The High Sec Carebear has finally moved to 0.0, Adventures with TEST awaits.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Hulkageddon starts and the ISK 3.0.

And so the Hulkageddon is upon us yet again.  It's been some time now since I've actually worried about the Hulkageddon, I don't mine that much anymore, it mostly comes through the market for me these days.  I do try to avoid flying freighters/Orcas or other "easy to hit" industrial during this time though, rather opting for my blockade runner to move stuff if need be.  Hulkageddon is really not that much of a problem if you take some precautions and use your head, should you get your Hulk/other highly expensive industrial ship ganked during this time, it's pretty much your own fault.  Saying that, I'll probably loose something shiny myself this time around, should that happen I swear not to whine about it.

I know several "carebears" and industrialists whinge and complain about Hulkageddon and I don't really understand this, as I stated above, staying safe isn't really all to hard if you stay smart.  I understand that you have to switch the "autopilot" mentality off, but in my opinion we're playing a multi player game, Playing being the operative word here.  If your need to play AFK is that high and you find yourself auto piloting a wreck when you return to the keyboard, tough.

Hulkageddon also presents a great way of making lots of money.  There are several new market opportunities during Hulkageddon, and they're also rather obvious if you know where to look.

In other news, EON has released the new ISK 3.0 guide, it's a 80 mb PDF download and it's worth every bit.  It's also FREE and although aimed at the newer player everyone can probably learn something from it, it nothing else it's a great little reference manual.  According to several other blogs around, it's the manual that CCP should have written to accompany EVE and I can agree with that.

http://www.isktheguide.com/

Fly safe.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Overheating racks and new portraits.

And so, the Sansha have descended upon us.
They brought with them an amazing new character editor.  I know some people have lamented the fact that the new ones aren't as good as the old ones.  That they liked the cartoon style, that the new editor lacks diverse and unique characters.  I for one, like it.
The new pictures look great, the options are plentiful and the expressions many.  The few things I don't like, it's hard to see the small, tiny, little photo thumbnail.  Some more clothing options might be nice and some more normal haircuts all around, other then that I'm very happy.
I'm gonna be lazy though, since I've already misplaced the pictures I was gonna link twice, I'll settle for the banner art.  I have created a new banner, my skills at photo editing are somewhat lacking, but it's my own and I'm rather happy with it.  The new banner has the new pictures, it's Evoran by the Iteron and Evv by the Mega.  The old ones are in the right sidebar for now. 
I went for a civilized, office sorta look for Evoran, seeing as he's the official guy with the trading and the building.
For Evv I wanted a "rougher" look, ex Navy, don't want his picture taken sort of thing.
I'm pretty darn happy with how they both turned out.

Now on a different note.  The patch brought with it some nice shortcuts, and in doing so it overwrote all the old shortcuts.  I undocked my Abaddon, warped into a mission, The Assault, yes, the same one that cost me my Apoc a while back.  I'm sitting there shooting away at the serpentis ships waiting for aggro from the last bunch to unleash my drones.  Aggro gained, drones out, ctrl-1 to sent drones to attack.  I hear this "plink" sound and think "hmmmmm".  Then the lower rack overheats.  I quickly turn the heat off and and head for the options, while getting shot at in the mission.  I go to drones, find the shortcut and assign ctrl-1 to attack.  I'm told it's already taken so I go to the appropriate page and turn it off, then back to drones to turn it on again.  Thing is, every time you click it, doesn't matter that you're in a menu apparently, it activates.  Sooooooo, by the time I'm done, I esc out of the menu and intend to finish the mission.  I was just in time to see my hardeners burn out, I check overview and see there's a warp scrambling frig on me, then my armor rep'erapparently activating things through menus. gives out.  I was fortunate enough to get out in low armor this time, repaired in station and finished the mission.  Thank you for overwriting my old shortcuts CCP and thank you for

All said and done though, good patch, I like it so far and now, all that's left is to rally some corp mates and try the Sansha for real.  I still have fresh memories of how that went on SiSi.

Fly safe.

Monday, January 10, 2011

2011, still going!

Happy new year to all and may 2011 rain isk or KM's on you, depending on preference.  Myself, I'll take the isk.
2010 ended quietly for me, bogged down in work and family stuff to attend for the holliday I got precious little EVE time in, such is life.  I've mostly been managing trade orders once a day, neglecting everything else and anxiously been waiting for the next Incursions installement to be deployed.  I'm actually looking forward to the new character creator specifically, and I'm not quite sure why I do it.  It's going to be very wierd to change portraits, I've been running around SiSi for a little bit and seeing that new picture in local is downright unerving.  When I get used to it though, the new creator is amazing and I'm really looking forward to recreating faces that have been with me for years now, I suspect I'll spend a few hours tweaking when the creator drops.

There's another couple of things about the patch, the shortcuts and the new NeoCom.  I love the shortcuts, absolutely love them, they're intuitive, they're quick and they reduce clicking by an awsome amount, BUT, I will not get over the fact that I have to click in the chatwindow to type now.  For that reason alone I will probably not use the shortcuts at all, I'm way to used to just start typing when I need instead of clicking somewhere.
The new NeoCom is also great, it has to be enabled in the menus as some BETA option, the problem though is that I will now have to start playing EVE in fullscreen mode.  Previously, EVEMON centered my windowed EVE for me, now I have to use some "Fixed" window option, the downside of this is that the windows start bar has priority at the bottom of my screen, the new NeoCom is also at the bottom of the screen.  Everytime I go for the new NeoCom the windows start bar pop's up.  Small complaints, I know, but still.  I'll have to find a way to get around it, preferably without going back to fullscreen.

Still, Incursions pt. 2 is looking great, can't say how much I appreciate CCP for holding back, staggering deployment and making it all nice and polished before release.

Fly safe all.