Deflating The Balloon

My experiment looking into the effect of the Odyessy expansion into the way I play EVE Online ended at downtime on Tuesday.  I just have to go through the statistics gathered over the last 10 weeks plus my notes and blog posts and write the post.

I think the end is part of the reason I'm feeling a bit blah when I log in now.  Having a purpose when playing EVE is definitely a factor in having fun.  Over the past month I couldn't even concentrate on another game because I had things I wanted to do in EVE.  I'd estimate that before the experiment I played 10-15 hours a week and over the last 10 weeks I averaged 15-20 hours.

One thing I realized is that a more mercantile low sec lifestyle means not shutting down activities in high sec.  Two examples spring to mind.  One is that while I can slowly sell all the liquid oxygen I care to mine in Molden Heath (which admittedly isn't all that much) heavy water just doesn't sell.  I need to go to the high sec trade hubs for that.  The second is datacore farming.  I didn't use a level 4 agent because he is based in Amo, a .5 system in Metropolis.  That's about to change.  I also have a couple of level 2 agents in Eram I might send my alts to visit now that the artificial restrictions I placed on myself are lifted.  My little network of low sec research agents is nice, but they don't offer everything I need.

So now I have a new task: weaving high sec and low sec together into a sustainable lifestyle.  I still have the core low-sec activities of mining, hacking, planetary interaction and courier missions that I think are crazy to do in high sec.  But I've found a couple of holes in the routine that I think high sec can fill.  So that's my next goal I'll work on over the next few months.  Besides, the whole high sec/low sec/null sec divide is such a theme park concept.  Time to think like I'm actually playing in a sandbox.