After a crazy couple of days in meatspace I got to spend some quality time in EVE Online last night. No scandal. No son of scandal. Or any scandal you can think of. No people arguing about the scandals. And, as the Congress critters in the U.S. would say, people revising and extending their remarks.
I just wanted to get away from everything. Some people do so by letting their cats kill everything. Others by stocking a market and then tackling all the things. Me, I just like flying around. So after updating the queue on my new pilot, I turned to the serious business of making bookmarks.
Making bookmarks is sort of like EVE in general. Long periods of boredom punctuated by short periods of excitement. Just what the doctor ordered. I'd already made my initial set of bookmarks for the entry system into low sec. Time to probe deeper and really immerse myself.
I've written about this before but some people have asked questions about how I do this. First, the ship. I usually use a micro warp drive fit Cheetah with a top speed of 3.3km/second. I know that I can finish a lot faster if I use an interceptor, but making bookmarks isn't just about making bookmarks. Among my personal rules for EVE, one of the most important is: if you're only doing one thing at a time, you're doing it wrong. So while I'm making bookmarks I'm also collecting intelligence about the neighborhood I'm setting up in. Getting to know the neighborhood can give a player a home-field advantage if done correctly.
Next is what bookmarks do I create. My first pass is setting up insta-undocks so I can get away from ships trying to camp me in a station, followed by observation bookmarks of the stations and of the stargates. After that, I do a lot of exploring and make another set based on the locations of the anomalies I find. If I'm going to really live in a system and mine I also will make bookmarks at the asteroid belts I can use to bounce my Procurer from one end of a belt to another. If I live in a system long enough, I have a lot of bookmarks. And good luck catching me, especially since I prefer cloaky ships. I'm really excited about that new SoE cruiser even if I do have to wait until next summer to fly it correctly.
Did I forget to mention how wide an area I bookmark? I'll bookmark my home constellation plus the adjacent constellations. In the case of my current area of operations that's 4 constellations with around 24 systems. A lot of bookmarks and a lot of exploring. But EVE is all about trying to get every advantage possible. And since I'm not an expert PvPer, I work hard at avoiding conflict. Besides, creating bookmarks gives me a good excuse to just fly around, relax and enjoy the scenery.
How often do you get requests from people that want to fly with you?
ReplyDeleteDude, I salute you. When I bookmarked my new home in stain I only did four systems. I feel like such a noob. *LOL*
ReplyDeleteWell, you brave wormhole PvP mercenary types who like fighting probably don't need as many as us poor inoffensive carebears :)
DeleteDon't minimize your own effort. Being able to make a safe get-away at the drop of the hat is as engaging of a PVP activity as what those "mercenary types" do. It just so happens that your PVP involves making clean escapes!
ReplyDeleteOh.. just so long as it doesn't involve stabs... stabs suck!
DeleteMy comment to Mabrick was just to tease him. A couple of years ago we were both high sec carebears, but we both saw the changes that CCP were making to EVE and decided to do something about it. I headed into low sec while Mabrick headed into w-space, which lead to a mercenary life and now null.
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