While selling some rat loot the other night I found that someone wanted to buy my Capacitor Coil for 0.01ISK. That is taking the piss I thought and went to the trouble of having a look at the buying side of the market. I noticed two things.
Firstly that there is a huge mark up between the buying and the selling and secondly, there is a wide variety of prices in the buying side. Certain commodities have an ‘agreed’ buying price and others vary wildly. John encouraged me to have a go and place a buy order with a view to making a mint.
With 3million seed capital I placed a buy order on capacitor rechargers – something that is useful on Gallente Armour tanks, I have at least 2 of them on my ships to keep the armour repairer going. My buy order is for 200 Capacitor Rechargers being bought at 6k (the highest buy order in the region). There were broker fees and other similar fun bits (taxes) but the end result was a 1.2m down payment to the brokers. The same item sells for about 18k in Essence. If my buy orders fills up then I need to sell the 200 units for more than 6k to make a profit. I figure that if I sell about 18k I’ll be doing well by tripling the investment.
Then came the crunch. After placing the order I noticed that though I had selected region wide buying, my trading skills did not allow the buy order to go further than the station I placed it in. As a result the buy order might not fill up. Glancing through the trading skills I notice that it might not hurt having a second character with another skill set.
There are simply too many areas that I want to play in!
With a trading character with some money the market is ripe for profit for a patient player. You wouldn’t ever have to fire a shot in anger to make a fortune. The market in Essence does not appear ‘mature’ by which I mean that the price difference between buy and sell orders is large enough to make big bucks. I do notice that the usual commodities have a much tighter margin (ammo) which would indicate more trading in these areas.
It will all come out in the wash as the week progresses.
Edit Well that was a disaster - I ended up with small amounts of goods spread all over the region - only a fraction of what I anticipated was actually bought - certainly not enough to set up a sell order.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Eve – First Level 2 Mission
Reading up on a game and actually playing it are two different things. I had read that running missions for a corporation improves your standing with them (reputation in WOW) that leads to better contacts, better missions and more rewards. Actually understanding this while simultaneously trying to understand everything else at the beginning took a while.
So I settled into the Federation Intelligence division simply because they had an agent nearby that was willing to take a chance on me. Since I have looked into things a bit more deeply with a slightly more experienced (haha - 3 weeks experience) view. They have a range of departments (different mission types) and have agents that handle missions from level 1-5 (the highest).
By the end of my first week I was flying a catalyst and easily doing the level 1 missions – I had even run the Worlds Collide mission successfully and my rep had climbed to the heady heights of 1.76! Each mission brought in about 200k between the loot, rewards and bounties. I was working towards a quality -19 agent that would offer me a L2 mission. I took it and flew into a pirates nest and promptly got my ship knocked about, in fact there wasn’t that much of my structure left when the warp engaged. I clearly needed a better ship.
With my 7.9million ISK hoarded and generously donated (more anon) I looked through the possibilities and how these would suit my skill mix. The answer was the Thorax. She is a Gallente gun boat with nice large drone hold and five high level slots. Someone was selling one for a nice 5.5million not too far away. That was the cheap part! I estimate fitting her out set me back another 4million.
Moving from frigates (a destroyer is really a large frigate) to cruisers entailed a whole new slew of skills as the guns and drones are now medium rather than small. The price of them is considerably more as well. A meta level 3 (1-5, 5 being Tech 2) can set you back about 0.4million. I was encouraged to buy Tesco-own-brand for rather less.
5x150mm railguns, 5 drones and with fitted out for armour tanking my Thorax went back for those pirates, and was forced away again, she just wasn’t happy with volleys of about 8/9 missiles striking her. I then started really looking into resistance. It turns out you need Hull Upgrades 3 or 4 for the active tanking gear (+50% resistance when activated) and there is a penalty for stacking resistances (to avoid you getting 100% I assume). I suspect that my ‘base’ station will have a vault with different resistance armour hardeners for the different missions. However, with the right armour fitted my beautiful Thorax was a different beast and tore the pirates apart. Tonight she’ll be dropping the railguns for blasters with antimatter. With the right armour she get up close and personal – time to do some serious DPS!
For the record. The much diminished cash reserves were replenished by 3 things. John (6 million initially, 3 million seed capital for trading), Jane of Infinite Covenant (3 million) and the level 2 missions themselves. The three bosses had bounties of 45k on each of them and the 20 odd guards that took forever to clean up had bounties of between 12k and 19k each. That means each L2 mission makes about 600k (100k reward, 100k time bonus, 300k bounties and about 200k loot). As you can see, well worth getting to the level 2 missions.
So I settled into the Federation Intelligence division simply because they had an agent nearby that was willing to take a chance on me. Since I have looked into things a bit more deeply with a slightly more experienced (haha - 3 weeks experience) view. They have a range of departments (different mission types) and have agents that handle missions from level 1-5 (the highest).
By the end of my first week I was flying a catalyst and easily doing the level 1 missions – I had even run the Worlds Collide mission successfully and my rep had climbed to the heady heights of 1.76! Each mission brought in about 200k between the loot, rewards and bounties. I was working towards a quality -19 agent that would offer me a L2 mission. I took it and flew into a pirates nest and promptly got my ship knocked about, in fact there wasn’t that much of my structure left when the warp engaged. I clearly needed a better ship.
With my 7.9million ISK hoarded and generously donated (more anon) I looked through the possibilities and how these would suit my skill mix. The answer was the Thorax. She is a Gallente gun boat with nice large drone hold and five high level slots. Someone was selling one for a nice 5.5million not too far away. That was the cheap part! I estimate fitting her out set me back another 4million.
Moving from frigates (a destroyer is really a large frigate) to cruisers entailed a whole new slew of skills as the guns and drones are now medium rather than small. The price of them is considerably more as well. A meta level 3 (1-5, 5 being Tech 2) can set you back about 0.4million. I was encouraged to buy Tesco-own-brand for rather less.
5x150mm railguns, 5 drones and with fitted out for armour tanking my Thorax went back for those pirates, and was forced away again, she just wasn’t happy with volleys of about 8/9 missiles striking her. I then started really looking into resistance. It turns out you need Hull Upgrades 3 or 4 for the active tanking gear (+50% resistance when activated) and there is a penalty for stacking resistances (to avoid you getting 100% I assume). I suspect that my ‘base’ station will have a vault with different resistance armour hardeners for the different missions. However, with the right armour fitted my beautiful Thorax was a different beast and tore the pirates apart. Tonight she’ll be dropping the railguns for blasters with antimatter. With the right armour she get up close and personal – time to do some serious DPS!
For the record. The much diminished cash reserves were replenished by 3 things. John (6 million initially, 3 million seed capital for trading), Jane of Infinite Covenant (3 million) and the level 2 missions themselves. The three bosses had bounties of 45k on each of them and the 20 odd guards that took forever to clean up had bounties of between 12k and 19k each. That means each L2 mission makes about 600k (100k reward, 100k time bonus, 300k bounties and about 200k loot). As you can see, well worth getting to the level 2 missions.
WOW – A Burn-out Break
Last week I informed the raid leaders that I would be taking a 2-week break from raiding. The second time in WOW that I have taken a break, the first time was when Dark Horizons disbanded. I have dipped in a few times to run Eirebull through instances and to use her transmute cooldown, she got her first transmute proc when 1 primal earth turned into 4 primal water! 1 of these waters subsequently turned into 2 air so the primal bank is looking quite healthy at the moment (though not so healthy as after a day of dailies).
The guild had got Vashj down for the first time Sunday 11th May, a breakthrough for the guild and repeated the exercise last night. She has gone down twice now and I haven’t taken part in either of them. Funny, as soon as the breakthrough happened I burnt out. The raid last Monday was disheartening, Loctite was in foul form and refuses to consider that the new guildies might not get concepts the first time. There is a lack of communication in fwehealers and without Nessus coordinating the pallies things were a bit confused.
What really hurts is the lack of understanding for the new guys.
Leadership qualities I look for in a raid lead
Demanding yet understanding
Driven yet flexible
Fair and clear
Committed
one bit of good news. Nexxus promoted Revenbo to officer, I think this good for the guild, he has an excellent manner with people and ticks all the boxes above.
The guild had got Vashj down for the first time Sunday 11th May, a breakthrough for the guild and repeated the exercise last night. She has gone down twice now and I haven’t taken part in either of them. Funny, as soon as the breakthrough happened I burnt out. The raid last Monday was disheartening, Loctite was in foul form and refuses to consider that the new guildies might not get concepts the first time. There is a lack of communication in fwehealers and without Nessus coordinating the pallies things were a bit confused.
What really hurts is the lack of understanding for the new guys.
Leadership qualities I look for in a raid lead
Demanding yet understanding
Driven yet flexible
Fair and clear
Committed
one bit of good news. Nexxus promoted Revenbo to officer, I think this good for the guild, he has an excellent manner with people and ticks all the boxes above.
Eve – Setting goals after three weeks.
Last week I paid up for Eve Online. The first time I have continued past a trial account. The creators said they wanted to make a sandpit, and I can say that they have. For a while I have been quite uncertain about what to do. To begin with the goals are quite straight forwards, get into a bigger and better ship. As these goals are achieved and your assets log begins to look like you are leaving old ships by the edge of the road all over the constellation you need something else to motivate you.
I had read about Eve University so on Sunday, I looked them up. Read their ‘How to Apply’ using the in-game browser, check. Found their local office (Duripant), check. Wrote a nice piece on why I should be selected, check. Opened their recruitment channel and there, in the header, RECRUITMENT CLOSED. They are at war and don’t recruit during wars. This morning I got an evemail confirming this. There is no ETA for how long the war is going to last.
Back to browsing the recruitment channel. I notice that Goonfleet has an obnoxious recruiter. One of the other recruiters [BSA] is backchatting so I open a window with the [BSA].
Infinite Covenant was a Fountain Dwelling Corporation until they were kicked out by [BOB]. They avow to be Anti-Pirate and friendly. Perfect for me. Unfortunately they also want 3million skill points. I have 1m having started with about 900k. It is going to take a while… So they are happy to have me in their recruitment channel until I get to the 3m. They have a plan of going back out into 0,0 space as they kept telling me what I wouldn’t be able to do.
So 1 weekend down and I haven’t yet joined a corporation. If you are starting out like me I would advise the following. In your bio (or handy bit of paper) write down a list of your priorities and positions, my would look like this
Fun, not too hardcore
Missioning (for the money)
Anti-pirate (and hunting pirate scum)
Moving out into low-sec space
Moving out into 0,0 space
Taking part in the drama of alliance warfare
Trade
Invention
Mining
This allows people to see what you are about and gives you a focus when pursuing your goals.
Quick note: Character name – corporation [alliance].
[BSA] Black Star Alliance
[BOB] Band of Brothers
I had read about Eve University so on Sunday, I looked them up. Read their ‘How to Apply’ using the in-game browser, check. Found their local office (Duripant), check. Wrote a nice piece on why I should be selected, check. Opened their recruitment channel and there, in the header, RECRUITMENT CLOSED. They are at war and don’t recruit during wars. This morning I got an evemail confirming this. There is no ETA for how long the war is going to last.
Back to browsing the recruitment channel. I notice that Goonfleet has an obnoxious recruiter. One of the other recruiters [BSA] is backchatting so I open a window with the [BSA].
Infinite Covenant was a Fountain Dwelling Corporation until they were kicked out by [BOB]. They avow to be Anti-Pirate and friendly. Perfect for me. Unfortunately they also want 3million skill points. I have 1m having started with about 900k. It is going to take a while… So they are happy to have me in their recruitment channel until I get to the 3m. They have a plan of going back out into 0,0 space as they kept telling me what I wouldn’t be able to do.
So 1 weekend down and I haven’t yet joined a corporation. If you are starting out like me I would advise the following. In your bio (or handy bit of paper) write down a list of your priorities and positions, my would look like this
Fun, not too hardcore
Missioning (for the money)
Anti-pirate (and hunting pirate scum)
Moving out into low-sec space
Moving out into 0,0 space
Taking part in the drama of alliance warfare
Trade
Invention
Mining
This allows people to see what you are about and gives you a focus when pursuing your goals.
Quick note: Character name – corporation [alliance].
[BSA] Black Star Alliance
[BOB] Band of Brothers
Friday, May 9, 2008
Eve Online - Slayfoe’s Bull
I have twice before opened a trial account in Eve Online (EO) and both times I have been fascinated by the depth of the game, the visuals, the excitement of a single server where players form power groups and exert real control.
So third time lucky! As both Slayfoe and Eirebull are now taken (attempts one and two) I went with Slayfoe’s Bull. You are very helpfully allowed to take two names in EO. I tinkered with a Minmater and as his first mission was World’s Collide (more anon) he met a very quick fate. So, as in the previous two tries, I rolled a Gallente. French, democratic, good looking ships, what more can a player look for?
The character generation has been upgraded since I last played. This time I chose to be a true Gallente Military Specialist with Special Forces training. Your insurance company no longer gives you initial training but rather you start in a deadspace complex and get right into the fray – damn pirate scum. The initial tutorial is quick and all the ones that follow are ‘optional’ – read them if you want a fighting chance. Your first agent gives a contact in the next system which has a very nice series of 10 missions. The rewards for these included an Atron that I fitted out as a close range blaster with a drone (this resulted in me running away a lot as I got blasted to bits regularly) and some skill books.
Day two
A quick browse through the forums pointed me towards the Tristan. At first the amount of information thrown at you is overwhelming and it takes a while to learn which traits are important. In WOW terms, the armour and hit points of the Tristan has twice the stats of the Atron as well as more slots for equipment.
There are three level of slots that can be equipped. These are high, medium and low. The high slots are used for guns, missile launchers, miners, nosferatus and other goodies. The medium slots seem to be about shield and capacitor boosters and the low slots appear to be about armour repairers and other specialist equipment. The high slots are specialised into either turret (guns) or launcher (read missile) slots. My character didn’t know how to use missiles so a quick trip was needed to a local university for the skills package.
So at the end of 2 evenings devoted to EO I am in a the best frigate money can buy for a beginner. Last night I even took out a Caldari destroyer, the antics of their navy in Gallente space are worrying but their midshipman insignia find plenty of buyers!
So third time lucky! As both Slayfoe and Eirebull are now taken (attempts one and two) I went with Slayfoe’s Bull. You are very helpfully allowed to take two names in EO. I tinkered with a Minmater and as his first mission was World’s Collide (more anon) he met a very quick fate. So, as in the previous two tries, I rolled a Gallente. French, democratic, good looking ships, what more can a player look for?
The character generation has been upgraded since I last played. This time I chose to be a true Gallente Military Specialist with Special Forces training. Your insurance company no longer gives you initial training but rather you start in a deadspace complex and get right into the fray – damn pirate scum. The initial tutorial is quick and all the ones that follow are ‘optional’ – read them if you want a fighting chance. Your first agent gives a contact in the next system which has a very nice series of 10 missions. The rewards for these included an Atron that I fitted out as a close range blaster with a drone (this resulted in me running away a lot as I got blasted to bits regularly) and some skill books.
Day two
A quick browse through the forums pointed me towards the Tristan. At first the amount of information thrown at you is overwhelming and it takes a while to learn which traits are important. In WOW terms, the armour and hit points of the Tristan has twice the stats of the Atron as well as more slots for equipment.
There are three level of slots that can be equipped. These are high, medium and low. The high slots are used for guns, missile launchers, miners, nosferatus and other goodies. The medium slots seem to be about shield and capacitor boosters and the low slots appear to be about armour repairers and other specialist equipment. The high slots are specialised into either turret (guns) or launcher (read missile) slots. My character didn’t know how to use missiles so a quick trip was needed to a local university for the skills package.
So at the end of 2 evenings devoted to EO I am in a the best frigate money can buy for a beginner. Last night I even took out a Caldari destroyer, the antics of their navy in Gallente space are worrying but their midshipman insignia find plenty of buyers!
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Starfire crits for 7490!
Fearsome War Engine raids Serpentshrine Cavern on Wednesday evenings. At this stage of the year we are farming it, taking down the bosses that we need to and leaving those that we don’t need anymore. As a casual guild we are quite far behind on the PVE progression ladder, we 25-man raid three times a week when all the stars and planets align on a blue moon. Sometimes a blue moon is hard to find and nothing happens.
The goal of the raiding team at the moment is to take down Vashj. She is proving to be quite a difficult cookie and since the attunement requirements for Mount Hyjal and Black Temple have been lifted we have been sneaking in there for a look. I must say that Mount Hyjal is a whole load of fun – the mobs come to you rather than the other way round!
Slayfoe’s part in the raiding team is currently to give one group a nice fat 5% spell crit bonus. Naturally this means that 1 group, the raid leader, ends up with all the goodies (Shadowpriest mana-battery, shammy bloodlust goodness and a chicken). Naturally this group die all the time to aggro problems.
But as part of the everquest of perfection and thanks to the badges of justice, damage is being tweaked all the time, upwards. Slayfoe finally got the Idol of the Unseen Moon (Moonfire can proc additional damage for 10? Seconds) and the badge bracers enchanted with +15dmg. Unbuffed Slayfoe has just over 1100 spell damage.
Trinkets used are the Icon of the Silver Crescent (base spell damage + click for additional dmg) and Sextant of Unstable Currents (base spell crit + proc of additional spell damage). Combined with the Idol of the Unseen Moon the following can happen.
First Sextant of Unstable Currents procs (+190 for 15secs)
then Idol of the Unseen Moon procs(+140 for 10secs)
Activate Icon of the Silver Crescent (+155 for 20secs)
Pray that the next Starfire crits (double damage) in the next 2 GCD.
Last night these all added up to a new max damage Starfire crit of 7490. This is the first time the 7k barrier had been broken and obviously won’t happen too often with the amount of procs that must come of in order. Thankfully – Nagar is the highest DPSer in the guild and he spends a LOT of time on the ground waiting for Korut to get lucky with the jumper cables.
The goal of the raiding team at the moment is to take down Vashj. She is proving to be quite a difficult cookie and since the attunement requirements for Mount Hyjal and Black Temple have been lifted we have been sneaking in there for a look. I must say that Mount Hyjal is a whole load of fun – the mobs come to you rather than the other way round!
Slayfoe’s part in the raiding team is currently to give one group a nice fat 5% spell crit bonus. Naturally this means that 1 group, the raid leader, ends up with all the goodies (Shadowpriest mana-battery, shammy bloodlust goodness and a chicken). Naturally this group die all the time to aggro problems.
But as part of the everquest of perfection and thanks to the badges of justice, damage is being tweaked all the time, upwards. Slayfoe finally got the Idol of the Unseen Moon (Moonfire can proc additional damage for 10? Seconds) and the badge bracers enchanted with +15dmg. Unbuffed Slayfoe has just over 1100 spell damage.
Trinkets used are the Icon of the Silver Crescent (base spell damage + click for additional dmg) and Sextant of Unstable Currents (base spell crit + proc of additional spell damage). Combined with the Idol of the Unseen Moon the following can happen.
First Sextant of Unstable Currents procs (+190 for 15secs)
then Idol of the Unseen Moon procs(+140 for 10secs)
Activate Icon of the Silver Crescent (+155 for 20secs)
Pray that the next Starfire crits (double damage) in the next 2 GCD.
Last night these all added up to a new max damage Starfire crit of 7490. This is the first time the 7k barrier had been broken and obviously won’t happen too often with the amount of procs that must come of in order. Thankfully – Nagar is the highest DPSer in the guild and he spends a LOT of time on the ground waiting for Korut to get lucky with the jumper cables.
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