Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Anomalies, For-whatsited Hubs, and Mazes

I am a bit burnt out with PvP. Not quite charred but definitely crispy. I haven't really felt much desire to go out and explode people for the last few weeks. And I have been travelling an awful lot lately. I feel bad because I just joined my new wormhole corp (they are great btw) and here's me who can't really be bothered with the effort of J-space.

It will pass. It has happened before and will, no doubt, happen again. Things will quiet down at work and my travel will slow down and then I will once again be Zappity the Fearless! But until then, I decided to examine my list of ‘things wot I havent done yet’ and found PvE to be distinctly at the top of the chart. And so follow some of Zappity’s recent PvE adventures. Don’t worry, there are still some killmails. Or, to be more accurate, lossmails.

It’s very quiet. It is the middle of the night and I had just sat down to a long Skype call for work in the middle of the night. Ugh. I decided to try some lowsec PvE. (Even my phone is trying to correct that to PvP!) I have always seen these strangely-named sites and anomalies while roaming about. And I know how to scan signatures down. So I sat my +5 learning clone in an Ishtar and sent it away from Jita to the depths of Gurista lowsec. I scanned down a signature and found it to be a 7/10 DED site, whatever that is. I warped in at 100 and started killing everything. I started yawning (not only because it was getting late). But then the call I was on suddenly became interesting and I began to pay attention to it.

In hindsight, this is the moment I should have warped to my safe.

A couple of players entered the system. When I saw core probes on dscan I didn't pay much attention, hazily thinking that a PvPer would be using combats. I was clearly badly distracted because I DO know better than that! I thought that right up until the mean Ishtar landed and tackled me.

Loss: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=23905425

Sigh. Why can't they all just bugger off and leave me alone? Can't they tell I don't want to fight just now? Can't they go and... I do beg your pardon. I don't know what came over me. Must be infectious.

I gave him a quick gf in local and made my escape in my pod, heading back to Jita where I examined dotlan. Lowsec is very busy these days, isn't it? And null is vast and basically empty. I pondered whole pockets in Gurista space with zero jumps over the last hour. Hmm.

I was soon in a slightly modified Ishtar and hopping along a route to Venal through Pure Blind and Tribute along with Innocent Scout.

[Ishtar, Guristas v3]

Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Co-Processor I

10MN Afterburner II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Gistum C-Type Kinetic Deflection Amplifier

Improved Cloaking Device II
Drone Link Augmentor I
Salvager I
Medium Remote Armor Repairer II

Medium Core Defense Field Purger II
Medium Core Defense Field Purger II

Caldari Navy Warden x5
Acolyte II x5
Federation Navy Garde x5

580 dps with the Wardens out to lock range of 100km and a 92% kinetic resist. The RR is for the occasional targeted drone and there's a 10mn MWD in the boot for a travel fit.

We arrived without much fuss and I quickly found a "Forsaken Hub" anomaly. Or is it Forlorn? I get confused. Now I didn't plan on running anomalies because they are too easy for interceptors to warp to but I had heard of this one (or was it the other one?) so decided to give it a go to test the Ishtar. I warped in at 100, killed all the things and got thoroughly bored. I think my shield dropped to 85% at one point. That was, um, exciting.

I understand why people are still calling for a nerf to the Ishtar. Honestly, sentries on cruisers are so overpowered it isn't funny. I don't even have HAC 5 or Sentries 5 and the battleships just melted without even scratching my tank. I then switched one of the shield extenders for another tracking link and did a Forlorn Hub. Or was it a Forsaken Hub? I had no problem there either, though I did get down to about half shields when I somehow triggered a spawn early.

A couple of days later I scanned down The Maze. There was a convenient lowsec wormhole which exited near Amarr so I brought in a Tengu alt. I cleared out the first room and then started working through the dozen acceleration gates to find the right one. After the third empty gate I got fed up and googled for a site description. I warped out in disgust when I read that there were similar sets of random gates in the subsequent rooms.

Honestly, what a stupid design. I understand that you should have to earn your X-type whatsit but seriously, this design is tedious and repetitive. Why can't there be a can that we have to hack to get the right gate or something? I pity the people who need to run these things for isk. It seems as though the key design goal of the game designers was frustration rather than satisfaction.

People keep trying to kill me but they don’t seem to be particularly good at it out here. The closest I have come to dying was to a wormhole corp who popped in for a visit! They were bloody fast at scanning me down.

I think I might bring a few cruiser hulls down to play with against the locals. What is the Vigilant hull bonus again? Ah yes, webs...

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