Tag Archives: EVE Rookies

Trying New Things

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Finally the Crimson Harvest event is over, drop rates are again back at the usual 50% and EVE Rookies are doing their incursions again! 🎉

We’re always working hard on improving our performance, even with the ragtag group we’re flying. So yesterday’s plan was to send in Sasha’s Vargur in first to draw (and simply ignore) aggro and it worked quite well. In fact it worked so well that at one point Oli decided to see if a single Basilisk could provide enough repping power for a whole site. Short answer: yes. Oli slacked off for two sites and not a single problem was encountered; I even drew aggro at one point but Kshal’s Claymore’s repping power was more than sufficient to keep me well out of armor. Of course we will still always use two logi ships because you never know what might be happening and with this fleet composition it is simply safer that way but it is very good to know that in case of whatever emergency we will not immediately all die. 🙃

All in all, last night’s performance was quite stellar! We flew for a bit more than 2.5 hours and managed to get to almost 90M ISK per hour, completing multiple sites in only 4 minutes, slowest site being 7 minutes.

Due to prior engagements there’s not going to be a fleet on friday but if the focus stays up long enough we’ll fly again on sunday and I’m really looking forward to that!

In other news: I asked my little sister whether she wanted to fly with us as well and she said, “eh, why not?” She is completely untrained, though, so getting her up to speed might take a couple of months but I’m sure we can expect great things from Narraja! So proud! 😁

New Spawn Is Up!

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Holy moly, I have been flying with Warp to Me today and it was pretty amazing.

First, I got into a Headquarters fleet and apparently was thrown directly into a True Creations Research Center (aka TCRC) which is supposed to be the hardest of all HQ sites… but as I was completely new to all of it and totally overwhelmed by all the action on the screen I didn’t really notice any difference between the three sites at all so I guess that was fine? 🤷‍♀️

I flew with them for a bit more than an hour, had some dinner, then decided to X up to fly some more and had the opportunity to also take a sneak peek into what Assault sites are like. The fleet is smaller, around half the size of HQ fleets (so 20 pilots instead of 40) but for logi the difference is not really noticeable. All in all it went without any problems (except for my ultra-slow faction afterburner which needs to be switched for an abyssal at some point), and after a short time we managed to upgrade our fleet to an HQ fleet as one of the other fleets running at the time stood down.

So, that was my first day with Warp to Me and I am very happy with how it turned out. I will be flying with them a lot more in the future as long as they’ll have me but — and I’mma be honest here — I am looking forward to running some nice relaxing Vanguard sites with EVE Rookies tomorrow night! 😀

Inter-Incursion Busy-Keeping

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Oh my, the last two spawns were really short so there were not that many opportunities to run them with EVE Rookies. I really should get started on running with either Warp to Me or some armor-based incursion group; I am already running the WTM fit on my Basilisk so that shouldn’t be that much of an issue (except for waiting time) but for doing logi in a Nestor I’m still a couple of skills short. Working on it, though! (And after that the Vargur, Ajaqa, I promise! 🤣)

Anyway, with so few EVE Rookies fleets running I looked into alternatives way of getting at least a little bit of money and so I had Ajaqa build me the small woman’s Vargur (aka a Tempest) and tried for several days to find a fit for it that would work for me. I’m not 100% sure whether I found it already but after failing hard several times in a row at the same mission I now have adapted my Stabber fit (artillery, two shield hardeners, and a shield booster) for the Tempest and it managed to not fail horribly immediately. More experiments will be made!

Beware the Basilisk

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Yesterday my skill training for Logistics Cruiser V finally completed and as such I was finally able to fly EVE Rookies’ Basilisk! I am still missing Capacitor Management V and Shield Emission Systems V to really nail that down but Logistics Cruiser V is way more important. Anyway, flying Logi for the incursion fleet was amazing! I almost immediately noticed that once I do not have to shoot things anymore I completely lose track of which wave we are currently in. 😆

It wasn’t really the very first time I flew logi for (some of) the EVE Rookies crew: last week we formed a small group under The Quartermaster and went to low-sec to do the Rogue Drone event sites. After about two hours (and me running dangerously low on cap boosters because logi frigates are not really capacitor powerhouses) we were murdered by a couple of frigates because right at that time our fleet decided to stretch itself too thin, with the FC burning to some target 120 km away, half the fleet following him, the other half staying where they were and we basically all died. Doing logi in the actual event sites was awesome, though!

Luckily, last night’s incursion fleet went a lot better. 🙂 We did have this one Vindicator that basically had paper shields because they put 5 webs on it and I didn’t really realize what that means until it got aggroed a second time. Apart from that everything went without a hitch and I was very happy to have paused skilling for the Vargur (sorry, Ajaqa!) to get into the Basilisk. 😁 But don’t worry, I’ll get into the Vargur eventually because that will more easily allow me to fly with TDF and/or WTM fleets as well.

For now I will be out there, listening for all the desperate “medic!” screams by victims of unjust aggression. See you out there!

Never a Dull Moment

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…when running incursions with EVE Rookies! Last night we had – for the first time – enough people to run two fleets at the same time! We’re definitely going to remember that one even if for a sadder reason… but let me start at the beginning.

So, during dockup, around 18:00 EVE we found that we had way too many people for a single fleet, and as Lord of Reclamation has been running fleets in different timezones (mostly US and late AU) for a week or two now, we decided to split the pilots into two fleets. Kshal took the shield fleet, Lord got the armor fleet (I joined them), we settled in neighbouring systems, and we ran for a little more than one and a half hours.

When our fleet was beginning to thin out because of people leaving we decided to head back to the dockup system where Kshal was still running and we had the crazy idea to contest them! (A contest is what happens when two fleets jump into the same site because the payout only happens to the fleet that did the most damage.)

We quickly located them, jumped into their site and to our great dismay Kshal decided to stand down because her fleet was also already weakened by pilots leaving way too early. They fleet-warped away but because there were still scrambling rats in the site, one Basilisk couldn’t actually get into warp and before we could lock it up and rep it, it died. 😢

That put quite the dampener on the evening which until that point had been lots of fun. However, only a ship was lost, no big damage was done and we now know that even when contested you should never try to warp away as long as there are still TOADS (Tama, Outuni, Auga, Deltole, Schmael) on site.

Tonight Lord also wanted to run for a bit but around dockup time there were so many holdups (mostly by new players who weren’t sure whether their fits were appropriate or whether they could fly ours) that in the planned 90 minutes of running we only finished two sites because we started so late. It also didn’t help that my ISP acted up and disconnected me twice…

In order to streamline getting new players into the fleets, Lord has now worked up a number of fits that new people will have to be able to fly in order to fly with us. Check the EVE Rookies Website regularly for updates on that!

Later I jumped back to where my Stabber was which I have recently dusted off and picked up where I last left it. I put a better fit on it (decent guns, add shield hardeners) and marveled at how much better it performed than I remembered it. I even managed to finish “The Blockade” in Level 3 with lots of time left for the bonus, and I only had to warp away and refit with better guns (artillery this time, baby! Finally!) once – a new personal best, that’s for sure. 😀 So, even if the evening of incursion running didn’t turn out the way I expected it still was a great evening!

News from the Other Side

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So, Ajaqa told me about her blog and asked me to write the occasional article for it as well. And I’m happy to oblige, not the least because she built me this awesome Vargur that I can’t even fly yet because I suddenly started training to fly Logi for the EVE Rookies Incursions fleet! Well, that’s me in a nutshell.

I am still running Incursions with them multiple times a week but additionally I am currently “commuting” every day because there’s free skill points in Caldari, you know, because of the Caldari Union Day but the Incursion is situated half-way around New Eden in Minmatar space. However, I do want those free skill points so that I can finally fly that Basilisk that I already have waiting for me. And the daily trip around New Eden ain’t that bad, either… got a small ship for the way, taking out pirates left and right, loot all the shit, life is what you make it, right?

Oh, yeah, yesterday a funny thing happened during the Incursion. One of the pilot actually had a killright on them so FC activated it so we could get rid of the killright, and I got the killshot! Now, my corp is named “Non-Aggressive Player Foundation” but that only ever means that I will never initiate non-consensual combat with another capsuleer, and this event was clearly very consensual.

Anyway, I have to kill more pirates now. Have a nice day and see you later! o/

Building a Vargur

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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!

Incursion Fun

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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!