What’s in a name

I’ve had a few people ask me why I call myself a Noob, when I obviously am not. Or at least not quite. They use the little ISK I have as an example for me not being one. But what exactly defines being a noob? And am I allowed to call myself one?

Those that asked me, are thinking about newb/newbro, as in someone who’s new to the game and doesn’t quite understand it yet. A noob on the other hand, is, according to UrbanDictionary; “Someone who knows little and has no will to learn anymore”

But I don’t like that definition either, because I do want to learn more. I just call myself a noob because I, like many others, know very little of the game, despite having played it for a while now. And despite having experience in things like this. But my noobyness (if that’s even a word) makes for some good writing.. That and I had no idea what else to call my blog so there you have it.

Speaking of learning, I learnt something new today.. That my mission runner is not that well liked by the Gallente Federation. How did I find out you ask? Well quite simply by going to Arnon and having their Navy tell me that they will blow my ship up if I don’t leave their controlled space.

So now I’m training Diplomacy, because I wanted to go do the SOE arc again. That’s something I do every few months, despite it not being of any use to me, I kind of like doing it, it makes me go out of my way to other systems, systems I don’t usually go to.
That and I get a bit of extra standing with the Sisters, which is a nice thing to have with the upcoming expansion.

Cue obligated thoughts on ‘Rubicon’

I don’t really have a big opinion about it, I don’t know enough about anything in the game to form one that makes any sense. I like the idea of player owned custom offices in High Sec. I’m one of those that does PI in High Sec, and to me the glass is always half full. So I’m thinking of lower tax rates. I might even be able to place a few of my own in my home system *fingers crossed*

I have no idea what the new structures will mean for me, the one thing I’m afraid of is that the Noctis might be on his way out.

Why? Well, the Noctis is, by far, my favorite ship. It has been ever since I first bought one and started tractoring, if I could and it paid quite a bit, I would be salvaging all day. Right now I use it to follow my mission runner, I pop in, tractor everything to me, salvage and loot.
Come to me my precious

I think I have more fun in that ship than I should be having in it.

Skills are trained, lets see if the Gallente Federation is still eager to blow me up

Stay tuned o7

I want it all

When I first started the game a few years ago I was at a loss, I had no idea what you could do, I had no idea what I wanted to do, or even how to get to those places.

We’re a few years past that point and I now know about the different things out there. And still haven’t got a clue about what I want to do. I do know that I don’t want to mine, so that’s something. I own a procurer, a skiff and an orca but they hardly come out of my hangar.

What do you mean I’m supposed to go out there

My problem is, that I want to do everything, I want to try out everything at least once, it’s one of my mottoes in life. And I carry that forward in gaming to.
Right now, I’m doing a lot of industry, and I haven’t really touched my other alts more than a handfull of times in the past few weeks. But I still want to pvp, I still want to go out exploring. 

If only I would actually start doing it, joining Red vs Blue was a good start, but I noticed that despite it being a good start, I don’t actually do much on there. I join the occasional fleet that forms up when I’m around but I noticed that if they’re too far away I just shrug and log off, not even bothering to do that many jumps.
I did think about null for a bit the past few days, but I don’t think that’s my cup of tea, or coffee, depending on what you enjoy drinking more.

Exploring still intrigues me, I love Tigerears’ stories and those on other blogs. But something tells me that I’d get bored with it fast.

Shame on me for sticking to the high-sec life. I need a reason to get out of it. I know that I should just join a corporation that makes me go out there, but every time I look for one, I just can’t find the right combination.

Which has something to do with the fact that I want to do everything, I know.

I’m even reading up on Incursions to see if I could join a fleet on those, I’m pretty sure that my main character is capable of fulfilling multiple roles.

We’ll see what the future brings, who knows, I might get an offer I can’t refuse

Stay tuned! o7 

Oh no, the queue!

I started a new job today, so I have a lot less online time than I did in the past couple of weeks. Which means that I won’t be able to update my inventions as much as I’d like to. Unless of course I sneak into the game on my work laptop but, I’m not going to do that just yet.

The one thing I did forget to do yesterday was to update my skill queue, and while I was at work I couldn’t help but think of something that I had forgotten, but I just couldn’t think of what it was. Until I got back home after going to the gym first.. I had forgotten to update the skill queue of my RvB character. The horror!

I had to rush upstairs, turn on my computer and quickly update, I’m sure some of you know what this is like, not having your queue running feels a lot like having wasted the precious, precious time to skill up. Luckily I only missed about an hour, so it wasn’t that bad. But it’s been a while since a game basically compelled me to log in just to update something.

I wonder if the people who do station trades have a thought process like that too. I wonder if they think about logging in to update their orders, or if they just don’t really care much if they miss it a few hours, or even days.

I’ve been looking into the markets a bit to maybe do some station trading, too bad that I can’t decide on what product I might go for. I could go to a mission hub and do it with ammo, but what use would that be when I’m also supplying the ammo there. 

Not that that’s what I’m making, no sir, not at all

There are still so many things I want to try out, and there’s so little time. I’d love to try my hand at wormholes, but maybe I should try out exploration in general first… Yeah, I’ll do that, wormholes are probably way out of my league.
I found something! Too bad it wasn’t worth the time finding it

Stay tuned o7

ps:  I just noticed that Merchant Monarchy put up a post about my blog. People are actually reading what I’m writing, yay! Thanks!  

Mad Scientist

I spend most of my time on my industrial character updating invention jobs. Most of them run for approximately one hour, so every hour or two I update them. It takes time, but it’s worth it. Too bad I’m starting a new job monday so I won’t be invention as much as I usually do. Good thing I still have a whole bunch of T2 Blueprints ready to manufacture.

If only I wasn’t so damn lazy, because I still haven’t gotten all of the materials to create most of them. I should do something about that, later.

I did look into ship building, I had a whole bunch of procurer bpcs lying around my hangar so I decided to invent a few.. With 1 out of 10 becoming a Skiff blueprint, I’m not sure if it’s going to be worth it to try and make more of them.. Maybe if I run out of the other copies.

I wanted to do some pvp in RvB today but unfortunately it meant me taking 24 jumps, and I’m in a pretty lazy mood today. Well almost every day, who wants to take 24 jumps, come on!

I might try harder tomorrow, we’ll see

Stay tuned o7

And this is what I do in GTA V looking at the view

Lost in Los Santos

Haven’t done much ingame the past few days. I think we all know what to blame this on. That’s right, GTA V. I went to the midnight launch because, well why not.

Today I spent about 800m, 450 of that went to fuel blocks to pay for the POS, 3m went to Red Frog Freight because I’m too lazy myself to haul it. That and I sold my Obelisk because I thought it was too big and ugly, if I have time I might go for a Charon, they’re pretty.

All the rest went into materials for my T2 research and manufacturing, the one thing I do log in for.

I’ve updated my jobs, now I’m going back to Los Santos.

Stay tuned o7

The lessons you learn

Last night I decided that I wanted to go do a level 4 mission again. I went ahead and accepted a Guristas Extravaganza. As most of you that run missions know, it’s not too hard when you’re tanked well, you just sit there and shoot everything in sight. So that’s what I did, lock down as much as I could and just shoot them to pieces.

Naturally, that was what I did on the last pocket too, deciding to go for the frigates and destroyers first. But after a few weeks of doing mostly manufacturing, I had forgotten that shooting the trigger, is not something you want to do fast if there will be multiple battleships warping in.

Shooting the trigger of that next warp is not a smart thing to do either.

That is, of course, exactly what I did. Not only did I shoot the first two triggers, I shot every trigger. It didn’t take long for all the newly warped in battleships to get my shields down to 15%. This was the first time in a long while that I was actually afraid of losing my ship, I had to align to the closest asteroid belt and warp out of there. I tried going in there again, see if I could shoot a ship and then get back out, but that plan didn’t turn out too well.

At least that’s something I learned for next time; I’ll have to watch the triggers.

Luckily someone in the E-Uni channel was kind enough to help out, not only did she do 9 jumps, she came in here Scorpion Navy Issue, tanking everything in the room as we killed the ships.
I’m happy that she came along, very happy even that she decided to stop what she was doing to help this little noob that forgot about triggers.

This just goes to show that not everyone in EVE is a heartless scammer and that there are people out there willing to help out others. The only thing she asked for in return was for me to pay back her ammo and return the favor to someone else when someone asks for help.

Which is something I will definitely do, I’ve already been doing it whenever I could actually help anyhow. It’s nice to help out those who’re stuck.

On another note.. I really like the Scorpion, I should get one myself, the only problem is that I just can’t fly it worth a damn. And there’s still so much on my skill plan. But I want one, maybe I’ll just buy one to spin in my hangar and fantasize about all the lovely things I will never be able to do with it.

Survived to fight another day! 

Stay tuned o7

Blog Banter #49 – What exactly does space rich mean

This month’s Blog Banter asks a question that we all probably wonder from time to time.

What is “rich” in EVE? Is it simply having more ISK than most everyone else, is it measured in raw numbers of some other ethereal quality? Can you actually be poor? Have you ever lost nearly everything and had to claw your way back? If you are rich, how do you know and how did you get rich?

ISK makes the universe go round, ask anyone in Jita!

After seeing this month’s topic on Blog Banter I decided to join in on it. Seeing that I only started blogging about EVE a few days ago, this is my first try at it. So here goes.

I don’t know that many people in the game, but of those few I know there’s a few that think I’m “rich” and others of who I think that they’re rich. But what exactly does being rich define in EVE. To me personally, being rich in the game mean having enough assets or ISK to do whatever you want in your chosen in game occupation.
Whether you’re a pirate, an industrialist or a missioneer, as long as you have the things you need to keep having your fun, you’re rich.

I don’t see myself as rich, seeing that I gave myself a few goals to work towards, I’m getting there, albeit very slowly. But once I’m there I’ll probably get my ass handed to me and will lose most of what I’m going for. My own sense of rich will be when I can fit multiple Machariel’s and not have to worry about them every time I fly them into low/null sec. When I can just shrug it off and take the next one out.

As for being poor in EVE, I’m not sure if it’s even possible, even if you lose everything there are plenty of ways to get back on top again, it might take a while, but you’ll get there eventually. The only way I can see someone as poor would be if they’re not playing the game for enjoyment.

I once lost everything I owned, when I was still a poor little noob and I had no idea what I was doing. I can’t remember how but I had made a few hundred mill in my wallet. Having just joined a corporation that was running L4’s they asked me if I wanted to join, happy that I had new friends I said sure, what do you need me to do. Well they wanted me to fly an Abaddon, a ship and fit, that if I lost it I would lose every single ISK I had. But naive as I was, I figured I wouldn’t lose it.

Fast forward a bit, and I of course lost it, I got blown up by rats. That was a major set-back, and I think I hadn’t logged into the game for weeks after that happened. But I got back from it, it took me quite some time but I earned the ISK back and learned the most valuable lesson in the game “Never fly what you can’t afford to replace.”

Stay tuned! o7

Is it worth it?

While updating my invention and manufacturing runs in my POS I was talking to a friend of mine who was helping me out with the understanding of invention when I first started doing it. He asked me if my POS is starting to turn out a profit yet and I had couldn’t help but wonder “Is it?”.

The one problem I seem to have while playing EVE is that I tend to forget to write down my expenses vs my profit. I have made spreadsheets in the past, and made a few this week, but those were easy ones, to state how much my inventory is etc etc. Nothing big yet to show the revenue of the POS.

So that’s my next goal, I need to start to figure out if the work and ISK I put in the POS is giving me a profit or a loss.

Running one is not cheap, I have a large Caldari tower so that means about 500m in fuel alone each month. Next to that I buy all my minerals in Jita, or near where I live, so I need to put that in the equation too. 

Coupled with how much ISK I spend on the invention and the actual BPC’s that come out. The only thing I know now, is that I have about a 40% chance of getting a T2 BPC out of the inventions, and that’s it.

I promised myself to start writing all of this down, now I just have to hold myself to that promise, that’s not going to be easy, I tend to get distracted easily while playing EVE. Channels, shiny ships, you name it, it distracts me. Next time, before I buy something or place a buy order, I’m going to write it down.
Same goes for selling, I guess I’ll know in a week or two if my POS is worth the upkeep.

Oh and in other news, I lost my Epithal last night. I was going from Jita back to base in it and remembered I had some PI mats in a low sec system. Thinking that nobody would be around at that time I went through the gate and started the warp. The moment I did a Prophecy popped up and insta-locked me and I got scrambled. Unable to escape my Epithal got blown up. That was a 50million ISK loss. Oh well, things like that can happen every time you undock.

Coming to a system near you!

Stay tuned! 

Industry pointers, do I even have them?

While chatting with a few people in game I got asked for a few pointers when trying to make ISK as an industrial.
The first thing I thought was “Why ask me, I’m not even good at what I do”. But then I figured that as a newbie, someone who owns his own POS, has an invention line going and is actually able to manufacture a few hundred items a week is a bit better at what he does than the newbie.

How did I even get to this point myself? Well, that was easy, I had a bit of ISK to burn and decided to buy a bunch of invention stuff to see what I could do with it.

And I didn’t even make that ISK with industry so what good am I for pointers? The only thing I could tell him is to stop thinking of mining as free ore. Time is money in this game, I can earn more ISK by doing missions than by mining the ore.

I can then use that ISK to buy my own ore/minerals which means that doing the missions is more valuable to me than mining.
It’s great that there are people who enjoy mining, and I even trained my industry character as a miner. W
e need people to like mining, how else am I going to be able to buy my ore off the market?

One of the best things that ever happened to me while figuring out how to make more money was learning about Planetary Interaction, also known as PI. You update it once or twice a week, get the goods and cash in. There’s almost no work to it and if you have a few alts on your account who are trained in it you can easily make a few hundred million ISK extra per month. How’s that for a pointer?

I’m still trying to figure out how all of this works myself, and I’m happy to share my knowledge with someone who asks, but don’t expect the things to come out of my mouth to be understandable, half of the time I don’t even understand my own train of thought.

I bet you noticed that already while reading my blog. 

Fleet mining can be alot of fun

Nothing says I love you like a rocket to the ‘face’

I think it’s safe to say that at least 90% of the people out there love explosions. Or at least looking at them. So what better way to say ‘I love you’ than by showering them with rockets/missiles.
My newly subscribed character Lctus Aivo has just joined Blue Republic and seeing that I haven’t played with rockets in a long time, I decided to stock up on a few of them. I based myself at blue base and have about 50 kestrels waiting to be blown up, or do some blowing up themselves. Why a kestrel? Well why not? They’re cheap, easy to fit and can still pack a punch if flown correctly.

Or so I’ve been told seeing that I have no idea what ‘flying correctly’ actually means. I got a fit of a friend of mine, which we tried out a few weeks ago, me in a punisher and him in a kestrel and holy crap that Kestrel was fast! In the end the Punisher did win but it barely survived. I think that at the time I had about 10% hull left, so it was only a matter of who would be firing the last shot.

I joined RvB together with a corp mate who bought a new character just  for that. I’m looking forward to flying with him and the other RvBers.

Now to go and blow things up


Edit:

I flew the Kestrel tonight in a fleet along with other Blue’s, I loved it. Despite not actually packing a punch, the kestrel is still pretty fast, and seeing that I fit it with a Microwarp drive, scrambler and webber, I helped a bit in keeping the other fleet’s ships from fleeing. Or at least I like to think that I did. 

First fleet: Big succes!