Tomorrow is the end of EVE Frontier's Founder Access Cycle 2 and the beginning of Cycle 3. I thought I'd give a brief summary of what I actually accomplished during the 56 day window of play before everything gets reset.
Grace: Grace is a currency earned by completing in-game objectives, missions, and other Cycle activities that contribute to leaderboard placement. By using the leaderboard I can determine how many people played Frontier during the cycle and my place in the pecking order. I managed to get 1250 Grace through the cycle by completing the following activities.
- Join Discord - 30 pts
- Enter game for first time - 20 pts
- Mine ore from asteroid - 20 pts
- Complete the tutorial - 100 pts
- Build a Network Node - 50 pts
- Join the official sub-Reddit - 10 pts
- Build one of each module - 300 pts
- Login for 10 days - 200 pts
- Kill an NPC - 20 pts
- Login for 20 days - 500 pts
My 1250 Grace placed me at 1736th on the leaderboard. But due to a bug, I think I received the 300 points for the "Build one of each module" goal by mistake. Subtracting those 300 points still places me at 1788 on the leaderboard.
But the leaderboard also lets me know the popularity of the game. The one fact I really wanted to know was how many people actually finished the tutorial. The absolute minimum amount of Grace one could earn and finish the tutorial was 140. A total of 4536 players reached that amount. The leaderboard basically ended at 5000 players so I can't give a percentage of players who finished the tutorial.
Tutorial: The tutorial didn't change much between Cycle 1 and Cycle 2. Players need to build the following structures and items.
Structures (basic)
- Portable Storage - (basic storage) - 50 Common ore
- Portable Refinery - (basic refinery) - 50 Common ore
- Portable Printer - (basic manufacturing) - 50 Carbonaceous ore
- Refuge - (basic fitting services/ship storage) - 50 Metal-rice ore
Reflex - (exploration corvette)
- 5 Fossilized Exotronics
- 840 Silicate Minerals (1120 Common Ore)
- 300 Metal-rich Minerals (400 Metal-Rich Ore)
- 40 Carbonaceous Minerals
Sojourn - (ship engine)
- 840 Silicate Minerals (1120 Common Ore)
- 300 Metal-rich Minerals (400 Metal-Rich Ore)
- 40 Carbonaceous Minerals
In addition I made the following items to fit my first Reflex
- 4 x Silicate Mining Lens (12 Silicate Minerals)
- Autocannon - 10 Metal-rich minerals and 30 Silicate Minerals
- Ammo - 300 - 72 Metal-rich minerals
And enough fuel to fill my cargohold and top off my fuel tank. I didn't fill my cargohold with only fuel. I brought along the four mining lenses and 220 rounds of ammo that didn't fit in my autocannon. I also brought 100 Common Ore to get a jumpstart on building infrastructure. The structures only last for three days without a network node in place, so make sure you put aside an hour or two to complete the tutorial. One thing I should add that I did differently between Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 was to search the sites for the beginners fuel and fossilized exotronics. At least in Cycle 2 the materials would respawn fairly quickly. Oh, and if any bodies floating in space go ahead and pick them up for reprocessing. The ones in the tutorial are very useful.
One last thing. Anything useful fit to the initial Wend players receive should be stripped off as well. I forgot to do that in Cycle 2.
Initial Base - My initial plan was to create a regular base. So after jumping to a system with plenty of resources I built my first four structures like I did in the tutorial system. Then I built a network node. I consider the network node the first serious piece of infrastructure since I needed to build 10 printed circuits, 10 carbon weave, and 10 thermal composites using the portable printer.
Network nodes can only be built as Lagrange points. I tried to build my portable structures away from the Lagrange point but determined I needed to reposition (meaning rebuild) my structures close to the spot in space.
From there I built, in order, a Refinery M, a Smart Storage Unit S, Printer S, and Shipyard S. After building all that infrastructure I still couldn't build modules for my ship. For that, I needed to build the Assembler. In Cycle 3 I plan on building the Assembler after the Refinery M as some of the modules I plan to build may require the output of the Refinery M.
I had a week or so left so I decided to also build a ship, the Reiver. Still a small ship, the Reiver is a more capable combat ship so I wound up shooting up some of the local rogue drones for drops. And that's where I left my play to reset tomorrow.
For Cycle 3 I intend to change my plan slightly. Instead of just stopping in the first system I found with resources I want to wind up 2 or 3 jumps away from a station. With any luck the developers will again seed all stations with buy orders for Feral Data and sell orders for the ingredients for crude lenses. Ideally I want to build a larger ship in Cycle 3, but I will satisfy myself with learning the process to mine crude ore and all the potential benefits that come with the activity.
That's a quick write-up of the last seven weeks I played EVE Frontier. Not the most exciting content but learning the new mechanics was oddly satisfying. Hopefully the new updates planned for the cycle will add some spice to some of the base building. While the lag from interacting with the infrastructure linked to the blockchain does sometimes gets annoying, at least a solution appears on the way. So I'll play the game at least until the end of the year and perhaps finish out the end of the current roadmap ending sometime next September.
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