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I’ve tried several characters in Champions Online, and none seem to be able to hold their own after level 11-13 or so. So I’ll probably be spending most of my weekend back in EVE since I can pretty much do whatever I want in that game on my own without needing others to progress. At least in CoX I got near level 20 or so before it was impossible to solo.
Apparently folks were able to solo until the massive patch the other day, so much for that. Unless I see a big patch again by tomorrow allowing folks to solo again, I’m sure I’ll be checking out the Renegade expansion in BattleForge and doing a ton more mining EVE. I didn’t really have too many high hopes for CO, since it was made by the same non-solo friendly devs that produced CoX.
I mean, I don’t think I died once before level 10, unless I really screwed up, and at level 11 – I’m lucky to survive even-con pulls, even when I do everything “correctly.” Pretty crappy mechanics there Cryptic. Hell, I even moved a level 12 guy over to the area he hadn’t played in yet (from the Desert SW to Canada), and he was almost killed by three level 6 mobs. Dunno what the hell was going on there, but it sucked pretty bad. I practically should’ve been able to just bat them with my wings and kill them, but nope…
Oh well – it’s still shaping up to be a nice long, game filled weekend, but it’s probably not going to be the new shiny game the wins my attention. I hope your weekend is successful by whatever measure you’re using. Enjoy!
I can’t believe it’s basically Fall already, but that’s how it goes! Most of my gaming time in August was spent in EVE Online with very brief excursions into Warhammer and the Champions Online preview/”open beta.” September will most likely find me in EVE again as my major gaming outlet, with more substantial ventures into Champions Online (going Live Sept. 1) and Battle Forge (Renegade Expansion going live on Sept. 1 as well). I may sneak into WAR as well, but probably only for very short peeks here and there.
As for the stats, here’s how things fell out for August – Top Posts:
- Enochian Tablets… Building Your Own with 166 views
- Gardening Bug with 158
- ScreenShots with 89
- EVE Multibox Mining with 37
- EVE 2009 with 35
In actuality, EVE related posts were probably the number one draw to the blog with over 160 views in my “top 10 posts,” plus a few odd other EVE posts that weren’t quite as popular. Still it’s pretty cool that my Enochian post is starting to generate quite a bit of traffic. It may inspire me to write a few more articles relating to the blog’s namesake.
The top search terms were for plants, however, so that’s pretty interesting. I think I only had one post about gardening since I don’t have my own yard yet. I think once I settle into a home again and really start gardening in earnest again, those types of posts will generate even more traffic as it appears folks seem very interested in that subject.
According to my summary tables, my monthly average is staying stable at around 30 views per day, 875 per month – and I’m less than 2,000 views from doubling my total annual views from last year. So all-in-all I think the blog is healthy and improving with time. I haven’t ever come close to my peak day/month, which was way back in Nov. 2007 when I posted about latest & greatest game, Hellgate London. 😀
Best wishes for a great September and that Autumn finds you well! Enjoy!
Well, it’s not quite bliss, but dang close now that I’m getting the hang of the Orca. After spending my life savings in ISK to get the ship Thursday night, I’ve already earned back over 200M ISK, without really trying. A couple more serious mining sessions, and I should have my $450M investment returned, and then some. And, if I remember right, I should have my second mining pilot (third account) in his Hulk sometime over the long weekend. So that should render yet another significant boost to my mining capabilities.
Some things I noted with the new Orca:
- It usually takes 3-4 return trips to a station to mine out an entire belt of Veld, Scord, and Kernite. So with the ultra slow maneuvering of the Orca, going between systems is semi-painful, but not so bad if it’s a very rich belt.
- It will hold at least 3 cruisers in it’s ship maintenance bay fairly easily
- The Corp. bay is odd, it won’t “auto-complete” a fill if the amount going into it is more than it can handle – the other bays (cargo & ore) will say something like, “not everything will fit, but would you like to put in as much as possible?” Not so with the Corp. bay, you have to fiddle around if you want max. load in that bay.
- Ships can’t “dock” in your maintenance bay. If you want to put ships in there, the pilots have to eject, and then the Orca can “scoop” the ship in. I think the cargo bays for such “scooped” ships also need to be empty, except for ammo – so no sneaking in more ore this way…
- Other pilots in your fleet can use the (re)fitting options avail. from the maint. bay without being “scooped.” You need to set this option as it’s not a default.
Anything I’ve missed? I tested the cruiser load in the maintenance bay ‘cuz I needed to move some ships from one station to another, and this way I was able to do it in one fell swoop. Very handy!
Of course now with all this mining going on, I’m starting to get an itch for ratting/missioning again, so it’s going to be interesting trying to maintain focus. Plus, Champions Online goes live tomorrow, so I’m sure I’ll be goofing around over there for a while as well.
Tonight I’ll probably be working on my month end roll-up as well. I hope your weekend was amazing, and that your work-week is smooth – Enjoy!
I finally got my Orca last night. So dunno what else I’ll be blogging about now 😛 It was getting pretty late by the time I got my last load of ore in, refined, and sold in order to have enough ISK to go buy the new boat. But I did go buy it and moved it back to my “homebase,” fitted it out and took her out for a quick test in one of the local belts.
It’s quite nice, but I still have a few things to learn about the best way to use some of its features. I brought it out with my Hulk and Retriever pilots, and it works out quite well. I’m doubtful it will hold an entire belt’s worth of ore, though, so that’s kind of a bummer. I will have to work out a system where the miners can mine out the 15-22Km rocks first, before the Orca has to go dump it’s load and then the miners can mine without needing the extra range boost from the mining link.
I’ll be giving the whole thing a good workout this weekend and try to work out an efficient means of fleet operations. I’ll keep y’all posted on how the whole process ends up working out. My retriever pilot is still about a week away from his Hulk – so that will bump things up another notch. I hope your weekend is shaping up to be your kind of awesome, Enjoy!
I’ll definitely be able to snag me one of these bad-boys by the weekend and then I’ll be able to put it through its paces. I missed an awesome buy the other day though, I saw one for sale for less than $400M – I think it was around $390M or so, but of course it sold by the time I got that much ISK rounded up.
Tuesday I was able to work my way up to that figure, and I’ve found a few awesome belts this evening, so I should be very close to the magic $450M tonight, and I’m quite sure I’ll have that much by the end of tomorrow’s mining stint. Hopefully once I get the Orca up and running along with my Hulk and Retriever pilots, I’ll be able to earn it’s weight in ISK before the weekend has expired. We’ll see, but that’s the plan for now.
In other gaming news, I’ll definitely be picking up Champions Online when it’s released next week, so that will have a pretty direct impact on my EVE time. A buddy from work is very excited to get in there and start up a super group, so it might actually be kind of fun to get in and goof around for awhile.
Not much else on the horizon for now – I was sorely disappointed that Blizzard doesn’t seem too keen on getting D3 out the door, too much Tom Foolery with their golden handcuffs known as WoW. Ugh.
Hope your weekend plans are shaping up nicely – Enjoy!
The weekend is almost over and I did get most of my “goals” met. Of course I set the bar pretty low… Get in some gaming, do a few chores, and get out the apt. at least once. And I met all of those! WOOT! As for gaming, I spent most of my time mining in EVE trying to get enough ISK together to buy my Orca. I still haven’t got it all together yet, but I went from a measly 150M to just over 300M, so I almost doubled my ISK. I need ~450M to get the Orca, so another few serious mining sessions should get me there. And then I’ll really be able to get serious on mining.
I also played quite a bit of Champions Online. And it IS starting to grow on me a bit. I’m still not convinced it will be able to hold my subscription for more than a month or two, which is about the same as CoH, but I will probably end up buying it and playing around for awhile to see how it goes. I’m still not convinced of the MMO model they use, which is basically the same kind of architecture that CoH uses – people subdivided into a ton of various instances to facilitate load balancing – but it ends up fragmenting your population. I guess it’s good in some ways, ‘cuz you eliminate player lag quite a bit in what would otherwise be severely overloaded areas, but I’m still not convinced. I really miss the feeling you get from other non-segmented MMO’s where there is the potential to run into just tons of people… OH well, I’ll still give ’em a try once they go live.
In other news, I went kinda crazy over in the MP3 section of Amazon.com and bought some albums from bands that I don’t have any previous experience with, and so far I’m really liking it quite a lot. I ended up getting:
I really like ’em so far. I hope you had a great weekend and that the coming week finds you in a good place. Enjoy!
With the weekend nearly upon us, I’m planning out my strategy. I’ve got a lot of gaming that I’d like to fool around with AND I also have a lot of chores that I need to get done. Hmmm, I wonder who will win this battle? Fun or Drudgery? Tough call, so I’ll probably try to mix it up a bit and see how it goes.
I’m trying to give Champions Online a fair shake to see if it can eventually convince me to subscribe or not, so I’m sure I’ll be spending a few hours there. I also have a major goal in EVE that I’m trying to achieve, so I know I will be doing quite a bit of mining trying to earn enough ISK to buy that darn Orca! And if I get bored between CO, EVE and taking out the garbage, I’ll probably take a peek in on my Warhammer characters to see what’s up there as well. AND if I get really gambitious, I’ll sneek into BattleForge to see what the latest patches have wrought in that little universe. [see what I did there? Gaming+Ambitious=Gambitious, ok well maybe I’m not so clever…]
So, it looks like the weekend is shaping up to be a veritable gaming smorgasbord. I’m looking forward to some quality time with my avatars 😀 I hope your weekend is fun and fulfilling in your own way. Enjoy!
…damnit. And in High-Sec too! Man, did I EVER screw up! LOL! And here I was thinking High-Sec was SO safe, hehe. Not so, young padiwan. Now listen, and learn.
Ultimately, the thing that killed me was just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And apparently it’s a well known EVE mechanic, that somehow over the course of several years of playing EVE, I’d never heard of. Apparently, if you’re in a fleet and someone – ANYONE in the fleet has their “NUM LOCK” key turned on… no one else in the fleet can fire upon someone that has fired on the fleet.
So there I was minding my mining business, when some one named Mullered2 shows up in my belt – people dropping in happens fairly often ‘cuz I’m in a busy mining area. But instead of moving on, like most folks do, he flips my can. And so of course my defensive drones, which are always out-n-about start attacking him. BUT, he doesn’t turn red to either of my other fleet pilots. I was like, what?!?! As soon as I targeted him with my command ship I got the Concord warning that I would be unjustly blasted from the sky by Concord if I did anything to the bastard ripping my Hulk appart. ARGH! By that time it was mostly too late, I made a feeble effort to warp the Hulk out, but it was toast before the warp engines even got half-charged. By that time the pirate’s buddy, Soporificstorm had arrived to get his share of the goodies out of my now wrecked Hulk.
OH well, I had the funds to replace it, but it’s going to make getting that Orca just that much harder since I’m now down about 200M ISK. The rule to be learned here is, never – NEVER play EVE with your NUM Lock key turned on! God, that has GOT to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of, but there you have it! At least that’s what I was told in chat. I haven’t been able to confirm this little gem through Google searches, but I can’t seem to find any other reason out there why other fleet-members should not be allowed to target players that are attacking other fleet members… I’d love someone to direct me to documentation about the where’s and why’s regarding this (bad) game mechanic? Any takers?
OH, and if you see Mullered2 and/or Soporificstorm in your travels, feel free to send them a free gift – like a cruise missile or something just as warm and fuzzy 😛 No hard feelin’s. Enjoy!
I’ve been experimenting with a couple of non-spec (read “non-Gallente”) “drone boat” cruisers in EVE (the Amarr Arbitrator and the Minmatar Bellicose) along with my EWAR pilot (in a Caldari Blackbird). And it seems to be going quite well so far. The first few forays were over even before my second bird got his drones out, and I’ve yet to have enough time to get the EWAR bird locked-on and jamming the “baddies.” So it seems to be working out quite well. I’m looking forward to getting enough Amarr reputation to get into some battleship sized missions where I can test out my Armageddon, Typhoon, and Scorpion. It should be fun! I’ll try to remember to take some screenies this evening so I can link them up here.
I’m still training for that Orca and second Hulk. After splurging on two more battleships though (the ‘geddon and ‘phoon), I don’t think I’ll have the ISK for it by the time I’m actually able to fly the darn thing, so it may have to wait a bit due to funding constraints. Not too much else going on – I did pop in on Warhammer for a bit the other day only to find my server was a “low population” server, so I probably need to move all of my ‘toons yet again. I think this will be the fourth time I’ve had to move my ‘toons – I wish there were a “mass move” option, grrr.
The weekend is fast approaching, I hope it arrives quickly and finds you in good spirits! Enjoy!
…for gaming at least. With the visit up to Utah, I did have pretty decent internet service via my cell phone, but I really didn’t have time for any gaming. Just did a little facebooking and browsing the net. Family took up the balance of the time. I did keep my training queues up and running for my EVE toons, and that’s about it on the computing front.
Wilhelm posted an interesting topic last week about AFK missioning in drone boats and that got me thinking about the same thing. As a rule in MMO’s, I’m a “pet-class” player, and the EVE version of a pet class is the drone boat: A ship that can release up to 5 semi-autonomous killing machines, and can keep several different styles of said machines within it’s “drone bay,” for various occasions. The best drone boats are those from the Gallente empire, since they have bigger drone bays and they provide various bonuses to the drones (like more damage and/or more survivability).
As a tri-boxer, I’m torn between using my “tried-n-true” missioning technique of kite/tank, snipe, and EWAR or might it be more efficient to just jump in and unload full bays of drones to do my dirty work… Hmmmm. Two of my toons are already pretty proficient with drones, and they can fly some of the non-specialized drone boats already, so I may take them out on some test runs to see how they do using a Maelstrom and an Armageddon. My third toon doesn’t have any drone skills, but I believe he’d still be useful in his EWAR Scorpion. If all goes well, I may do the cross-training required to fly the “real” Gallente style drone boats after I finish my current training plan for the ultimate mining 3-boat fleet (Two Hulks and an Orca, which I should have complete in a week or two… I’m already getting giddy towards that prospect). If I go cruiser for lower lvl. missions I guess I’ll use the Hurricane and an Arbitrator with an EWAR Blackbird – can you take battle-cruisers into Lvl-1 & 2 missions? I’ll have to give it a try I guess…
Not much else to report. I hope your week goes great, Enjoy!
Lemegeton 