This is the third post in my series Casual Alpha’s Guide to EVE Online. You will see that I am now linking to a nifty new index page that you can access from the sidebar. The other thing you might notice is that this isn’t a Saturday feature. I will be doing some EVE posts during the week when I have something else in mind for Saturday, because I know not everyone wants to read about this one game all the time. Some of these extra posts won’t be as long or as detailed, but I will still be doing one for every two hours I actively play.
OK, enough housekeeping, let’s get to talking about the game.
When I last left off, I was docked in a station with a few hundred thousand ISK in my wallet and a beginner’s mining ship. This week I started running some industry missions for the career agent so that I could learn more aspects of the game, generate some income, and keep my skill training queue in motion. I am finding the learning curve is treating me well so far and not living up to the rumours. The first mining mission was neither hard to figure out nor was it a paint-by-numbers experience like the tutorial.
I had a little hiccup when my first mining ship, a Venture class ore miner, was told it did not have enough cargo capacity to complete the mission. I had to do a Google search to find out that this warning message was only considering the space available for items, and that being a specialized mining ship, my Venture had more than enough capacity specifically dedicated to hauling ore. Without the EVE forums just a few clicks away, I would not have been able to play this phase of the game according to the rules as I understood them. Fortunately, those who play this game have the ear of the demons who come when you call their name: the EVE community seems very responsive to anyone who is willing to engage with it. While the game may be very deep indeed, most questions one has can be answered in the forums if not the many Wikis, subreddits, etc. Simply by mentioning the game in my tweet on December 3, not having posted it anywhere in particular, I got a small spike in readership of this blog. I haven’t even reached out by posting on the forums yet, and already I know the community is there. That is really neat.
Anyway, it took me a while to figure out that the feldspar I mined in my first career agent task was supposed to be reprocessed into tritanum for my second task. I went back out to the asteroids looking for the finished product when all I had to do was refine the stuff I was already asked to do in the previous mission, which I could do while sitting in the station. Doing these little missions require a little bit more effort than the tutorial, but it’s still all about learning the basics. Eventually, though, I did get to the point where the industry career agent is offering me a mission in dangerous space. This is when I decided I needed to outfit the frigate hull I bought last week when thinking about pursuing the military agent. While I doubt the hostile NPC drones will actually present an existential threat to any beginner ship, I wanted to play with the idea of putting together the best ship I can with my small budget, even if it is a tad unnessecary. I ended up with a Blast class frigate, which I renamed Genesis because I enjoy naming ships rather than just having it designated by owner and class. I think it’s how the Star Trek fan inside of me imagines a science fiction character talking about his ship, rather than how in real life I refer to my automobile by make rather than by a name.
As I am outfitting the ship it occurs to me that I can buy a few components to make it pack a little punch and be tougher than a child’s birthday party piñata. Not by much, being my first ship, but I figured I should make an effort. So I bought some upgrades for the Genesis which happened to be eight jumps away. I quickly figured out what this actually means: I have to actually go to the station where the part is to pick it up. This involved going out to the edge of “high sec” space, which worried me a little bit considering I hadn’t even got the skills and the ship upgrades I wanted to. The ones that I hope at least buy me a few additional seconds against beginner-level NPCs and other new players who aren’t well equipped for griefing guys like me. I was a little bit worried when I noticed the security rating on the system where I had to go for my new part. As it turns out, going from systems where the security rating is 1.0 (the highest) down to 0.5 is still considered “high security” space. I was relieved to know that I wasn’t taking as big a risk as I thought I was when I saw that security rating dropping. While high security is no guarantee that someone won’t try and blow up my ship for the lulz, it is at least comforting to know that the in-game police force will come harass them if they do.
And lastly, I find that I am cheating on my time limit, a little bit. One of the restrictions of being on a free account is that I can only have my character training three skills at one time, and the third skill must be scheduled to start within 24 hours. This means I could have been wasting oodles of training time (which increments in real-world time, not in-game time) if I didn’t go in and queue up more skills (which can be prerequisites for using cool new ships and components). So I’ve popped on for a couple minutes at a time each day outside my play time to keep the queue running and claim my Youil Festival gift crates. I expect this will calm down once my skills are up to the point where the next level is 7+ days away so I can leave it alone on any day when I am not actively playing. All of this to say, I am quite a fan of the balance CCP has achieved in giving me enough game for free that I want to check back in almost every day, but not too much for me to fail to see the value in subscribing and not necessarily drawing me in for huge amounts of time. I’ve got a brand new copy of Civ 6 sitting in my Steam inventory for when I am ready to risk having a video game attempt to eat my soul. I am at least saving my delve into that rabbit hole for an evening when I don’t have to work the next day.
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