ISK guide 3.0

Hey guys had another email from those lovely people at EON , and almost as if they read my mind it was about making ISK using their NEW FREE guide!!

here was the message:

It's been a long time coming but it's finally here! The ultimate guide to EVE Online and it's all yours, for FREE. Whether your a new or old player, there is something useful for everyone.

So for your free download, yes free, please visit www.isktheguide.com from 1st February.



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Millions while you sleep

Hey guys,

I had something playing on my mind over the last few days. I had a comment on one of my posts once that said “if your not making millions while you sleep, your doing something wrong.”
I have often made a little while I slept but never millions, I have tried a little trading however the constant altering of buy and sell order bores me, as does keeping track of margins of profit and loss..I am not a trader. I am also not very industrial, I always thought to make much money building stuff you needed a lot of skills to keep the costs down and some expensive BPO’s.
I have recently learned that opinion is rubbish.
We recently had a new player join Btek, by the name BLKhawke, who has been carebearing with a group of us that run lvl 4 missions a lot (myself and 3-4 others) but as she hasn’t yet aquired the skills to fly a drake or anything powerful she has been following behind us in a noctis (named “hoover of DOOM”). Blk took some advice from a few of us and bought some useful BPOs (large CCC rigs ect) and we all sorta agreed BLK could keep all the salvage if she built us some free rigs when we needed them..
Figured shed make a few mill to buy her own drake right…a few days salvageing with us..after building several large rigs for us for FREE..BLK has made over 100 million!

This has convinced me is will salvage the missions I do solo in future (in fleets I still prefer to let new members hoover up, I’m a nice director) and maybe make a few rigs. I think I will also give PI another go with vespa, I’m sure I could set up a few planets making POS fuel (that will always sell right?) and now it has 14 day cycles it might not be the giant ball ache it was before.
Are you guys making millions while you sleep? If you are let me know how!

Oh and while I think of it, If there is any Corps out there looking to join a New Industrial alliance, check out Pheonix industrial, we are new and rapidly expanding. On a smaller level if any pilots are looking for a laid back home check out “Btek pub” for a chat, you could be the next player making a easy 100 mill!

the darkside

hey guys,
I have been off work most of this week and running a shit load of missions on eve, which has had to great upsides , 1st I had a lot of disposable income to burn secondly I can pretty much go anywhere in high sec now.
so what do I do with my new found freedom and wealth.. why try to get blown up of course.

I logged in today with a plan, a simple easy plan. I have been so disappointed with the quality of ninjas in my area I decided to give it ago for a day. I bought my cov ops up from lowsec bad fit it for speed and salvaging, and fit a harby up as a gank ship with a standard fit.
the first few hours were ok but no one wanted to shoot at me, how dull! anyway I went to make a coffee and warped the Cov ops to what I thought was a age spot, but was infect a warp in for a mission I still had running from the previous night.
-1 cov ops.
bought another one and carried on, still no bites so I moved to deltole in hope of more foolish victims.
20 mins later cov ops 2 goes bang when I am salvaging a mission and the got warps off before I notice!
maybe I'll switch to t1 ships, I figure a probe is fast so fit one to try again... same thing happens ... not my day.
oh well last try, scanned down a raven and a drake and warp in, both sic drones on me straight away and another probe goes bang. but now I have agree can kill them! I warp off and grab the harby.. warp back to the site, no one is there, I feel robbed.
on the off chance I warp back to the entry gate and find the raven pilot in a drake, meh I'll take it..

I start going to town on him as we fight his friend warps back in a pvp ( he claimed pve .. with a scram) and joined his mate.
the harby went pop.
I offered a friendly Gf in local, and got some snotty response's from the disgruntled carebears.
tbh when they wernt at the site I had a feeling they swapping ships but after trying for 7 hours to get ANYONE to shoot at me I wasn't gonna leave them.

My conclusion is while the ninja life is fun(ish) it takes a lot of effort to get anywhere. I did try to get hold of a couple of the blogging ninjas to see if they had any pearls of wisdom but they were all offline.
my advice to anyone looking to get into it, you make more money on lvl 4s and more pvp in lowsec. it may be for you but based on my attempt I don't think it's for me.

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arbitrators.

Back in the day…
I hadn’t been playing more than a few days, I was just graduating from frigates in my first corp..i was greener than green and I didn’t understand amarr ships. I asked in the local corp channel “whats the best amarr cruiser? I was looking at an arbitrator”. I was told then the arbitrator was a crap boat and to save my isk and go for a mauller.
In retrospect that call was probably the correct one however the statement that arbitrators were “crap” was so very wrong.
I recently have got into flying cruisers again tho for very different reasons, and find them the ideal mix of speed and power for lowsec when I’m solo. And the arbitrator has become my go to option for everything from exploration to PVP. With Amarr cruiser to V and the right support skills it is one of the most versatile cruisers in the game, and id like to pass on to newer amarr players a little wisdom it took me too long to learn.
First off, the arbitrator can be used as a mission boat, in much the same way a vexor can it just needs a good tank and some drone skills and will walk all over lvl 1 and 2 missions , with good skills and some kiting you can also do most lvl 3 mission’s, however that isn’t where this boat shines..
Exploration and solo lowsec PVP are what this ship were build for.
First up exploration..

High slot - “Arablast” Assault launcher
High slot – salvager 1
High slot – Medium NOS(t2 or best named)
High slot – Medium nuet (t2 or best named)

Mid slot- analyzer 1
Mid slot- code breaker 1
Mid slot- AB (t2 or best named)
Mid slot- tracking disruptor (t2 or best named) keep both range and speed scripts in the hold


Low slot- MAR t2
Low slot- 200mm plate
Low slot- EANM
Low slot- DC2

Drones 5 x warrior 2s
5 x hobgoblins 2s
5 x valkire 2s
ECM drones optional

Rig to taste, my preference is to rig for speed

This is my cookie cutter exploration boat, it will do mag or radar sites very easy, its quite cheap to put together and easy to keep alive. It relies on keeping range while letting the drones eat any rats, any damage seeping through can be soaked up by the repper and normally eliminated with the disruptor, in the event of a really tough rat or being found by a solo player ship..you can normally nuet them and run or if you carry ECM drones sic a few on them and leave.

Now my PVP fit, this is designed to fight solo, and to take on anything up to a battlecruiser tho I have yet to test it against one

High slot - “Arablast” Assault launcher
High slot – Cloak (can also be a medium pulse for added DPS)
High slot – Medium NOS(t2 or best named)
High slot – Medium nuet (t2 or best named)

Mid slot- x5 Web
Mid slot- T2 scram
Mid slot- tracking disruptor (t2 or best named) keep both range and speed scripts in the hold
Mid slot- tracking disruptor (t2 or best named) keep both range and speed scripts in the hold


Low slot- MAR t2
Low slot- 200mm plate ( 400 if you have the powergrid to fit it)
Low slot- EANM
Low slot- DC2

Drones 5 x warrior 2s
5 x hobgoblins 2s
5 x valkire 2s
ECM drones

Rig to taste, my preference is to rig for speed

Ok Here is the thinking behind this puppie, load 1 disruptor with range and one with speed scripts, so you can decide what’s needed fast. You will be looking to kill solo targets only (or maybe 2 frigs). You wont need a AB as the idea is to force them close, if anyone trys to kite you put both disruptors with range scripts on them and sic the drones on them, if they are smart they will run, if not they come closer..
Once you have some one in close..switch both disruptors to tracking speed..web scram + nuet get in to a tight fast orbit and let the drones eat them, also pepper them with missiles that use a DIFFERENT damage type to your drones (make it hard to resist tank). If you start running low on cap switch to the NOS to give you a little longer.

Obviously use drone appropriate to the the size of the of target.. the combination of nuet and disruptor will cause most common PVP fits to crumble however missile chuckers will be where you have trouble, try to avoid anything big that uses missiles, frigs should be fine as the nuet will help them die before the missiles become a problem. Anything using turrets will have trouble hitting you and if it is active tanked it will go down fast , and wont be able to do a damn thing about your drones with the disruptors on them

Enjoy your weekend guys

A question for you all

Good morning happy people, today I have a question for the eve community..I am looking for opinion’s.
As most of you that read the blog know, I am running a lot of LVL 4s in between my odd lowsec adventures for the purposes of isk generation and raising my security status so I may travel semi freely through empire.
At current I am able to field a T2 fit battleship (I’m using a Apoc to keep costs down at the moment) and can solo *most* lvl 4s with out too much trouble.
My question is, would a command ship be a better option? I am not far off being able to fly a Damnation (HAM fit) and not that much further off flying a Absolution.
I’m liking the idea of a faster ship that is more nimble, but would the tank on the command ships be up to the incoming DPS from lvl 4s? the higher base resists make me think they should but does anyone use them that could advise me, Im only really interested in Amarr ships as training for any others at the moment would seem a waste.
I often start the lvl 4s solo, however I tend to have people gravitate towards me, so I normally wind up in a small fleet by the end of the night. But I need a ship that can SOLO them easy.
I did consider training a marauder but now with the noctis I won on somer blink I don’t see the point, salvaging is quite fast and painless.

Comments very welcome..

Ps…
Its my 30th birthday nex Tuesday (25th) for those that know me, I will be online celebrating at some stage that day (Also any one that wants to send me a birthday gift…I like exotic dancers and expensive ships lol.)

Keep it under you hat, but...

...im a bit worried.
With this latest patch for eve we got the character creator..which to be honest was the bit I was looking forward to the most.
Trouble is my laptop cannot handle the creator. It can run the game fine if I turn the graphics down a tad but the creator is a no go for me. Tis initially pissed me off, as I wanted to play with my new toy. I tried updating drivers switching menus in the esc screen and every other method of getting it to work posted all over the internet, nothing.
Then panic set in as it was announced we have 1 month then you MUST use the character creator to redo your toons..
Now at this point I will say I fully intend to buy another laptop, after the 5 grand holiday I have half paid for! So I either lose 2 and a half grand deposit on a holiday or make do with the laptop for 3-5 months? But if I do that no eve.
It was quite a dilemma.
So I did the most sensible thing I could think of at the time. I spoke to a friend who had a gaming decktop of high specs, and asked him to create the toon’s, giving him a rough idea what I wanted. I will keep him nameless incase I have violated the EULA (I of course took precautions of changing passwords before and after, and used some one I know and trust quite well)
So I have now 3 new faces, but still cant use the creator.
Now what has me really worried is everything I have read said the creator was slow as hell and choppy on everything but the most modern gaming PC’s, so even if I go drop £700 on a new laptop in a few months am I gonna be bonned for incarna? My gut says yes.
Don’t get me wrong I’m loving the direction CCP is going with this, but personally I think they are in danger of cutting of a large part of the subscriber base by taking the system requirements to high to fast.
Hope we can all keep up.

Astral redux

ok I found a way around MY problem with the charecter creator and now astral and co have had a face lift, more on that later. but for now may I present...



Astral Dominix- I was going for a pissed off George clooney.




Vespa Dominix - I was going for hot brunette..

and my piggy bank alt




Sekrit Banker ( a friend decided if she was hot I'd put more money in her lol)

like em ?

small design changes

i have been making some design and layout changes to the blog, any comments or suggestions would be welcome. i'd like this blig to be the best it can be and do everything within my technical ability to make it look nice, so tips and comments really help.

Oh and for those that wondered about the rumble I tried to set up..it was a non starter, no one signed up, which was a pity as it seemed a good idea.
and I have a close freind working on my "problems" with the charecter creator, its a tempory work around but im gonna need to bite the bullet and upgrade my machine after my holiday in may.

borked

you heard me ccp .... borked!
I downloaded the client.. I sat thu the install I went to my Abomey new character creator.. and it freezes EVERY BORKING TIME!
some times I think ccp does a great job, other times I wanna do bad things to the whole of Iceland....you know why !!!


BOrKeD!!

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patch day fun

Well its patch day! Have you all got long skills training in case the servers explode?

I have been quite quiet recently as I haven’t had that much interesting to write about, I have been feeding my inner bear..which means lots of missions, as a result I “had” a nice wallet balance, which as always has been re-invested into other projects, most of it is in buy orders for caldari navy tags of various types as now I have a abundance of loyalty points I want to spend them..and I want a few sets of meta 9 harders.
I am quite looking forward to the patch today as I have stayed away from the test servers deliberately so it all feels new and fresh when I get in from work and I get to “re-do” astral. The actual invasions might be fun asa well, I have a harby ready to go for fleet’s if any form up near me. And I can almost enter 0.8 systems so I have a little more freedom to pursue the sansha round hi sec.

Out side of eve I have been working on a large and extensive lowsec exploration guide, its going to be good I think, it will be available early next month and will have step by step guides with screenie’s showing how not to die..in theory.

I have also been doing some solo roaming lately..mainly in yarbitrators, some times with friends, although I have found it very difficult in the region of lowsec I frequent to find anyone to fight..and most of the exploration sites are being done before I get in from work, which is annoying, so I am considering relocating my lowsec base to a more interesting area. By interesting I mean there will be more people to play with that don’t mind a little 1v1 (or even 1v2, if I like the odds), like lady shaniqwa or kane rizzle and snippse and a few others I know of, many of whom frequented the systems around auner (the system I was based out of as a black rabbit) so im thinking of putting my exploration clone and ships, along with a few PVP ships out that way. For all those people that roam solo mostly round lowsec like the players I mentioned above..I have a LOT of respect for you, and am looking for you.

A message from EON!

Hi guys,
had a message from my freinds at Eon, they asked me to pass the message about a pretty sweet deal so here it is:-


As it's a new year things need refreshing. So continuing on that theme, we decided to give the New Eden poster a little facelift and an update. Individually they are $14.95 however the cheapest way is to purchase the whole poster bundle.

Royal rumble

I have been out roaming tonight in lowsec, it seems hard to get a decent fight nowadays, to many blobs, always a ambush waiting.

so I had an idea, a consensual pvp rumble!



here is what I want to do, Thursday, at 2000 eve time I will set up this rumble.

the rules:-
5 mill to enter

you can fly any t1 ship fit anyway you want!

you cannot become involved if 2 people are already fighting, if I see a kill mail that isn't 1v1 your all out!
if you warp in and see two people fighting you warp out until one is dead.

you must stay in fleet until your ship goes boom, then leave the fleet ( if you cheat and grab another ship we will know by the kill mails)

you must stay in jel and ation people will be watching!

at 1 hour mark the prize is split between those left standing

or

last man standing takes all!

sound simple? good.

I will limit this to 20 entrants, to enter simply comment on this post to say your in with your chars name, first come first served.
be in jel 10 mins before 8pm and I'll invite entrants to a rumble channel and @ 5 to 8 to a fleet. at 8pm we rock!
if your in the first 20 posts send your entry fee to astral. prize payout will be after all kill mails have been linked and emailed to me.


any questions?

Killing ninja's is fun

Hey guys,
I had a fairly good weekend, I got my sec status down a bit (can now enter 0.7) I won a cople of nice ships..and the highlight of my weekend – popped a ninja AND got tears from him lmao.

So first off the winning ships, I just discovered “somer blink”..awsome site where you gamble isk to win stuff, I wont go to much into it, google it and go have a go! So war I have gambled 16 mill and have won an alleged 97 mill in ships, which equates to 1 retribution assult frig and a noctis! Not bad for 16 mill. I can see me gambling on here quite a lot plus they run promo blinks where you can get stuff for like 1 isk if your really lucky.

On to the weekend.. I spent the most part of it running missions in jel and ation, now I have sorted the tank out on my apoc, I am soloing lvl 4’s easy and fast (thank you to all the people that emailed me with advice on fittings). So Saturday my self and a corp mate jad decided to team up for some social missioning, set of , me in my apoc, him in a domi..we had a nice lvl 4 and began working our way through it..
Then the something fun happened, we had a ninja warp in in a heron…silly ninja. What made me smile was he imidiatly started LOOTING the wrecks! Now im not sure if most carebears ignore this red flag activity…but I don’t.
My corp mate was asked to keep within 10 k of him and play dumb while my apoc warped of to station. I expected the ninja to catch on at this point, I wasn’t subtle, but no he stayed looting.
A min or two later I returned to the mission, this time in my trust vengeance “bad ass”..still the muppet didn’t try to run.
The result can be found here

After dispatching the noob ninja I wondered if I could in a complete turn around get some tears.. the private convo here –
astral dominix- hello sir
Bad'Egg- you didnt have to kill me .
astral dominix- but twas fun
astral dominix- you did decide to ninja a ex pirate
Bad'Egg- meh
Bad'Egg- good for you?
astral dominix- too easy
astral dominix -AF vs heron
astral dominix- you had no chance
Bad'Egg pretty much
astral dominix still occupational risk
astral dominix GF anyway
astral dominix was nothing personal and you wreck is still at the site if you want your mods
astral dominix :)
astral dominix im a nice ex pirate
Bad'Egg yeah ill pass
astral dominix meh your call sir

Had the ninja returned to collect his ill gotten gains I would have popped him again..so probably a smart move there.
After the agro timer had run down so he couldn’t come back and gank the mission ships, we returned to our mission.
A 20 mins later ..the same moron shows back up, however this time is careful NOT to loot anything…I go get the vengeance anyway and we have the following convo in local –

EVE System Channel changed to Ation Local Channel
Danny Liverpool- where you gone egg lol
Danny Liverpool- actually, in Ation lol
astral dominix- he is back with us
astral dominix- already killed him once tonigh
Danny Liverpool- awww why
Bad'Egg- just makin a living
Danny Liverpool- by doin what
Bad'Egg- salvaging
astral dominix- i have more ammo than you have herrons lets see how this works out for ya
astral dominix- :)
Danny Liverpool- theres better ways to make isk lol
Danny Liverpool- be easier mining lol
Bad'Egg- dilly dominix, a vengeance doesnt run out of ammo
Bad'Egg- silly*
astral dominix- you really are a dumb ass i killed you once and you didnt notice its fitted with ACs?
Bad'Egg- mining is incredaboring
Bad'Egg- who fits a veng with ac's 0.o
astral dominix- someone who knows how to fly one
Bad'Egg- little to hostile for my liking
astral dominix- lol
astral dominix- night night
astral dominix- go join suddenly ninjas and learn to do it properly

at this point said ninja shits a brick as I am a tad in his face waiting for him to go red..and bails out…
agin switch back to the apoc and continue..a mission later he comes back yet again!!! He turns red as I warp off to get the vengeance..however this time he remembers and quickly hides and does not renter the mission for the remainder of the night.

Now reading this you may think I like most carebears don’t like ninja’s..
But I do.. we have one in corp I like him a lot, and I have a lot of respect for the guys in “suddenly ninja’s” and “honerless internet jerks” I think what they do is both funny and fun. However I hate the asshats that arnt looking for PVP and are really just that cheap they want your trit bars and don’t learn to do what they do properly.
So all in all a fun weekend for me..and to any ninja’s that come to visit me, if you kill me and steal my stuff I take my hat off to you, but at least come expecting me to try to kill you back..its as much fun for me as it is for you

2010 ..not a bad year at all

Ok everyone else seems to be doing it and it seems a good idea to me so..here is my 2010 in retrospect..

2010 was my first full year in eve, it saw me go from totally green noob in highsec, out to dip my toes in null sec life, then dive head first in to piracy and finally back to high sec again lol.
I have learnt lessons innumerable from how to pvp effectively (aside from my recent station webbing incident) to how to traverse null sec, and now I am re-learning how to carebear and how to build very specific tanks for lvl 4 missions.
I have been part of some fantastic corps over the last year, and flown with some fantastic guys, four pilots that stood out for me were wolfduke, mail lite, curzon jazz and Reltso yand. I have learnt so much form each of them.
I managed to cram 174 posts into 2010, better than the 4 in 2009 (to I only started to blog in late dec 2009). I have grown to 55 followers and a few hundred subscribers. My page views generally peak around 400 a day, and idle at about 60. I have been counted among the blog pack, which was fantastic as the small measure of celebrity allowed me to promote the corps I was involved with.
I have gone from no money and a few cheap ships, to no money and a few fucking expensive ships (expensive to me that is ..over 100 mill each), I have killed more ships than I have lost and I have lost a few. I have achived 1 of my three ships I wanted to own , a pilgrim, still working on the absolution and archon.

So what’s the plan for 2011?
Well form the blog point of view, I keep posting everytime I have something to say, its my blog and my outlet so I post as often as I like, although I have recently asked to be removed form the blog pack as now I am mainly”carebearing”I forsee the interesting posts being less frequent. I will be posting a fair bit on exploration and isk making as well now.
For astral as a pilot, he is working on flying command ships and carriers, jump freighters are the goal for vespa.
For me as a player, I think I am finding a better balance between eve and real life, I don’t log on compulsively any more and surprisingly longer skills don’t bother me anymore. I find if im getting fed up of eve a week of to replay something xbox or shooting people on halo refresh’s me fairly well.
This year I am hoping to become more of a leader than “the weird drunk director in lowsec” and help lead BTEK’s newer pilots. I also intend to become more involved with the new Alliance “PIT enterprises” as they have a few bits going on in lowsec and wormholes that interests me.

That’s all I can think of for now..oh and happy new year!

been a interesting holiday season

Hey guys, did you have a good Christmas?

Have been a bit slow on posting over the festive season and on my return to work where I do most of my blogging, I have had a shit load of work to catch up on. Still back now and almost on top of things again, and we have had some interesting developments over the last few weeks.
Firstly, we are now part of a alliance, a friend of mine and fellow blogger EveSOB recently joined the PIES alliance and told us what a good bunch they were so me our CEO relso looked into the alliance and found it to be a good fit, its mainly a highsec indy alliance with some lowsec work and some PVP for them that like it. Still very early days but I think it will be a good move, also there is almost always a corp or alliance op running now, so there is almost always something to do if you feel like joining in. which is nice.
We also still have close ties to Legio, and things may be developing on that front tho I cant say what at the moment.

As for me, I am still battling the dreaded sec status, although I did have a small set back the other day..i did something really dumb.
A few corp mates decided they wanted to go play in lowsec and blow some peeps up, so I said id go along to play, most were flying rifters or interceptors, I decided to be different and built a yarbitrator for a giggle, with the idea of nuet and disruptor combo while my drones and corp mates did any DPS…good plan..
Anyway we formed up and flew the few jumps out to the lowsec system I work out of a lot of the time without incident, on arriving we started trying to bait the locals into fights sitting in belts ratting…that didn’t work as people noticed the back up sitting at safes or in stations.
Then we noticed a red in system ferrying ships from his POS to the station….a lot of them. In the hopes of snagging him as he exited I moved the fleet over to the station and I sat in the undock..i pre heated my web and scram..
Now at this point I should mention I was playing on a map top with a touch pad for a mouse.
I sat watching the station, reached over to pick up my rum and coke (yarrr) took a sip, then I was dead.

Seems I had knocked the touch pad as I picked up my drink and web/scramed the station, who took offence and obliterated my cruiser. My corp mates do like to take the piss about that..

In other news I am now running lvl 4’s mainly in jel and ation when they arnt giving me lowsec missions, and find the BS kills are helping me gain sec status quite fast, however my little harbinger was often being overpowered by the incoming DPS, which ment I had to either keep warping in and out or take a corp mate (normally sarj in his drake) to act as a damage soak..say what you will about mission drakes but they can absorb a hell of a lot of fire! Still I wanted to last a bit longer under fire which meant I needed a bigger ship, namely a battleship..

Now I have most of the support skills for a BS but having flown them so rarely I only had amarr BS to3, enough to fly any of them but not all that well.. also I had a budget of about 140 mill to blow on the BS as I just bought a pilgrim and invested a little over 100 mill in sell orders in lowsec.
My first choice would have been a abaddon, but I couldn’t buy the ship rigs and fittings in my budget, which is a pain as the tank/dps mix on it is perfect for what I wanted..
I liked the look of a Geddon, but everything I read said they suck for PVE.
So in the end I opted for a Apoc, grabbed all the fittings and stuff I needed and headed off to fit it up.
Now I don’t know if I have it fitted wrong but the tank is still failing under hevey fire..im fine if I sit 100km off and snipe but if I land in the middle of everyone my tank just cant hold?
My tank at the moment is 1 trimark rig, 1x 1600 plate , 2 large reppers, a DC2, ENAM and 2 specific hardners?
Any suggestions would be welcome, as id like to get this think fit to solo the missions.

Well that’s about it…your upto date, if anyone feels like joining btek give us a shout in “btek pub” or eve mail me or reltso yand, we are always looking for new blood, miners and mission runners primarily but we do have everything form ex pirates to part time ninja’s in the corp.
Have fun.