S3: Blood Stained Stars - aka Sisters of Eve Arc

I am not going to do a play by play on this one as I plan to blitz it and there is a good play by play here: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/The_Blood-Stained_Stars

I have a 500+m/s destroyer with seven missiles launchers than have a 28km reach. Kiting time.

Humor Break (random bit from local)

OK, made it, Mission 1 starting at 20:05 local eve time.

Mission 25 at 22:52. Nothing hard yet. The missile launcher kite model rocks this chain so far.

From the mission Chasing the Nightmare

Burning Down The Hive: Webs and Scrams... yeah I was getting lazy

.

Sigh, mission 38 at 00:53

Mission Brothers and Sisters... 25 jumps to get back to starting point. (time 02;30, with some time for real world)

A good night sleep and back in, playing Chasing Shadows, of note there is nuet (steal you capacitor) and tracking disruption. Kills the small guys and get in close to the battlecruiser so he can't hit you. 

I need 100 DPS minimum for Dagan, so I needed help. I had a stranger come blast him with his Drake.

OK, I finished this chain, End result was some standing (I fixed my Amarr a little, I am going to go hang in Amarr space now) and my wallet sitting at over 28 million isk. 

JITA! The bitter hive of scams and laggery.

So I got a skin from CCP that I just dumped for 10million isk. Nice! On top of dumping a bunch of other junk I had left over I have over 17 million isk.

Hmm, so I built the Talwar, after a few mistakes I now realize that it'll be a bit crippled, but it should be able to kite and shoot stuff. I have a 30 second cap with the shield booster running, but the shield resists are 56-63%. Crossing fingers, with errors I just burned a hair over 2 million isk . Not too expensive.

To SOE arc!

Intermission

I think I'll blast through the SOE arc (Sisters of Eve) story arc. This is a series of missions that a player can run through to reputaion with all the races, some more equipment, and isk. It also takes you on a bit of an inter-system trip to see what other regions look like. I should be able to do this in a Destroyer for the whole thing, the only problem being one boss near the end if I recall.

The SOE arc is not really hard, but it isn't the near snorefest this NPE and Career agents were.

I am going to pick up a couple skills before I head to Jita trade hub to arm myself.

Jury Rigging - So I can put rigs on my ships
Anchoring - In case I want to use a tractor module or mobile Yurt.
Social - so I get better standing boost from mission agents
Negotiation - so I get better payout from agents
Rapid Launch - to fire missiles faster

I am going to load up the junk in one of the Wreathe and head to Jita (28 jumps away).

S2: Final tally

As I write this I have just finished all five career agents and the NPE. I am a day old now as a pilot and I have about 452,262 skill points at this point. Below is what I've trained in the last day:

You will see I trained for drones a little as well as missiles. The drone training is for if I go mining or exploring, and the missile training is because I am going to be buying a Talwar missile detroyer and blasting through a few L1 missions and the Talwar is basically and iWin button (more when I buy it).

So the real end of game stats are, after one day, I have:
1x Reaper (Starter Ship, soon to be junked)
1x Burst (Frigate) - Since it is mainly a shield boosting ship I am probably scrap it
1x Slasher (Frigate) - I actually really like this thing. I think they got buffed at some point
1x Rifter (Frigate) - Mainstay combat ship. I'll build it up to something eventually
1x Probe (Frigate) - Mainly a scanning ship, works as a small hauler
3x Venture (Mining Frigate) - these have uses beyond just mining, but I'll address that someday later.
1x Thrasher (Destroyer) - This things are power house shooters, overkill for L1 mission, good for starter PVP
2x Wreathe (Industrial) - Cargo ship, but can be used for some other purposes

On top of that I have a small pile of starter equipment to play, but most importantly, I have over 6.2 million isk in my pocket to play with. OK, what next?

S2:E6 Exploration Career part 2

So I ran late last night and finally finished the Industrial Career agent. I then dove through the business agent chain, which to be honest was really thin, and go half way through the exploration agent. I'm going to comment on the last couple missions here and then move forward.

Mission 3: This is the first time you use a probe launcher. Reward is over 218,000 isk if you finish in under six hours. I should note that you need to get a DATA site, not a RELIC site. Yeah, I screwed it up.

Mission 4: Now go get a Relic site. Well since I had it already, fastest isk ever made.

Mission 5: Gas cloud. Find the gas cloud, get a Probe frigate (good scanning ship). Note that this mission requires a key, so do not forget to put it in your ship after they give it to you. Scan the site, hit the gate, grab the loot.

That is the end of the Exploration Career. Pretty short but you do get some stuff to help you out.

S2:E5 Exploration Career Part 1

Still waiting to finish the Industrial Career, so...

Only 5 missions here.

Mission 1: Fly to training site. You should see it by hitting ALT+P and scrolling down to a training site and then warping to it.

Mission 2: They give me a Burst frigate, so I will use it naked. I'm guessing I will die along the way.

*side note, the Burst looks like a melted spatula.

An NPC will guide you here. Do what they say.
 You'll get a probe launcher, probes, and a data and relic analyzer (Yeah! Free stuff!)

Sightseeing tour:

Now fly home. I have 30 minute until I can finish the Industrial Career. Need to eat. More tomorrow.

S2:E4 Business Career

Well, as I start this I am waiting for the 90+ minute build to finish mission 10 on the Industrial Career

Mission 1: Courier mission (FEDEX). 120l isk. yawn. still waiting for the ship to build.

Mission 2: Go salvage a ship, reward, ANOTHER Venture! and some cash if you're fast (well, not dead)

Mission 3: Go mine Veld and make Trit from required location. (rat spawned here while mining)

Mission 4: Go kill and then hack/recover,,, so fit a data analyzer (provided).  Had to kill one ship and hack the container... no challenge.

Mission 5: FEDEX a chip, real hard.

Mission 6: (1 hour 12 minutes remaining on the M10: Industrial Career) Bring back a Tracking Computer I. Fine. Bought one for 40,000isk.

Mission 7: clear and hack mission. Use a Relic Analyzer (provided). Kill 2 rats, a quick brainless hack, back to base.

Mission 8 (FEDEX) reward an implant. Make sure implant it when you get back to the starting point!

Mission 9: provide 2 1mn Afterburner I units. I had them from salvage and such. DONE!

Mission 10: 5000 rounds of EMP S ammo and you get a Wreathe industrial ship. Build or buy... hmmm... I need to do 50 runs.. that is... 4 HOURS!... I will just go buy it., 112k isk later. All done!

Recap: I just did this whole chain because I was waiting for a ship to build to finish the Industrial chain. I cheated at the end by buying the ammo. I typed all this up, and I STILL have over 50 minutes to go before that ship is finished.

I guess I'll start exploring now.

S2:E3 Industrial Career Agent

I will be honest, this isn't my cup of tea, but I'll give it a shot.

Mission 1: Go mine 1000 Veldspar from the assign mining area. They give you a miner, but odds are if you've been playing along you still have your Venture. Note the payout is over 300,000 isk for just this mission. If you go to any old belt and mine, you will not get credit for the mission. Bit of advice, mine a few minutes after the mission says complete, you need it for mission 2.

Mission 2: Make Titanium, reward, a Venture! Cool, we can use that one as a lawn ornament.

Mission 3: Make and sell two civilian afterburners. Ok, I know you are supposed to build them through industry, but I had a pile from farming newbie Corvettes... fastest mission yet.

Mission 4: Go to assigned area, kill rats, mine. OK.  Remember that extra Veldspar from Mission 1? Well, the trit from that will allow you to keep going. No need to mine yet :)

Mission 5: Fedex Mission... pick up object at point A take to point B.

Mission 6: Make 20 cap booster 25 units. This one requires materials you might not be able to mine locally. However, from the left over stuff from the NPE, I think I have enough materials... so I'll just go back and get them. When you put the blueprint up, make sure to select 2 runs in the middle before hitting RUN. 10 minute break! and a 400,000 isk payout!

Mission 7: Go sell the cap boosters (FEDEX mission). big deal

Mission 8: Build a shuttle.... remember all that Trit from earlier? Yep, again... 5 minute wait...

Mission 9: Go mine to lure bad guys, kill bad guys, rescue scientist. Um, ok. After a couple cycles of the mining laser a one-shot wonder enemy shows up and you pop him. I jet-canned the ore and went back to station. This is one of those times I need to mine to relax, so I tossed the prize in tot he item hangar and grabbed the Venture to clear out the Kernite (see tip on mission mining). I have two hours to get the bonus and I've been playing all day... mining time. zzzzzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzzzzz

oh wait, I'm done? I'm done! 5949 units of Kernite with a rough raw value of 1.2 million isk.

Yes I am making fun on miners. I have lots of time as a miner, so I can laugh at myself too. (hey an idea for a post!)

Mission 10: Build a Burst Frigate! Um.. ok... gonna reprocess everything I got and see what happens. Yeah, I was short 6 zydrine, 21 Nocxium, and 3167 Pyerite.... total cost to me from local purchase? about 42,000 isk... sucks, but I'm in a hurry tonight.

Remember that hurry? The stupid ship takes 1 hour and 35 minutes to build!!!

*** going to star the next career agent since I am waiting for a glacier to move ***

S2:E2 Advanced Military Career

OK, the the initial branch was a breeze. Lets give the Advanced one a shot:

Mission 1: Go kill stuff, come back, get paid. (see TIP post about overheating and Thermodynamics)

Mission 2*: READ THIS This is one of the few times you REALLY need to read the details.

Take the free naked ship, fly in, blow up. dock back in your pod and get back in to your main ship.
*note that a container was left behind. You can save the location (right click on the container) and then turn in the mission, get a ship, and fly back to loot it (People and Places (ALT+E))

Mission 3: You need to warp scramble a target and kill his escort (but not the target... read the rules) walk in the park.

Mission 4: Again , read the instruction... you need to mount a Civilian Small Remote Shield Booster and fix a guy (AAA in EVE). Go tot eh guy, target him, and shoot him with the remote shield booster. You get a skill for your efforts... one which I will inject and not bother with for a while. It took me longer to type this than to do the mission

Mission 5*: AGAIN, READ THE MISSION : They are going to give you a ship, but the EXPECT you to die. However you do need to kill at least one person. You do still have all those crappy civilian guns from the starter ship right? If not, farm three starter ships in the next system over and bring back the guns for this one way ticket.

*Idiot moment - You should remember to insure your ship on these missions... free isk (called idiot moment becuase I thought of it after mission 5.DOH) 

Mission 6: Fly really fast to point A. Note you could fly around the green cloud if you really wanted to but I didn't even lose half my shields in a Slasher with a 1mn Afterburner I

Mission 7: This mission says to use a civilian autocannon. Not if it'll check, but I'll use one anyhow. Actually this makes sense of you are not Minmatar and are doing the missions (Omega clone). Another mission shorter than the time it took to type up.

Mission 8: Watch for pop-ups, you'll get instructions when you get to the mission site. You do need to recover 10 hostages. No shots fired or you fail.

Mission 9: Go web a guy, reward is a Minmatar Destroyer skill book, If you are able to, train it right away (in my opinion).

Mission 10: Finish this and win the destroyer! Go blow up a bunch of guys. You do get webbed and scrammed here, so kill that guy first! (he is also the only guy you HAVE to kill).

OK, Advanced Military Career is a bit dull overall from the first one. At the end of it however I have almost 3 million isk and a Destroyer to fly. Not a bad couple hours.

TIP: How to not melt your ship as a new pilot

EVE has a skill called Thermodynamics. It allows a player to overheat his ship systems to get more performance at teh cost of damaging many other componenets in the ship with the end result of buring out bits of your ship. In PVP this can be life and death, in PVE, it can mean a nasty repair bill.

You used to have to buy and train Thermodynamics in the past, but now people get it for free with they start. If you don't understand what is going on, and you click that green curved line on the top of your weapon or equipment icon, you can put the item in overheat and take damage. See picture:

To avoid this, for now while you're learning, you can lock this be doing the following:

How bad is this damage? Well, about 19,975 isk which was 25% of the mission payout. Fly safe out there.

S2:E1 Military Career Agent

When you fly to the career agent station, you will find that all five of them are here. More importantly, you will find that the station is one that sells skill books.

I am going to train two skills, one I already have is Drones which is at level 1. I am going to train that to level 3 so I can use drones on the Venture. However, I also need to buy the skill book Light Drone Operation and train it to one so I can fly the drones I need.Note that you need to get Drones to 3 first before you can train the other skill. This first training time will take about 9 hours with basic stats.

I've also decided not to use the Venture at first. I went and got another starter ship in the next system by flying there in my pod. I then stripped it, repackaged it, and trashed it. I undocked and redocked and go yet another newbie ship. I then took the gun from the first one and put it on the second one after stripping the mining laser off number 2 and flew back the one system to the career agent.

Mission 1: Fly to a spot and kill a three bad bad guys. Reward, a gun (a real gun not this civilian crap) and some ammo for your ship. Note that I got a gun and some ammo from the first wreck. There was a forth bad guy about 25km out. I killed him too, why not? (he dropped some ammo)

Mission 2: Kill more guys, rescue people, and win a frigate (anything is better than this starter ship). Loot from mission scored an afterburner and a web.

Mission 3: Kill guys, get documents. New frigate is a Slasher. They also give you two more guns so you have a full rack.

Mission 4: Go find a stargate: reward afterburner. leave once mission says complete. The gate will cause gas damage.

Mission 5: Go talk tot a guy, do what he says, reward is a civilian (big deal) Explosive Deflection Field. You need to read the local chat to hear the pitch, then shoot the guy there.

Mission 6: Multi-room kill mission with a +1 implant as a reward.

Mission 7: More killing, Small Armor Repair 1 as reward (although I am planning on focusing on shield tanking)

Mission 8: Go kill even more, get two overdrive injectors for your troubles. First time I've had to use a repper or any kind and only because I stuck around to kill the rats.

Mission 9: Blow a warehouse and get a webber.

Mission 10: Kill the bad guy, win a Rifter, you know, like the one you lost during the NPE.

To be honest, other than a little singing in the last couple missions, this is a cake walk and you'll have about 1.5 million isk when done. I also have a new love for the Slasher, this thing is extremely nimble, but I still might go to to the Rifter.

This was the end ship.

S1:E8 - Career Agents

Here is where you break off from the NPE (New Player Experience)

 You are note required to do any of these if you just want to go play. You can always come back and try them later. You will get money and ships by finishing these chains so it is worth taking a look at if you are very new. I will also note that there are three full sets of agents per race. So as and Alpha you could do these chains three times for your race. I think you can do the other races as well, but you won't be able to fly the ships they give you.

I am going to start with the Military Career path, mainly because I want to get a destroyer and you get one for free (I think, it has been years)

Before you leave, make sure to redeem your tiems. You will get a box in your item hangar, right-click on it to open it. With it you'll get a blueprint for your lost frigate (which I am not going to build anytime soon) and the Venture ship.

I am going to load up the venture with what I can carry, but I fully intend on leaving things behind here. Stuff in an NPC station is always safe, so don't worry if you leave it behind. However, if you want that stuff later, you are going to have to fly back to get it (there is no teleport in Eve).

S1:E7 Battle at the Hive

Huge fight! OK, don't bother salvaging this one, just fight it out and watch the show.

And then you die.

The good news is that you are about to get a free mining ship and some other bits. That mining ship, a Venture, is actually a pretty handy tool if you want to mine or explore, in a pinch it could even be used in level one combat missions, but that will be for later. 

S1:E6 Travelling to the Hive

OK, set the destination and then hit the auto pilot. Alternatively you can manually fly there by selecting the yellowed icon on the right hand overview display and then hitting the jump icon about (or hit D while left clicking on the gate in the list)

Flying manual is faster because in autopilot you warp to 15km from the gate and then fly 12.5km until you can jump through where as manually you jump right to the gate and pop through. I a frigate you save 30 seconds or so per jump. In larger ships, you can save several minutes. Plus manual flying is also safer.

S1:S5 Battle Preparations

This part of the campaign is prepping for the big end battle scene. I actually got some extra gear from earlier when I got blown up by the Drifter battleship. This means that I ended up with two Civilian Armor Repair I units and two Civilian Webifiers. In the ship I got for the battle, a Rifter, I can fit it all and it remains cap stable (meaning I can run everything and not run out of power. I will touch on this in later posts, but for now, we can use 'all the things'.

Bit of a spoiler: You are going to lose this ship, it is part of the tutorial. I 'think' you can switch back to the other ship if you want, but I am going to be doing the career agents after this, so I know I have more toys coming.

One last note. You get a skill injector during this build up. I would recommend using it to get your Frigate (not mining frigate) skill up to 3. The reason is that then next class of ships you'll be able to fly is the destroyer, and it is a fast way to make simple isk early on.

S1:E4 Investigate Research Facility

Oh yes, AUTOPILOT>. I need to teach you new folks about NOT using autopilot down the road, but for now, use it.

This is the first time (after a 120km+ flight) you do hacking. This is pretty straight forward. Actual hacking is more complex, but not much more with skills.


Now we get to see all the ships.. this is actually a cool part of the game... and ruined because of brackets.

Once done sightseeing, finish with the autopilot fly away. As a new player, this is a neat chance to get a good look at some big ships you won't see until you migrate to null-sec, so it might be worth a couple minutes a sight-seeing.

S1:E3 Introduction to Industry

OK kids, this is probably where most new players get screwed. Eve is a complex game and while the industry side has gotten better (trust me here, it really is much better) the part still throws people off.

You are going to be told to open the market (ALT+R if you can't find the button that looks like a line graph). You will then be told to find the listed blueprint for CIVILIAN DATA ANALYZER BLUEPRINT. Please look at the picture...

ok, if you move all the crap from your ship to your item hangar, and then go to the item hangar and right-click on the blueprint and hit Use Industry, you'll get the picture below.

Hit start and listen to more story/lore... or go make a sandwich, it'll take almost 2 minutes to make this thing. 

Ok, back? cool... you should now see this (well actually if you left it open during PB and J time then you might actually have to close the window above and reopen the industry tab (factory icon or ALT+S)... and  (see picture)

The item should now be in your ITEM HANGAR. Add it to your ship. 

S1:E2 SHIP DESTROYED

Yeah, i didn't do what I was supposed to do and got blown up.

Here there is a tutorial failure for me. AURA says to open the ship hangar, but not how to. It is the box on the left side, two boxes down from your character's picture (otherwise hit ALT+C)

I'll explain the dying soon, but back to the tutorial but I just found out to keep the tutorial going I have to undock and redock. Ok, fine.

hurray me... 50,000 isk for tutorial... keep doing these though if you're new.

OK, so we go out, kill a half dozen ships, loot the container (make sure to grab the materials, you'll need them... sort of)

Next up, where people f%%% up.

S1:E1 THE NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCE!

So, if you drift in to the game, you get the walk in story. I am going to play through this and make some notes. I will point out here, if you want to drop out and just play click here (and probably just to Season 2)

OK, so AURA (your ship computer) will start helping you. click through the steps (you'll hit next a lot)

Basic Navigation is first and the tutorial is pretty slick so far. Barry is happy.

Exploring the Wreckage is next. I will point out that I have heard getting ahead of AURA here is 'bad' and can get you stuck. New poeple are probably still ooing and ahhing. experienced players might shoot themselves if not careful here. I don't like the radial menu much, but that is just me. Also, turn on the afterburner (ALT+F1) since it won't hurt anything.

Now you get to listen to more back story. (grabs popcorn) oh and praise praise. Oh and there are 'Drifters' which is new to me, but we'll look at them later.

Next up will be Removing Warp Disruption Field tutorial. Again, follow along, note that civilian guns never need ammo but they suck. You need to kill two ships to pass this fight. You can loot the wrecks if you want. isk is isk.

Next is DESTROY THE BACKUP GENERATOR... go and kill it. Nuff said.

So, I hear you ask, what if I say Eff it and approach the Drifter Battleships? You got blown up and end up in a pod. If you are new, don't worry, you'll get a new one when you dock.

I'll go dock in my pod and follow up next post.

Welcome

S1:E0 Welcome to Five Minute EVE.

The plan here is to make an Alpha character and relive the beginnings of EVE online. I used to play several years ago and only now and I getting back in to it after about a three year break. There is a lot to learn in EVE Online and a lot has changed. I also want to try to break this down in to short five minute bites for players to read through rather than to make it a wall of text.

The initial few posts here will be me walking through the NPE (New Player Experience) as a starting Alpha. I plan on trying to run these in groups as Seasons and Episodes. So this is Season 1 and Episode 0 . (S1:E0).

OK, well, time is short, so we should get going.
 When you start you can choose between four different races (Gallente, Amarr, Caldari, and Minmatar). Each of the for races has three sub-groups, once you choose those you then have to sculpt your body, choose your ancestry and education, and finally your name.

So, to kick things off, I hereby hatch a heavy set, weak, old, one-eyed Minmatar clone named Barry Z.

I chose Minmatar because they have some advantages with damage types and the fact that guns do not need capacitor. I'll go over more of that as we move along, but for now... BEHOLD (drum roll) Barry!