Learn by doing

by In Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
The best way to learn new things, is by doing them. You will not learn how to draw by reading about it, nor will you learn how to set up a Hyper-V server environment with multiple Virtual Machines in it and a full Active Directory structure by reading about it either.

But it helps.

Seeing that my corps is at war, and my first plan on taking out my Machariel and Noctis team went down the drain. I decided to go out to Low and Null sec with my Nemesis, in search of prey.

Let’s just say that I would not be a very good predator. The most I saw in local was 10 people, and I couldn’t find them anywhere. When I jumped to null I came across a few people talking in chat, and after a few jumps I found them parked outside a bubble in between two gates, but three against one isn’t what I would call good odds, nor would my bomb do more than maybe, just maybe scratch their paint.
So I decided that would not be a good idea to try.
Oh hello there, what are you doing?
But I never shot a bomb, and I wanted to learn how they work, so I needed to find a spot to try it out on. After a few more jumps I came into a system with an ice belt. People love ice!
After jumping there, I saw a Skiff warp away, he must have seen me in local and figured I would be there to kill him, must be.. But I was in the belt, and I desperately wanted to shoot a bomb. So I lined up with one of the ice rocks, uncloaked, and watched my pretty bomb fly there.
Oh shit oh shit, get out!

Which, according to most people, was more than likely my fifth mistake of the day.

After reading so much about bombing, I decided to forget everything in the “heat of the moment”. Due to me being impatient I just dropped it and kept looking. It will come to no surprise then, that I got hit by my own bomb, luckily, I survived. But only barely, it was right around the time that it exploded that I had decided to warp away. Leaving me there with my hull barely intact.

At least I learned something, and I did it by doing.

Later that evening I was told about the corp’s wormhole about to close. Having never seen a wormhole close, I decided that I wanted to see it happen, so I took the jumps to the high sec static, went inside and waited on the other side. Snuggling up in my pod and looking at the hole with my cloak on.
If I were high, I would have been staring at this for ages

While waiting for the high sec static to close, we were talking in corporation chat. A call went out for having the “balls” to go out to high and get back in. Seeing that the hole were to collapse any minute, and a bet was made.

I’m still not sure why, but said bet unleashed a little game of double your ISK. We hyper multiplied it, starting with 1isk, and then going 2,4,8,16,… unfortunately I had to call it at 128. I did not have the 402m that I could send to my fellow corps member. Probably a good thing because I doubt that he was able to go to 103billion.

It was a pretty fun Sunday, not only did I fly out in low, I hung out in a wormhole, watching it shimmer and everything. I do think we scared a newbie though. As we were talking there was a flash of the wormhole. And before I knew it there was a bubble up.
Oh gods! Something just blew up in my face!
That even made me jump for a bit because I did not see that coming. Said Cormorant had de-cloaked and probably did not think that would happen either because before you could say “Booh!” the wormhole flashed again.

Then again, if I see a Nemesis, Legion and an Onyx suddenly pop up, I’d be getting out too.
After the Cormorant left, one of us came back in a Myrmidon, you know, just in case. And I said something about not knowing how to bomb, so they told me how to do a run, and try it out on the Myrmidon

I didn’t even scratch the paint

I learned quite a bit today, and it was fun.

I didn’t see the wormhole close though, as I had to work in the morning, I decided to head back out to my high sec HQ. As soon as I docked there, I heard about the hole closing, and it was wonderful.

Oh well, there will always be a next time. 

Stay tuned o7

How do you EvE?

by In Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , , , ,
I’ve seen these going around the EvE blogosphere and on Reddit the past week or so, and I figured I’ll join in.
Don’t mind the mess

So this is how I EvE. My current setup is two screens, on the one screen I usually have all of my clients running, and I just switch between windows, and the other is for my Facebook, Twitter, eve-central, steam chat and so on.

There are times when I use one of my notebooks along but I don’t have enough room on my desk for now. I switch between clients because I usually don’t play on all my account at the same time. The only time that I have two on the same grid is if I’m doing missions and the other one is cleaning up behind him in her Noctis.
As shown in my first sentence, I too am a Redditor, and I browse /r/eve quite a bit when I’m supposed to be sleeping, or when I just woke up. 

While browsing the topics this morning I came across a gem of a post, someone asking for stories to tell to people in order to get them to play eve.

One post in such topic got my attention and brought a smile on my face while reading it. This guy took his time, writing down all kinds of different reasons on why to play eve, and it gets through to the gist of the game.

If you want to read it too, here’s a little link for you.(top post) I’m sure most of you already know it but I haven’t been on Reddit for that long so it was something new for me.

I’m not sure what my gameday today will be, I was planning of taking out one of my mission runners and having my second one finally undock and join him. But the corps I’m in is at war so I’m not too keen on taking my shiny, shiny Machariel out of undock.

Maybe I’ll go back to scanning a bit.

Stay tuned o7 

Christmas and EvE

by In Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , , , ,
As most of you may know, today is Christmas. A time for sharing, caring, family and gifts.
The last part being the most important one for a big amount of the population. All because we as humans love receiving new things and are pretty egocentric when push comes to shove.

CCP did something nice within their Icelandic folklore and the celebration of Christmas for the players. They introduced us to the Yule lads. Born from a troll mother these little creatures are used to scare kids and steal things instead of giving. And thus it came to no surprise that a lot of the gifts we received from the advent calendar, was seen as something worthless. Until yesterday, the 24th, the last day before Christmas. Everyone rejoiced as we got ourselves snowballs and the Leopard. A nimble shuttle with an amazing warp speed of 20 A/U. The trolls delivered.

And how!
I spent half of my day yesterday driving through the country with my little sister, she needed a place to store her 700+ Pokémon cards and I was a bit bored so I shrugged and said why not. At the one store we found that had what she wanted I bought her a Christmas present, to her great joy. Unfortunately for her she’s not allowed to open it until this evening when we’re having our family dinner, yes, I’m evil like that.

As for Christmas EvE, it was spent at my girlfriend’s place, along with her parents and brother and sister, food, Wii and ice cream. It could have been fun, but it wasn’t, mostly because I’m not a big fan of a family get together, and I kept on thinking: “I could have spent my time better on EvE”

Which, would have been a lie, mostly because I barely undock, and when I do, I seem to find myself a bug.
Today’s plan is easy, this evening I’m spending my time at home, with my parents, my girlfriend, my two sisters and my youngest sister’s boyfriend, eating soup, roast, homemade tiramisu and who knows what else.

But during the day, I will be spending my time in front of my computer. Trying out Exploration once more, while my girlfriend is sitting behind me, getting frustrated with her exam material. Seeing that she’s in her last year of college and her exams are coming up she spends most of her waking hours studying. 
Which is good for me, more EvE time and less girlfriend agro.

I decided on trying out wormhole exploration once more today, I’m going to try and get to null sec. I’ll have a relic and data analyzer equipped in my little Cheetah, seeing that I also want to see what happens when I find one in null or any low system I get to.

What do you mean, I’m already there? I didn’t even get time to blink

Wish me luck, because I’ll be needing it.

Stay tuned o7

And we learn something new

by In Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , , 3 Comments
The other day I decided to finally go out and explore a few wormholes. Taking out my Cheetah I started to launch probes left and right, scanning for an entrance. I first started in the System I usually do my missions at. Close to home, and if I found something, even better.

This is where I made my first of many mistakes. I know absolutely nothing about scanning, I know you need probes and you need to keep configuring them and pressing that scan button until you find a 100% one.
So that’s what I did, after a while I found an unstable wormhole, giddy as a little kid that just got his first gaming system I pressed jump and entered without checking the info.

Guys! I found something!

Little did I know, that I would just be dropped 12 systems further, in another high sec system. I finally check the info and noticed that this wormhole drops someone in a random high sec one.

Thinking to myself: ‘Ok E’dyn, rookie mistake, this can happen to anyone, lets head back and try again’
Luckily for me I was still idling at the WH entrance, otherwise I would have had to scan again to find it.
So we go back, and this time I go a few systems further in, into low sec, thinking that I might be able to find something better here. Lo and behold, I find an entrance to unknown space. I go in, immediately warp away from the hole (because that’s what I think you have to do) and cloak up. To then start idling at the hole, wondering what on earth I will need to do next.

I should have bookmared that hole

I was amazed at the discovery scanner, there were a total of 15 signatures in the wormhole. Of which 11 were already at 100%. Asking in a channel I asked them if this was normal but unfortunately none of them knew anything about wormholes so I was left to think that it was.

Oh well, 4 others to scan so I might as well do that. And here’s where I made another mistake. I warped of to the nearest planet at about 70km, forgetting to bookmark the hole I just came from.
No big deal you’d think, that’s just a few scans away. So I start to scan and find another WH entrance, according to this one it goes into unknown space. So, I went ahead and clicked jump, because that’s what you do when you have no idea what you’re doing.

And the confusion starts, I wanted to enter the wormhole, I was in a clone without plugs so if I did something extremely dumb, I could just decide to self destruct.

After pressing jump, I got stuck, and I have absolutely no idea what happened, nor could anyone in any channel I talked in answer. My ship was calibrating, and I was cleared for jump in x amount of seconds. So I kept pressing the jump button, nothing happened. But according to my UI I was getting pulled into the hole. After the timer ended, I was still stuck in the same animation, and I was still in the same system. But for some reason I couldn’t warp away, I couldn’t even reload my probe launcher, because according to the game, my ship was no longer located in the same place.

I stared at this for quite some time

And when I tried to jump again, it told me I was polarized and needed to wait for 5 minutes or so.
And we wait, after the 5 minutes were up I was polarized once more. ‘Strange’, I think to myself, ‘Something must have gone wrong with the client, better turn it off and on again’. Because that’s what you do when you’re in IT and you come up with a problem, that’s the first step you try, you restart and check if the problem is gone.

After the restart I was warped away from the hole I was getting sucked in. But this time I had made a bookmark! So let’s try again.

No luck, and no idea why I have no luck. No explanation why I’m not going into the next system.
Around this time I started to realize that without anyone able to explain to me why certain things work or not, I would be in over my head.

After another restart, I scanned up the exit to low, and went back to base. Having not won any information, other than the fact that I’m not that good at scanning, and that I’m in over my head when it comes to wormholes.

And then there’s the whole d-scan. I have yet to figure out how that works, I did use it. And there were two orcas and a caracal in the hole with me. The only problem was the fact that I didn’t know how to find them. I had forgotten where a POS gets anchored, and I didn’t want to warp to every moon and every planet to check.

In hindsight I could have used Google, but I didn’t think it would have mattered.

Docking up, I store the Cheetah, not giving up my hopes on exploration yet, but logging of with the idea that I needed someone to show me the ropes.

Stay tuned o7

Not that good at writing things down

by In Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , ,

Trading has been put on a definite hold for now. Mostly due to the fact that prices seem to be dropping everywhere.
So I’m just going to build a small stockpile and then when prices rise again I’ll have a nice amount of profit.

At least, if they rise, but I’m sure they will, it’s the holidays, people just have more time to play right now.

I’m ashamed to say, that after playing EvE for so long I have finally found a use for the transactions tab in the wallet. I have never, in my whole life on EvE clicked it, until a few days ago. This little thing would have made everything so much easier if I had known it existed sooner.
As one of the people I talk with stated: “You’re a trader, you make a nice amount of ISK by trading, and you never used that tab? WHAT?!”

I know, shocker, it came as quite a shock to me too when I found out how much that can help when you’re trying to figure out how much you paid for something because you never write it down.

Speaking of never writing things down. I have made about 10 trips to Jita yesterday. That doesn’t seem like much, but I did it in 2 hours time, in an Iteron that could have done everything in one trip if I cared to remember everything I needed.
I didn’t take the bpcs along and I hadn’t written it down so everytime I came to Jita I remembered a maximum of 2 things I needed.. But not the amount I needed.

I’m not that good at this spreadsheet online game this week, can you tell?

As for the combat alt, he has finally gone out of the station! After a few weeks, it was about time! But I didn’t do any combat, I did scan a bit, even went through a few wormholes, enjoying the view. I did forget to make screen caps, but I’m going to point fingers at the fact that while I was playing yesterday, I was also watching a few online training videos for work related things.

Multitasking, yay!

I’m going to try and do more tonight, we’ll see this weekend if I actually succeed in this or if I fall asleep because I’ve been working my butt off.

Stay tuned o7

Thinking things through is not my forté

by In Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , , , 2 Comments
I have a hole in my hand, and it’s quite big. Every time I want something, I tend to buy it. This can be anything, from a game, to a new cellphone, to a ship in EvE that I just have there to look at.

This time, it was “EvE Online: The Second Decade”. I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to decide whether or not I felt like paying 158 Euros on this. 
Trying to make this decision I kept weighing the pros and cons of the collection. I’m a big fan of Collector Edition’s, I have the one from SWTOR, The Witcher 2, Heroes of Might and Magic VI,… 
And all of them have one thing in common, other than the collectible in it, I’m no longer playing the game or using anything in it. My Darth Malgus statue is sitting next to me and my Geralt head too, the coins are in my wallet and I sometimes wear the Might and Magic shirt. But all the rest, is not being used.

So the biggest part of making the EvE decision, was whether it would be used or not. The collectibles in it are pretty cool, golden pod and gnosis BPC would most definately be something I’d use. 
But I’m interested most of all in the Rifter USB hub and the “Danger Game”. The Rifter being my favorite ship and the game being something that could be a lot of fun with my friends.
Pew Pew Pew

So after hours upon hours of weighing, I decided to finally buy the game the other day.
Cue 10 minutes later, I have just spent 158 Euros on a pretty USB hub and a board game I may or may not play.

My girlfriend rolled her eyes at me when I told her that I was having second thoughts. Knowing full well that this was going to happen. Good thing there’s the fact that you can ask for a cancellation within 14 days of purchase. So that’s what I did.

Moral of this story: ‘I really need to think harder on whatever it is I do and buy’

Which is something that I need to do in game too. Despite me really wanting the CE, I can’t for the life of me think of a good reason to spend 150+ Euros on me. I thought I did have a good reason, until I actually bought it.

It’s a shame that the Americans had that Black Friday sale but us Europeans were left in the dark. I really, really want the Danger Game and USB hub.. But the whole package would only be worth about 50euros less than the current asking price.

So if the price does drop, I will probably buy it. Unless I can find someone willing to part with their board game.
I’d love to play this with my friends on New Year’s eve.
Stay tuned! o7

Time equals money

by In Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
It’s been a busy week for me, and I’ve finally found some time to write things down again. I feel a bit guilty for not writing more blog posts, but c’est la vie. RL always comes before the EVE life.

Speaking of which, I still haven’t found what I want to do, mostly because of the fact that I haven’t been doing much the past couple of weeks. I spent a few hours making undocks in different stations, just because I needed to find something to do and I felt like making these makes my life a lot easier.

So I took a cloaky cheetah, went a few jumps in Low and spent a few hours making undocks. Which gets boring, very, very fast.
What do you mean, this can’t be done faster?

Industry wise I’ve been slacking. Not only have I stopped my invention, I have stopped manufacturing altogether. Not because I want to, but because of time restraints. I don’t have that many blueprints, but I have a whole bunch of BPC’s that I still need to invent. Problem with this is the fact that I haven’t actually gotten myself the data cores for this.
And every time I got to Jita I forget to take a bunch of them with me.
But! The good news is, because of the fact that I just wrote this down, I have put up a few buy orders for around 500 of each data core. So here’s hoping I can get back to that.

I’ve also put up a bunch of buy orders for the materials I use in manufacturing. This ranges from Tritanium to Guidance Systems to, whatever else I need and that I can remember without looking at my spreadsheets.
I’m not sure how much time I will be spending in the game this weekend, but I do know, or at least hope, that a few of those buy orders will get filled.

As for trading in general, well seeing that I haven’t logged on since last Sunday on my trader, let’s just say he’s doing nothing at all. I have just put up 1.2billion in buy orders with only 600m in ISK in his wallet. How I love Margin Trading *grins*.

If, and that’s a big one, they get filled, I can make at least 2billion on this. But that’s a big if. 0,01 ISKers are still the bane of my existence and I’ve had a few days where I just wanted to stop trading, seeing that I’m actually not that very good at it.

I’ve looked into inter-regional trading, but every time I look at those hundreds of possible items, I start to feel like it’s an impossible job for me to make money on it and I close it down again.

Maybe trading isn’t quite meant for me. We’ll see what this current batch says, if the station trading finally picks up, I might change my mind. It’s the weekend, so that means more sales and more buys.

Or at least.. It should

Stay tuned o7 

Industry and Guilt

by In Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
The problem with manufacturing T2 is invention. You need to have invented blueprints in order to do something with your lines. And that’s where I’m slacking on. I got bored of all the invention, every few hours checking in on EVE to put new copies into the mobile laboratories. It’s something that quickly becomes a drag.
But now that I stopped doing that for the mo
ment, I feel guilty for not using the POS. Sure the others in the corporation are allowed to use it, but we’re pretty small (there’s three of us) and the other two don’t actually use the POS. They are quite clueless about how industry works.

Which I get, it’s not easy to get into and it definitely is not something you can do without the correct amount of SP.

So what am I doing now with all those open slots? ME research on several BPO’s I had lying about. They’re not actually worth anything but at least that way I’m actually using the slots and I don’t have to feel too guilty about it.

As for my other characters. Well I have had almost no time to past couple of weeks, other than updating market orders and taking my Cheetah out that one time I have done close to nothing worth of note. Which is a pity, because I joined that new corporation to have more stories but Real Life seems to be getting in the way of me actually creating them.

Why are we all just hanging here?


Market wise the game is doing good for me, although I have yet to make a lot of money out of it, my station trader is making a small profit, but a profit nonetheless.

Every time I read the people with market blogs and their billions of profit I want to know what their secret is. I even want to talk to them about it and give me hints. But the problem is, that the secret is more than likely spending a lot of time checking out the market and fluctuations of it. Look at items and how they move. 

Unfortunately, that’s time I do not have, and time I would probably spend by getting bored of it and closing the market altogether.

It’s a shame that people can’t give away their secrets on ISK making, but I get why. Without those secrets, there wouldn’t be any more ISK to make.
Stay tuned o7

Every day, you learn something new.

by In Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
As it turns out, I’m not that good at scanning. Whether it is partly due to my lack of skills or because I just suck at it in general. I’m just bad at it.

I found that out while trying to check if I could scan things in a high sec area. It took me about 20 minutes to resolve the one gas site that I found there. Twenty whole minutes.
Scanning ship, at your service

Makes me wonder how bad I’ll be at this if I tried it in w-space. And I don’t feel like training it right now because I have other plans in my queue. I’m currently training to finally be able to fly a Loki. I already have all the subsystems in place, the only thing missing is Minmatar Cruiser V.. Which will take me 17 more days, I guess that just goes to show that I should plan things better than I do right now.

But! The good news is that I finally finished Gallente Battleship V so my Machariel now has the full bonuses for both the Battleship skills. And most people know, I really, really love my Machariel.

Which makes it even better for me that people seem to want to get rid of theirs, the prices of Pirate faction battleships has been dropping ever since Rubicon hit.
The whispers I heard say that this is because of the warp speed changes, making them rather slow. But I still love my Mach, it’s my first baby and I will treasure her/him/it forever.

And in other news, turns out that I forgot to enable auto subscription on my main account so I lost 14 hours of training..Darn
Stay tuned o7