Five Is A Magic Number

The DDoS attacks haven't kept me from playing Eve Online because by the time I get home from work they are over.  Now if real life will just cooperate a little bit I can get some play time in.  My new goal actually requires me to play the game.

What's my new goal?  To get some nice shiny faction ships by turning in Angel Cartel tags.  But that actually requires running missions and getting my standings up with the Republic Parliament.  The only problem is that I started off with no faction with the Republic Parliament.  At all.  And I really didn't feel like running level 1 or level 2 missions.  I had just done that with Wandering Rose to get her enough standings to get perfect refining at some stations in Ammatar space.

Then I looked at my faction standings and smiled.  My standings with the Minmatar Republic were 4.8.  A couple of storyline missions and I'd hit the magic number of 5.  Why is 5 a magic number?  Before the latest agent changes, all 5 meant was that you had access to all level 3 mission and R&D agents and the worst of the level 4 agents.  Now, 5 means access to all level 4 mission and R&D agents.

Now, getting a storyline missions means doing 16 regular missions.  Since I like flying around, I figured level 3 missions were just the thing to do.  I figured doing courier missions that required no more than 3 jumps was faster than doing combat or mining missions.  So for two weekends I ran courier missions.  I think it turned out to be around 45 because I had already done some level 3 missions a long time ago that counted toward my total.

With more opportunities comes more work.  My current path collecting datacores is 89 jumps.  I now have access to closer agents, which will make life easier.  Of course, I have to do the work of signing up with new agents and dropping the old ones, but that should just be an afternoon's work.  And since I have access to all of those level 4 agents, I might have to break down and purchase a Noctis to do all the salvaging.  Part of the reasons for doing the level 4 missions is to get those precious tags after all.  If I am going to loot them, I might as well get some salvage at the same time.

Getting standings up to 5 with one of the major factions (Minmatar, Amar, Gallente and Caldari) opens a lot of possibilities.  Now I just need to figure out how to really take advantage of what I've worked for.  Choices, choices and more choices.  Just another day in the sandbox we call Eve Online.