Returning to Business

The Idea of putting all your possessions into one large truck and driving said truck over a lake with a thin covering of ice doesn't really sound appealing does it?

Well imagine you did it, that's something like the feeling i got moving all my worldly possessions across 7 low sec systems in a hauler, lucky for me i didn't meet anyone fast enough to lock me travelling between the gates, and upon arriving at my destination Tom lead me through the wormhole into my new home.

Now i know i said last night that i was going to move to the alliance owned 0.0 space, well i was already close to the wormhole and now that i'm safely inside i'm very glad i decided to come this way instead. Unfortunately my accounts were too far apart to bring both inside the wormhole before its gate collapsed so i only have my hauler and mining barge inside at the moment, but it seems 1 barge is enough to make 10-12 million an hour even with tech 1 strippers.

With my game time on both accounts drawing close to renewal I pull out the calculator to see how much mining i would have to do a month in this new location for me to keep both accounts running off plEX.

10 million an hour for 3 hours a day for 10 days per account, Or 1 hour a day for 30 days.

Seems viable right? I mean obviously the time will go down as my indy skills improve and i move on to bigger and better things, but for a fairly new player to the game I think getting both accounts running off plEX with neither being over 6 months old is a fairly impressive feat.

But of course saying is one thing, doing is another and we shall see how this venture goes, i'll be sure to put out updates fairly regularly as to the success or failure of this plan.

Currently for my 3 hours mining i have made 29,175,225.46 ISK in 1 retriever tech 1 strip lasers.

A slight delay

Alot has been happening lately, with my hunt for war targets becoming more and more successful as the alliance fleets grew in size, it actually was rather disappointing to see the mail announcing their surrender, though i was rather pleased to get back to my trading.

Shortly after the news was heard i decided i would train up for Gallente ships (being a Caldari pilot) and that i would do missions for the federation navy in the hopes of piloting a Navy issue Megathron and eventually a Rattlesnake.

Mission after mission passed as my mind wandered vacantly to how cool a Rattlesnake would be, and unfortunately my absent mind didn't remember to check for war targets (having been less then 24 hours after their surrender) and as i undocked i was locked and popped by a Dramiel.

Losing a frigate is no big deal, your unlikely to lose more then a few mil if one explodes on you, on the other hand you are likely to notice the incredible tracking speed of a Dramiel as it destroys your pod with 60 million in implants. And to top things off we were war decced soon after by a much larger merc alliance, seems someone has a grudge against us.

With that all said, the once wide eyed new capsuleer to the EVE universe has had his spirit crushed in a rather lame glittery explosion, now only having 2 million isk after replacing all my implants it seemed a rather gloomy future.

At least until a corp mate mentioned that he had found a worm hole in which we could escape the new war dec and live in relative safety with access to some of the best minerals in the game, it seemed like i had very little choice as i could no longer trade safely even in high sec, so with my haulers packed i started the slow move out to the low sec system where the worm hole was located. 6 jumps out my clients crashed and as it turns out all players using the internode isp had been disconnected and couldn't log back in.

With not alot else to do on a Sunday night, i discussed the idea of living in a wormhole with a much more experienced alliance member, and we came to the conclusion that it would be safer out in our alliance controlled null sec then anywhere else, so it seems i have to turn the train around and head back across the universe to the safety of hundreds of friendly pilots.

Bloodlust.

I'm not normally a pirate, but after losing a Bestower (and my pod!) in a low sec trade run i figured i would give it a shot.

8 million ISK later i had a decent enough cruiser to take out some newbies in a nearby 0.3 system.

Upon arrival at the system i immediately saw how flawed my plan was, in that every other player in the system had a good year or two on my alt.

"Well bugger" i thought, but i decided to go scout around in the hopes of finding a hauler or even a mining barge i could mess around with. Belt after belt i scoured looking for something until finally at the station i ran into a neut...

"let him hit me first" - i thought...

At least until i saw he was in a Tengu and docked instantly.

Waiting for him to dock, i was beginning to think this whole venture of mine was a massive waste of ISK and time.

When i saw him snugly in his hangar i undocked again with the intention of hauling ass back to high sec and getting on with my trading, fortunately i took the wrong gate and thought i might as well check the station in this system for something to scratch my revenge on the world itch.

To my disbelief outside the station was a Magnate attempting to open a cyno, what luck!

I clambered up next to it at a slow 460m/s, locked it down and popped it.

2010.08.17 18:24:00

Victim: Poisen Iv

Corp: Ministry of War

Alliance: Unknown

Faction: Unknown

Destroyed: Magnate

System: Saminer

Security: 0.3

Damage Taken: 82

Dropped items:

Cynosural Field Generator I

Expanded Cargohold I

As for my first solo pirating experience a figured i would find someone, attempt to attack them and get my ass handed to me, but instead i got a 2.5 million ISK Cynosural Field Generator.

At least until the station guns blew me up and i was forced to wait the 15 minute GCD in my pod while the rightful owner of the cyno generator undocked in a newb ship and looted both our wrecks before leaving on the cheery note of; [18:24:19] Poisen Iv > KANKER FAGOOT

whatever that means.

Alas i have learned from my ways (mainly to align to something before attacking outside a station) and my blood lust has been sated, at least for now, and i return to the blissful monotony of high sec trading.

Returning the Favour.

I used to be a carebear, i would mine for a few hours maybe go ratting here and there but the thought of losing a ship to a vastly more experienced player is something that didn't particularly appeal to me.

On the 5th of August our alliance was war decced.

7 hours later i lost my mining barge, to a vastly more experienced player, and it wasn't that bad at all. Of course i was still fairly carebearish at this point and waited till the hostiles disappeared from local before undocking my second mining barge and heading for the same belt to mine the same rocks..

As expected the swift return of the war targets resulted in the loss of my second barge, which lead me to think about alternate ways of making ISK.

I am a very "instant gratification" type of person, if i do something i want the result the be in my wallet upon completion, and like everyone i would like the result to be fat paycheck, so i hit up google about ways to make money and avoiding the rick rolls, account hacks and anything that would be a breach of CCP's rules, I kept seeing the same thing;

Trading.

Now the idea of putting out a bunch of buy and sell orders is not my idea of instant gratification, quite the opposite in fact, but there were heaps of people claiming it's how they got rich, so i thought i would give it a shot. In the time it took me to alt tab back into EVE i gave up on the idea realizing i would have to train up multiple trade skills to make it worth while.

So there i was, sitting in my only remaining ship (A Badger mk 2) having lost my raven and scorpion as results of the war. Then i thought I would check out the market just in case i saw something i could easily move for profit and that's where it all started, having 2 accounts meant i could move multiple cargo loads across different regions for what (to me at least) seemed like insane amounts of profit.

I know people in 0.0 with carriers doing 10/10's solo making billions a week would laugh out loud at the small time profit of a newbie in a Badger and Bestower but alas the instant gratification was there, and i was making infinitely more money then i was mining or missioning.

Unfortunately to those interested in taking up trading as a profession like i did i will not be telling you the best trade routes i know, or the easiest ways to find them as that would be crippling myself financially as well as leaving myself open to pirate attacks, though the answer is there if your willing to put the time into it.

Once you get the hang of it, there is potential for even the most newbie players to make 10's of millions of isk an hour.

Now at the start of this, i mentioned that i was a carebear in the past tense implying that i am no longer and a few of you out there are probably thinking "this is pretty carebearish there is very little risk if you trade in high sec" and yes that is true!

But the money i make trading goes into fitting all kinds of ships to "thank" the guys who got me into trading ;)

And hopefully in the next few days i'll be able to post the kill mails or tears of those i "thank" personally.