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I’m still mining trying to get enough ISK to afford my ORCA. After splurging on the Scorpion and the Claymore, I’ve already got my bank back up to 200M ISK. Orcas go for around 450M in my neck of the woods, so I’m not too worried. And by the end of this week, I’ll be able to throw a Retriever in on the mining mix – if I really feel the need for it.
I also did some more probe exploration and can easily lock down wormholes and most other signatures. The only one still taking awhile to lock are drones. I think that’s because they’re so small and they’re always on the move. I haven’t found any abandoned ships yet, which is what I’d really like to find someday. I’m sure I will find one eventually. Too many people get too comfortable in some of their locations, or they go link dead and can’t get back on in awhile – I’m watching for you! 😀
In other gaming news, I finally took a look at the new single-player Battleforge map, “Oracle” last night, and that was fun. I just did the normal difficulty to get a feel for the place and how nasty it might be in Advanced or Expert Mode. I think Advanced will be ok, but Expert, as always, will probably end up an exercise in frustration management, bleh. Oh well, it’ll probably be fun in Advanced, and that’s the mode I tend to play most often anyways.
Hope your week is shaping up nicely – Enjoy!
It’s not good to “oops” in EVE, but I don’t always take the most planned or intelligent path through EVE. Last night I was practicing my exploration skills and found my first wormhole. So of course I just HAD to go through it to see what was on the other side.
I ended up somewhere very far away out in 0.0 (“zero-zero”) space and did some more probing around. I found a couple “sleeper sites” and… another wormhole. So of course I went and trotted down the next wormhole, which took me even further away from home base than I was before (now 44 jumps from home, instead of the mere 37 from the last location). This was an interesting location. After doing some exploration, I found a huge number of ships all clustered together – abandoned. Everything from rookie ships up to carriers. I was dumbfounded.
So I warped in at max range (100km) and cloaked to find an extraordinarily well protected and defended piece of space. There was a huge bubble of some kind surrounding this menagerie. There were sentry guns and missile batteries of all types all over the place. Even at 100KM, I ended up close enough to the bubble thing to force my ship to de-cloak. I still had a bit of time to look around a bit, but then one of the defenses started targeting me, so I warped of to my “safe spot,” but not before taking a hit from a missile – it barely scratched my shields, but still, I was ready to move on.
I re-cloaked at the safe-spot to assess my location and saw that there was a stargate that linked to 0.5 space. And since it was getting late – very late – I thought I’d better start looking for a station to dock for the night. There wasn’t a station in the 0.5 sector, but there was another stargate to a 0.8 system. So I gated there and and found two stations. I picked one and docked for the night.
I’m still VERY far from home base, and am wondering if I can backtrack the way I came. Of if it might be better just to randomly jump through wormholes, hoping I end up a bit closer to home. Besides, exploration is fun – but I’m so far from home that I won’t be able to take advantage of any of the cool things I find 😦 Next time I’ll know better to take the rest of my fleet through, esp. since they’ve all got cloaking and some pretty good firepower. Dunno that I could take out a sleeper with just an inty and a stealth bomber, but I’m sure I can take out other rats.
I’ll probably mess around with exploration the rest of the weekend, just to hone my skills a bit. And then I’ll start the long trek home to share what I learned with my “homies.” I hope your weekend is fun and fulfilling – Enjoy!
Actually I dual-box with three accounts, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyways, the path I took to get where I am was a long and convoluted one, where I started with just one account. I was mildly satisfied with my combat pilot, Markosias, but I was always low on ISK. Then some buddies of mine let me in on their dirty little ISK secret, mining. Being an “alt-o-holic” doesn’t mix well with EVE, since you cannot train more than one character at a time…unless… you get another account. So, wanting in on this lucrative mining business, I bought myself another account with the express purpose that my second character, Orobas, would be my miner.
My primary character decided to hang out with my mining character and they both mined in mining cruisers for awhile. Until one day, my miner was able to get into a Retriever. At that point I couldn’t keep up with the ore being produced, so my combat pilot trained up to be an ore hauler. Eventually I got around to reading Ombey’s mining guide, where I found out about Mining Foremen and Directors. My combat pilot was already trained up to Battleships before my second character’s incarnation – and he could also fly Battle Cruisers, which can fit a Command Link. So while Orobas trained towards his Hulk, Markosias trained for Mining Director.
Eventually Marko got Director and Oro was in his Hulk, and the next dilemma hit. Again, I was without a hauler, since Marko had to sit in his Hurricane in order to run his Mining Command Link (and double as belt ratter/protector). So… I bought my third account for the express purpose of hauling ore. Thus Naberius was born. Nab quickly trained up to pilot Marko’s old Mammoth, and all was a happy mining operation for awhile.
Eventually, mining got a bit long in the tooth and I wanted something else to do, so I started training Oro and Nab to be complimentary combat pilots to Marko. My first outing was a disaster, I hadn’t counted on how involved and micro-managed EVE combat can be at times. So I held off for awhile, but kept my combat training up while I was mining belts. Eventually I came upon the combo of Tank-Jam-Plink. I use different ships now for the tanker and the plinker, but the strategy is still the same.
In my next post, I’ll try to propose a better approach to Tri-boxing if you know you’re going to multi-box from the get-go. Until then, good luck and Enjoy!
I’ve been learning how to use my Buzzard and exploration skills over the weekend, along with quite a bit of mining as well. At first I just didn’t “get it” when I was trying to probe and this video (without commentary, just captions) finally cleared things up for me! I was able to find ships quite easily, and drones and “hideouts.” But some other targets were extraordinarily difficult to get a fix on, and I would give up on them.
I have pretty good skills: Level 5 Astrometrics, 4 pinpointing, and 4 acquisition. But I probably should get range finding up, it’s only at level 2… I’m hoping that once I get that skill up to 4 or so, I’ll be able to hone in on some of those more difficult targets. I’ve been using combat probes too, so that might be part of the issue, but from reading the descriptions, it seems that they’re the best probes you can get without making a major outlay of ISK on factional probes (like Sisters). I’ll let ya’ know how it turns out after I get range finding up…
All in all, it’s been an interesting new experience in EVE, which is always good. I hope your adventures this week are going great – enjoy!
Yup, I’m back in the EVE universe again. What really hooked me back in was a little mining expedition. I was just going to go plow under a belt and see how things were going on my training etc. So after clearing the belt I headed back to the station to refine and sell the ore. BAM! I made over 30 million ISK! Which is about 3X what I used to get for the same ore just a few months ago .
Anyways, I figured I’d better stay “in-game” for awhile, at least for as long as these high ore prices are around. I also learned a bit about probing with my Buzzard and I splurged and bought my EWAR toon (Naberius) a Scorpion. But my current training plans are to get Marko into an Orca and Nab into a Hulk (using a Retriever as a stepping stone). And since Oro is already pretty max’d in Mining skills, I’m training him for “speed tanking” missions in a Crow, while Marko plinks with either his Hound or Maelstrom. And Nab jams/damps them in his Blackbird or Scorpion.
In Nab’s Buzzard, I was able to find three “hideouts,” so that was fun. I then brought in the battleships and blew everything away without hardly a dent to my sheild layers. Marko was in his Maelstrom and Oro was in his Raven, while Nab did his snooping in the Buzzard. I also found a rogue drone hive, but it was getting late and I didn’t get over there to do any extermination. Maybe tomorrow.
I hope your weekend was fun and that your week goes smooth. Enjoy!
I can’t believe 2009 is already half over, but such is the nature of time – it just keeps on going without consideration toward any thing. It’s been an extraordinarily busy year for me so far, and I keep hoping that things will slow down to a dull roar, but so far I think things are actually getting busier as the year progresses. Not a good thing for my mental nor physical well being, but in this kind of economic environment, I really have no room to complain.
On with the stats… First I’ll do the June wrap-up, and if I’m still awake, I may try to tackle the 6-mo. roll up.
Top posts for June:
- Gardening Bug with 358 hits
- ScreenShots in a distant 2nd with only 72 hits
- Enochian Tablets… Building Your Own with 55 hits
- EVE Mission Running with 41 hits
- EVE – How To with 32 hits
- EVE Multibox Mining with 20 hits
- and Hellgate Mini-Game and other goodies rounding out the double digits with 14 hits
So, if I roll the three EVE posts into one, EVE actually comes in second with 93 hits… EVE is always a popular subject, as is gardening and other DIY/How-To type posts.
Total hits for June were 878, down from May (which was my 2nd strongest month EVER with over 1,100 hits).
Total hits for the last 6 months: 4.225 (which takes me well beyond my total hits for 2008 which was 3,870)
So all-in-all I think things seem to be going pretty good with the blog, since I started it kind of as a little side project to renew my interest in writing, gaming, and other sundry hobbies.
As for gaming, I’m testing the waters in LOTRO again and it still isn’t really getting its hooks into me. Battle Forge on the other hand has been a great diversion, but if new cards or maps are not soon forthcoming, I don’t see myself hanging out there much longer either. I’ve been keeping up my training stints in EVE, but I haven’t really been actively playing there. That may change soon now that the luster of my fantasy MMO’s are starting to fade a bit. I’m sure I’ll be back in Warhammer soon, but I’ll probably drop LOTRO permanently after this latest subscription expires.
July is going to be another hectic month, with 4th of July coming up, a lot of work projects (of course), and I’m going to take a mini-vacation near the endof the month. So there will be a lot of chaotic activity throughout the month. Andof course with it being summer, I’ll be doing more things outdoors, or just trying to cool off in front of the AC. Sitting in a room full of heat producing PC’s isn’t really appealing to me much, LOL.
I hope the first half of 2009 has been grand for you, and that the next six months will be fun and productive! Enjoy!
Hard to believe, but my blog has been viewed 10,000 times! WOOT!
This has been a pretty lackluster gaming week – but have spent a few hours in BattleForge and I also peeked in on my EVE Online characters to see how their training was coming along. I’ll probably drop in on Warhammer Online tomorrow.
I’ve been goofing around over on my facebook page, mainly adding friends here and there and creating more “flair.” I also finished up planting my planter boxes earlier in the week and the seeds are already sprouting, so that’s cool.
I also attended an “esoteric” meet-up group, and that was interesting. I’m so conflicted, LOL! See, I don’t “believe” in mysticism of any kind, be it magick or religion, but I find the topic utterly fascinating. So anyways, I’m glad that I was able to attend and didn’t get rocks thrown at me or anything 😀 I did share a number of the tarot decks that I collect, and the group was appreciative.
And I got a new sphere this week. I collect rock spheres – I blame my Mom and Dad for that. Dad was a geologist and one year when he and mom went to the big rock & mineral show down in Silver City, NM, they returned with several, very nice looking spheres – and I’ve also been hooked on them ever since. I tend to get mine from “The Rock Shed,” where I’ve felt I’ve always got great stones for a very reasonable price. Anyways, I just got a nice 3″ quartz sphere this week – what’s normally called a “crystal ball.”
Anyways, I hope your week was easy and that your weekend is turning out grand! Enjoy!
What a busy month! I can’t believe how much I’ve neglected writing in the blog, so I’m gonna blame work for that! 😛 I’ve been really busy trying to put together purchase plans and distributing and configuring new computer systems for the library that my time has just disappeared on me. By the time I get home I just wanted to vedge in front of a game or do some reading.
On the gaming front, I was jumping into WAR fairly regularly, playing both my Order and Chaos toons. Then a week or so ago I got into Battle Forge, which has been a very nice diversion. I also kept my training queues going in EVE, but I haven’t done any active EVE gaming for quite awhile. Once the next set of queues finish up sometime in June, I may jump back in. We’ll see.
In other hobbies, I planted several of those window-box style planters and they’ve all done quite well so far. The number of the seeds that actually grew surprised me, since many of them were several years old. I also started getting my FaceBook stuff going. I’ve actually had a facebook page for over a year, but I’d never really done anything with it – I’m not really much of a socialite, so the whole social networking thing just leaves me with a “what’s the point” kind of reaction. But a new co-worker has turned me on to some of the interesting things that can be done in FB, so I started messing around with it, adding “Flair” and trying to hook up with old friends and acquaintances. We’ll see how it goes. I still think my main “presence” in webspace will remain fixed here on the blog though. It just suits me better.
On the music front, I grabbed a few more albums this month. Mainly from the “rock-opera” genre with some MM thrown in for good measure:
- River of Tuoni by Amberian Dawn
- The High End of Low by Marilyn Manson
- Unter Der Linden/Vater by Heimataerde
- Tales Along This Road by Korpiklaani
- Battle Metal by Turisas
(I Love that I can look up my digital library on Amazon 😀 )
In the reading arena, two books rose to the occasion:
Now for the Statistics for May
Top Posts for May:
- Gardening Bug with 189 views (Spring Fever has officially set in!)
- ScreenShots with 112 views (mainly for EVE online pics)
- Enochian Tablets… Building Your Own with 44 views (Magick is awesome!)
- EVE Mission Running with 32 views (EVE is losing ground, seriously)
- EVE – How To with 24 views
- Foundations for a New Mythology with 23 views (and several interesting comments)
- EVE Multibox Mining with 21 views
- Crazy stuff… with 20 views (my crazy spending habits, oy!)
- Hellgate Mini-Game and other goodies with 16 views (pretty good for a dead game)
- EVE Missions – Multi-Box with only 7 veiws (but I needed to round out this list 😀 )
Top Search Engine Terms:
- Dwarf Lilac (174)
- Wormwood (99)
- Sedum (29)
- Lemegeton (19)
- Enochian Tablets (16)
Definitely shows a shift from gaming references to gardening and magick – interesting…
Summary Stats:
I’m inching closer to the 10,000 hits mark with 9,799, only 201 to go! I should go over 10K this week, as my average per week for May was around 220. I totally kicked last year’s butt with 1,089 views this month compared to last years anemic 240 (Thank you gardeners!). Next month I should best my total views for all of 2008. I had 3,870 views in 2008 and I’m already up to 3,333, so that’s pretty cool!
Plans
I don’t realistically see my workload decreasing much over the next several months, so my blogging may remain somewhat lax, but I’m hoping to do better in June than I did in May. We’ll see. I’m attending three or four social groups in town, so maybe that will help to inspire me to write up some goodies. As for Gaming, I’m still waiting for a few things to be released: Sims3, Champions Online, and Jumpgate Evolution. In the mean time, I’m sure I be playing more BattleForge and Warhammer… and maybe some EVE online if I really get the space bug…
I hope your May was a wonderful adventure, and that with the onset of Summer this June that your life will be simply amazing! Enjoy!
Actually I’ve just been slacking on blog posts a little bit ‘cuz I’ve been so busy doing other stuff. Over the weekend I did a lot of Warhammer gaming, again I’ve been concentrating on the Order side of the house and getting somewhat frustrated at the huge Destro over-population on that server (I think Badlands, but I can’t remember for sure, that might be where I play destro, lol!). Anyways, RvR there is just an exercise in frustration, I think due in large part to two (very large) guilds that I enjoy playing with are on opposite sides of the realm on that server – Casualties of WAR (COW) is Order, and The Older Gamers (TOG) play destro there. Grrr. Both guilds are geared towards “mature” (as in over 25) gamers, although the average is probably closer to the upper 30’s or maybe even mid 40’s. Oh well, things are a bit more balanced (and therefore “fun”) over on my destro (destruction) server, so I’ll probably be heading back there for this weeks gaming escapades.
In other gaming news, I’ve been keeping up my EVE training, but I really haven’t been doing much there except logging in to keep my characters on their training path. I unsubscribed to LOTRO and City of Heroes (I think I said that in an earlier blog, but I don’t remember, so bear with my senior moments). So I think that about wraps up game-talk.
I did get a new graphics card over the weekend. An nVidia 9800GTX OC from BFG. But to be honest, I haven’t really noticed a huge performance gain over my “old” 7900GTX OC BFG card. Probably because I’ve only been playing MMO’s which have some pretty scaled back graphics in order to improve “lag” performance. But that’s just conjecture on my part.
In other news, I’m quite jealous of a good friend of mine who is moving from Salt Lake City to Aliso Viejo, CA (just over the hill from Laguna Beach). I have some cherished childhood memories of Laguna Beach, as our family spent 3 or 4 summer vacations at a beach-house there (mid 1970’s). Although the last time I was there in the ’90’s (when I was living in Long Beach), it had sure grown A LOT. It used to seem like such a rural drive from L.A. (Hwy-1/Pacific Coast Hwy) down to Laguna, and now it’s all suburbia. Oh well, such is progress.
And, on a completely different note, the writers group I belong to met on Sunday, and I went and committed myself to providing a plot synopsis of my novel for review at next month’s meeting. I’m supposed to have that submitted to the group’s website by the end of the week. I was going to work on it last night, but I was dog-tired after work. Hopefully I’ll be a bit more inspired this evening. I actually have a fair synopsis written already, but it was “for my eyes only,” LOL. So it still needs some work before being submitted for review. Hopefully y’all are keeping up with all of your projects and having some fun too! Enjoy!
Work is just over the top busy lately so I haven’t had a lot of time for gaming nor blogging. I did get the latest update to EVE online the other day, and was able to login to keep my training plan up-to-date on my latest endeavor: covert-ops. Naberius now has the skills to fly a “Buzzard,” but he still needs to up his training in Cov-Ops so he can use and fit a cov-ops cloaking device. Once I get that done, he’ll move back to training up even more probe skills while I learn how to explore/probe out in “zero-zero” space.
I’ve also had a bit of time to make a few forays out in Warhammer. Mainly I’ve been working on getting my Black Orc up to level 20. He’s currently up to 18 or so. I’ve got about half of my characters up to level 20+, and now I’m just trying to bring up the rest of my gaggle of “alts” up to that level. “20” is a magic number in WAR, since that’s when your character gets their frist mount. For my Black Orc, that will be a wart hog like beast. Last week my Squig Herder got my first timber wolf mount, and I already had a Magus with his scarab-disk, a Chosen with his war-horse, and a DoK with her raptor-like “Cold One.”
Not much else going on – I still need to replace my mp3 player that died over the weekend, so walking back and forth between home and work has been less musical for the past week or so. I’ve decided that I would much rather listen to music than traffic, sirens, and garbage trucks! I’ll probably order something off of Amazon soon.
Whatever I get, it needs to support “random play” from an SDHC card, since that’s what I’m already accustomed to. And I’d like it for less than $100. So that about narrows the selection down to two contenders. This USB/SDHC “keychain” stlye player, and the Cowon D2 (which is what just failed on me). I’ve actually used both of these gadgets and they’ve each had their own sets of “issues,” so I’m not sure what I’ll end up choosing.
I almost never used the video player capability of the D2, so I guess I could just buy 9 of the keychains for the price of the the D2 and call it good, LOL. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes, and I hope your week has been good to you! Enjoy!
Lemegeton 