Whirly: good to go

I struggled writing my last post. I’ve had trouble in the past, but I don’t recall struggling to find something to write about. When I started with this writing thing, I was simply trying to chronicle my, and my friends, adventures playing these on line games. It doesn’t seem like an adventure any more. Should I tell about my latest mission in EVE where I went somewhere and killed a long list of red [X]? Sure I made ISK and faction killing red [X]. Sure I lost a *, and had to buy a new one. Is that an adventure?

At one point last night, with the boys, we just went out wandering. We wandered down to an area with cool aid colored ponds and high level mobs. We clicked on the blinking things, on the ground, and found we had a quest to click more, which we did. When we found that killing some mob incremented a quest counter, we killed more. Eventually we completed three or four quests just roaming and killing. That was an adventure of sorts. I’m not sure what I’m struggling with here or what I’m missing. It’s not that I’m tired of playing, I can’t imagine not playing. I guess I just want something different.

The other thing I miss is humor. When I started, I was trying to be funny. I seem to have lost my funny. Maybe if I’m funny 12 times I’ll get a nice new hat. No, that wasn’t one of the funnies. You can’t just pounce on humor. You’ve got to sneak up on it.

I was just searching the comments section looking for anything that wasn’t spam. I ran into one comment that looked completely non-spammy, it read “Hola faretaste mekodinosad.” I have no idea what that means so I ran it through Google’s translator, Spanish to English. It came out “Hello faretaste mekodinosad.” It seems to be a greeting of some sort. I can hardly wait to create a new toon named Faretaste.

We killed a lot of half-orcs and spiders for quests around Anin Enioh (I’m not sure about that spelling). When we were level 20, and the spiders were as high as 26, they took a long while to take down. We killed all the half-orcs in the ruines except for the big boss and his friends in the circle room at the top. The first time we met, it was a surprise-accident, we weren’t prepared, and we died horribly. Last night, at level 21, we went back specifically to take Hontimurz and four of his guards, it was a quest.

I wanted to fight as few of the lower level half-orcs going in as possible. Turns out, somebody was ahead of us, the court-yard mobs were missing. OK! At the top of the ruins there are two mob-groups and the circle room with the boss and guards. The guys ahead of us had cleared almost everything and were fighting in the circle room. We tried to sneak in without attracting the attention of the two guys on the wall. Nope. Our Bear got too close. The two on the wall are a pain because I can’t get up there. We practiced, last time, jumping up using an urn next to the wall. Unfortunately, somebody had looted the urn this time, and the boys had to take the two with magic while I stood around watching. In the circle room there were two level 35 guys killing everything that popped. It’s a level 22 quest damn it. We moved in and eventually got the four guards and the boss. The experience was diminished by the two 35s. It seems only polite, when grinding on lower level mobs, to move out of the way when players, who need the mobs, come along. That’s just me.

Wow, I haven’t written for a week. I’ve been busy playing. I’m trying to level four Lord of the Rings Online toons while playing a lot of EVE, and listening to podcasts. I discovered I have a level II EVE agent and have had her for a while, I’m not all that pleased with her missions. Level II missions are like level I missions with two or three times as many mobs. It certainly is a challenge, but not very interesting. I don’t know what I was expecting. What else could they do but throw more ships at you.

We’ve reached level 20 with our LotRO main toons. We haven’t been working very scientifically, but we never do. Of us all, Mark is our researcher. He’s been walking us through levels with quests and what not. It makes things much easier when we have some idea what we are doing.

We considered moving to the LotRO test server. I was opposed, I just don’t want to start again. I’d rather push on to 50. Mike and I played a couple of minutes of Monster play. We had no idea what we were doing, and were poking around killing some slugs, right out side the gate, when a Lore-Master jumped us. He kicked our butts royal. Kept me stunned while taking out Mike then me. We ran back to give it another try, but all we found were two other Monsters in the same place.

I purchased my Thorax and am in the process of fitting it out. It’s outfitted enough to start running missions, but not well. The plan is to have it be a blaster boat. Unfortunately, I can’t fit the planned Micro Warp Drive yet so it’s kind of slow getting around, my drones kill most guys before I get in blaster range.

I got a new higher-level Agent today. I headed off on my first mission with complete confidence. My slow getting around cost me big time. These new mobs started shooting me before I was even in drone range, and it hurt big. They burned through my shields quick time. Then my armor. Then half way through my ship structure. I had to scoop and run. It cost me over 300,000 isk to repair. I went back and finished it off, slowly. I even looted the wrecks. It kind of took the whole profit out of the mission, and couple of other missions as well. I guess I thought I was uber.

Lord of the Rings Online is really starting to work for me. At 18 we are beginning to feel and look like players, not noobies. The only downside is playing on a production server. We played instances in WoW, Test servers in Vanguard and EQ and we don’t like crowds of players getting in the way of our fun. Twice, the crowds got in our way last night. I suppose we got in their way as well. When you are playing solo, working a hard area, you don’t want to see a group come through, even a small group like ours. It screws up the spawn. You don’t know if a bunch of mobs are going to pop on you or what. We’ve died many times because another group has cleared ahead of us and we get over run by a surprise re-pop.

We started south of the Forsaken Inn in Lone-Lands. Mark wanted something that drops from an elite dog ‘Asht‘ for a crafting project. We knew approximately where Asht lives, but there were so many people in the area it would have been painful to work there, we moved on. Later we were working quests for Candaith in the north west of Lone-Lands. The spawn camps were filled with players in their 20s and 30s. I don’t know what they were doing killing level 17 mobs, but it made it harder for us. We made it harder for them as well. I don’t like that frantic, “pull before somebody else gets him,” stuff. I suppose it added to the excitement a little. It makes us play a little more on-the-edge than we would have if we owned the place.

Mostly we had great fun. We were fighting 20 elites for a while, a short while. We can take em, one at a time. Two for a little while. Beyond that, “see you back at the inn.” Oddly, I (the tank) went down in one of those fights and the Lore-Master / Minstrel survived. Unfortunately, we had worked our way in far beyond any chance of my making it back solo. The boys could have fought their way out, but it would have taken time. They were nice enough to die their way out to me. That’s friends for ya.

When I stopped playing EVE a year ago I had a Vexor, Gallente Cruiser, decked out for mining. I’m sure I chose it because of some article found on the web. It’s good for the purpose but I’ve been thinking of what next. As mentioned before I’ve started purchasing Giant Cargo Containers (Cans) and anchoring them in good spots around the 0.7 system I’m working, as well as a 0.6 system near by. I don’t know the re-pop schedule for asteroid belts, but once stripped it takes a few days for them to return. While waiting for Asteroid re-spawn, I’ve started running missions, something I never did before. It took me a couple of days to train the skills necessary to make the Vexor a good fighting ship. It’s overkill for level 1 missions, I like that.

I’m playing with the idea of buying a Thorax, Gallente Cruiser. It wouldn’t be a very good miner, not as much cargo or CPU, but a nice mission killer. I figure I’ll use the Thorax for running missions and Vexor for mining. It sounds dumb to me now. I’ve got a couple of days to think about it before my training allows me to drive a Thorax. I’m also considering getting a battleship for mining. It will take me 26 days to train for the battleship. The Thorax would gives me something to play with while I wait.

Running missions is such a bore. I see why I never did them. I’m making more money doing it than I expected, it’s not equal to mining money at this stage. I can’t bring myself to loot the hulks of the ships I kill. I’ve looted a few, but it’s so slow. I know there is good stuff in there, but if that’s the game, I’d rather not play.

Monday night went almost as planed, better than expected. We all dinged 15 last time so I thought it would be a good time to run our class specific, level 15, quests. Unfortunately, the Lore-Master and Minstrel quests are solo only. My Guardian quest wasn’t, but I found it to be quite easy, consisting of protecting some dude as he walked around his farm. I finished it up while the boys were running theirs. I got a nice hat out of the deal.

We headed to the Forsaken Inn in Lone-Lands, I picked up eight quests, then headed into the runes just to the southeast. It was a nice spot for us. Lots of work and quite challenging at times as we were fighting multiple level 19-20s. We collected the components for a number of quests. A timely death found us back at the Forsaken Inn completing those quests. We all dinged 16.

With a few minutes left we decided to explore the zone a little. That’s when we noticed the large cone-shaped mountain ‘Weather Top’. It was too interesting, we had to check it out. We climbed all the way to the top and found nothing of interest. We used our maps to gate back to BreeTown. Selling off, skill training, and auction house searches kept us online long after our regular Monday ending. We’ve perfected a group /faint where we all faint on cue. It might not be funny, but it cracks us up. We used that to signal the end of our evening.

The teamwork required to fight the multiple mobs in Lone-Lands is what we enjoy. Surviving difficult fights with adds and surprises is where the fun is for us. We’ve not found much of that in LotRO. Most of the stuff we’ve fought, up to now, was solo-able - not much of a challenge. I think last night’s adventure gave us all a boost. A reminder of why we play.

It was time for my Guardian, Mike’s Lore-Master, and Mark’s Minstrel to move out of Ered Luin, we were 14 and the pickins were getting a bit slim. We’ve been working the zone for a good while now and we’ve seen about everything there is to see. Before we left though, Mark and I needed to finish our Epic Prologue quests. Who knows where those things lead, but they are “Epic” so you’ve got to give them some respect. I didn’t know if Mike’s toon, being human, could join our Dwarfs in the quest-instance, he could. We did three or four instances, they were fairly easy geared more for level 12s, then headed for BreeLand, which, as luck would have it, was both out goal and the next location for our Epic Prologue.

Mike tracked down the beginnings of his Epic prologue in Combe, BreeLand. He was able to work through the lower ones himself. I joined him for a couple with my Champion and we were able to sync up all our Epic Prologues Friday. We worked a few quests in Old Forest, but eventually got lost trying to figure out Chapter 10: Into the Barrow-Downs. Old Forest, a maze, is really starting to piss me off. I hate wandering around trying to find some clown, especially with the group - we are on the clock here you know. Eventually, we gave it up and headed to Northern Bree-Fields to kill orc, or what ever they are. We found a large camp and worked our way to a cave entrance, but it wouldn’t let us in, we weren’t qualified. We ended in North Downs where we killed one level 20 mob before camping.

Mike and I had parked our Saturday Hunters in Old Forest in the middle of a different quest. We screwed around in there for an hour trying to find a guy’s pack. We eventually died in a bear accident. Screw that. We headed off to Lone-Lands to find fame and fortune. No fortune, but we did ding 17. The group toons all dinged 15 friday, so we all need to run our class quests. After that I think we’ll to move to Lone-Lands as well. We our a power-house the mobs of BreeLand seem unable to stop. We need a higher challenge.

My toons are all so poor. My Guardian couldn’t afford his level 15 skills, one of which was heavy armor. I’ve got to come up with a money making plan. I suppose I could beg. “Excuse me. Could you help a fellow out with a little silver?” Naa.

At Bruce’s suggestion (co-worker who plays EVE) I’ve purchased a Giant Cargo Container and an Industrial ship (Iteron) to hall it around. I still use my Vexor to mine with, it has three mining lasers, then drag the ore from my cargo hold to the anchored Giant Can which has 5 times the space. Once the Giant Can and Vexor are full, I warp back to station, switch to my Industrial ship, and run back to the Can to empty and return the ore to station. It seems like a lot of extra work, but it keeps me in space mining longer, and is more efficient.

I may upgrade to a slightly larger Industrial ship (Iteron II) as, even with cargo expanders, the one I have can’t quite hold all the Giant Can’s contents. I may also purchase more Cans as placing them is the hardest part. Cans aren’t expensive, and spreading a few around the system might be even more efficient. Even after purchasing all the skills and equipment I’ve made a good return on investment and have close to 9 million isk. Who knows what the future will bring.

I’m slowly regaining a rudimentary understanding of EVE, the best I ever achieved anyway. I’m making 500,000 isk an hour with my newbie mining business working in 0.7 space. I’ve purchased insurance for my Vexor, a Gallente Cruiser, and my five Drones protect me easily from the occasional pirate. I need an upgrade for my Shield Booster to work comfortably in lower security space, but I’m doing fine so far. I’m not looking for excitement yet.

Mining will get boring in a week or so. It’s a great way to get re-acquainted with the game though, and you can watch a Netflix movie, or write, or do EVE research on the web at the same time. I can’t mine unattended, the 0.7 pirates would take a good while to do me major damage, but they eventually could.

There is plenty of time to figure out what I want to do in EVE. As everybody says, EVE is open ended. You get to choose your future and path. Mindless grinding is my specialty. Maybe I’ll stick with that.