Update

Well, I kinda let this sit on the backburner. No hits, so I didn’t see much point! Now that I am on the blogroll, I will make a more concerted effort.

I have been keeping my skills updated. Trained Mass Production to IV so I could get more stuff into the oven, and managed to snag a researched Badger MkII BPO for UNDER market price of an NPC sseded BPO!

Right now I am working on Drone V so I can protect myself against the casual belt ratter who wants to try his luck. Next up are some more drone support skills and probably some armor tanking skills. Then Mining Barge V and Astrogeology V.

I will also be honest, I have not been able to log in as much as I would like. I still play WoW and am one of the guild leaders of the top Alliance raiding guild on my server, so my time is stretched thin. 3.1 recently came out, and the raiding schedule has been murder.

However, herein lies one of the strengths of EVE… I really don’t have to log in that much to keep my skills going. Especially with the skill queue. So, I look forward to when I have more time which should be within the next couple of weeks.

Retriever

Well, I am finally in my Retriever and settled in a .5 system. I need to grab BPO’s from the area, but I am only a few jumps from a regional hub. Despite being in a dead-end system, there are still about 50 day waits for ME research.

Working on Mining Upgrades IV now, and will polish up Gallente Industrial IV later in the week. I need this obviously so I can jetcan mine with a GSC so I don’t get flipped. Cannot do that right now with just my Retriever.

Been mining a lot of Golden Omber and Massive Scordite. There is also a lot of Pyroxeres in the system, so Mexallon won’t be an issue. I will still need to buy Zyrdrine, which is unfortune but unavoidable until I get into a 0.0 alliance.

More training

Well, I took Katzukov out into the belts for the first time. While I have almost a billion in ISK, I didn’t want to drop 2 mil a pop on Miner II’s that I will not be using once I get into a barge… so I just bought some Meta 4 Miner I’s.

Getting out there, I realized just how much training I have to do to get my character really usuable. I have to train Anchoring obviously… by some stroke of really bad luck the system my Corp is based in is only 3 jumps from Jita. I have been suicided TWICE… while in a Navitas! What the hell was I going to have in the damn thing that was worth two battlecruisers?

Anyway, Astrogeology IV is finishing up tonight, then its onto Mining Barge I-IV. Then Refining to IV, then Scordite Processing to IV… then probably Veldspar Processing IV. Got lucky the other night and found a TON of Massive Scordite roids in a belt… mined them dry. 90,000m3 of massive Scordite in my corporate hangar right now… not gonna refine it until I get my processing skills up. For some reason, I am a Gallente pilot in a Caldari station… but there is no penalty to my refine beyond the 5% tax. So I really am not going to bother with working on standings. That would require me to shift to combat at least partially, and I don’t want to do that.

Long term plans:

I plan on starting work on my Industrial/Invention skills once I get in a Retriever (Whatever the T3 mining barge is… I know its Procuror, Retriever, Covetor… I just don’t remember what order they go in is). Probably not much right now, just enough to get a feel for the way things work.

I need to find a 0.0 alliance I think. I love the industrial side of things so far, and really wanna get out into 0.0 and make my mark on the EVE world.

Any takers? Latrange?

A Fortunate Death; Chapter One

“Ohhhh… why must the Amarr be so cruel… the Minmatar be so rude… the Caldari be so focused on money… why can’t they be lovers…”

Katzukov rolled his eyes. This song had been on the SystemNet at least five times in the time he had been out. Some new pop song from song from some young band from some god-forsaken planet in some depressingly boring system. He didn’t care how depressingly boring the place was… it was no excuse for this drivel.

Katzukov turned the Net off and went back to his data pad. “Learning and You: An Idiots Guide to Remembering Minituae Vol. IV” 

“Hmmph. Thank god this is almost over with…” Katzukov muttered to no one in particular and propped his feet up on a console.  Actually no one at all, he was alone on the command deck. Katzukovs mind went to Volume V of the book… sitting in a crate in his cabin back on station. That one was going to take him WEEKS to get through… and he shuddered. “Ain’t worth it… nope.”

A flashing yellow indicator on the panel in front of him indicated that the asteroid in front of them was about to be depleted. He hit a button with the heel of his boot… and the strip miners switched to a fresh asteroid in the belt. Katzukov yawned and looked at the cargo indicator… not even half full. At least ejecting a container took a few minutes out of the mind-numbing tedium.

“Frigate to Titan I… hah! I got you now!” The voice blared in his ear. He forgot to turn the volume down a bit on his fleet comms. Katzukov looked up from the data pad to another console on the command deck. A screen that should have been displaying ore purity levels was displaying the 3D grid of Titans & Cruisers… a horribly simplistic strategy game.

“Well, that only took you twenty minutes. Give me a moment to think about my next move.” Katzukov yawned again and went back to his book. He was playing against his opposite on the hauler a few kilometers to starboard. He was bored as well, waiting for a can to jet so that he could take it back to the station to be reprocessed. The man was not good company… because he was an idiot. Was podded a few to many times without having an updated clone. The booze didn’t help either.

More time passed. And at last the final page of the wretched book was finished. With a toss, he sighed and grabbed the next pad out of his satchel. “Basic Industry: Making Shinies Vol. 1″. They really had to stop letting people rename these books.

He had hardly started to read the mercifully short primer when a red indicator went off on the primary HUD. He was being targeted. “Goddammit Yuri, that isn’t funny…” Katzukov swung the camera drones around to view the hauler. The pan only revealed debris… and two red highlighted reticles indicating pirates.

Fear passed in and out of Katzukovs mind. His ship was tough, and these were only a pair of light frigates. But still, they were a threat… especially if they took the hauler out so quickly. His mind went to Yuri… probably waking up now in a hand-me-down clone even dumber then before. A smile crossed his face at the thought.

By this time, alarms were going off over the ship and the ships captain came running onto the command deck half-dressed. Luckily he was wearing the bottom half of his clothes… the captain had a habit of bringing lady friends for long operations such as these. “What the hell did you do?” He blurted.

“What did I do? A pair of Angels just warped in and blew Yuri up! I am aligning us for warp now… but it will take a bit. We are in a barge not a cruiser.”

The captain glanced at the threat panel. “Bah, just a pair of frigates. Send the drones to fight them off.”

Katzukov shrugged and opened the Drone Interface. Acolyte II’s… 5 of them… LAUNCH. While Katzukov was sure the drones would make short work of the frigates… he kept the ship aligned.

The pirates were clearly not prepared for a fight. They were expecting two unarmed ships… and found one with teeth. Small teeth… but sharp. The Acolytes AI quickly turned the frigates into chunks of scrap metal with their crews frozen corpses drifting into the belt.

“Hmmph. Let me guess… Yuri didn’t have an updated clone again” Captain Suvorov was rubbing his temples. He was probably going to shoot Yuri when we got back… this was going to cost the corporation millions.

Katzukov checked a status display to make sure… and broke out with a smile. “Oh jeeze… not only did he not have a clone… but his backup won’t even be able to interface with another hauler for at least a week.”

“Goddamn him!” Suvorov swore and threw the nearest object against the bulkhead. It was Katzukovs Industrial Datapad.

“Hey… careful! Those are expensive!” Katzukov ran over and checked on his datapad. 10,000 ISK… luckily it was not broken.

“Alright… fine. Align us to the station and take us back. I guess this operation is ending early.”

Katzukov shrugged and aligned to the station. He barely noticed the flashing mail icon on his personal pad. Probably another offer from some Amarrian prince who needs to move a few billion ISK and needs his help…

A few minutes later they were back at the station. As they were waiting for the docking tugs, Katzukov grabbed his personal pad and opened the message…

To: Katzukov Yimenshinko

From: Shinseki and Co. Legal Conglomerate

    Mr. Yimenshinko, we regret to inform you that your great-uncle Mithendadon has perished beyond the range of a cloning facility in null space. Mithendadon had no will, and you have been determined to be his closest living relative. The contents of his bank accounts and assets have been tranfered to your personal inventory. Again, we are sorry for your loss.

G. Shinseki

“Ooo… free money.” Katzukov thumbed over to his wallet expecting to find a few thousand ISK more. Perhaps enough for new quarters…

Wallet: 750,000,000 ISK

Katzukov started coughing. That number was almost too large to fathom.

“I feel faint…” Darkness enveloped him as he fell to the deck.

Where I am so far

I started Katzukov two weeks or so ago. My old character had a few billion ISK in assets in 0.0 (I got some lucky faction drops)… but the alliance I was a part of was pushed out of 0.0 apparently (IAC). So, I have around half a billion in liquid assets and a few hundred million more in ships and modules on the character. This is more than enough to get a new character set up.

I naturally started with learning skills. I have Learning to IV, all the basic attribute skills to IV, and the advanced MEM and INT skills to IV. As I am just training Mining and industrial skills right now, I do not see the point of training PERC/WIL/CHA attributes at the moment.

Once I got the learning skills out of the way, I trained Science IV and Cybernetics III so I could plug +3 plants into my head. This lets me train the industrial and mining skills fairly quickly (1600 SP/hr). I have heard of people getting 2500 SP/hr… and I frankly have no idea how they manage to do it. Does 4 more attribute points make that big of a difference? If so, it may be worthwhile to train my primary stat skills both to V… but I recall an article saying it takes YEARS to make up the time.

Anyway, with my plants in my head I started training the core skills for my profession. First was Mining V, then Industry V… then I forgot I actually needed to fly ships to fly and I trained Gallente Frigate to IV and Spaceship Command to IV. Right now, I am training Astrogeology to IV so I can fly barges.

The immediate goal right now is obviously to run T2 strips on a Retriever. I will likely have to train some cap skills to be able to run it constantly. But that is at least a week in the future.

Introduction

My name is Evan. I have been playing EVE Online off and on since release… always as a PVP/mission runner. I have spent time in 0.0 pewing away at the 0.0 rats (1.25m is awfully nice for 2 minutes work). However, I always leave after a few months or so. I have yet to get a character above 10m SP.

This is going to change. I have decided to completely reroll a new character… and be an industrialist. I am going to pew rocks instead of players and build the ships I used to blow up.

This EVE blog will be both in character and out of character (the transitions will be noted of course). One, this will be a creative outlet. And two… this will hopefully serve as a guide to future players so they do not make the mistakes I will certainly make.