Vaccuming asteroids

The universe sure is a messy place, and someone needs to scoop up all those asteroids!  Nothing much to report today, just a relaxing day mining with a little trading on the side.  Hope everyone is having fun out there. :)

What I've Been Up To In EVE Online

Is it still called EVE Online?  I mean, with the Online, part.  You know, I really don't think it is anymore, I think they dropped it and the game is just called EVE now.  Suits me just fine!  Anyways, I would like to share with you what I've been up to in the grand universe of EVE Online!  (I'm still going to call it that, that's how I learned it.)

Of course, as always, I've been mining a bit.  OK I've been mining a lot. :)  Which I really probably shouldn't even say due to the permanent Hulkageddon, but I'm not going to talk about that!  The ISK has been the same as it always was, from what I remember, slow but steady.  I actually have hopes of paying for my sub with ISK this time around using EVE's plex system.  Yes I am a bit frugal, but also, the whole plex system is giving me a nice motivation to log on and make that ISK!  More plex, means longer sub, longer sub means more skills and more gameplay options in the grand universe of EVE online.

I have been up to more then just mining, another one of the reasons why I'm having a blast this time around.  When I resubbed to EVE I was informed that I had a number of skill points saved up that I could put anywhere I wanted!  This is rather unusual as EVE skills train over time.  The reason I got these extra skill points, I'm sure this is not news to you current EVE players reading this, is because they decided to remove the "Learning" skills in the game, which previously sped up a pilots skill training time.  Anyways, back to my original story and the screenshot, I sunk all the skills points (some 5 million) I had to spend into laser skills and Amarr ship skills!  

So, I decided to ditch the boring old Gallente ships I had been piloting and try something totally new.  I'm glad I did because the Amarr ships are absolutely beautiful.  Plus, they really kick ass!  I've gotten further in EVE's PvE mission-running then previously, all the way to Level 3 missions.  The ship I've been flying in these mission is the Harbinger you see above.  She really does a lot of damage but she definitely needs to be watched.  There have been some missions where I just scraped by.  One major reason why I'm running these missions is to gain faction standing with the NPCs who own the station where I refine my minerals at.  Even though mission running is time consuming, I know reducing that tax on my refining to 0% will really pay off in the long run.  Assuming I stay in the same system that is!  I like where I've been hiding at though and I don't plan on moving anytime soon.  I would even like to start stocking the stations around my space and learn how to haul.

Safe flying wherever you may find yourself.

Darkfall milestones: Herbing, Mining, AND Lumberjacking at 100!

Yup, not too much to say here, but I hit 100 Mining and 100 Herb Gathering (and lumberjacking, I just forgot to take the screen) in Darkfall! Go me! These are the first skills I have managed to get to 100 in Darkfall.

Kitty On a Boat and The World Smallest Iron Node

I recently got the chance to try out sailing in Darkfall. I think almost everyone's first ship is a raft, and in my case this was no exception. Rafts are the first craft you can.. craft.. and they are also the cheapest. That said, they have no cannons and you are rather exposed on a raft.



One of the main activities a group of people can do while sailing is fish. This makes rafting both a fun and productive activity!

After sailing around a bit we landed on this island and cooked our fish using one of the previous mentioned campfires.

Oh, and as a small bonus, here is a picture of the worlds smallest iron node. There may be smaller out there, but so far this is the smallest I have seen.

Eve: HULK

A major milestone in my EVE career has been reacher, I got the skills to fly a hulk! Sure I am not the first, nor will I be the only, but getting the skills to fly a hulk is a major first step in a newbies mining career.


Anyways, I couldn't resist a nice scenic screenshot.
Anyways, this hulk definitly rocks to take out rats!
It has 3 powerful strip miners.

A small tour of Dark Age of Camelot

I took a small tour back to Dark Age of Camelot. Not that I have played the game much before, but I did buy a boxed set for it a few years ago to give it a try. It wasn't the right game for me back then, but I was curious to see how it developed since then. The first thing I noticed when I came back to Dark Age of Camelot was how great the graphics look! It almost reminds me of Vanguard in some ways, especially the trees. In the end however, I couldn't really get used to the controls and that is my main reason for not continuing to play. The second is the player armor, after looking at some high level people, it seems the high level stuff is just dyed versions of the lower level armor. There wasn't much variation or style to the armor at all.

Still, I got some good screens so lets take a look! This first shot is all the classes of... dang I forgot the name of the plant/nature realm but yeah this is it's classes.
Some people fighting.
Gotta have castles! It wouldn't be Dark Age of Camelot without castles.
I sure do love mining. :P
Some sort of fast travel system?

Yeah, I really do like mining, seriously!
Here is a picture of some players, note the bland armor.
This guy killed me.
But this guy didn't! Caus its a necromancer pet, looks pretty cool!
Well, that is probably all I will ever write about Dark Age of Camelot! I was really surprised by how well the game has stood up to time, and how great the graphics where, but in the end I just couldn't get past the player armor and the controls.

0.0 Action Continues, Fleet Battle!! (yes that is two exclamation points!)

This most recent blog is definitly one of my favourite yet. I really liked my last one, and I really like this one too. EvE 0.0 sure is a lot more dangerous and a lot more exciting than I had previously imagined!

This last weekend, I was able to engage in my first fleet battle! My computer like slowed down to a couple frames per second, I tried to scramble someone but I just got blown up. (I seem to be getting blown up a lot these days). I normally never post a screenshot with any sort of interface in it, but this one shows the craziness and confusion that is fleet combat very well. No, it is nothing like I imagined. I used to think it was like some ordered thing, you would have a wing of one ship come in and do some long rang sniping, tacklers would go in close range, everyojne sort of had this barrier between each side (red vs blue). However, turns out, it is much more of a blob-like formation than an hourglass-formation (with each side of the hourglass meeting in the middle). Nope.. it's just a big blog. I dunno how you even maintain proper distances and ranges from your enemy or target.
Well, these next two screenshots are very similar, but this one has a ship getting blown up so I'm just gunna add it in, what the heck!
And this one has me... dead... well in a pod, but that got blown up pretty soon too! I think this is why we won and they lost (oh did I forget to mention that?) they where busy targeting noobs like me and taking the time to blow up my pod while the whole time our battleships where blowing the crap outta them!
This is my friend Korvix's ship.
And here we are guarding the dead bodies of our fallen comrades, taking what we can salvage before we get out of there!
And our reward...?
Aww c'mon... I know it is a rock but hey, I like mining!
Yup, I like mining.

NaNoWriMo is almost here!

National Writing Month is almost uppon us! :) NaNoWriMo is when thousands (well I hope its thousands, that's actually just a guess) of people write a 50,000 word book in a single month. Thats the goal anyway. I have played the game for the past three years, and have failed each time. But this year I'm going to try again and this time I am going to WIN!!!

So, I would encourage any of you guys out there that like to write to participate, it's a great literary exercise. (It's more about quantity, then quality, if you nitpick you are never gunna make it.) Another big challenge of the game is plot. It's actually not hard to write the recommended 7,500 words a day until about halfway through you realize you ran out of plot!

What I'm saying is next month you guys might not see any blogs at all. ^^ Or perhaps just a few small ones, we'll see. November is a month for me to step away from the TV the video games, and even the friends, and just get my writing cap on. I try to not write about RL in this blog but this isn't really RL is it?

In the meantime I do have two EVE pictures to share. Here you have my barge doing with it does best, mine. and there is some other fancy looking ship that just jacked my ore. XDMy second account finished training for the Itty V! Now I can haul with the best of them! Unless I get a freighter that is. :P

Interesting thing happend in EVE

Well, I didn't think I would get any content from EVE. I mean its just such a different game I wasn't sure if I was going to have anything to blog about. It's not like I can just go to some new area and take some pictures to show you guys. Well the other day I was just sitting in my asteroid belt doing some mining like I usually do when I saw some really interesting things go down.

I'm not really sure what happened but I'll do my best to explain what went on.

First I saw this rather large group of ships warp into the belt... some of them had low security ratings but not all of them. Then most of the ships warped off and left two of them in the belt.
I know the screens aren't very good but I did the best I could. I think I can get better ones in the future, I'm still learning the camera system and the action was so fast I had to be quick.

Well anyways, continuing the story. After the rest of the gang warped off, one of the pirates went over and floated by this rook(I think, not sure what ship it was) and then stole his can... but instead of flying off with the rooks minerals it just sat there.See the puff of smoke around the can? This is not the rook's can, I think this is the pirates. I'm not sure why he would jettison a.. replacement can?

Regardless... I DO know what he was doing... baiting the rook into attacking him! And attack him he did. A really cool battle happened.I know you can't really see them fighting, but I think that grey smoke is the rook getting hit by a missile and the rook was hitting the other ship with its drones. Obviously the pirate was an experienced player while the Rook was a n00b...If you look carefully in this picture you can see the smoking wreckage of the rook to the upper left of the... other ship. (I don't know what it's called XD)

But then when I thought it was all over something else very strange happened! Another ship warped into the belt, and began to attack the pirate! Is it the same pilot in a different ship? Or perhaps a corpmate?

The battle that ensued was very colorful and I'm sure it was exciting for both pilots involved.
Yay blinky lights! I have no idea what is happening here, if someone can explain what those little dots of light are?
Then like this glowy stuff started shooting out. Is this that stuff that drains your capacitor? I don't think its a damage thing I think its like a debuff. You can also see a missile exploding off the other ship.
Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the explosions of either ship. My cameras where positioned in a way where my view was orbiting the non-pirate ships. When they exploded the camera instantly zipped back to being centered around my ship, disorienting me and causing me to miss the big explosion. :( Next time I'll get some much better pictures.

Oh yeah, so uhm this ship that attacked the pirate died too. Too bad! But it was fun for me to watch and I bet fun for all those who fought.

The pirate then came over to me... and stole 100 ammo from my can. :P I had allready moved my ore out of the belt long ago... I wasn't about to attack the guy so he could not kill me or the NPC cops would vaporize him.

All said and done it was an exciting day and gives me hope that EVE will bring more blogging material then I thought.

Retriever

Allright, I got my Retriever! Check it out, this is a picture of it in my station. Note it has gears, and flames, and looks like it can mine a ton. And believe me it can definitly mine a ton! I never knew barges would mine so much more then my crappy ol' frigate. XDYou can see one of the strip miners on the top of the ship (the little ball looking thing). They look kind funny but oooh man is it sweet to mine in. On my frigate the vindictus I would get about 2k ore every 60 seconds, now I get 12k ore every 120 seconds!!! That is HUGE I knew mining barges where good but I didn't realize exactly how gimped I was. :PHere is a shot of it mining, notice that big stream of ore around the laser. Now the laser is fatter and has that puff of ore being sucked into the barge.

One interesting note is I thought I would be able to AFK easier with my mining barge, and this is true due to the 120 second cycle instead of 60 seconds. However after just two cycles of my mining lasers my barge's cargo space (which is a lot bigger then the frigate of course) is full. This means I still have to use a jetcan to mine just like when I was flying my frig.

Except now I have my second account to haul for me at the same time of my mining. :) I am "popping roids" sooo fast now. I haven't sold any of the ore I mined yet but I bet I will be making much more cash.

Mining a bit and skillin up!

Well EVE is kind of a slower paced game... it's not like a traditional MMO where I can just go and explore some new area and get some screenshots from that to show you guys. So I wasn't really sure if I had enough content to make a blog, but thinking about it, yeah I do! :P

First off I would like to show you this shot of my drone killing this rat (slang for the NPC pirates).
You can see me mining to the left of the drone. Man those explosions sure are satisfying. I can't wait till I blow up some people! :) I'm not really interested in going on missions to kill NPCs but oh man I would love to kill some other players. >:) I'm sure I'll get my chance someday!

OK I got podded. ><
:P This is a picture of me!


Here I am flying in to buy 9 million ISK worth of skill books! These two books where 4.5m ISK each, and are some advanced learning books. I like how this Gallente shuttle looks... really sleek and stylish!

One word.... EVE!

Yes that's right, I have switched MMO's yet again! This one is big.... this one is REALLY BIG. Of all the MMOs I have played EvE will take this blog in a completely different and new direction. Well, what I meen by "completely new and different direction" I am talking about the essence of EVE. It's just such a different kind of MMO compared to Lineage 2, EverQuest 2, or Vanguard.

See in a traditional fantasy MMO you have these rails to go on. You might adventure here or there or go quest at this spot or that spot but you are limited to a steady regular progression of your character that is the same as everyone else. A better way to describe this is, "In [insert generic fantasy MMO here] your character gets strong as you level up, but the monsters get stronger aswell, so really the only thing that changes around you is the enviroment. And you just go through the same enviroment and quests that everyone else does."

In EVE its completely different. There are no quests. No places to go and farm, no castles to explore no dungeons to raid. Rather the game is the players. Every journey and every characters experience in EVE is completely unique because there are no "rails" to go on in order to get to the top or to get to some max level to do good in PvP. In EVE everything just IS. It's hard to explain.... I hope you get the point I am trying to make. ;)

Ok the first screenshot I would like to show you is this nice little picture of my mining ship the Navitas.
Beautiful isn't it? Here you can see me mining an asteroid. Behind me floats a jetcan which I place my ore into. Later I will come back with my hauler to haul the ore back to a nearby station.
I quickly made some friends in EVE. ^^ Here I am in the middle of a big mining operation!Here is a picture of a minmatar shuttle. Shuttles are a fast and cheap way to get around the universe.
The universe in EVE is huge! As many as 35,000 people can play at one single time on the same server. That is one of the craziest and best things about EVE the fact that there is just one server. This is so exciting! I can't wait to see what will happen in my stay here in EVE. ^^