Wandering Aimlessly in the Sanbox and Moving to Nullsec

After getting expelled, Tesla and I started trying out different careers in Eve.  I quickly found an interest in exploration, as I could turn a decent profit (for me) in a short amount of time.  Tesla participated occassionally, and we both trained into covert ops - Buzzards for the win!

At the same time, we both set up colonies to exploit for production in lowsec systems.  Passive isk is awesome, and once you get past the initial confusion over how to set a colony to produce a decent product, you can gain a nice supplement to your income.  Tesla was more adventurous in his system selection and was able to produce product at a higher yield. I chosed based on traffic and a low kill record in system.

Had Tesla chosen an easier to access system for Planetary Interaction, he might have done much better with his lowsec systems.  As it stood, he lost two badgers while making PI runs.  Fortunately for him, he hadn't filled up his cargo hold yet.  Overall, I'm sure he made a bit more isk than I did, however I never lost a ship doing my runs.

After a couple of weeks in an NPC corp, Tesla put forward that it would be fun to move to an nullsec corp.  I had misgivings, but I didn't really care to be left behind in highsec while Tesla went out to get blown up in null.  I logged off not long after his proposition expecting that we would take a few days to research corps in null before taking the plunge.

The next day, I logged in and Tesla informed me he had been accepted into a corp in the Tenerifis region of nullsec.  I was caught by surprise.  He gave me the info on the corp and while scrolling through the recruitment ad, I noticed that they had a 10 million sp requirement.  Upon pointing this out, Tesla responded that he applied while the corp was moving from the north end of nullsec.  He relayed that the recruiter he was speaking with was happy with the fact that he could produce PI, as there was a large interest in industry and production from the CEO.

So, despite my misgivings, I sent an application into the corp, stating I wanted to move to null and set up some PI, and generally have random fun.  I was accepted into corp within an hour, despite only having about a quarter of the required skillpoints.

There are going to be a few posts on life in nullsec, so I'm going to segway into the issue that this lack of skillpoints caused Tesla and myself.  At this point, our toons were about 2 months old, maybe a bit older.  We were jumping into the deep-end of New Eden, and had no real idea of what to expect, how to make isk, or how much we would be blown up.

Had the recruiter for this corp done a little research, as he had access to our full API, he would have noticed that we were only competently skilled for flying tackle frigates, Planetary Interaction, and the necessary skills for exploration.  We joined the corp as it was moving to a renter alliance, after their old alliance, IRC, was in the process of collapsing.  Our systems were right on the edge of the systems held by S2N, and were heavily roamed by TROLL.  We were moving into a system that we would not be able to support ourselves in.

Himdsight being 20/20, both Tesla, myself, and the recruiter should have  taken a step back, looked at our skill points, and concluded that perhaps we should try to join when we were closer to the minimum requirement.  As a new player, things you take for granted in highsec - easy access to markets, rats that are designed to be easy for you to kill, et cetera - are gone.  Instead you have battleship rats, stations with unseeded markets' and roaming gangs of hostile forces looking to make your current hull explode, which is expensive and difficult to replace.

I would advise any new player who is looking to move into nullsec to research their prospective corp and the region they are in.  While researching, spend some time in the recruitment channel and have some real discussions with those present.  Ask how they make their isk, what hull and support skills you should have in order to be able to make a decent living, as well as what the expectations are during fleet engagements (trust me, there will be a lot of those, and if you can fly the required hull, they will be the most fun you have in nullsec).

If you don't do your research and proceed like we did, you will find yourself struggling to survive.  We met and flew with some excellent people in Tenerifis, and a lot of them were nice enough to help us out - both strategically and financially.  In time I started to feel unable to properly contribute and that I was a drain on the corp.  Not really a position I ever want to be in.

Expulsion for Attempted Piracy

We reached a lull at OUCH.  I had missed a course that was a prerequisite for participation in the nullsec gate camps put on by the faculty in order to give students a taste of small gang pvp.  The course wasn't to be offered again for another month, so I returned to highsec in an attempt to make more isk.  I was generally unsuccesful.

Tesla was able to take part in a gate camp.  He let me know that it was great getting in on some kills, but the attitude demonstrated by the particpants didn't sit well with him.  His description of events reminded me of a class trip with remedial students.  Within a half hour, the students are detriorating into a state of near-insanity, while the teacher's temper gets shorter and shorter.  After his initial camp, Tesla returned to mining to pass the time until we could at least sit on a gate together.

Time passed slowly, and as days went by my eagerness to get into a gate camp with OUCH lessened.  There was a roadblock between me and my goal of completing the curriculum.  Rather than attempt to break through the roadblock, I was starting to think about just choosing a different path.  It is a sandbox after all.  After some discussion with Tesla, we concluded that we had learned enough about pvp and nullsec survival to get on in New Eden.  It was time to leave OUCH.

I didn't even get a chance to push the quit button, however.  While running missions in highsec, I accepted a mission that brought me into lowsec (despite being urged not to by Tesla).  I was blown into bitty pieces by a capsuleer who preys on easy targets like this one:

http://zkillboard.com/detail/27307116

I was promptly expelled from OUCH for breaking one of their cardinal rules, namely don't participate in any combat not led by a faculty member.  Actually, I think they had a rule against lowsec too.  In any case, my time in OUCH was done.  With no chance of having me in a gate camp fleet, Tesla's interest in graduating evaporated.

Realisically, it would have been very simple for Tesla to toggle the leave corporation button and wait the 24 hours to get kicked into an NPC corporation.  That action didn't really suit our playstyle thus far, so Tesla decided a little self-sabotage was in order.  We fitted up two OUCH spec Merlins and flew into lowsec to attempt to gank someone less knowledgable than us.

We finally found a lone capsuleer on gate.  We forgot about gate guns.  Also, we had no idea what a Cynabal was.  In fact, the whole thing was a great big clusterfuck.  However, we couldn't stop laughing at ourselves.  We may suck at this game, but we have a great time being bad:

http://zkillboard.com/related/30005257/201301110100/

Someone is Here...Run Away!

I apologize for jumping ahead in the timeline with this post, however I haven't stopped chuckling about this, so I thought I'd share it out of sequence.  Unfortunately, it kind of ruins the narrative thing I've had going.  If anyone is confused:

The Heroes End Up in W-Space and Generally Act Like Fools

I had a small window of time to log in on a Sunday.  After bouncing around the system in my Buzzard and performing D-scan, I hopped in my ratting battlecruiser to scratch an anomaly or two off our list.  I'm space poor and need to put some isk back in my coffers.

I got through the second wave of sleepers when I noticed a drake on scan named "Imicus".  Nice trick, I've used it before.  I think it only ever results in a chuckle.  I aligned to the
POS but keep hammering down on the sleepers in the hopes that when the pilot notices another ship in system, he or she would bug out.

Next D-scan cycle, I see something strange.  A drake is still on scan, but it appears to be my own drake.  "John Hurt = 12th Dr".  I thought briefly that this is a bug.  Then I changed my hull name to "derp".  I ended up getting a wink in response.  At this point I pulled in my drones and warped back to my POS and jumped into the Buzzard again.  This cheeky pilot again responded to my ship name ("Don't Panic") with "I Never Panic".  I was really starting to like this capsuleer.

I warped off to an unaligned safe with no hulls on D-scan and dropped combat probes.  Cloaked up, I moved probes to the area I last saw the Drake.

Pants soiled.  I haven't figured out how to get photos working yet.  There was an Eris, a Proteus, a Prophecy and a Talos on scan.  Not something I could take on myself (I haven't yet found out exactly what I can take on myself).

I narrowed down my probe range and managed to ping the prophecy, however by the time I warped in to gather intel, the pilots had already moved on to another anomaly.  I swapped back to D-scan and noticed that my friend the drake had noticed as well "Other Bads in System".

At this point, the situation degenerated into a probe war, mine versus the those of the pilot of an Eris class ship.  The whole time, the Drake pilot egged us on and dodged probes.  Whoever he is, he seems like a total bro and the type of pilot I want to fly with.  Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to probe the Drake down and figure out who the pilot was.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Our Heroes Seek a Higher Education

The Open University of Celestial Hardship looked great.  Tesla and I had briefly discussed E-UNI, but ruled it out very quickly as we were more interested in the martial aspects of Eve, as opposed to training in every facet of New Eden.  Essentially, we were looking for acceptance into a small dojo of Eve survivalists, instead of an Ivy-League institution like E-UNI.

Joining OUCH was painless.  We were told to register in the forums so our progress through the syllabus could be tracked.  Ground rules were basic and made sense, and mainly consisted of making sure you were actively participating in training, and ensuring that you did not participate in any PVP combat unless it was in a fleet led by an instructor.

If you, dear reader, are a new player, then a program like the one offered at OUCH is a great idea.  Knowledge deemed essential for survival in combat and traveling through 0.0 is broken into separate courses, each lasting about 3 hours and taught by faculty on (usually) a monthly basis.  Tesla and I learned the basics of creating safespots, using d-scan, unfucking our overview settings, etc.  

In terms of teaching ability, the faculty at OUCH was very capable of imparting their knowledge to me in each course I took part in.  As with any school setting in my experience, there were other students who ended up making my time in class less enjoyable.  Without naming any names, there was a Sycophant amongst my peers who drove me nuts, and some of my sessions deteriorated into Tesla and I passing notes about this person in a private convo.  Apparently school - like war - never changes.

Unfortunately for me, my real-life commitments conflicted with some of the courses on offer, and Tesla was able to move ahead of me in the syllabus and jump into the gate-camp sessions offered as part of the training requirement.  Tesla didn't share too many details about the gate-camps at first, beyond his mild excitement at getting on a few killmails.

At this point, we decided to undertake the independant study portion of the syllabus, which consisted of completing a roam through pre-determined null systems within a time-limit, and posting screen grabs on the forums.  Tesla and I fitted up a few of the suggested frigate hulls and took off into nullsec, taking turns acting as scout.

Wandering through nullsec was exciting.  We would enter each system and set up safes, and d-scan our next gate to check for bubbles.  Flying was a nervous exercise.  There's nothing quite like moving through unknown space, expecting the alarm of a hostile ship locking your hull at any moment.  It took us a few tries to succeed.  On our second-to-last attempt, we had managed to almost complete the loop through null when Tesla was insta-popped two jumps ahead of me:

http://zkillboard.com/detail/26661365/

I scrambled around behind him and attempted to create safes in K-QWHE, in order to approach my destination gate from an unaligned point.  My aim was to avoid the bubble completely.  My aim was a little off:

http://zkillboard.com/detail/26661541/

We did eventually manage to complete the course (it turns out, the best strategy to travel through 0.0 is to do it during the week at about 0400 eve time).

Our time in OUCH was beginning to grow short after this.  Details to follow in the next post.

Every Tale Starts in Highsec

Highsec.  Maligned by the hardcore.  Haven of the carebears.  Also, the first home of every single character in New Eden.  My start was, I believe, typical.
Tesla had a two week headstart on me (At the time that Tesla told me he was subscribing, I possessed a PC tower that required major retrofitting to reach the admittedly low 
requirements to launch Eve).  By the time I had a working computer, Tesla had completed the majority of the tutorials and started a career in highsec mining to build some capital.

Join me for some highsec mining, he said.  It's a great profession, easy isk, he said.  Don't mind the terminal boredom, he said.

To be fair, I can see how mining is a popular pusuit in Eve.  It is a low commitment, low risk pursuit with fairly decent returns (in that you will always have enough isk to buy the next step up in mining gear and hulls).  Both Tesla and I are married with kid(s), so being able to log on and earn isk and still have the opportunity to help the wife out makes sense.  Avoid waggro at all costs!  

On the other hand, my gaming time is very limited as there is a inverse relationship between wife aggression and time spent in New Eden.  It didn't take long for me to get fed up with the tutorials.  For a brief period, I hauled Tesla's ore to market for him.  At the same time, I tried my hand at mission running.

I hope that the brief mention of my highsec activities so far gives you an idea of how little I think of these activities.  The truth of starting in highsec is that it sucks.  It exists to give new players as safe haven to learn the intricacies of New Eden.  On the other hand, there is very little emergent gameplay possible in highsec (yes, you can create content in highsec, but there is so much Concord interference that it doesn't seem pratical in my eyes).  I don't see the reason why people want to spend their entire career in highsec.  I also don't understand why there are such great swaths of it.

Within two weeks, I was ready to get out and experience the side of Eve where you get to fuck with everyone else's game.  Of course, it didn't actually end up that way.

Tesla dropped the enrollment information to Open University of Celestial Hardship in my inbox just as my frustrations with highsec were growing.  He always seems to have a plan.

o7

In which we meet the protaganists

First off

Another Eve Online blog.  What does this one offer that all the well-known ( and better) Eve blogs dont have?

The answer is: nothing.

I can never hope to offer up the knowledge and insight that is found regularly on the pages of New Eden's best bloggers.  My aim with this blog is to provide readers with details of my adventures in Eve.  But before I try my hand at story-telling, a little background.

I came to Eve at the urging of my IRL oldest friend, Tesla.  We have explored as many areas as possible in Eve together in our relatively short time in the game.  We have so far spent a short time in highsec, lowsec, nullsec and W-space, pursuing a wide variety of occupations in the pursuit of fun.  We haven't spent any significant length of time in any one place, and we certainly haven't experienced anything close to all that Eve has to offer.  With the being said, expect a lot of newb mistakes and shear lunacy (or stupidity) in the posts to follow.  Maybe that's what you came here to find.

As a newb, stepping into New Eden is like walking into a room full of every possible dessert known to humanity.  A lot of players might sample a few of the offerings and settle in quickly on their favourite.  Tesla and I thus far are like the fat kids with ADHD, sticking our fists into every bowl and leaving a trail of detritus between the tables, growing fatter with each passing minute.  Ours may not be the smartest way to play, but it is fun for us.

Welcome to Errant Capsuleers.