IC: The YC116 Expedition Begins

Note: My old blog Life in Low Sec contained posts written both from a player and character point of view. I'll be doing the same thing on this blog. To make it a little easier to recognize when I'm speaking in-character, those posts will have the prefix "IC" in the title, be tagged IC, and written in third person. Enjoy!

"Sure you're ready for this, Mynx?" Rixx asked.

She smiled and nodded, idly watching crew members prepping Lasher. "Oh yes. After three years wandering planet-side, I guess I'm just not ready to settle into one place yet."

Rixx nodded. "Any idea how long you'll be away"? 

"Not really," she said, and held up a small black journal. "As long as it takes to fill these pages with sketches and musings about the trip, maybe?"

"Charmingly low tech," he said dryly. "Keep in touch, we want to know how things are going. Need anything, you know who to call."

"Of course...and thank you. I'll chat and share my journal when I can. And hey, depending on how the wormhole connections work out -- or for that matter, my luck in keeping my ship and crew in one piece -- you'll probably see me making pit stops in Isho from time to time." 

Rixx  smiled and said, "I'm a little jealous, you know. Running off on a long-term expedition without any agenda or plan has a certain appeal." 

They both laughed. They both knew Rixx was far too responsible to do any such thing. 

"I do have a plan, though," Mynxee said. "The plan is to explore...and profit if the opportunity presents itself. You just never know what or who you might find out there."

Rixx indicated the crew. "Looks like they're done. Be seeing you around, Mynx."

With a warm handshake, he turned and walked away. "Take good care of my cat!" Mynxee called after him. He raised a hand and gave a good natured wave without looking back. Taking a last look around herself, she headed for her ship, journal in hand.

Wormhole Wandering

I recently spent a few days wandering through wormholes in a stealth bomber with a sort-of objective of getting close to B-R5RB so I could go see the destruction there. I found a few null sec exits but they were too far from B- to be interesting. 70+ jumps through null seemed a bit suicidal, so I continued my wormhole-hopping.

Then I got stuck. Not thinking ahead, I had brought only a few scan probes with me--five to be exact. Plenty to scan down wormholes quickly so I didn't really think about it until a RL thunderstorm and power loss disconnected me for a couple of hours when I had those probes deployed. They expired and I had no backups. So I left my nicely fitted Hound at a planet for someone to find (I wonder if anyone has claimed it yet!) and took the Pod Express home. Oh well.

Back home I prepped my beloved Rapier for another expedition. The cargohold is loaded with piles of scan probes this time plus ammo, spirits, and a few fun items for amusement's sake which will hopefully survive if I get killed.

I think it'll be an extended trip this time. I truly love wormhole-hopping by myself. I enjoy the scanning process, the surprise of seeing where newly found wormholes emerge, the solitude of solo travel, the sense of being lost in vast reaches that gate travel fails to provide, looking around for unsuspecting victims, and poking around to see what people have left in w-space. I'm surprised at how many offline towers there are. Perhaps I'll eventually find one with something interesting to liberate :P

If I ever do manage to get close to B-R5RB in this circuitous way, I plan to have a nice long look around and takes lots of pictures (as well as not die at the hands of locals). Then I will continue my wormhole wanderings with some new destination in mind. Maybe I'll just blindly stick a pin in the map to choose that destination and then see how long it takes to get there. Maybe I should document my route and the things of interest I find along the way.

It doesn't sound like the most exciting way to play Eve, I know...especially compared to the energy and excitement of pirate shenanigans in and around Ishomilken. But for me, for now, it's a relaxing retreat and as a bonus, is recalling some of the earliest feelings of wonderment I had when I first started playing Eve. Which is, perhaps, what I am really looking for after all.

Old School Solo Shakes

This post is about a solo frigate fight. Such a thing wouldn't normally merit a blog post but as my first solo kill since my return to Eve--and one that was an excitingly even match right up until it wasn't--it is worth note.

So there I was last night cruising around in my Slasher looking for targets. I spotted a Tormentor in a FW plex. Activating the gate, I landed 6K away from him. To my delight, he immediately engaged. Nothing says commitment like being mutually warp scrambled, after all!

Old situational awareness habits started to kick into gear. Good thing too, because it was a blow-for-blow fight right from the start and I immediately had to micromanage my repper and overheating . He got the jump on me taking out my shields but his were also being blown apart. My armor was disappearing rather alarmingly fast compared to his. So instead of micromanaging my top and bottom racks, I just overheated both and figured I'd either get an advantage or die in a glorious ball of twisted metal. My armor began to recover and cap held steady. His armor was peeling off in the smallest bites and it seems he recovered a bit here and there. I had a few seconds to wonder if this was going to be one of those stalemate situations (like one of the best solo fights I ever had, with Dame Death; both of us in faction frigates and neither able to find an advantage; after 10 minutes we called it a draw!). Then suddenly a huge chunk of my armor repped and the Tormentor started taking a ton of damage. My opponent must have capped out--my small neut earning its keep, I imagine. He managed to do some more damage but immediately the advantage went to me and in short order, the Tormentor blew up.

It was close--I ended the fight with 65% hull and 10% armor. If my opponent had had the tiniest bit more cap (or taken the booster in his cargo that he later chastised himself for forgetting), the fight would likely have gone the other way because my repper and DCU had burned out. Ooops...so much for managing overheated mods very well. But in addition to having a neut fitted, I think my rig configuration offered a bit of a tanking advantage compared to his. Anyway, while this fight was not particularly epic, it was fun as hell and the pilot was a great sport about it when we chatted in local afterwards. As a bonus, his wreck yielded some useful loot that will probably blow up soon on of my ships. :)

I love the thrill of solo fights when opponents are evenly matched and the outcome is in question right from the get-go. Nothing offers a more sure way of getting those good old PvP shakes that are so addicting! I know I started having them the second my armor blew off! I was talking about this fight in a friend's channel afterwards and had to laugh at suggestions from others to employ link and logi alts for more solo uberness. No thanks. I don't care how much New Eden has evolved while I was gone...I prefer to get my thrills from old school solo frigate fights that are solo in the traditional sense: one ship vs one ship, not one person vs one person with an alt army backing them up. It might limit the number of good fights I get, and it might mean I die a lot because the alt army practice is so common. Oh well. It just means that when I do win--especially against an evenly matched opponent--the victory seems more genuine and well-earned than bringing overwhelming invisible assistance to sway the odds in my favor. ymmv. 

So, GF, sarhamen, and thanks for giving me the first solo kill of my return to New Eden. Definitely feels like I'm getting my space legs back.