First contact

Based on feedback from experienced players, I updated a little my Imicus setup. It now has more speed and has three Acolytes for damage. I’ll switch drones later based on rats.

I was on my way to buy a new Sisters Probe to get better scanning strength but decided to scan first my home system. I found 8 signatures (6 unknown) and started to scan those down.

First one was radar type and I was thrilled. I finally find something. Scanned it down little by little and finally got it 100%.

I recalled my probes and jumped on 30 km range from the site. It includes about 6-8 rats but because I didn’t know how hard those were I started to get closer little by little to get first hits. Those were Centii Servants and I quickly got attention when I went closer. Turned over, kicked my afterburners and launched drones. I was ready to hit armor repair if needed but suddenly I realize something…three targets were gone and I didn’t even got single hit. My Acolyte drones, which I thought would be pretty much useless, dropped those Servants so fast that I didn’t even noticed. I have used to little harder rats on my missions so far.

I killed other rats (or my drones did), cracked those containers and salvaged the wrecks. From the first site I got two Sacred Manifesto and some smaller loot.

Then I returned the the station, did some repairs to drones and scanned second signal. It was also a radar! Scanning that down to 100% took awhile and I was close to call it off. Got it 99.99% and first it seemed that I can’t get it to 100%. But some probe re-arrangement I finally managed to get it done.

Second radar site was pretty much same than previous site regarding difficulty. So it was quite fast farmed. I have to though point out that my drone skills are decent so that helps me a little. I found there one Sacred Manifesto more and one Formation Layout.

It was over midnight on that point so I had to hit the bed and leave those other sites intact. But for 1.5 hour job I was tired but pretty pleased what I got. You can see my gathered statistics below and estimated values on my region and based on EVE-Central info.

Statistics

Found sites (on parentheses) and visited ones without by type.

Time used: 1.5 hours

System	Total	Radar	Magnetometric	Gravimetric
1	8	(2) 2

 

Estimate market price and other income

Loot found so far and estimate average prices

Item	Qty	Domain Average	EVE-Central Average
50mm Reinforced Nanofiber Plates I	1	22 588.89	31 826.47
Armor Plates	1	180 230.79	336 619.18
Charred Micro Circuit	3	188.19	1 278.59
Civilian Shield Booster I	1	267.50	35 027.63
Contaminated Nanite Compound	2	177.63	2 415.96
Dual Light Pulse Laser I	1	5 325.37	78 164.77
Dual Modal Pulse Laser I	1	11 521.06	133 613.02
Formation Layout	1	7 800 009.07	8 068 115.56
Melted Capacitor Console	1	15 074.72	27 335.23
Positron Cord	68	14.65	11 890.76
Sacred Manifesto	3	4 166 425.00	4 818 960.42
Suppressed Targeting System I	1	173.08	51 801.51
Tangled Power Conduit	1	202.58	9 600.11
Tripped Power Circuit	2	69 717.41	69 519.30
Estimate Total		20 676 018.91	24 185 253.71

Bounty Prizes (cumulative): 45 750 ISK

Expenses (cumulative)

Item	Cost
Sisters Core Scanner Probe x 1	385 504.88
Repair	17
Total	385 521.88

Found something…but no paycheck this time

Here are results from my first journey. You can check statistics end of this post but as a summary I found some signatures and scanned every signature at least to 25+% to find out signature group.

Most of sites were Unknown or Cosmic Anomalies but I manage to find two Gravimetric sites, but signals were quite weak and I gave up one of them because I had to go 0,25 AU and just tried to move probes to find if that movement change was good or bad.

Second Gravimetric site based on Type (Small Omber Deposit) seemed not worth of time to use scanning it to 100% and mine after that. Standard Asteroid belts can provide better profit…at least on that case.

 

What I’m going to do to perform better? I already started to increase my skill level on Astrometric Rangefinding to increase probe strength. Also going to buy one Sisters Core Scanner Probe to help some more.

So about 2.5 hours used to this round without paycheck. I’m getting better with probes so maybe next time I find something. At least I think I will do scanning faster.

Statistics

Found sites (on parentheses) and visited ones without.

Time used: 2.5 hours

System	Total	Radar	Magnetometric	Gravimetric
1	2
2	7
3	3
4	0
5	4
6	1
7	1			(1) 0
8	4			(1) 0
9	1

 

Skill updates

Following skills got updates after previous blog report

Scout Drone Operation
Drone Sharpshooting

My starting point for exploration

I wanted to describe better my starting point before undock to explore unknown territories. Beware now experienced players…you might see something newbie things here, so have fun.

Ships and fittings

As I told I have been invested to mining so far and I want to utilize my current ships I have for now. These are not best in a market for this job but something what I’m planning for use during test period.

My main ship is Osprey which is a T1 mining cruiser. I have currently two main setups for Osprey. One set is for clearing rats in sites and fitting either radar or magnetometric sites (Codebreaker/Analyzer). Other set is for mining for Gravimetric sites if I found something to mine. 

For scanning and easy (no rats or only few) radar sites I’m planning to use Imicus. That setup which is on these pictures is more or less scanning setup and I’ll switch Salvager and Codebreaker when entering to sites. We will see how it goes. I might change this setup more faster (Afterburner) from current tanking version if it seems to work better for my playing style. But because I don’t know much what I’m against want to take this approach first.

With my current skills and fitting it will give almost 63 base sensor strength

Skills

I don’t plan to list here all my current skills but wanted to point out a few which might have relevance my performance during this test.

Drones
Combat Drone Operation
Drone Durability
Drone Interfacing
Drone Sharpshooting
Drones
Scout Drone Operation

Mechanic
Salvaging

Missile Launcher Operation
Missile Launcher Operation
Standard Missiles

Science
Archaeology
Astrogeology
Astrometric Acquisition
Astrometric Pinpointing
Astrometric Rangefinding
Astrometrics
Hacking
Science

Engineering
Energy Grid Upgrades
Energy Systems Operation
Engineering
Shield Management
Shield Operation
Shield Upgrades

 

Preparations for route

Experienced players told that it would be good to make route which you go trough while scanning down the sites. Therefore I planned a route which is a loop near my current home station. I don’t want to point out exact route but it is in Amarr space and systems security standings vary between 0.7-1.0 in this initial nine jump route.

New player on EVE universe–ready to learn exploring

I started to play EVE 8.7.2011 so this is still pretty new experience for me. Until now I have been learning basic game mechanics, learned in game skills (about 3,4M skill points learned so far) and spent time with missions and mining mostly.

During tutorial missions I got a feeling that archeology, exploring and mining could be my style on this game. Also battle in a pure form as a main career seemed  not so interested option for my playing style. After a few months I have learned that fighting is part of almost every aspect of the game in a way or another so it is pretty hard to avoid that totally. And for mining I decided in a start not to go to be pure miner and goal was going to Osprey –> Rokh style path so I can keep my options more open for example exploring.

My skills are pretty much scattered for different areas (64 known skills, four of them on level 5) but most of my skill points are on science, industry, spaceship command and drones. I guess that is pretty normal for new player without really good focus and knowledge what to learn…but I still believe that 95+% of those skills are usefully for me currently.

As I told most of time I have been mining on hi-sec space or doing mining missions. I have been trying to increase my standing for one chosen company so I could refine my ores with a better profit. I still have work to do on that area to get standing to 6.0 but that is the goal.

While wondered on internet and on EVE forums, I notice one thread which leads to this blog where writer made a test last year and documented it. Idea was to test if a trial account player can earn over 350M ISK by doing radar sites on hi-sec space in a 14 days. Writer is a pretty experienced player on exploring career but still it seems amazing on my eyes because currently have on my wallet about 20M ISK after spending my money to fittings, clones and skill books. So started to wonder that I must do something wrong here. ;)

I asked around and found out that this is still possible now days. Of course this career is pretty much luck based and sometimes you find something but mostly you don’t. But it is like treasure hunting so eventually you will find something and score big time (so I heard).

Because that blog was done by experienced player and about year ago, one person suggested on forums that I should try something similar because I’m pretty new in this game and don’t have real life EVE skills to help me. Also exploring is pretty common career now days and it is maybe harder to even find those sites if you don’t know the areas. Competition is harder.

Because exploring was on my “to do” –list next to try I might then document my experiences for a month or so. Because of the real life commitment for work and family, my playing style is pretty casual and I can play the game maybe 3-5 hours a week.

My goals/points for this test are

• How much ISK I can gather during test period. I want to point out though that ISK is not the only factor I want to test. So this will be far from optimized way to do exploring and optimize ISK because of my knowledge about EVE. So this is a learning period.
• How many radar, gravimetric and magnetometric sites I can scan down so I can check those out. I don’t want to ignore these sites types yet.
• It is stated many times by experienced players that gravimetric and magnetometric sites are not worth of time, BUT I want to test that also to see it myself. Maybe…just maybe those are now  days better or maybe I can even earn some ISK from those if I can’t find for example radar sites at all. 
• My starting point is not the same as for fresh day 1 char so I’ll have basic skilled already learned, have some basic ships with fittings and a little money to backup if I loose a ship.
• I don’t have to plans to use any alts, other players or corporation support during this period. I’ll want to check what I can do as a solo player.
• I want to do this round as safe as possible. If someone trying to ninja my site I don’t want to fight for it to the bitter end. That is also one point I want to document if I run to this kind of activity…want to see how other players behave or not. Also if the site seems to have too many and hard ‘rats’ I’ll rather fallback than loose the ship for that.  

So I guess those are my main points for this.

On a next blog entry will be about my starting point and my current skills, fittings etc. so new players like me can see what I’ll use and maybe learn something from that and do better than me. And experienced player can laugh, point with a finger and say “What a noob….that is a stupid fitting for this job.”. :) So it goes at least on other MMOs…*grin*.