EVE Online | Deccan Chronicles: Part I

Having little concern that my first EVE Online ship was free and had no weapons, I proudly undocked my new vessel. The Navitas-class frigate is specialized in logistics, and is basically defenseless. I was freely able to fly it anywhere, and I took that ugly thing everywhere I possibly could. It’s been updated now and looks totally different; the Navitas is much more aesthetically pleasing now than it was years ago. It still made just as good use of autopilot commands, as I’d taken to leaving my ship orbiting stations at 25% throttle, just for the view.

I was so new at this point I still thought the only way to make ISK was through completing missions. I was staying employed through tasks assigned to me from stationed agents. The missions introduced me to an agent who needed certain small jobs completed. He’d even pay bonuses for promptness, and he was paying quite a bit; my starting ISK wallet amount was 5000 ISK. Every bit helped.

Space Mining In A Venture In EVE Online

Imagine my glee upon realizing that the asteroids floating on the outskirts of the solar system could be mined for ore, which could then be sold to other capsuleers! I’d made enough ISK through working for my agent to eventually place an order. I purchased a Venture-class mining frigate and a pair of mining lasers for less than 2 million ISK. The skill queue required a little coaching from a chatroom in Eve Online specifically administered for rookie players. I struggled with the powergrid, CPU, and calibration points a bit, but I finally was able to get to work after some genuine effort.

The most lucrative endeavor in EVE Online is usually mining. I knew I wanted to get in on it as soon as I could. The problem with that plan was that it’s almost impossible to do anything of consequence alone when you’re starting out in EVE Online. I did see some other people doing some of the same things I found myself doing at that point. You’d mostly see other ventures sitting in asteroid belts for hours, interrupted by the occasional pirate. You didn’t see many others doing anything else in sleepy high security space, so I figured I was probably on the right track. Grander ideas filled my mind before long.

My intentions were rooted in linking up with another new venture pilot. I’d seen him just about every day mining the same belts I’d mined. He never spoke, and neither did I, unsure what the protocols in space were. One day, our two ships floated around 27km to 30km away from each other, blasting mining lasers at slowly drifting asteroids for a long while. The time it took to fill up an entire ore hold in a Venture, which stored 5,000m3 of volume, can be most accurately measured in moments of awkward silence, it turns out. In this case, around two.

I needed the ore to be transported to a nearby space station, which I would have to do on my own. The journey to transport mined ore from the asteroid belts to a refinery cost a lot of time. Inefficiency and waste were robbing my operation of growth when I could’ve been actually mining to my potential. Every delay like this meant my next ore load always took longer to harvest than the previous one. The chore of moving the ore from asteroid belt to space station was becoming a limiting task. The situation could’ve been far worse, I soon found. I was in a high security system, meaning that law enforcement was present and would retaliate in the event of any criminal activity anywhere. I wouldn’t need to worry about police shooting at me, or any other ships that happened to be zipping around; or so I thought at the time.

Written by Bill Reeves

Bill Reeves is a reporter for evilonline.co documenting stories in EVE Online. Bill actively reports on factional warfare and current events and graciously accepts in-game donations of EVE plex and ISK. Bill is always looking for tips and checks his emails often.

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