Chasing Shadows

I didn't get off to a very good start with the July update last week. I didn't really get settled in until I discovered I needed to stay logged into the Captain's Quarters. Once I figured that out, I was good to go, right?

Not really. The next step involved participating in the new event, The Shadow of the Serpent. The concept seemed simple. Just log into the game and see the available events on the character select screen. Of course, since the game is EVE Online, not everything is so straightforward.

On Wednesday, I decided to give the event a try. First, I looked at the four activities on the character select screen. Three kill missions and a mining mission. Okay, maybe mission isn't the correct word, but that's how I think of them. Only, the mining mission disappeared by the time I logged my main into the game. Then came the confusion. Where do I find the events? I had heard that in previous events the sites appeared in the probe scanner, so I flew around high sec and low looking for one to appear. After about 45 minutes of fruitlessly looking, someone in a chat channel told me the sites appear on the overview. I just flew to a station, docked up, and logged out.

My next opportunity to play video games was Friday. Due to the 4th of July holiday, I only had to work a half-day. So what did I do Friday afternoon? Play EVE. Instead of logging into my main account, I logged into my industrial account. I may define industrial differently than others. My main industrial alt can't fly battleships, but can fly everything up to and including command ships. But I didn't have to worry about that, because one of the event options included mining 500,000 units of scordite.

I know where to find scordite! I decided I would do the events in high sec, so I flew to a system in which I had set up a cache of ships to do some mining. So I hopped in a Skiff and headed out to a belt.

Now, I did have a couple of concerns. Did I have to only mine scordite, or could I mine any type of scordite, like condensed scordite? Also, would I need to transport the mined ore to a station? The event description didn't say. If I needed to transport the ore, I could always multibox and use both my Orca and the Mastodon. As for the types of scordite, mining condensed scordite for a minute wouldn't really hurt matters in the long run.

To my surprise, not only could I mine all types of scordite to meet the requirement, but I got to keep what I mined. So for about 80 minutes of effort, I got 500,000 units of scordite and 1000 of the event points. Well, I actually got a small bonus. Another of the events required killing Angel Cartel ships in belts. So while I mined, I also received 50 event points for defending myself against the NPCs trying to kill my poor Skiff. Not too bad.

After finishing the first two activities, two more popped up. The first involved destroying 20 Angel Sortie sites. Destroying that many sites seemed like a lot of effort, so I chose another one that required killing Angel Cartel ships. I figured the easiest way to finish the event was to clean out one of the combat anomalies in the system. Rummaging around the station, I found an autocannon Vagabond I used to run the level 1 Sisters of EVE epic arc when I needed to improve my standings. The Vagabond is really fun to fly. I took the ship out to a site and killed the ten rats in a couple of minutes.

The next event was a touch of fun. I needed to kill Angel ships, but in a frigate. What type of frigate? Did the term frigate mean tech 1 frigates only? I decided to take a chance and fit up a Jaguar, one of the Minmatar tech 2 assault frigates. I opened up pyfa and came up with a passive shield regeneration, 200mm autocannon PvE fit. I had most of the modules in my hanger, so I just needed to fly to Rens to pick up a couple of modules and rigs.

Once again, I headed out to a combat site and once again took out the guarding NPCs in a few minutes. Not so surprisingly by this point, I received credit for the kills. But that all for the quick events. Now to face destroying 20 Angel Sortie sites.

The Angel Sorties are designed for even a solo cruiser to do quickly. The standard composition awaiting players is one battlecruiser, two cruisers, and four frigates. The frigates do not attempt to tackle players, at least for now. My solo Vagabond chewed through the sites with ease. The biggest problem involved finding 20 sites. I only completed 16 by the time I logged out for the night.

Those familiar with The Shadow of the Serpent event will realize I have not talked about the bread and butter activity, "Keep Up the Pressure". I think the destruction of the Serpentis Shipyard and Research Facility sites deserves a stand-alone post plus screenshots. I also have a couple of other observations to make that won't make sense without writing about Keep Up The Pressure. So one more post about The Shadow of the Serpent is coming before I move on to another subject.

Avoiding Flying In Stations

I got home last night excited to log into EVE. I received a minor disappointment when I didn't see the Shadow of the Serpent content on the character selection screen. Hey, bugs happen. I'd also heard something about a docking animation and wanted to try it out.

I thought the docking animation occurred outside the ship, which caused me a little concern. The truth was, in a strange way, worse. The first thing I saw when I logged into the game was my Cheetah slowly flying past as my disembodied body started drifting in the other direction. That messed with my head.

I have a little problem with motion sickness in games. For example, I can't play Elder Scrolls Online for long periods of time due to the camera setup. In most games when I play in third person mode, the camera is positioned in such a was that the camera angle is looking in the same direction that my avatar is travelling. Not so in ESO. The angle is off just enough that I start feeling queasy if I don't take frequent breaks.

I started feeling the same way watching my ship fly in the station. I didn't know why, though, so I undocked and played with the little blue pointer that now protrudes from the front of ships. I can see the use for making instawarp undocking bookmarks, so I flew out 150 km from the station, then returned to the station and docked.

Upon docking, the flying in station animation appeared and I started feeling a little strange again as I watched my ship fly by. I figured out that I needed to stop my ship to make the feeling go away, but I couldn't. Aargh!

I felt really frustrated because for almost seven years, I always had control of my ship. Even in those instances where a player tackled and destroyed my ship, I still had a feeling of control, even if all I could do was align to a planet so I could warp my pod to safety. I really, really wanted to stop my ship, but the game had taken the control away from me and all I could do is look away from my screen in order to make the feeling go away.

I'll admit I said a couple of bad words and then logged out of the game. I figured maybe if I ate dinner I would feel better. I usually try to eat something before playing ESO as that seems to help. The solution to my problem hit me while preparing a salad. My client was set to view the ship hanger when I docked. What would happen if I switched to the Captain's Quarters?

Op success! Instead of seeing the flying ship, I received a loading screen and then appeared in my Captain's Quarters.

Now, some may think that flying in stations is just a cynical ploy by CCP to trick players into using the Captain's Quarters instead of the ship hangar. If so, they succeeded in getting this player to make the switch. Anything to keep from seeing that stupid animation again.

A Quick Look At Kinguin, RMT, And Overcharging Players

On Friday I received an email from a public relations person at Kinguin, a competitor of G2A. I guess my piece on Wednesday documenting yet again why G2A is shady put me on Kinguin's radar screen. The representative wanted me to pimp their new program aimed at convincing indie game developers to sell their games on Kinguin. With all the news about how G2A rips off developers, now's the perfect time for Kinguin to entice indie developers, right?

In case anyone forgets, Kinguin is a very shady place as well. Back when hackers purchased thousands of FarCry 4 keys using stolen credit cards, over 4600 of those game keys were sold on Kinguin.

One test I use to figure out a company's ethics is to look up the offers for popular games, or at least games I'm familiar with. I usually start with EVE Online PLEX. Needless to say, Kinguin failed the test.

Instead of just stating that Kinguin is engaged in illicit RMT, let me walk you through why I believe that Kinguin is engaged in the practice. In the graphic above, let me point out three indicators that the offer is totally shady.

First, the price is way too low. While not as cheap as those found on various forums and other "exchange markets" that don't pretend any legitimacy, $11.14 USD indicates that the PLEX was not purchased in bulk during a sale. After looking at the list of authorized PLEX resellers, even taking into account currency fluctuations, I don't see how anyone could sell a PLEX under $16 USD and make money.

The second is the offer of insurance. I know many will say that a site like Kinguin or G2A offering insurance to make sure the sale goes through is a normal business practice. But really, the insurance on the PLEX offered above is 10%. That seems awfully sketchy to me.

Of course, the final item on the list screams RMT. The title of the offer includes the phrase "In-Game Delivery". The transaction as described fits the description of real money trading. The buyer is purchasing an in-game item (PLEX) for real world cash. Clicking on the Activation Details link explains brings the following pop-up.

So what is the "Donate to" delivery method? The Donate Game Time feature takes a PLEX from Player A's account and gifts it as 30 days of game time to Player B. Not as PLEX which a player can then sell for ISK, but as actual game time. The seller has to take a PLEX from his in-game inventory in order to do the transfer. An in-game item in exchange for real money. A EULA-violating RMT transaction confirmed.

So I found a seller engaged in RMT. Now for a little fact I find hilarious. Apart from the RMT offer, buying from Kinguin is more expensive than buying from an authorized PLEX reseller. Here are some examples.

First, purchasing two PLEX from CCP or an authorized reseller normally costs $34.99 USD. Here is a screenshot of the offers available from Kinguin.

That's right, the offers range from $36.98 to $37.91 per 2 PLEX, or $2-$3 USD more than buying from a safe, approved source. And buying in bulk doesn't improve matters.

The approved price for a 6-pack of PLEX from CCP is $104.97. The price on Kinguin? $108.85, or $3.88 more. I found the single PLEX offers were more expensive also.

Truthfully, I don't know why anyone would take a risk going to these shady marketplace sites. Anyone going to Kinguin for EVE-related items is sheer lunacy. Except for the instance of buying game time which involved real money trading, the deals are better going to an authorized PLEX reseller. I guess that may make Kinguin more honest than G2A, but I still recommend buying from CCP approved sources. Why take a chance, especially when buying from Kinguin costs more money?

Down The Rabbit Hole With TinyBuild And G2A

Sometimes I get what, at first glance, is a simple story. StupidGenius from the Cap Stable podcast let me know about a story claiming that G2A was selling game keys obtained through credit card fraud. Again. 

"King Serpent's" Loss Is Our Gain

I'm not sure what Virge Salvador Sarpati ever did to CCP Delegate Zero, CCP Falcon, and CCP Affinity, but they love kicking him while he's down. For those who don't know, "King Serpent", as his sister calls him, is the leader of the Serpentis. To say he is having a bad year is an understatement.

First, Serpentis lost control of Outer Ring Excavations in November last year (YC117) in a hostile takeover conducted by the newly formed Upwell Consortium. Nothing says hostile takeover better than several task forces of Mordu's Legion striking simultaneously across space.


In EVE Online, players will take years to gain their revenge. So will NPCs. The chairman of Upwell's board of directors is Yani Sar Arteu, the founder of Outer Ring Excavations. Further fighting broke out in December as Serpentis Corporation forces destroyed three heavily armed Ducia Foundry mining convoys in Outer Ring. Serpentis continued its efforts against the Upwell Consortium in combination with the capsuleer alliance Omega Security Syndicate in January of this year (YC118), destroying five construction sites building prototypes of the Astrahus-class citadel.

Players became involved in the story as part of CCP's first in-game Christmas/New Year event, Operation Frostline. Mordu's Legion decided to publish the locations of Serpentis sites so capsuleers could kill all the things and get phat loot. Among the initial loot advertised was, "apparel, synth-grade boosters, ship blueprints, all manner of high and low value modules, implants and Nexus Chips," with new items added to the loot tables over time. A fun time was had by all, as long as you weren't Serpentis.

CCP is offering players another go at fighting V Salvador Sarpati at the end of the month. CCP Affinity introduced the event, Shadow of the Serpent, in a dev blog Thursday:

"The Shadow of the Serpent earns its name from the hidden Serpentis arms race we will see happening over the next few weeks.  Naturally, many organizations within New Eden are pretty unhappy with the Serpentis creating new, advanced tech with an intention to distribute and will do anything to put a stop to this and they want your help!

"With so much happening in New Eden lately, the major corporations and factions are overwhelmed with work and will reach out to the newly independent Scope Network for help.  The Scope Network will use this opportunity to start up a new business venture, as a broker service between the major organizations of New Eden and the real powerhouse; the capsuleers!  To help the Scope Network succeed in this venture, we have been working on a prototype framework for a new way to display events happening in-game.

"When an event is happening, you will be able to see event specific challenges in your character selection screen. These will also appear in the new Scope Network window in-game, which you can access via the Neocom.  Over the course of the event, which will run for 6 weeks, you will notice a much wider variety of available challenges including roaming Serpentis and Angel Cartel pirates and 9 new event themed sites complete with loot and bounties.  On top of that, each time you complete a challenge listed on your Scope Network window you will earn points towards small, medium and large Scope Network prize containers. These containers will contain some very nice rewards, a selection of which will be available for the first time during Shadow of the Serpent."

I know a lot of traditionalists will hate the idea of putting a to-do list on the login page. The usual suspects will proclaim the end of the sandbox and decry CCP's efforts to turn EVE into World of Warcraft. Those critics have a point. When looking at the mockup of the login screen, I can see echoes of Guild Wars 2 and its daily, weekly, and monthly objective system. Personally though, I ignored that when I played GW2.

A mockup of the character select screen for the event.

But, is the system good for EVE Online? I do see some advantages. The first is visibility. I am one of those people who is not thrilled about special events. I might participate if I stumble upon one, but unless a game plants the information right in front of me, I will not take the effort to look up the information on how to take part. Making the event more visible will get more people, possibly even myself, to participate. Of course, that will make the drops less valuable, but that's the free market for you.

Perhaps the biggest advantage is the synergy with the opportunity system. Right now, the system is very bare bones. If a player logs into the game and kills a rat, the reward is 10,000 skill points. Sure, a player is incentivised to log in for a couple of minutes. But I experienced that in Neverwinter. Do something that takes 15 seconds a day and after awhile I levelled up. Part of the reason that I stopped playing Neverwinter is the ease I could level up. A very unsatisfying activity.

Now, combine the opportunity system with the live events and perhaps CCP has something substantive. The player is lured to log into the game by the promise of skill points and then sees the latest activities available for even more rewards. The tasks players can participate in are still unknown, but they could give someone an incentive to jump into the game for 15-20 minutes. I'd call that a win for CCP.

But wait, look what else CCP has in store for the Serpentis Corporation. CCP Fozzie got into the act with a change to boosters:

"In recent months the CONCORD Inner Circle has started seriously considering a new approach to the issue of New Eden's illicit booster trade. Prohibition was successful in reducing booster addiction rates, but has had serious downsides across the cluster.

"The illegal booster trade has enriched the great pirate factions (especially the Serpentis Corporation and their Angel Cartel partners), and led to an increase in underworld violence as local pirate bands compete for slices of this lucrative pie.

"Escalating enforcement requirements have stretched the resources of the DED and the empire customs authorities to their breaking points.

"In response to these issues, the Inner Circle is planning a complete shift in their approach to boosters. Booster possession, trade and consumption by capsuleers will be legalized, and licenses for legal booster production will be available to certain non-capsuleer corporations (X-Sense being the first authorized manufacturer). Booster production and research by pirate corporations and unlicensed capsuleers will continue to be illegal.

"Some CONCORD resources will be diverted to harm reduction programs (mainly focused on treating addiction among non-capsuleer populations).

"This change in approach is obviously good news for the X-Sense corporation, and experts predict that it will deal a non-trivial blow to the income of the Serpentis Corporation and Angel Cartel. Nobody yet knows how these powerful pirates will respond, but it's a safe assumption that they won't take it lying down."

That's right, now high sec residents don't have to worry about transporting combat boosters around. Not only will that affect PvP, but mission running as well. No longer will PvE types limit themselves to the previously legal synthetic boosters; now they can use the good stuff. Production will still take place in low sec, but manufacturers will undoubtedly transport the goods to high sec markets.

Over the past 8-9 months CCP created a lot of content for players by setting them upon the luckless Serpentis. In a couple of weeks, we'll get to see what the future may look like concerning PvE in EVE. I'm pretty sure that Sarpati wishes the lore team would pick on someone else.

Dragomon Hunter: Mergers

I play a little free-to-play (F2P) game called Dragomon Hunter. During a long weekend spent making instawarp bookmarks in lowsec, running around an anime world gathering resources, doing dailies, and tending the creatures on my ranch for an hour or so is a nice break. I like the game, but a lot of the YouTube videos weren't so kind.

Apparently Dragomon Hunter is not as popular as Aeria originally thought as the two North American servers merged into a single shard last week. The devs stated that one of the reasons for the merger was to shorten the wait times to get into the PvP arenas. That made sense, as the one time I queued up for a match I wound up giving up. I didn't try to log into the game until Saturday, which was the correct choice, as the new server performed poorly and required an emergency maintenance to fix the issues.

Aeria used the server merger to revamp the daily login rewards. I couldn't find details about the new system, but the rewards went from a 10-day rotation to a 28-day rotation. The new rotation also gives out more loyalty points, which players can use to purchase some items available in the cash shop. I guess I have to keep logging in every day for the next four weeks to find all the goodies. I figure if all I do is log in to see what the rewards are, I will at least get some ideas of how CCP should develop the EVE Online dailies program.

Yesterday brought news of another merger into the world of Dragomon Hunter. Gamigo and Aeria announced a merger, with Aeria's parent company ProSiebenSat.1 becoming a minority shareholder. I remember that many European players protested when the German company became the publisher for Sony Online Entertainment's portfolio of games in Europe. One interesting tidbit is that Gamigo publishes Dragon's Prophet in Europe. Yes, the game that Daybreak dropped back in November is still running in Europe and Asia, with Dragon's Prophet receiving a patch as recently as the end of April.

I don't know what all of this means for Dragomon Hunter, or my Aeria account. EVE is still my main game, even if I don't get to play as much as I used to. But when I want to just putter around and not worry about death, Dragomon Hunter is a nice place to visit. I just hope the game sticks around for awhile longer.

Will PvE Blossom In 2017?

Sometimes I wonder if I follow what happens outside EVE way too much. One of those times occurred at Fanfest this year at the end of the first day of the convention. A group of us sat around drinking and discussing our impressions of the keynotes. I think most of us agreed that the presentations were not filled with exciting stuff. CCP Ghost's presentation (and brain) was a highlight that teased fascinating possibilities for the future. Otherwise, I thought the first day was rather pedestrian.

Neville Smit looked at the day and took the lack of new features one step further. Where was the content for high sec? My feeling at the time was that just because CCP did not announce something at Fanfest didn't mean content wasn't coming in the future. Just not the short-term future.

But that's all I had, a feeling.  I've heard that intuition is a subconscious collation of facts. So while Neville wrote his "Occupy New Eden" manifesto at the beginning of May, I searched for indications that the road map already included those elements.

Beginning A New Adventure

‘Every seat in the passenger cabin was occupied, the occupants sitting so peacefully one could believe they were napping, if it weren’t for the fact that each and every one had been completely drained of their blood. The same fate had befallen the rest of the crew, even the captain in his capsule was now only a dry husk…’

-- The Blood Raiders

Over the weekend I finally fit my Stratios with a reasonable build and headed out to do some extended exploration. But where to go? I want to learn how to fly some of the combat sites as well as hunt down the usual data and relic sites, so I set my eyes on the Amarr Empire. Why? Lasers. I figured that since the Amarr use lasers, and the Stratios fits lasers, I should go to a place where the NPCs are vulnerable to that weapon system.

The Amarr Empire is a pretty big place. Officially the Empire consists of 8 regions, but I also include Genesis, the home of CONCORD, and the Ammatar Mandate in the region of Derelik. The Empire is also home to two pirate factions, The Blood Raider Covenant and Sansha's Nation. Both are pretty nasty pieces of work in different ways, but share a love of, and vulnerability to, electromagnetic and thermal damage. Perfect for my laser-fitted Stratios.

I have to admit, I made my choice on where to start my expedition based on avoiding factional warfare zones. I want a nice quiet, relaxing time. If I want to play hide-and-seek with the militias, I'll go back to Metropolis. Since the western half of the Empire is free of the simmering conflict between the Amarr Empire and the Minmatar Republic, I decided to begin there. The western half is the home of the Blood Raider Covenant.

A lot of players would look at the stats of the NPCs and go on their way. Not me. Instead, I like inventing a narrative that leads me through the campaign I create. My characters are Minmatar and don't like the Amarr a whole lot. They do business with them, but not much else. The Blood Raiders are a crazy type of Amarr. From the Chronicle...

"The Blood Raiders are part of an ancient cultist faction called Sani Sabik, meaning Bloodfriends. The cult first appeared thousands of years ago on Amarr Prime, long before space travel came into being. The cult was based on schismatic sect of the Amarr state religion, which advocated that some people were born for greatness and other people only lived to feed and breed these geniuses. To this the cult added the obsession of the Amarr elite - the Holders - about eternal life so the result was a cult so pervasive and destructive that the Amarr authorities immediately stamped down on it. But the cult lived on in the shadows, every so often mutating itself anew. At one time in their history they started using blood in their gruesome rituals, until then they’d had only used blood in the initiation ritual, but now it became the focal point of their supposed search for eternal youth."

The leader of the Blood Raiders, Omar Sarikusa, served as the focal point of The Crimson Harvest event that ran last October. CCP even released the following Scope video featuring Bloody Omir.


Pretty gruesome stuff. So I put my trusty Cheetah in the hangar and am now flying around in something a little more dangerous. I intend to run a lot of data and relic sites, but engaging in combat with NPCs is a little out of character for me. Thanks to the lore, I have a reason for my changed behavior. Some NPCs just need killing.

Account Security And Skill Point Trading

I am so far behind on my blogging that I still haven't blogged about perhaps the most significant security story coming out of Fanfest. I'm referring to the increase in hacking attempts since the introduction of skill point trading in February.

Account hacking has long plagued the online gaming industry. Blizzard developed a smartphone application providing two-factor authentication for Word of Warcraft accounts long before tech giants like Google began offering the public similar software. A World Bank report published in 2011 concluded that 20% of all virtual currency for online games sold on the secondary RMT markets came from hacked gaming accounts.

Hopefully regular readers of The Nosy Gamer are not shocked that the amount of activity seen on sites like Player Auctions jumped beginning in February. Offering players the ability to buy and sell the most precious commodity in EVE, time in the form of skill points, opened up a lucrative new market for illicit RMT operators.

Initially, the secondary market followed the lead of the PLEX market in The Forge. Player Auctions, a major illicit RMT site that facilitates the sale of virtual items and currencies for most major online games, saw the sale of ISK increase by 92.4% from January to February. The increase closely matched the 95.2% increase in the ISK value of PLEX sold in EVE's main market in The Forge during the same period. 

In March, the secondary market diverged in direction compared to the PLEX market in Jita. While the amount of ISK exchanged for game time in The Forge declined by 18.6% from the preceding month, the amount of ISK sold on Player Auctions increased another 80.6%. Much of the increase was due to a single buyer purchasing 1.845 trillion ISK between 8-23 March, but even subtracting those purchases, the daily demand for ISK rose by 8.2%.

How does a marketplace handle a nearly 250% increase in demand over the course of two months? Additional sellers either entering or re-entering the market is the obvious answer for those who claim that the EVE Online secondary market, or at least Player Auctions, is totally stocked with legitimately acquired ISK and items.  The data I tracked, however, suggests that new sellers only account for, at most, half the increase. I should also add that the seller who sold the 1.845 trillion ISK in 15 days is a long-time presence on Player Auctions. CCP Bugartist's statement in the roundtable session that hacking attempts are up since the introduction of skill point trading rings true.

The first subject that CCP Bugartist addressed was an increase in hacking attempts. He noted the lack of players using two-factor authentication and how well the feature works. Accounts protected by 2FA are only involved in 0.6% of successful hacking attempts. Or, to look at the issue another way, 99.4% of successful hacking attempts involve unprotected accounts. In an ironic twist, once an account is compromised, the hacker will install Google Authenticator on the account in order to keep the owner from taking back control of the account.

The big hole in the security, though, is communications between CCP and players. If a hacker can compromise a player's email account, then CCP cannot determine that the hacker is not the legitimate account owner. For players concerned about game account security, securing their email accounts is equally important.

One of the oldest methods used by players is using a dedicated email account for each gaming account. The less the email account is used, the less visibility the account has to hackers. A more modern solution is the use of password managers that automatically populate password fields. Password managers helps users keep from reusing passwords across multiple sites, a major no-no in internet security. I am not a security expert, but tech sites like PC Magazine offer reviews of the top password managers. A final major solution is to put two-factor authentication on email accounts. Doing at least one of these is better than doing nothing at all.

One final item from the roundtable I'd like to address is the effect of skill point trading on hacking. Due to the ability to now strip skill points from characters, hackers not only do more damage to players' accounts, but make more real world cash with a successful hack as well.

For the first few weeks, the illicit RMT shops had a negligible amount of skill injectors for sale. The situation changed in March as the injectors got into the hands of the illicit RMT operators. In April, I tracked the sale of 839 million skill points using Player Auctions' feedback system. While 36 years of training seems like a lot, given the size of the player base, hopefully the figure indicates that hackers are not having great success in looting accounts.

An often overlooked fact is that fixing a hacked account is a manual, time consuming process. I forget if CCP Bugartist stated the time during the roundtable, but restoring an account can take up to two days. That is two days of time that customer service could spend working on other tickets. Recently I began to hear complains of increasing times for ticket resolution from customer support. I wonder how much of the delays are due to tickets concerning hacked accounts.

One last thought. Account security is not a sexy subject. Game companies can only give players the tools to secure their accounts. No one can make someone actually use those tools. But picking up good habits in securing your gaming accounts translates well into having a safer online experience in the rest of your life. Or, as CCP might say, "EVE is real."

I Did Mining Missions ... And I Liked It!

On Sunday, I decided to just not think about writing about the "great" issues of the day and instead play EVE for a few hours. For my industrial alt, I needed to pick up some skill books in Domain as well as a load of kernite for the next time a level 4 storyline mission came around. So I hopped in my Prospect and headed off to slaver space.

I could complain about how CCP favors the Amarr over the Minmatar. In the Minmatar Republic, kernite is only found in low sec, while in Amarr the ore is found in systems with a security status of up to 0.7. A very nice perk for high sec mission runners in Amarr, as the level 4 storyline mission that gives out +4 learning implants requires 8,000 units of kernite to turn in. Normally I would mine the ore locally, but since I needed to buy the Medium Beam Laser Specialization skillbook, among others, doing a little high sec mining helped justify the trip.

Have I ever mentioned I don't like mining in high sec? Fortunately, filling up my Prospect's 10,000 m³ ore hold didn't take very long. I even attracted some attention.

Missed Me

A Sansha's Nation frigate decided it didn't like me mining and started doing its best Star Wars' stormtrooper imitation. I shouldn't gloat too much. I was in a tech 2 expedition frigate running a signature tank orbiting a rock at 1200 m/sec. Seeing my shields drop to 96% didn't fill me with anxiety.

After that fine reminder of why I don't like high sec, I decided to do something a lot more fun than hanging around high sec: low sec mining missions. So I cut though bad parts of EVE like Huola, Kourmonen, and Amamake back to the safety of Metropolis low sec where my agent resided.

The first mission offered was the level 4 ice mining mission that never has NPCs. A perfect mission for an Endurance, if I had one. One of these days I will build one (I invented a couple blueprint copies), but for now my trusty Procurer works fine.

The drawback of using the Procurer is the slow speed of reaching the ice. Even fitting a microwarpdrive, the ship required a minute-and-a-half to cross the 6 kilometers of space from the warp-in point before I could begin mining. But once I'd run a cycle or two on my ice harvester, a red triangle appeared on my overview and I was quickly scrammed and webbed. What?!

While the mission contains no NPCs, that does not stop ships from Mordus' Legion from dropping in occasionally. I even lost a Procurer once when a Mordus' Legion cruiser dropped in on me when running the same mining mission. Thankfully, this time I only faced a frigate.

Mordus' Legion NPCs are nasty little ships, especially when you forget to turn your hardeners on. Oops. Once I did that, the damage stabilized around 25% of my shields. Not bad, and in the tanky mining barge something I could live with.

Did I mention that the NPC mercenary ships have a better artificial intelligence than the average belt rat? Once the AI determined I could tank the incoming fire, the NPC ship switched fire to my drones. I initially sent 5 Warrior II drones to attack the frigate, with 3 Hobgoblin IIs and 2 Warrior IIs in reserve. Due to the damage I began rotating the Warriors out and the Hobgoblins into the attack. I lost one Warrior II with two others taking hull damage before I could get them to safety. Still, I managed to defeat the NPC.

When the fight began, I was the only ship in the system. But near the end of the fight, a factional warfare pilot entered the system. I had to defeat the NPC because I was tackled and couldn't get away otherwise, but with the fight won, I faced a dilemma. Do I dock up, or do I cross 16 km of space at 71 m/sec to loot the wreck?

Why the decision? Because in the wreck of every Mordus' Legion frigate hanging around low sec belts is a Garmur blueprint copy. I decided to go for the loot, so I fired up the MWD and started clicking on the directional scanner hoping I would not see the probes that would reveal my mission dungeon. I needn't have worried. The other pilot jumped out of the system shortly after I looted the wreck. The next decision was automatic. I warped to the station and deposited the blueprint and the 8 units of mission ice sitting in the ore hold. I then finished the mission by mining the remaining 12 units of ice without incident.

Mining for blueprints

Of course, I wanted to do another mission. The next one, involving gas harvesting, is one I refer to as "The Benny Hill" mission. When run in a sig-tanked Prospect, I wind up with 9-12 NPCs chasing me and Yakety Sax running through my head.

Actual Game Footage (not really)

The mission ran pretty much as expected. I orbited the gas cloud at speed with nine NPCs chasing me around getting my shields down to 75%. As I often do, I didn't bother docking up when neutrals entered the system. Normally if multiple people are in a factional warfare system, they won't bother going through the work to scan down a mission site when others are available to fight. Except this time, a Bifrost warped into the site when I only needed 17 more units of gas to complete the mission.

I really wonder what the scene looked like to the pilot. A frigate huffing gas getting chased around by nine NPCs. However, at the time, all I saw was a command destroyer land about 35 km away and I quickly warped to a station. I then warped back cloaked to the site and found the destroyer gone. After about 10 minutes, the system emptied out and I finished up the mission.

I think the reason I enjoyed myself Sunday was that low sec offers the possibility of random events. High sec is so static and predictable. Perhaps if CCP finally works off the technical debt of the old way of creating missions and we start to see more variety in missions perhaps less people will complain about the PvE content in EVE Online. Then again, that will just result in the player base complaining about something else. EVE players not complain? I don't think that is possible.