All About EVE Online

This is a public service announcement!

For a lot of new players you may not be aware of some of the larger, famous (even infamous) Corporations or Alliances out there. In recent news two major alliances where disbanded. One alliance was disbanded by internal betrayal and espionage (about 6 months ago), another by outside hackers. CCP launched an investigation into the hacked disbandment and found that it was the work of 3^rd party ISK sellers.

Please note that this may not apply to all ISK sellers, but it is not wise to buy ISK from 3^rd party sellers. There are a few out there that are dishonest and will cause you far more far than you think. The main issue is key loggers and credit card theft. If you even visit the site of one of these dishonest sellers you could be infected with a key logging program that will get your EVE Online account information, hack your account and then drain your ISK and all possessions.

CCP has pointed out several times that they are not responsible for such hacks and that buying ISK is against the End User License Agreement (EULA) that you agreed to when you signed up for the game. They are not obligated to reimburse you for your lose. Also key loggers can gain more information about you and other sites that you may be affiliated with. These sites may also not have a problem with using your Credit card information again or for their own profit. Remember that EVE Online is a global game, with over 130 countries represented and consumer protection laws may not help you. CCP has advised on more than one occasion to NOT encourage these sites by buying ISK. So in short DO NOT BUY ISK FROM ANYONE.

So for your protections and for others in the game it is my suggestion that you do not visit sites that sell ISK or buy ISK from anyone. Also investing in spyware removal programs and virus protection is always a good thing. There are other means to making ISK and I will take about some later on. Please note that I do have links to ISK making guides on the link page (on the right). I have used these guides myself and have not had any trouble with them. If you do decide to use a guide to make more ISK be sure that YOU are earning your own ISK (this conforms to the EULA) and that you are not paying (RL money) for someone else to earn/make ISK for you (this VIOLATES your EULA).

CCP has, this time, reinstated the hacked Alliance, but I have no information if lost funds or equipment has been reimbursed. Ok, I will now step down from the soap box, and until next time Fly Safe

Reggi Mental

You have gone out and spent hours mining the asteroids, dealing with can flippers, and maybe even pirates, to get a ton of ore, now what? You can sell raw ore if there is a good price for it on the market, or refine that ore into minerals that you can work with (build items) or sell on the market. Refining ore into minerals is easy enough, but to get the best yield or price for your work let’s look at a few things.

Ore:

I will point out that different ores have different volumes (Veldspar is 0.1, Scordite is 0.15, and Pyroxers is 0.3 cubic meters per unit, just to name a few), so you will get a different number of units for each cycle of your mining laser. Each ore needs a different number of units to refine it, and refining is done in whole batches so for example Veldspar needs 333 units per batch, so the numbers would be 333, 666, 999, 1332, etc… with the remainder going back into your station hanger. You can find these numbers in the ‘Attribute’ tab of each ore.

Reprocessing Plants:

I believe that most, if not all, Non-Player Character (NPC) station has a ‘Reprocessing Plant’ in it. There are four different base yields (30%, 40%, 45%, and 50%) so look carefully before you just blindly start to process your ore. Your skills (see below) will adjust the ‘base yield’ to your ‘net yield’, and your ‘standing’( again lower down) with the corporation will adjust how much they ‘take’ as a fee. You can find these numbers by clicking the ‘Reprocessing Plant’ button in the station and look in the upper right corner of the window. If you hover over this area you will get a brief description too.

Skills:

Each ore also has a ‘Processing’ skill (under the Industry menu in Skills) associated with it as well that cut waste by 5% per level. You can process without these skills but you will not get as much yield. There is also a ‘Refining’ and ‘Refinery Efficiency’ skill this will cut down on the waste as well (2% and 4% per level).  If you are using a NPC stations with 50% base yield, you do not need all these skills at level 5 to get zero waste.

Standing:

Your standing with the NPC Corporation will increase by story line missions and/or by ‘Social’ training (‘Connections’ to be specific). These will lower the amount that the Corp takes as a fee. The fee is taken from the ‘Recoverable’ amount (the amount after waste).

I know this seems to be a lot of information just to refine some ore into minerals, but I thought you should know what the items on the window mean and how best to use the Reprocessing plant to get the best yield possible.

Well that’s about it for now, remember to subscribe to my site for updates and new articles. If you have any questions or comments feel free to post them. And until next time, Fly Safe

Reggi Mental

History Alert!

“Go West, young man, and grow up with the country” as writer John Soule’s stated in his 1851 article for the Terre Haute Express, an Indiana newspaper. This quote would later be popularized by Horace Greeley and served as the mantra for nineteenth Century American migration. This quote has been used for decades and even a century later it is still used to urge people to go out and build their future.

 Now in the time of EVE this quote can still be used to urge young pilots to go out and find fame and fortune in the untamed universe. Well not the entire universe is untamed, maybe just less tamed than the rookie space of your tutorial agents. If you did all the career tutorials you have already made several trips out of this home system, which on most cases is the highest security space in EVE. The opportunities in one system are severely limited.

Why should I “go west,”?  Where should I go?  What should I do there? 

Why should you leave the safety of rookie space? Simply put, to make your fortune, to become a powerful player, to explore, the options are almost endless. In lower security systems you will find more player, better ore, more agents and adventures. These can lead to you making friends, finding or creating a corporation, learning new skills, etc… Now I should note that I am saying lower sec space (lower than 0.9) not low sec space. High sec space is space with security rating of 1.0 to 0.5. Low sec space is rated 0.4 and lower, even though 0.0 is sometimes referred to as zero space. Low sec space you will not have CONCORD coming to your rescue if other players attack you. If you travel to 0.8 or lower space and do mining you can expect NPC rats to attack and again CONCORD will not help against NPC rats. The lower the sec level the larger their ships will be. But staying in high sec space and mining, I have never seen anything bigger than a frigate come after me in a belt.

One of the biggest problems effecting rookie space is the miners. More than once a day I read where some new rookie is looking for Veldspar in a belt but all the belts are mined out. This is partly to do with macro miners (a third party program that will mine for you while you are away from keyboard, even while you sleep). Macro mining is illegal in the game and if are found out to be macro mining, you can be banned from the game. Some are ISK farmers that are looking for safe place to mine without pirates, and again ISK buying and selling is illegal and could lead to you being banned. Some are just players that don’t want to risk their precious barges while watching tv instead of watching the game (ok, sorry for the rant). But this leads to an over mining of resources in rookie space and very little opportunity for you to grow. The point is that as you travel down to lower security level systems you will encounter more and different ores. Check out my article on “Ore to Minerals” to see what minerals you get from different ores. These new ores and minerals are needed to manufacturing and can be a great source of income to a player.

Another reason to head out is that once you do all the tutorials (even all the ones in other systems and with other the races) you cannot do any more missions with these NPC agents. Going to other systems allows you to go to other stations, find new agents, do more missions and improve your standing with the local Faction, not to mention that some of these missions are very profitable. Feel free to review my article “Call My Agent” for more information on finding an agent.

Now the last two questions, where should you go and what should you do, I cannot answer for you. Where you go and what you do is entirely up to you. That is one of the great things about EVE online, its freedom. Freedom to go where you want, do what you want, not jump through hoops.

So as EVE grows, we need to expand and to explore new territories and whether we are the ones boldly going into the abyss, or supporting them with mining and manufacturing of ships, ammo and equipment, we must step out in our own way to find these resources, the fame, the new worlds, all those things that we cannot find in rookie space. So to update the quote, Go Out, Young Pilot, and Grow Up with the Universe.

P.S. One last thing I want to point out is to keep your clone updated and once you find a place you like and want to call home see about moving your clone there or at least close by. Check out “Send in the Clones“.

And until next time, Fly Safe

Reggi Mental

In the previous versions of EVE, rigs where a ‘one size fits all’ set up. With the new patch (Apocrypha 1.5, released 20, August, 2009) we now have three sizes to work with. the Advantage to this is the smaller size rigs will require less material to build and research to Tech II versions. The downside is we now need to have three different blueprints to build them for all ships. All rigs and blueprints in storage or hangers will be converted to Large Rig versions. All rigs installed in ships will be converted to the proper size for that ship, so you wont see any change on your ships that have rigs.

The blueprints will be available through out EVE, at first they appear to be Race orientated, meaning that if you are looking for missile and shield rigs you will need to look in Caldari space. But I am sure that over time they will be distributed over all of EVE by players selling them on the open market.

Small rigs will used on ships like frigates, destroyers and their Tech II versions Interceptors or Interdictors etc… Medium rigs will be used by medium-sized ship hulls such as cruisers, industrials and battlecruisers etc… Large rigs will be for those ships big ships Battle sips, the Orca, Titans, etc… Simply look at the fittings tab of the ship info and look for rig slots and you will also see a new line giving the size of the rig.

This is the first step in a series of rig renovations. In future patches we should be seeing adjustments to the rigs attributes or drawbacks, new ways to transport a rigged ship (repackaging a ship destroys its rigs) and a adjustment to drop rats of salvaged materials.

Until next time, Fly Safe

When you start talking to your agent the clock for the mission starts. In the case of the tutorial agents, or Career Agents, you have 7 days from the first click on them to finish ALL the misions. It is possible to do all 10 of the missions in one day so don’t worry that it will take to long.

Also you have one chance with each agent. The trick here is that there are three sets of agents for each race. so you can do 12 sets of missions (Bussiness, Manufacturing, and Military) for a grand total of 360 missions. You will recieve a bunch of ships, moduals and skill books doing this. You will need to learn each races frigate and industrial ship skills to pilot everything. Will will also have to learn the other races weapons systems to be able to use them. This does not mean you can’t do the mission, you just need to use you races ships to do the mission, you just wont be able to use their equipment till you train for it.

I have included in this article the locations of each Career Agent station and if you consider all the items you get you can easily do the math and see that you will gain a ton of items that can either be sold or used by you with a little extra training.

Race         -                 Systems

Amarr       -     Conoban, Pasha and Deepari
Minmatar  -     Malukker, Hadaugago and Embod
Gallente    -     Clellinon, Couster and Trossere
Caldari      -     Akiainavas, Jouvulen and Uitra

Simply open your People and Places tab and search under “Solar System” for each of these systems and set them as a destination in your auto pilot. Remeber to adjust your auto pilot settings to stop at each waypoint, and to perfer safer. If you are unsure of how to do that, look for my article on Traveling.

Until next time, Fly safe

Reggi Mental

Hello and Welcome

I will be posting a series of blogs and articles of my knowledge about EVE Online. I and compiling them now, running test on others, and composing multi-media versions as well.

If you would like to be informed when these post go live, simply subscribe to my site and you will receive email notices as things go live. I would like to take this opportunity to assure you i will not share or sell any private information.

You can also take this opportunity to leave your replies and let me know what you are looking for and I will do my best to address them as soon as possible.

Till next time, Fly Safe

Reggi Mental