The times they are a-changing

I went on holiday and was busy at work after returning, so regretfully haven’t posted here for a while. I have been playing EVE on-and-off, but mostly off as I spent nearly a month training to get a Covetor on my main and only picked that up last week. I did go for the ‘power of two’ offer by the way and so I now mine with an alt in an Iteron MarkV. I also bought a second monitor for my computer to make this even easier.

The main reason for this post though is to update you on big changes which are happening in EVE over the next month or so:

Tue Nov 30: The next expansion of EVE ‘Incursion’ is released
Tue Dec 14: Learning skills are to be scrapped in EVE and replaced with attribute boosts instead.
Jan 2011: The promised overhaul of the character portrait and creation system will happen

As for me: Despite playing for nearly 3 months now I am still finding my feet. I have resisted joining a corporation (corp) as I don’t have the time to dedicate to one. I have been thinking about joining EVE University for some time, but haven’t yet applied. My current idea is to start a new combat only alt and join the corp with that, allowing me to fall back on my mining character if/when corp life doesn’t appeal.

The power of two

CCP are running an offer at the moment where you can subscribe a second EVE account at a greatly reduced rate.

6 months for 49.99 Euros

It is a full account and at the end of the 6 months you can choose to extend (at the standard subscription rate) or move the character to your first account and terminate it (transfer fee will be payable).

This offer is available until November 7th 2010. It seems they only run this offer once a year around this time. So if you dont take advantage now you will probably have to wait until October 2011 for the offer to come around again.

Follow this link to learn more.

CCP Announces the new "Incursion" EVE expansion

Recently CCP announced details of the next free EVE expansion which is due to be realeased in November 2010.

It will be named Incursion and more details can be found here.

One key feature will be a reworked character portrait design system. This should get rid of the problems I had creating my portrait (more details in this blog post if interested). However, I hope they dont change the race styles too much. I like the way my avatar looks and choose the race for the look.

Leaked details have already stated that existing players will be able to redesign their portrait but will not be able to change race, so I hope they do a good job with the male Amarr...

Rookie Skill Training Bonus

My skills were around 800k by the time I even realised I was receiving a rookie training bonus. New players get a 100% bonus to training time until their total skills reach 1.6 million.

CCP Quote: “Newly created pilots will train skills 100% faster than older pilots, until they have reached 1.6 million skill points. The first skill that will train past 1.6 million skill points will not receive the training speed bonus.”

Up until that point my plan about what to train next had been pretty random. I hadn’t even noticed that some skills had training time penalties (that’s the x1, x2, x3 etc. you see in the descriptions). It’s a good idea to try and squeeze in the skills you most need before you hit the 1.6m point.

So for the first time I started to think about what I actually wanted to train and this meant thinking about what I ultimately wanted to do in EVE. I gave up on that quite quickly as I still didn’t have much idea of what I wanted to do.

Mining? Yea, its OK
Missioning? Yea, its OK
Exploration? Sounds interesting
Industry? Maybe
Pirating? No thanks, well maybe

I decided the best bet was to just training the learning skill (for now anyway). I followed this guide, although I didn’t follow the implants as that was too much to spend at this point in my career (I felt).

So my short term goal became training learning skills, mine and mission whilst I work out what I want to do. The missioning and mining lead to a desire for a few skills and so they got mixed in with the learning plan along the way. Evemon is a tool that helps you plan your training, I recommend you give it a try if you haven’t already.

I tried to squeeze in as many skills as I could before I hit the 1.6m barrier and so as time went on more of the higher level training skills fell off my hit list as I was increasingly doing shorter and shorter skills so I could get eth maximum benefit of the skill bonus.

Inevitable I eventually lost the bonus. But continued training learning skills as a priority. I quite enjoyed mining. Would I become a miner? That’s boring right? I actually started to like it, but would my interest still be there after I had maxed my mining abilities and wasn’t chasing a higher yield anymore?

Time would tell…

Lessons to be learned

The huge trouble I had with the Kritsan Parthus and Dagan certainly taught me a lot about how weapon type and shield/armor tanking can make a big difference in a fight. My lessons were learnt rather by necessity though, as I was forced to learn to have any chance of killing of these super hard opponents…
 
To celebrate my success I decided to splurge out on better implants and a couple of expensive learning skills books. Up until then I had been trying to resist spending on anything unnecessary, but I felt like in a spending mood. My money went below 100m for the first time.

I received a couple of follow up sister missions, which I was informed about via EVE mail. I’m not sure when these come in, as I hadn’t been checking it, so they may have arrived mid-arc for all I know.

One was a simple courier mission just a few jumps away, but the second was a combat mission over 27 jumps away, back in an area I was in mid-arc. I made the long trek, but it was a real pain and I struggled against boredom on such a long journey.

The mission was over quickly and so I made the 27 (or so) jumps back to Arnon again... I crammed anything useful in to the cargo hold of my Omen and the rest I sold. I had decided long ago that when I finished the arc I would return to the area I started the game in and nothing had made me want to stick around the new areas I had visited.

So off I went on a 20 (odd) jump to get back ‘home’

Landing at my ‘home’ station I dumped my ‘loot’ and took a few days off playing EVE. Doing nothing much else than manually jump for the last few hours had turned my brain to mush. On the plus side a trip to a system 5 or 6 jumps away now seemed quite trivial, something I would have considered a long journey before beginning the epic arc.

Epic Mission Arc Part 4: The Conclusion

So finally I reached mission 50 of 50. Dagan was in my cargo hold and the walkthrough I had been following said the last part held no surprises, but it also said Dagan’s battle was pretty straight forward…

It turns out it was indeed a straight hand over of Dagan to the authorities who have been so keen to capture him.

The Epic Arc was finally over, but what should I do now?

Stupid is as stupid does

I havent been playing EVE that long, but I sure know what the consequences are of going in to system below 0.5 system security rating. To see what happens when someone tries to play EVE without taking any notice of system security ratings please watch the video below.

I cant quite decide if it is tragically sad or incredably funny. Most viewers seem to think its funny, so enjoy!

 
!Warning! This video contains foul language. Although it has been bleeped out of the audio, you can still work out what was said.

Epic Mission Arc Part 3: Dagan

Mission 49 of 50, almost done! …But it wasn’t going to be an easy walk across the finish line.

When you start this mission you get a choice of which faction you want to help you. There was no mention in the walkthough I was following, but I later found out that your choice does make a big difference as it affects how Dagan’s ships is speced. I choose Amarr (because I was Amarr), I later found this was the worst choice I could have made…

Which ever ally you choose, Degan is setup resistant to that factions natural setups. So by choosing Armarr I had setup Dagan to be resistant to lasers (my primary weapon choice), great…

How your choice of ally affects Dagan’s ship setup:

• Caldari: He has Defender missiles plus Kinetic resistance boosters.
• Amarr: Active armor tanking and massive EM/Therm resist.
• Gallente: He'll throw heavy Kinetic damage missiles and may have Target Painting as well.
• Minmatar: He'll have short range blasters or autocannon and a cap drainer on top of that.

In this mission you meet Dagan’s Battlecruiser. Where as with Kritsan Parthus I had to battle an armor tank, with Dagan (at least he was for me) I had to battle a shield tank.

By this point I had my Omen and lots of different weapons and ammo left over from my experiments with working out how to defeat Kritsan. Thankfully Dagan was quite slow and didn’t hit that hard so I didn’t need to be constantly running from him. A close orbit was sustainable with my noob shield tank whilst I fired everything I had at him. The problem was I was doing very little damage and despite the table above my Degan seemed to have an active shield tank a very good one…

Every time I made any sizable inroad in to his shield he simply flipped on a active tank and I was back to the start again. I needed more firepower! Much more firepower… But I already had a Cruiser stuffed with weapons and there was no chance of getting a Battleship anytime soon…

Switching to a smaller ship (like a Frigate) and avoiding getting hit wasn’t an option, as the problem was not having enough offence this time. It was pretty easy to stick with Dagan and take his damage, even in my easily hit Cruiser. I didn’t have my Destroyer anymore as I got rid of it (insurance fraud) after obtaining my Cruiser. In hindsight it might have been useful as it had a lot more hardpoints than the Destroyer.

Over the course of a weekend I trained up skills, tried to acquire more powerful weapons and searched the net for advice – which mostly advised not choosing Amarr as your ally, hmm…

It became obvious I just wasn’t going to defeat him using lasers. I tried using missiles, but they weren’t doing much, so I trained for heavy missiles. They did something, but cycled far too slowly – I still needed more… I trained up drones skill and was now using 3 Hobgoblins in combat in addition to my 5 Medium laser turrets and Heavy Missile launchers. Even with all that it wasn’t doing enough to take down his shield.

I stumbled across an online article that mentioned that Kinetic and Explosive damage was the way to take down an Amarr speced Dagan.

I didn’t have the patients to train up to medium projectile weapons, small would have to do. After a bit of head scratching I choose to mount 280mm Carbine Howitzer I with Fusion S ammo.

Yes, I was finally doing significant damage and his shield was taking a pounding! But, progress through his shield and armor was slow. His offence wasn’t huge, but as I sat there broadsiding him for such a long time it eventually took its toll on my cap. I didn’t have enough sustainability to remain engaged with him long enough to take him down completely and any break I made from combat allowed him to put his shield back up. Grrr….

Nosferatu (Nos) was the answer! I fitted one and it worked fantastically! As the fight went on my cap dropped, I flipped on my Nos and it drained Dagan. This was a double plus as not only did it allow me to keep my shield up, but it stopped Dagan rejuvenating his too.

Victory was mine!

After days of bumbling about with ship fittings and different tactics I finally hit on the solution. So if you have to kill an Amarr speced Dagan, one of the ways is to use the following:

Nos + Projectile Weapons (Explosive/Kinetic ammo)

Make sure you use an active shield tank on yourself as you need low cap yourself (1/4 – 1/2 is fine) to be able to drain Dagan. If you have high cap the drain wont work and Dagan will be able to rebuild his shields easily.

At one point during the fight I had Dagon’s shield and armor completely down and was working my way through the interior. I saw my energy was about 1/4 and so decided to turn off my Nosferatu. Immediately I did that his shield tank came back on, so don’t be tempted – keep the nos on until he is dead!

Create a starship contest

Design a starship and enter it into the EVE Online Create A Starship Contest for a chance to have your dream ship become a reality. The 1st Place winner will have their ship added to the premiere space MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), EVE Online where countless pilots will build and fly the winners' creation.

Entry must be received by 11:59:59 PM (PT) on October 13, 2010 and be submitted to the Contest gallery on www.deviantart.com

Epic Mission Arc Part 2: Kritsan Parthus

Mission 47 of the Epic Mission Arc is called ‘Chasing Shadows’. In the walkthrough that I was following it mentioned that this was a particularly difficult mission, but missions so far had been mainly taxing my ability to stay awake rather than my ability to complete them. I felt confident that with a little effort I would be fine. I was a little worried as the walkthrough listed a Battlecruiser as one of the ships you encounter in this mission and I was only in a Cruiser. I trusted that the game designers wouldn’t give me an impossible task and I set off to the mission site with high hopes.

After the fifth time I was forced to warp out and repair leaving Kritsan Parthus with a tiny sliver of red on his armor from 20 minutes of my efforts I really started to hate him! I was able to get through his shields OK, but he was running an armor tank (a huge one) and I wasn’t getting through it…

To make matters worse he hit really hard and was easily getting through my shield tank, I was only safe when 35Km+ away from him. I re-speced my ship for long range combat, I re-speced it again and again with only slightly better results each time. I fitted more and more powerful medium sized laser turrets (my charater is Amarr). Each time I was defeated, I was paying out hundreds of thousands in repair costs. The money I had made from the Epic Mission Arc thus far quickly dwindled away…

I searched the internet for help, but the only two pieces of advice I could find were:
1. Get an experienced player to kill him for you

2. Wait until your skills are higher and then return to these missions some time in the future.

This was a mission you are sent on right after completing the tutorial missions, it must be something a noob can complete on their own… right?

On two occasions I considered giving up, but I kept coming back for one more try. Eventually I hit a build (see attached image) which actually made a dent in his armor whilst enabling me to stay out of range of his stinging attacks. Finally I was doing more damage than he could repair and I almost got him, but at the last moment had to retreat when I ran out of capacity.

I repaired and quickly came back feeling more confident that he wasn’t invincible after all. I waited until my capacitor was full before attacking him and after a long struggle I emerged victorious!

It was a tremendous relief to have overcome the odds. To me it really was an epic battle that not only had taken its toll on my bank account, but I was exhausted IRL. After handing in the mission to the agent (not within the bonus time limit of course) I decided to take a break and continue the rest of the missions the next day.

There were only a couple of missions left and I was sure they would be easy ones just to round off the story. There couldnt be anymore missions of this difficuty, could there?

Epic Mission Arc Part 1

I had already completed a few of the missions provided by Sister Alitura and decided it might be a good idea to search for a walkthrough guide on the internet. After all I was a long way from home in a strange part of the galaxy and if you screw up in EVE it isn’t very forgiving. I didn’t want to have to replace my Destroyer if I could avoid it. I did have other ships and resources, but these were all back near my starting system (past the 0.5 system security space which I had come to dislike).

The guide I followed was the one by Keith Neilson and you can find it here. One word of warning though, for some unknown reason Part 1 of his guide managed to make my Firefox crash several times, but there was no problem with the rest of the guide. If you encounter the same problem, try Internet Explorer instead as the page displayed fine using that.

The Epic Arc is made up of 49 missions. No, that isn’t a typo, 49 missions…

For the most part the hardest thing about the missions was staying awake when it kept sending me on long trips involving over 10 jumps – this happened frequently. The missions themselves were reasonably easy and my noob ship setup skills didn’t seem to cause too many problems. That is until in one mission, when I tried to warp out to repair only to find that I was warp scrambled and ended up in my pod contemplating what just happened. To be honest at the time I had no idea why I had failed to warp and died. It was only after seeing someone else moan in the rookie help chat channel about the same thing happening to them, that I realised what must have happened to me.

I bought a new Destroyer and outfitted it again. It didn’t cost that much, the Epic Arc provides plenty of cash so I was still about 6 million ISK up overall. I continued working through the missions, albeit a bit more cautiously now. After a few days I was up to mission 47 only a few hours from the conclusion, or so I thought…

I'm not looking for trouble

I discovered that the map window can highlight the locations of agents willing to offer you missions and soon I was undertaking missions for agents near my starting area. During some down time, I began to research the Epic Mission Arc that I would attempt at some point. One post in particular that caught my eye, of a player reporting that because they started the Epic Arc so late they had built up faction values which caused them problems.

I didn’t really understand if the missions I was running at the moment would or would not put me in a bad position for the Epic Arc later. I decided it was better to be safe than sorry and set off on the long journey to the Arnon system. The route took me through some sections of space with system security level 0.5, but everything I had read up to that point said that only below 0.5 did things get dangerous.

During my journey, every single time I came out of warp to use the star gates in 0.5 space someone locked on to me... I didn’t get fired on, but this was probably just because I managed to jump to the next system in time. This happened using autopilot and I now only use manual jumping and haven’t had the same problem since. Still, it has given me a bit of a phobia about 0.5 space and my heart skips a beat every time I have to travel through it, which unfortunately is quite often as it is hard to avoid 0.5 space completely no matter where you are headed.

I arrived at Arnon in one piece and started straight away on the Epic Arc missions.

Early days continued

Mining seemed a safe activity and so I set my goals on becoming a good miner so I could collect some more cash whilst I worked out what I was going to do next. I mined randomly in the local systems, then realised that the asteroids (roids for short) were not making me much money. Where could I get those Kernite asteroids that I had briefly encountered during the trade tutorial?

After a quick search on the internet I found two useful sites that helped with where to find certain asteroid types and how far away those locations were. I chose a system only two jumps away from my starting system and setup a mining operation there. I found a nice quiet (less stip miners) belt that was close to a station. I trained up some relevant skills and refitted my Coercer for mining. I enjoyed the challenge of refitting the ship for mining and after buying several pieces of equipment managed to shoehorn in four mining lasers, whilst retaining four laser turrets at the same time. The lasers were needed to defend against the pirates that would periodically turn up in the asteroid fields.

Things went well for a while, but I couldn't help thinking that the hours I was spending mining in my bastardised Destroyer could be mere minutes if I had a bigger more dedicated miner ship. I checked the skills needed and realised it would take at least a few days to train up to either get a mining barge or a Cruiser. I started along the Cruiser route, then changed my mind switching to barges and then shortly after back again to the cruiser route (I couldn’t decide).

After just a couple of days I abandoned mining all together, left the skills running and decided I would try mission running until my skills caught up with my ambitions. I refitted my Coercer for combat and went looking for mission agents that would give me combat missions.

Early days

I was playing pretty much every opportunity I could, plus when I couldn’t. I was meant to be working on an assignment for my Business course, but that was put on the back burner so I could play more EVE. I realised quickly that the skill training queue has aspects in common with those very addictive Facebook games such as CafeWorld and FarmVille. I had to keep checking on my skill training queue, were my crops ready to harvest yet? … err I mean were the skills completed? Finally the day came for my assignment to be handed in, now I can play more EVE without feeling so guilty.

With my pile of ‘twink’ cash I was tempted to splurge on the many larger combat ships available on the Market, but I managed to resist and only used the money I earned. My self control was mostly generated by a fear that I might spend it on things I later found useless. It turns out I was correct as by the time a new player has gone through all the introductory tutorials you end up with quite a few ships, including a Destroyer from the advanced military tutorial.

I finished the tutorial, what now? The game suggests visiting an agent called Sister Alitura, this is the beginning of what is called the ‘Epic Mission Arc’. The only problem is that the I would have to travel about 18 star systems to get to where that starts. Travelling so far when I barely had a grasp of the game didn’t seem a good idea to me. So instead I decided to see what I could do locally until I understood the game better.

What you see is not what you get

I setup my new 21-day trial account, created a new character and entered the game. I immediately noticed that my character’s eyes were pointing in a way which made him look weird. It didn’t look that way during the creation process…

I guessed there wouldn’t be, but went searching for a way to alter the character portrait nevertheless. I was correct, there was no way to change the character portrait once created, but discovered that the developers would allow you to portrait swap if you pay (real-life money) for the privilege. Charging for changing character names is common in MMOGs, but charging 10 Euros to allow you to change a 200x190 pixel image seems a bit excessive.

One good thing came from my search as I discovered a nice internet guide for creating your EVE character’s avatar picture. The guide mentions how this is the only picture other players are going to see of you in the game, so you should try to get it right. It would have been nice if a similar warning was given in the game when I was crating my character.

Anyway, since I hadn’t really done anything with my first character I thought I would just delete it and start again. Ten hour wait for deletion? Well, I couldn’t put up with the picture, so I had to live with the ten hour wait.

I messed around on my 14-day trial for a bit and practiced creating my avatar picture so it would be perfect once I could finally get to delete and recreate it again. When the time came, I must have spent an hour on that portrait tweaking it so it was just right. Satisfied with how my character looked, I entered the game only to find a strange pixel mark on his mouth….

Again this was not visible in the portrait creation process and I realised that what you see is not what you get in this game. I decided to just put up with the imperfection rather than wait another ten hours to change it again.

I let my 21-day trial buddy know my character name and promptly received my pile of cash (ISK). I was now ready for EVE, or that is what I thought...

First impressions

My hopes were high, well not that high, in fact I was expecting to hate EVE…

The reviews were accurate and you don’t need a joystick, everything was just point and click. I spent two or three days working my way through the introductory tutorials (as was recommended in several reviews). The more I learnt about the game, the more I realised how massively complex the game truly was.

This did not put me off however; in fact it made me even more motivated to keep learning. After three or four days I was hooked and ran up against some of the trial account restrictions: I was given a large ship as a mission reward only to find that it was impossible to fly it on a trial account. I started investigating the subscription charges…

EVE was more expensive than I was expecting for a game that is seven years old, it actually costs more per month than WOW…

Despite the costs causing me to think twice about subscription, I just couldn’t bear looking at the Sigil sitting in my landing bay and not being able to fly it because of the trial account restrictions.

Whilst I was trying to decide when I would subscribe, I stumbled upon an article talking about 21-day trials. Too late now I thought, but intrigued I decided to read on. I discovered that the 21-day trials were only available when given as an invite from existing players to people they know. What was really significant was that it mentioned players would often give a lot of in-game money (ISK) to new players that sign-up off of their invite. Curious, until you realise that players get one month of game subscription free if someone signs up off of their invite. This system is known as the 'buddy program'.

Ships and equipment in EVE cost a lot of money and for a new player many things are just way out of reach. The prospect of a nice pile of cash to start me off was irresistible, so I abandoned my 14-day trial account and went searching the internet for an existing player to invite me…

In the beginning

I should have been studying for my Business course, but I wanted some recreation. I spotted a web advert for EVE Online on a webpage I was looking at (I can’t remember where the advert was, maybe a games review site). I always knew EVE Online existed, but it drifted out of my mind soon after its release. It was only after I started buying PC Gamer magazine in the last year or so that I got curious, as the editorial staff would often mention how they enjoy playing EVE.

I had never given EVE a try mainly because of my previous love/hate relationship with games like Elite, X-Wing, (insert all space exploration/trading games from the early Naughties), X2, X3 etc. I really enjoy space exploration games, but looking at stars rush past my screen whilst I repeatedly make loops trying to get my crosshair on the tail of the ship I’m chasing isn’t my idea of fun. I even bought a nice Saitek Cyborg joystick for X3 and gave it a real try, but the ‘twitchy’ combat aspect of these games is what always ends up putting me off in the end. I realise that same aspect is what attracts a lot of people, but I get more pleasure from winning because of brains rather than brawn.

My interest was peaked and I started reading some reviews. When I read that combat was a point and click affair, I was very pleasantly surprised. I realised this could be the space exploration/trading game I had been searching for all these years. I downloaded the 14-Day trial of EVE Online from the internet and gave it a try…