hi-Sec would be at least a little unusual.  I am wrong.

Half the pilots I check are over a decade old. In fact – let me check the age of pilots in system right now:

<1 Year – 7

5 Years – 1

8 Years – 2

9 Years – 1

12 Years – 2

16 Years – 6

17 Years – 2

19 Years – 1

So, 22 pilots are in system, 11 of them are over 10 years old. And this is what I see across the constellation when I am running sites or doing mining missions. Not many players between 1 and 9 years old, and a disproportionately larger number older pilots than I would have expected to have seen in Hi-Sec.

I wonder if this is normal or it has been caused by pilots coming out of the woodwork due to the catalyst mining changes. I might have to visit more regions.