Last night I worked late and instead of just writing a blog post when I got home I jumped into my Prowler, turned on Eve Radio and started doing distribution missions. I have to say that doing missions is a lot more fun in low sec than in high sec. I tried doing distribution missions again in high sec last weekend and I was bored. Multi-boxing just kept my hands busy.
In low sec I only can run one pilot at a time, but I find that I'm a lot more interested in my surroundings. The real possibility of losing a ship keeps one's mind focused pretty well. The whole process of checking local, seeing if any nasty pirates are in system and having to make decisions on whether to jump straight to a station or to one of my observation bookmarks to check out the situation keeps things interesting. Did I mention that I'm nervous every time I undock because the stations don't have windows? Oh, and every so often I see NPC pirates at the gates, but since I don't fly ships with weapons mounted in low sec I just cloak up and fly away. But the wrecks of those NPCs do make the overview more colorful and dead Angel Cartel ships always brightens my day.
Is the risk worth it? I don't know about mining, but distribution missions definitely are, especially in a blockade runner. I have a set of bookmarks over a large area, although I need to bookmark a few more systems because I didn't figure missions could take me into another region. I don't know if making all the bookmarks was really necessary, but I feel a lot better having them.
I should add that I am not doing distribution missions for the isk or the loyalty points, although the payouts are much better in low sec than in high. I want to have some stations in low sec where I have perfect refining. Sure, for the corporation I am currently running missions for I could do the standings grind in high sec, but low sec is just more fun. One of these days I will need to learn how to blitz combat missions, but until then distribution missions are what I do to grind standings.
So I have a ton of systems bookmarked, I'm hopefully two weekends away from having standings for perfect refining in some of the local stations and I have a NAP with a 300-man alliance. Looks like I'm moving to low sec, doesn't it? I'm still not sure about that, but I do plan on spending a lot more time there just to see what that part of the game is like.
Combat missions in low sec are fun. Just don't use a ship that's too pimped out and don't mission when there are pirates in local. Also, keep on your scanner looking for combat probes and get away from the warp-in when you enter each pocket. Scouting with an alt when you get missions in another low sec system is also a good idea.
ReplyDeleteOnce you get good at blitzing and know which missions to take or turn down, the longest one (The Blockade in my case) don't take more than about 15min to complete. Some take less than one minute. Eve-survival has blitzing instructions for most missions. Good luck!
I've recently been experimenting with running exploration sites in low-sec with my arbitrator. I have to agree that the added awareness of your surroundings (and the general lack of competition for sites) makes things a lot more fun. I'm considering moving some other assets out as well.
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