Shattered Wormhole Backpacking Trip Day 2

(TLDR: Not dead yet, signature re-spawn in C13s are crazy and I'm not alone. So far very fun and I have paid for my ship already)

Thank you all for the feedback I got on reddit about this adventure I’m on. Just some quick clarity on my reporting process going forward. Its hard for me to play, blog and be a human being to my family in a sequential day to day format. So thought it might say “Day XX” it might not be the exact day following. Thinking about it now, calling it “Day 1.. Day 2.. “ so on and so forth.. was a bad idea. O well now for day 2.. ish.

Day 2:

There where some questions about what a C13 definition is:  A C13 is a frig/destroyer entrance only hole. There are 25 in the game and I’m doing this in one of them. Some people corrected me that there are 75 other shattered holes, that have various wormhole effects, static exits… but are essentially just like other wormholes, but without moons.

My review so far of this shattered C13.

(full disclosure: I did move in a scanning alt to do my scanning because scanning 30 some sigs in a cloaked confessor totally sucks. The other character doesn’t help in any other meaningful way, other than making my time playing just a little less painful. I’m sure to the backpacking solo purist, I’m bad.. .but FU. That is all. )

First I want to mention something about the signature refresh rate. Maybe I was just scanning at a time when every other person in the world was... or the wormhole just ate its Wheaties this morning, I have no idea. What I can say is, sigs respawn at an amazing rate in this hole. I have lived in W-space for 4+ years in every type of wormhole and I haven’t ever seen this level of refresh rate.Totally bananas.

The below picture is my attempt to scan down the system completely. On the right column you have my Siggy entries as I resolve each signature to 100%. 

My process is: Once I find out what they are, I enter in data to siggy, book mark it and ignore the signature in my scanning tool on the left. There were so many signatures it took me almost the full duration to resolve the system to 100%, and I'm a fast scanner!

The idea was to attempt to find all the unwanted sigs and spawn them. Clean up the trash sites (gas, Null relic/data) over 3 days.  I was thinking it worked the same way as it did in other wormholes. In other wormholes, you can scan down each signature, then maybe throughout the day you might get 1 or 2 new signatures. These new signatures would be either PVE sigs or new incoming/outgoing wormholes. It would be manageable.... right?... RighT?!

Well that doesn’t work so well here.

The column on the left is the new sigs that appeared AFTER I resolved the hole. Less than 2 hours after I finished scanning the original set. So either I screwed up somehow and didn’t add things I scanned to 100% to siggy (which might be the case for a couple, but not all) or this hole is just a constant flux of things appearing and disappearing, all the friggen time, which is way cooler imo.

This image is a comparison from what was spawned/de-spawned after 12 hours.

I might not be able to tell exactly what is going to happen from one moment to the next. Crazy right?!

Population of a worm hole nobody lives in.

Let’s be real here this wormhole gets around. It opens up and is opened up all over the place. She's dirty.. ooo soo dirty... but in a super fun! in a "you will never be meeting my parents, so lets get a 6 pack of lube and spatchula" kind of way.

 On Sunday, I had my alt cloaked in his confessor looking for the right time to strike out and do some quick PVE. Right time meaning: alone for 30+ minutes.

I found I was never alone. There were always traces of people either flying through it or doing the null/data relic sites in it. There wasn’t a 20 minute span of time when I didn’t see one cloaky frig or another appear then disappear on D. Maybe it was just because it was a Sunday, and everyone and their brother was playing.. but this hole got A LOT of traffic Sunday.

The neat thing was; when one of these roaming scouts would stay on D-scan for longer than a minute I knew exactly where to look for them. Doing a data or relic site, that I already had scanned down. 

Muhahahha

 At first I would just start up a conversation with one of the adventurers that wasn’t smart enough to rename his ship from his default character name. "So and so's Cheetah" whatever.

I’m sure it was slightly discerning for them, when they thought they were totally alone a convo opens and I say that I’m watching them (creepystalkerstare.jpg). Side note, I like doing that more than blowing them up.

They always ask.. "who are you? How do you know me..? Why are you talking to me this very moment"...then when I don't answer... *the EVE convo's version of heavy breathing on the phone* they just close convo, warp off and cloak.

 I did this twice on Sunday.

 Another time I went a little further and I warped my confessor to the Relic at 0 and tried to one shot the would be adventurer. Sadly the confessor doesn’t make a good cloaky ganking ship.. (Wut is scan rez?! Stupid cloaking device scan rez hindrances) It also doesn’t help that I don’t have a warp disruptor of any kind. But rest assured one of these guys will get sloppy and I’ll blap them.

PVE sites so far.

Late Sunday night I did find time to do some PVE. I tried a sleeper relic site first, which went better than I would have expected. I landed on grid, one shot the sleeper frigs. Killed the cruisers faster than I ever should have in a ship like that. With Gleam loaded and in Confessor offensive mode, I’m at a mind blowing 1030 dps! And all of it is totally applied to all sizes of ships. 

My largest slowdown was just burning into range of the ships. Gleam is very short range, 10k or less. If I wanted I could have cut my DPS in half to be able to apply it a bit farther, but I didn’t mind being always on the move. Felt more fun to me.

I thought my largest challenge would be the sleeper battleships, but I was wrong (yet again). I speed tanked sleeper battleships. Hardly ever ran the armor repper,  I just flew right at them and orbited. They didn’t stand a chance. A relic site’s sleepers took me less than 7 minutes to complete.

The first 2 relic sites I couldn’t figure out how the site would behave. I would warp in, drop the mobile tractor unit, kill the sleepers and warp out to my mobile depot. I would then refit for salvage, warp back to the site, which still had relic site cargo containers, loot the mobile tractor unit, salvage. Then I would warp out again, drop off my loot, fit a relic analyzer, warp back to find my Relic site had de-spawned. Well, poop!

On the third site, I figured out that I could offline my weapon mods, fit my salvagers AND a relic analyzer, warp back and I could then pick up all my loots, salvage and hack cans. I had no trouble opening the can without any ship bonuses. It helps that this character has level 5 Hacking/Archeology and can use T2 modules(I haven’t always been a murdering wormholer, some of us were bears once).

The only issue was right at the 3^rd Relic Can I came across one of those wrecked ship hull modules that was 150m3. It was worth 28 million isk, so I didn’t want to just leave it… So I dropped my mobile tractor unit and refit right there on the spot for 2 cargo hold expander IIs.

Once the site was done I warped off to my stash can, dropped off my loot and then back to the 1^st mobile depot, refit all my guns/cloak, scooped my mobile unit and got safe.

Summary of Day 2 -- Total haul so far:  311 million ISK (sitting in space.. unguarded.. anchored in a secure container... The higher this number gets btw, the less sleep I'm going to get at night)

For those of you asking me if there is money to be made here.. well let me describe my point of view a little better.

There are countless things I could be doing and making more ISK safer, and faster. ISK and ticks isn’t the reason I’m doing this, I know that’s a lame thing to say when you are PVEing with the eventual reward being ISK…. But I’m getting that thrill I used to get when I didn’t know what would happen.

Example: When I was a newbie, punishment for making a mistake was extreme, quick and without mercy. Now that I’m a Vet, I can reasonably predict what the outcome is going to be before I even do that activity. Having pvped in small gang fights for years now, I almost never have the “jitters” anymore. 

Two nights ago on my main, I took my little Incurses solo vs 2 bombers and a rail catalyst. I should have been worried, I wasn’t. Experience took over and I calmly asked for backup over coms. I killed both bombers and helped finish off the catalyst without even a shred of excitement. Experience and ship knowledge won me this, not really skill. The bombers should have known this before they tried to engage me.  In my opinion, this is the challenge for vets, they have seen it all before and expected outcomes wreck surprise.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/44444308/  Bomber 1 --- https://zkillboard.com/kill/44444339/ -- Bomber 2 https://zkillboard.com/kill/44444356/-- Catalyst

This is why I'm doing what I'm doing. Not for ISK, though ISK is one of the factors to reflect success. 

I want that risk, and feeling of unknown doom pending! I want EVE hard mode!

This activity of being alone, without support or the ability to hop in a mission appropriate ship, brings it all back for me. It brings back the jitters.

Those “Jitters” are what I’m chasing. 

Going forward

Now that I have paid for my ship, I’m going to start getting even more reckless, I look forward to the murder squad that will be dropped on me. 

Here’s to dying in a fire on Day 3 and not posting a Day 4! 

Wish me luck!