Shattered Wormhole Backpacking Trip Day 5ish Final day

See that Sabre? Yea I do too, a little too often. I saw that Sabre named cleverly, “Scanner Probe”, just one too many times on my D-scan. The interesting thing is he would appear each time I logged in my Confessor pilot, for two day straight. 

My time in W-space has taught me many lessons, one of them is to notice patterns in player behaviors that I might interact with.  “But Spear, you’re just being paranoid.” My paranoia keeps me alive and keeps others dead. Seeing the same ship, named the same way two days in a row exactly after I log on my character means that guy has me watch listed.

For those of you who may not know what a watch list is or what “watch listing” is. Its where you’re hunting a player and add them as a contact, adding the little check mark to notify you when that player logs in. This is commonly used by player hunters to map a targets play times.

What our Sabre friend did was simply add my character to his watch list on an alt. Each time my character logged in, he would log off his main and jump on his Sabre pilot. The thing is, he was sloppy about it. He didn’t wait or change his ships name each time he logged in. Two Sabres in the hole can be coincidence, two Sabres in the hole named the exact same thing long after all connections have cycled…. Well that’s a pattern.

Sure it could be someone lost, without a cloak, without probes… that just so happens to play at the exact same time as me. Nope. I’m not that mark.

I suspect I picked up a dedicated screen sniper from one of my broad casts. Its not like I made a huge effort to hide my character’s name or location. It could be found when I moused over the planet list when I right click and go to my book marks.

Now my opinions on screen sniping. The one hand I’m happy for any use of intel to murder another player, even outside of game tools. Anything that brings players together for the sake of shots being fired makes me happy. On the other hand, he was so very lazy in hiding his intentions and honestly that can’t be rewarded.

Its hard to describe to someone that hasn’t ever hunted another player. That extreme tense buildup of making all the right choices while the fate of another players’ hard work rests in your fingertips. Knowing that the prey could flee the second you fuck up. That level of commitment needs to be rewarded. Even while I assume the role of prey and you hunter I can respect a good game.

Well Sabre pilot you dun fked up. Work harder next time.

Since the outcome of most pvp engagements is determined before shots are fired. This is how the battle would have gone down.

Sabre pilot would have turned on my twitch stream and waited till the moment I refit for salvagers. Without salvagers loaded I couldn’t fight back. I would have warped onto grid to salvage my wrecks, he would have appeared bubbled and I would  be forced to refit on the spot or die to him. I might have had a chance if I could refit and tanked him, but that’s iffy. Good chance that he wasn’t alone.

I decided to evac all scouts and all loots from the frig hole. Git while the gitten’s good.

Summary:

Total backpacking isk gains: 1,423,000,000

Not a bad total for logging in every few days and running sites for a few hours.(2-3 hours every 2 or 3 days, wasn't keeping track. No clue what my isk per hour was, I just know how much money I have now. )

What I would have done differently:

Instead of using cans to hold my sleeper loot, I should have brought in an alt in a cloaky hauler destroyer. Think a destroyer with all cargo expanders and small cargo rigs. You can get them fairly high, not sure how high but I would have slept better at night knowing my loot wasn’t floating in space waiting for Wingspan to come and fly to it.

I would have brought more crystals, just Aurora and Gleam. I wasn’t sure which crystals to use the first time but Gleam at under 10k in a Wolf Rayte is like crack… Its sooooo good. People on my stream were telling me that pulse lasers with conflag was better, meh, I don’t know enough about lasers to counter it. I just know I was dishing way more damage than I should.

IF I was serious about doing this as a longer lasting PVE thing, I sure as hell wouldn’t blog about it, or stream it. There are just too many snipers out there.

That’s about it, everything else was flawless IMO. The fit was amazing, it buffered quite well when I screwed up the timers, it was flexible enough to swap out stuff fairly easy. Honestly the confessor is amazing in that hole.

For those of you waiting to see my confessor explode, well it happened, in a truly hilarious way.

I had dropped off my loot and I was cruising around in High sec and saw a Covert Research Anom. Oooo I can do that, I warped to it hacked 3 cans, the rats showed up, I flipped into tank mode because I have resistances right?  NOPE.

KAAABoooOOM. 

Living in a C13 for about 2 weeks, running sites without scanning out the chain, doing massive salvaging in a combat ship, totally alone... I lived! Then I out wit a scene sniper and his friends… only to have the 275 million isk confessor explode to this bull shit, I had to laugh. 

This is Bobs way of showing I should have stayed in his bountiful domain.

I have been telling people this for years, high sec is the most dangerous sec in the game. Shit is crazy out there!

Thank you for everyone who read this series, asked questions and is having more fun in wormholes because of it. 

Bob Bless. o7

Shattered Wormhole Backpacking Trip Day 4

Visitors!

I log in my confessor character to see the following on D-scan. Wrecks! In my home! This simply won't stand. Using my amazing powerz of D-scan I found which site they where at and decided to pay them a visit.

I landed on grid and started shooting at them. The real problem was, my cloak took soo much CPU that I needed to offline my two tech II heat sinks. Not only that, but I was at range and needed to use some weak crystals. I was able to kite them for a bit till they flew away. My confessor was faster then them by at least 300 in speed mode.

This is the convo I had with them in local chat.

[ 2015.02.16 04:36:01 ] Erata Vuld > This is going to be boring
[ 2015.02.16 04:36:23 ] Sir Lomax > well you do out number me
[ 2015.02.16 04:36:24 ] Erata Vuld > i guess we should both bring are friends
[ 2015.02.16 04:36:34 ] Erata Vuld > youre faster
[ 2015.02.16 04:36:42 ] Sir Lomax > bring faster ships
[ 2015.02.16 04:36:55 ] Erata Vuld > tbh not worth it to head home and come out
[ 2015.02.16 04:37:15 ] Erata Vuld > not for a kitefit fessor
[ 2015.02.16 04:37:32 ] Sir Lomax > i'm not going to 'let' you shoot me
[ 2015.02.16 04:37:59 ] Erata Vuld > yea and im not going to make a ton of jumps to go get a ship to kill you
[ 2015.02.16 04:38:13 ] Sir Lomax > me neither?
[ 2015.02.16 04:38:15 ] Erata Vuld > ill wait till you screw up and warp at the wrong range i guess

Well that was just rude, better continue to fk with them.

They started the next site..

So I did what any good Bob worshiper would; I went back to the bookmark I made of their old site and blew up their wrecks.

6 times. (I am Spears' inner 12 year old)

They would warp to a site, I would book mark it.. warp to the old site they were at and blow up more wrecks. I did this 6 times ..

I'm infantile, but honestly...I laughed each time a wreck exploded.

You would think after 1 site worth of wrecks, they would have tried to guard the wrecks while the salvager would do his thing, but this took 6 times for them to baby sit the wrecks.

They eventually figured it out.

 O well, I decided to quit pressing my luck and logged off.

Shattered Wormhole Backpacking Trip Day 3ish

TLDR: (I surfaced for air to get more sweet sweet gleam crystals, moved out 750+ million in sleeper loot. Started killing npc's while active probes are in system and lived to tell the tale!) 

I got a mail from someone and I thought I would share.

Hey man, striking out in your c13 with a confessor has inspired me to attempt something similar. I'm mainly copycatting, but it looks like a fun why to change things up.

The toon I'm going to use isn't quite trained up to what it needs to be yet so I'm doing some different things right now, but I did have a question for when the time comes.

How is hacking sites in your confessor? Are you finding that you're successful most the time? Is it a pain in the rear?

I just want to say, it warms the dark chambers of my heart to get messages like this. I like knowing I have inspired someone with something. Even if its to hunt me, explode my spaceship and then finally mock me on the forums. I like knowing someone is having fun because of something I'm doing or have done.

 I already answered this persons mail, but for those of you reading now, I'll go into greater detail.

Hacking in the confessor is easy for the relic and data sites I'm doing now. It might help that I have level 5 archeology and level 5 hacking skills, along with T2 mods. But honestly, I make it through the mini game with virus strength to spare.

The thing is, sleeper data sites are from what I can tell, totally worthless. There isn't a chance for nano-ribbons and most of what your pulling out of cans is valued far less than 100,000 per can.

Sleeper relic sites on the other hand, have a chance at a wrecked hull which is worth around 23 million at the moment. So I guess relics are worth doing. /shrug

PVE update:

Every site in this C13 can be done in the confessor, if you follow the NPC trigger rules. If you screw up the trigger rules, like I did on a relic site, you may need to warp out and back in again. The webs and nuets will make your day sad. Its easy to fix if you just warp back at 100k, flip into speed mode and get a significant transversal on the sleepers, blaping any frig that gets near you. Easy.

So shortly after day 2/3(sh) my Small Gleam crystals burnt out and disappeared. This dropped my maximum DPS from 1160 to around 500. It was like someone took my crack pipe away. I had to fix it.

I was facing close to 25 signatures on scan and not wanting to scan my way out with a confessor, I cheated. I logged in one of my alts and scanned out the chain looking for the first K space. It didn't take me long, because the c13 has on average of 6+ other wormholes connected to it at any given time. The most common I have found so far are C2's. But honestly this C13 connects to a different batch of holes each day, so perhaps its just feeling ofly C2'y recently. I'm sure in a week it could be nothing but C5's. Who knows.

Anyway, once I found a K space exit, via a C2 static Low sec. I popped my alts head out to see exactly where this was. 2 low secs systems deep, 6 from Amarr. Thanx Bob!

I started muttering to myself.... "I must... have... Gleam... daddy needs Gleam crystals to get him right. Just a couple more Gleam," I said while slapping my hungry crystal veins.

Logging in my confessor character I figured, "why exit empty handed" I know I said I would stay in till I died, but the 750+ million sitting in an anchored can was causing me to lose sleep. My wife woke me up from the short period of time I did finally sleep, asking me why I was cursing someone named "Wingspan"?

I loaded up my booty and headed out into low sec. 6 in local in low sec number one, no problem.. who cares about a random confessor traveling through low? Right?

I jumped into the next low sec. 20 in local... uggg. Happily, I made it to the high sec gate and waved at the 2 legions on gate, mining for players kills. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate gate camping? Because I hate it. Its the mining of pvp. In fact I have more respect for miners than gate campers. Fuck you if you're a gate camper, seriously.

Warping my confessor to Amarr and dropping off my loot, I bought 30 more small gleam crystals. mmmmmm nice.

Back into the C13. I figured I would need to fight my way back in because of the legions, but I guess they were docked up blowing each other, because none of them stopped me.

The following day(s) I just logged in and did sites with reckless abandon. Gleam is sooooo addicting... At one perimiter camp or hanger or whatever.. I sat totally still and just vaporized sleeper frig after sleeper frig. F1 you die.. F1 you die.. F1 you die. As quickly as I could cycle my small beams sleepers became wrecks. I'm not sure I will ever be able to ever do a low class site again in anything other than a confessor with C6 Wolf Rayte effect. uuuuugggg sooooo good.

Fast forward to this morning:

Lotor my CEO/Co-host and bestest of buddies logs in and starts watching my stream. We start chatting away and I see a cheetah on scan, then sister core scanner probes... Now a few days ago, I would have ran for the hills. Logged off and hid. Nope. Ship is paid for, time for stupid.

I'm talking to the people on my stream and Lotor is saying "Fk it dude, whats the worst that could happen" I know right? I could lose my ship... I'm still about 900million net at this point.. Who cares.

Another cheetah is on scan, this one with a different set of tags. ugggg... I'm going to get smoked I know it.

I decided to not make it totally easy for my hunters and went to all 8 gas sites that I had spawned ealier on this morning. They would need to try and find me with probes and dodge gas clouds. I warped in to each of of the gas sites and started wrecking all the sleepers there. The entire time I had multiple sets of probes on scan.

Lotor kept telling me "dude you're going to be fine!"" people don't fly frigs/destroyers in Wspace" then he would softly giggle. That guy is no friggen help btw. I tried to make a side bet with him that I would get killed in the next 4 sites. He said, "no way, you'll just kill yourself to win". Some people are just so un-trusting.. Sheesh.

Once all the sleepers were killed, it was time to pick up the wrecks. I warped to each site with my guns still online and only 2 salvagers. I wanted to fight off any tackle that came my way, maybe I would take one with me..

I spend the next 20 minutes flyig from wreck to wreck, picking up sleeper tags and salvaging with just 2 salvagers. Watching probes buzz around and playing out in my head exactly how I was going to die, ready to warp to safety the second I saw ANY combat ship appear.

To my total surprise nothing bad happened. I salvaged over 50 wrecks with just two salvagers for a total gas sleeper defender reward of 75million. Not bad...

I'll tell you though, I was sweating! The tense moments when I would warp to a new cluster of wrecks, knowing that any second a gang of interceptors with the wreck I'm on as a book mart could come in, point me, orbit and out track my beams....I was doomed in my mind, it was exciting!

None of that happened, but the excitement fulled me more than any isk ever could. Fun was had still alive.

Player danger is always the best danger.

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!