Happy new year, everyone! While everybody has been out celebrating New Year’s Eve, I have used the opportunity to mine the more valuable stuff from all those places that are normally a lot more dangerous than my usual mining grounds: low-sec and wormholes.
With just a couple of an Endurance’s cargohold’s worth I have collected almost enough non-high-sec minerals to build a full Combat Battlecruiser. That’s really not too shabby for a few hour’s worth of mining!
So, while Lissy is busy hunting down Sansha’s Nation (as she usually is) I have been clearing the mining sites that follow the ice storms that are currently roaming New Eden. It seems that under certain circumstances the sites disappear from the Probe Scanner window but do remain active and even respawn the asteroids after a while, giving you pretty much uncontested access to as much ice as you can mine. A miner’s dream come true! 
You all know my friend Lissy who’s all over New Eden, running Incursions, right? Well, the one thing that stopping Sansha’s Nation gives you is CONCORD Loyalty Points. Okay, technically you also get ISK but let’s ignore that for the moment. And what is it you can do with CONCORD Loyalty Points? You could spend them in CONCORD’s own Loyalty Store, e.g. for implants but — and this is the nifty thing — you can also convert them to Loyalty Points for other stores! This amazing ability comes at a prize, though: for the empire-based faction stores you have a conversion rate of 80%, i.e. you have to spend 125 CONCORD LP to get 100 faction LP (the conversion tool does the hard work for you, don’t worry), for other stores you only have a rate of 40%, and for some stores you cannot convert them at all. 
Now, Lissy doesn’t really have any idea what to spend those Loyalty Points on (though I guess at some point she will take a deep dive into the implant pool) so for now she decided to let me reap their benefits by getting ammo from me and converting it to faction ammo which I then take back and put on the market. This in combination with my ammunition production business should give me a steady trickle of income so I don’t have to worry about basic necessities and it’s also a nice break from mining all day, you know, taking care of the books, dealing with taxes and brokers, all that white-collar stuff. Lovely! 
Haha, my friend is a real doozy! Now I built her that incredibly awesome Vargur but instead she got it in her head to take on a support role in her Incursion fleet so she is now concentrating on flying Logistics Cruisers such as the Basilisk! I really hope that Vargur will either a) see some action anytime soon or b) go up in price so much that I can make a quick buck on it. 
Anyway, while she is off to all over the place to beat Sansha’s Nation to a pulp, I am supporting her by getting some Lyavite every now and then. (Because when doing those Vanguard sites there is one site that requires Lyavite to get a chain reaction and blow something up or whatever, what do I know, I don’t do that shit.) I am also still mining all the usual high-sec ores in order to produce ammo which my friend can use to exchange for faction ammo using their massive collection of CONCORD Loyalty Points. They have to be good for something, right?
So, yes, apparently flying with EVE Rookies is a great way to destroy NPCs and make some ISK on the way; and apparently it is so much so that I have currently been tasked with building a Vargur, just for that. (It might see other uses, probably.) I already have the Tempest I need as a base for that, and I have started working on the advanced components required for the build.
“But, Ajaqa’s friend, isn’t it cheaper to buy than to build?” I hear you ask. And, well, if ISK is the only way for you to have fun in New Eden then you probably shouldn’t try to build stuff you can readily buy. But I can imagine that for her it has more value to have a ship built on request. I know it is just a ship and all Vargurs are exactly the same but she will know that this little baby here is the one I have built especially for her. (That is actually one change I would like to see in EVE: see who built the items you are using.)
Anyway, just wanted to give you a quick update. See you out there, and fly safe!
Another type of activity you can do in highsec are Incursions. A friend of mine has been running incursions with EVE Rookies for a number of weeks now and it has been an amazing experience for her. With the right crew running incursions is almost completely without risk (as much as anything can be without risk in New Eden) and even for the rag-tag group they have (it’s geared towards less experienced pilots so lots of Praxises in that fleet) the turnout is pretty great. I hear she will upgrade to a Vindicator or even a Vargur sometime soon. So excited for her!
Welcome to my blog, fellow space-dweller! I will be using this space to tell a bit about my life in highsec (and surrounding areas) and other things that are of interest to me.
I do also develop small applications to help my life in New Eden. One thing I have written is the Asteroid Belt Calculator which shows you how large an asteroid belt is. I still have a number of features planned for it so make sure to check back every once in a while!
Plan for today: moon mining! There is a moon in highsec in the Metropolis area that has just popped, and there’s millions of m3 of tasty moon ore waiting for me!
