What I Did In EVE In January

At the beginning of the COVID lockdowns in 2020 I was a bit disenchanted with EVE. After a huge DDoS attack that lasted for days, I wound up playing a lot more Final Fantasy XIV and a lot less EVE. Yes, the financial disaster known as the Chaos Era really shook my faith in the direction of the game. By 2021, I mainly played EVE during the seasonal events, watching the Scarcity Era play out from the sidelines.

With the MSQ in FFXIV's Endwalker expansion complete, I had a little more time to play a second game. I added to the time by not concentrating on RMT as much as I did in the past. Of course, I kept up with the news about EVE and read about the developers' plans for winter. With all the crying and gnashing of teeth occurring on the EVE sub-Reddit, I figured the developers were doing something right. So on the first day of 2022, I decided to play EVE semi-seriously again.

What does semi-seriously mean? For me, spending more than an three or four hours in the game each week. And planetary interaction. Anyone maintaining PI colonies is playing semi-seriously. But maybe I should just list my activities in EVE last month. 

Cleaning my redeem queues. One of the first things I did was go through my redeem queues looking for valuable items like skill points and blueprint copies. On my third account, I found the ISK tokens from The Great Heist event back in July and August. Putting 235 million ISK on an account with only 30 million ISK felt good.

Playing the market. I was a little surprised how much I used the market in January. While in the beginning of the month I was selling items obtained before 2022, I wound up completing 51 of the sell orders I created in January. Overall, I sold 496.6 million ISK worth of items on the market while paying 49.5 million in broker fees, transaction taxes, and market escrow.

I also purchased 28.8 million ISK in items, mostly to fit the Rupture I used in the cross-over event.

The Doctor Who crossover event. I would have played the event in any case, but I was a little more serious with the Doctor Who event in January. I did get one character to 900 event points. I lost count of the number of sites I ran in both high and low security space, but the logs did show how much ISK I earned. 

I received 7254 Peculiar Data Collections, the commodity players sold to NPC buy orders for 10,000 ISK apiece. But I also sold event boosters and filament building materials on the market for an additonal 110.5 million ISK. When including filament BPCs I sold in contracts, I pulled out 191 million in ISK, minus taxes and fees. Not bad for an event more directed to new players.

Mining. I began mining so I could experience the new mechanics first hand. I ended the month mining veldspar to export the minerals to my manufacturing station in low sec. With tritanium only available in high sec or in null sec sites with spodium, I have to mine in high sec. I don't have a choice about exporting the mineral to low sec; just how I obtain the construction material. 

In January, I mined 370,000 cubic meters of ore, enough to fill 20 Skiffs. I used the Type A tech 2 mining crystals, which resulted in 28.5% mineral residue of the available ore. Given the small amounts I mine, I didn't worry much about the residue.

I didn't initially set out to create a ship construction program, so sold 22.5 million ISK worth of minerals.

Planetary Interaction. I really need to get serious about my planetary interaction colonies. I had some items ready for sale from 2021, which inflated my sales amount of 200.9 million ISK for the month. I only ran 4 planets with a character who can operate 6. How much could I make if I used 2 characters?

Industry. As I mentioned last week, I decided to turn the frigate, destroyer, and cruiser BPCs I receive as daily Omega rewards into ships. Last month I built 18 ships: 2 cruisers, 6 destroyers, and 10 frigates. The ships I didn't already own I'll keep and sell the rest. In January I sold a Cormorant and a Kestrel. I hope to sell a lot more in February.

Project Discovery. Finally, I try to start the day by playing Project Discovery. I use two characters, since the first 10 examples for each character get double the Project Discovery experience. I complete one level per character per day. I started late in the month, so only made 25.6 million ISK. I'm interested in how much I'll make in February.

That is a description of my playtime in EVE in January. How serious is my return? I'll let the reader decide. But I do want to continue playing for another month to see what the developers do with the game.