It seems that all I've done over the last few days is roll alts in Eve. Alt for the factional warfare sister corp, alts to see what good base skills you can get with a pure noob and, finally, a new alt for actually experimenting with factional warfare.
I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but despite playing Eve for over five years now I'm utterly useless at PvP. Well that's what I think because I never actually do any except when I really can't avoid it. I think it's time that I did actually bother to learn, but since the curse of having a high skill point character is that clones are expensive it's time for an alt with a cheap head for no consequence mayhem.
So here we are, a fresh new Minmatar pilot called Theobald Gaudin. My name picking strategy consists of grabbing a history book at random and picking the first name I see, this time it was a book on the Templars. I picked Minmatar because if I'm going to be stuck in Frigates for a while I'd rather be in a Rifter, which is I think a bizarre adaptation of the "If I'm going to be staring at my characters' arse all day it might as well be a female one" argument that may mean that I need serious mental reconditioning.
Sitting here with my current skills in Evemon I can see that I'm not that bad out of the box. I can fly a Rifter already, I can even nearly use T2 projectiles, but that's a decision for the future. I'm going to need to add the skills for warp scrambling and webbing, but I seem to remember I'll be able to use a webifier after the tutorial agents finish so that's OK. I know I'll be needing a MWD, but an afterburner will do for a day or two before I can train one and then that's it. I'm ready to go.
Next comes learning skills. You know all those people who say get them all to level 5 straight away? Well they're wrong. Get them to 4 soonish and then get the advanced to 2s as you can afford it. Longer term get the advanced ones up to 4s, but there's no real rush as you've got most of the bonus already. Whatever you do make sure that you're still training the skills you need in order to have fun in the meantime! Eve is not a game where you train solidly for the first month and then undock, even if some people tell you that it is.
Now what am I missing? Oh yes, faction standing. I'll be ready to go on Thursday or Friday thanks to Van Hemlock. By that time my skills should be ready too.
I am slightly torn as to the next bit: cash. The thing I really know is that I need at least a couple of Rifters all fitted up ready for me to explode due to low skills both for me and my character. Technically I know what to do, and I understand how everything works far too well but the human element is an unknown. I suspect I can fund one of them from the cash I make while sorting out my faction, but that does then depend on me looting more than I lose in fights. So what are my options?
Option one is to bung 100million from my main and live off that. This is probably the easiest.
Option two is to do the time code for ISK thing. Since I'm paying for this account with timecodes funded by my main already that doesn't seem that sensible and becomes option one again.
Option three is to hope I make enough cash from the fighting. I'm not an optimist at the best of times so I doubt this will work.
Option four is to run missions. One of the reasons for this char is to have fun and rekindle my enjoyment of Eve. I've been finding the game a little stale lately and mission grinding outside of factional warfare isn't the answer.
Oh well, it seems like cheating but I'll bung some cash from my main. It's a shame since I'm doing this from scratch and it would be nice to have the proper newbie experience, but those advanced learning skills cost cash and I don't fancy grinding more than I have to in order to get started on this. I think I'll treat it as a loan and keep track of how much I earn in case I can actually make this pay from looting. Of course in the background I've still got my corp to run so this is certainly going to be casual PvP.
Can I play Eve with a casual PvP character and not need to keep funding it with my main? Will I learn how to actually fight? Will I miss having lots of skill points? And most importantly, how much will Eve change as a game for me? I may, or may not, blog about depending on my results but I'm sure it'll keep coming up in our podcast as me and Hemlock laugh at each others' results.
My goals:
- Have fun
- Try to be financially neutral, if not actually make a profit
- Learn how to kill people
posted @ Tuesday, June 17, 2008 2:03 PM