Ten Things You Can Do With a One Month Alt

Way back in the 2013 release of Odyssey CCP introduced the ability to train two (and later three) characters on one account using PLEX. At the time, I thought it was a nice addition but the sheer significance of this change went over my head.

Then it short of clicked—this is an amazing change. Game-changing, in some ways (e.g., in the amount of alt accounts that have likely closed as a result of this change). Now you can train a month's worth of skills on a second or third character slot and then have that character as long as you have that account, with no added subscription fees--a pretty daring move by CCP if you think about it. What, though, can you do with a “one month alt,” in other words a second or third character on an account that has just one month of skill training? (Besides a mining alt, which I don't even bother featuring here.) It turns out, you can do a huge amount with these types of characters, not the least of which is make a bunch of isk as well as PVP in a variety of ways. So, here's my list of ten things you can do with a one month alt (and, obviously, since a one month alt is useful, a fortiori an alt with more than a month of training is even more useful—some of my alts started as one month alts and eventually branched into other uses featured here, for instance):

I) The Market Trader Alt

Use: A market trader alt is easily one of the best possible uses of a single month of skill training on another character. With a range of 125-225 orders (and an initial investment of isk for the market) you can very easily make well over 800m isk per month, paying for the character's PLEX in no time. This sort of character can set up a market like the one I describe in my tutorial for trading—in fact, my first use for the one month character training was to have a trader for my most distant hub, allowing up to update orders there simply by logging in. Of course, this character can also station trade in a system like Jita etc.

Skills: A character devoted to market trading needs only a small set of skills to function effectively. In a little over two weeks, you can have a character that has 125 market slots by training up to wholesale IV, and that includes accounting and broker relations to IV. For the rest of the month's training, you can just about squeeze in wholesale V and then tycoon to III to increase your orders up by roughly 100.

II) The PI Alt

Use: Very straightforwardly, one uses a PI alt simply to run a colony. One account nets three possible characters that can be running PI, which, in low sec or below, can easily make over 500m a month altogether (in null or wormholes, far more). A single character doing PI is still worthwhile as a source of stable extra income for many players.

Skills: Prior to the ability to train skills on a second or third character at the same time as the main character, players had to pause training on their main for one month or more. This prohibited many players from setting up things like an army of PI alts. A one month character can reach 6 colonies plus enough other PI skills to set up colonies as effectively as is needed. There should be a week or two extra left, so this character can also add other skills, such as for T1 industrial ships or market skills.

III) The Hauler Alt: Transport Ship Version

Use: Having an alt that can fly cloaky blockade runners is incredibly helpful. Before my second character could fly one, I had loot scattered around low sec in dozens of systems from PVP and exploration, but no safe way of retrieving it. With a blockade runner, I was able to collect it all, as well as transport small goods safely to wherever I was stationed in low (in a pinch, you can also use the blockade runner as a scout for another character). With the updates to deep space transports, this skill also gives you the ability to haul relatively large amounts with a decent tank, in the range of 6 packaged cruisers or 24 packaged frigates or one packaged battleship—perfect for a PVP supply etc.

Skills: The skill plans become a little tighter with the following characters, but the useful far increases. With a well-chosen remap and skill implants you can just about fit a race of transport ships into a one month training, but it is hard to fit in many other needed skills as well like cloaking, evasive maneuvering, and so on. This character is probably best suited as a “two month alt” but the usefulness is huge.

IV) The Hauler Alt: Orca Version

Use: An orca is a cost-effective and versatile solution to hauling needs. The decently sized fleet and cargo bays allow for a bunch of packaged ships and many more modules, and the decently sized ship maintenance bay is incredibly useful for transporting fitted ships. One of the first things I did with a second character was get into an orca so I could haul around Sven's stock of fitted frigates. Of course, an orca is also good for mining boosts, but it is an under-appreciated hauler.

Skills: It only takes around two weeks to get into an orca, leaving plenty of time for improving skills which help it fit more, align faster, and so on.

V) The Hauler Alt: Freighter Version

Use: Obviously, freighters are useful, though for almost all of my hauling I would rather use an orca, DST, or blockade runner. However, having an alt that is used simply as a freighter opens up many more possibilities in addition to being pretty convenient.

Skills: You can just barely get into a freighter with a month of training, but without much time for other skills many of which would be nice to have. Ideally, a second month of training is most effective, especially since the upfront investment of the freighter is so much isk anyway, but one month is still doable.

VI) The Exploration/Scanner Alt

Use: Exploration need not be skill intensive to be effective or enjoyable. In one month you can theoretically fly a covert ops frigate, but not effectively. Instead, specialize in a tech 1 exploration frigate with high skills for data and relic sites and you can do null sec relic and data sites with decent success. This null sec data and relic site runner needs only a month of skills to be efficient and make a ton of isk for newer players. If you've seen JonnyPew's recent videos, doing just these sites in null can net a decent amount of isk. This alt can also aid in scanning, which has lots of potential uses even on a player that has only a single account, scanning down signatures or potential targets and then logging back into the main character.

Skills: I would specialize in a tech 1 exploration frigate, getting the relevant skills for data and relic sites as well as basic scanning as high as possible. Adding in a few skills for agility, one month is just enough for a good exploration alt.

VII) The PVP Alt

Use: PVP alt in one month, you say? Absolutely, and chances are you can make an effective alt that can provide a huge amount of fun whenever you log in. My main tip would be to get an alt for Red Versus Blue, where it is easy to acquire ships since it is high sec near Jita, and where low skills are no barrier to having a lot of fun (e.g., open fleets are almost always up). The skills are almost irrelevant, since you can fly in tech 1 frigates with tech 1 or civilian modules in RVB if you so wanted. An added benefit is that in RVB if your fleet wins the field you can freely loot, and if you are flying tech 1 fitted ships you can easily make a profit or at least replace your losses, particularly useful for a newer player.

Skills: Skills are entirely up to you. Haven't ever flown laser ships? Make a one month Amarr frigate and destroyer alt. You can even get up to cruisers with tech 2 weapons, though without room for much else. Extremely tanky ships like maller are popular in RVB, and easily obtainable in a month.

VIII) The Gank Alt

Use: A character that can fly ships like an arty thrasher, high DPS catalyst, or arty can function as a devoted alt for ganking even with minimal skills. Arty thrashers are often used to suicide on pods, shuttles, or T1 frigates in high sec. Catalysts are obviously the ship of choice for ganking miners, and arty tornados are among the popular ships for ganking T1 haulers.

Skills: One month is more than enough time for any of the three most popular ganking ships (and enough for a combination of them depending on how many support and fitting skills you also want). In a month of training it is quite possible to be able to fly a catalyst with tech 2 blasters and an arty thrasher capable of popping pops, along with power grid skills to help with fittings. What ends up being more of a barrier to the one month gank alt is not the skill training, but security status. Recycling alts for the purpose of ganking is against the rules, so one your sec status drops “into the red” you will either have to use security tags to get it back up, or—what's common in groups like CODE.--plan ganks around the limited time you have to avoid high sec police (not CONCORD, who comes when you initiate a gank, but the regular police ships that eventually shoot those with low sec status and enemies of the respective faction). The latter involves warping from gate to gate looking for pods or other easy targets, or using an alt to plan the gank so the DPS character only needs a few seconds in space.

IX) The POS Bashing Alt

Use: Many players at some point have reason to engage in a POS (or customs office) bash, and sometimes in high sec or without the use of dreads. Either to avoid having to use a main character or as an alt on an alt account alongside one's main character, POS bashing characters only really need a month of training to add substantial DPS. A single 900 DPS ship will take roughly 5-6 hours to destroy a small tower in high sec (as I recently learned...) while having a second, hands-free character can effectively cut this time in half.

Skills: The most common route for the POS bashing character is to specialize solely in the Oracle with meta 4 mega pulse lasers, tech 2 heat sinks, DPS rigs, and enough cap rechargers to make it cap stable, bringing it to the range of 700-800 DPS and for a price of less than 100m—easily obtainable in one month of skill training. The only question is just how much DPS you can maximize out of one month out training alone, but anything above 600 will provide more (sustained) DPS than a bomber and knock substantial time off a POS bash.

X) Miscellaneous Storage, Scout and Slot Alt

Use: This alt does not have a single role but does a bunch of things I find well worth the single PLEX for some skills. I've started using an all purpose alt for scouting, storage, and industry slots lately. This alt will have a corporation, a small POS, and has science skills up high enough to do long-term research on blueprints. I also trained jump clone skills up as high as I could in one month, giving this character something like 7 jump clones. I spread them throughout areas in low/null where I sometimes need a scout (e.g., high sec to low sec jumps that are often camped).

Skills: Entirely based on needs—for me, I needed jump clone skills for scouting and science skills for blueprint research.

The list goes on, and I've probably missed a bunch of great one month alts, but those are the ten alts I have found the most useful and profitable. What's next for CCP? It might not be on their radar, but being able to buy extra character slots would help both their finances as well as the usefulness of PLEX for skill training. Maybe someday players will be able to buy a 4^th or 5^th character slot, with the ability to train skills on those 4^th or 5^th characters with PLEX. This likely wouldn't result in more alt accounts being closed, but would likely result in some added slots (say, for a few PLEX) and PLEX for skill training.

Burner missions – Economic Impact?

Amidst Hyperion's fairly rocky release (including, for some players, the loss of all their UI presets), many players are attempting their first burner mission. I tested a bunch before release, but have not yet had to time to run them “for real.” I am currently more interested in what, if any, economic impact burner missions will have. The first thing I did was jot down the tech 2/pirate/navy losses in two NPC corporations over the first 24 hours after these missions were released, just to get an idea of how frequently they were being run and what ships people were losing...

Perkone

Hawk

Hawk (140m)

Cruor

Vengeance (75m)

Daredevil

Manticore

Daredevil

Daredevil (180m)

Caldari Provisions

Cruor

Hawk

Comet

Enyo

Hawk

Manticore

Astero

Hawk

Hawk

Hawk

Hookbill

Wolf

Hawk

Kitsune

Hawk

Manticore

Hawk

Jaguar

Hawk

Manticore

One notable and somewhat funny loss from another NPC corp was a condor worth 56m. The bulk of its price was a single Dread Guristas Light Missile Launcher in its high slot (one other other high slot was filled with a salvager). The missile launcher dropped, so the pilot returned to the mission complex in a rookie ship in an attempt to loot the item. The pilot looted the missile launcher, but was then killed by the burner, at which point the launcher was lost. Burners, it would seem, are a fantastic troll.

But then CCP Fozzie graced the datajunkies by noting on twitter how many player ships were lost toburners on release day: On day one, 207 Burner NPCs died, but they killed 1563 capsuleer ships.” 6.2 kills per burner, improving the text day to 7.55 says another tweet.

Has the market been affected by these losses? The relevant tech 2 market has stayed fairly stable, in spite of ships like the Hawk being popular for burner missions. The daredevil is the only ship that is noticeably up, sitting around the high-90m isk in Jita as of 8/29. The Worm is high but has been since the summer buff.

However, the relevant deadspace module markets have spiked—either because of manipulation or demand but likely both. Small armor repairers in particular have skyrocketed, with most items doubling in sell price in Jita and remaining fairly stable. Buy orders are slowly acquiescing to the higher prices so if the spike is manipulation the parties are apparently dedicated.

If the price of daredevils and various deadspace modules like SARs stays high, this in turns benefits explorers doing 1/10-3/10 DED sites, which are often new players. It's a good time to run some lower-end DED sites in serpentis and guristas space particularly. I ran a blood raider 1/10 for kicks the other night, and got a C-type SAR. That armor rep is usually 20m, but currently up 15m in buy orders and, if I managed to sell it, currently running at around 100m in Jita sell orders with very limited stock.

It is no secret that EVE has a lack of isk sinks for many play styles, leading some mission runners, for instance, to amass enough wealth to fly mission ships worth tens of billions of isk. Risk/reward does not scale well at many levels of EVE gameplay. What's distinctive about burner missions is that they create a sort of risk of loss that otherwise didn't exist in the game—an isk sink that targets mission runners specifically, does not involve PVP, and can fairly reliably result in the loss of ships. It also introduces a new sink for pirate and tech 2 frigates as well as the respective deadspace modules, one that again did not previously exist.

Dotlan reports that in July of 2014, for instance, around 313,00 player ships were lost in high sec. It's likely that the number of players running burner missions will drop significantly over the next few weeks as novelty wears off, and it's likely that those who do continue to run them will do so because they have found fairly reliable ways of winning the mission (enough to at least break even on isk). So, in terms of the long-term economic impact, burner missions are not likely to be a massive market force. However, any new content that has a large amount of risk of loss is welcome in EVE in my opinion and I count this as a step in the right direction for CCP, even if the missions leave a bit to be desired. 

Testing Burner Missions

Burner missions are coming with Hyperion and they are on Sisi with only a few days for testing—time for tweaks and fixing the bugs but likely close to the final form. That doesn't leave much time for even bug testing, so if you have any interest in these missions it would be worth logging onto the test server,  trying them out, and leaving feedback. A feedback thread started here, where I posted some first impressions. After running more of these missions and reading more feedback my impression has stayed pretty much the same: 

First, they can be easy with the right fit, and second, no, they are not at all like frigate PVP and players aren't going to learn much about PVP fitting from them. It already appears that efficient fittings for these missions are going to be what I would call “cheese” fittings, quirky fits that counter each specific burner but mostly useless in any other context. The types of frigates that will be able to run these sites is fairly limited, insofar as you need far more DPS than almost any frigate can match (in fact, thus far it seems the worm in various fits is by far the best frigate for running all 5--a nice potential investment at the moment, perhaps). Giving up on the idea that they are going to help players learn to fit for PVP or somehow simulate frigate PVP, they look to nonetheless be quite fun.

One Year of Trading

From January/February 2013 to February/March 2014 my second character lived as a sort of hermit in low sec doing exploration and PI. As I describe in this post a while back, this was an incredibly formative and fun year (or so) of EVE for me, but it came to an end when I moved this character out of low sec and transitioned more into trading. I still do a lot of exploration, but causally—and sometimes even in high sec. Though I play EVE primarily to PVP, I live a double life in a way, also playing a character who avoids PVP at all costs, first as an explorer and now more so as a trader.

In August 2013 I started regional and inter-regional market trading. It has now been a full year of trading, and I would say I've come a long way. I started with a handful of goods and some T1 haulers, selling in small markets I had at some point lived in/around. I suppose the most significant milestone is my total profit on the year, half of which has come in the past three months:

First Year Total: 58b.

Monthly Isk in Millions

Looking ahead into the next year of trading, here are a number of things that have recently changed for me:

First of all, my goal has always been to trade on one character, with 300 stable (though constantly changing) orders. However, I recently took the plunge and trained a second character on that account. One month of training easily allows for a character with 125 market orders and two weeks of other skills as need be, and this character (or two) does not cost extra each month since it is on an existing account. The reason why I trained a second character is that it actually makes my trading more efficient and less time consuming while at the same time adding more orders. Here's why: As my posts introducing trading outline, one place I trade is Simela, a mission hub (more posts in this series hopefully coming soon). I trade all sorts of goods there. The orders do not need frequent updating and I only need to restock every week or two. So, I decided to split this market off onto a second character since it is so hands-off. It doesn't make a lot of isk, but enough to be worth keeping. With 125 orders freed up, my main trader can add more items to hubs that she visits more frequently. I should reach thi new goal of 425 orders by the end of the month.

Second, as my experiment involving investing 100b into the market outlines, once I am no longer using profit to add orders I will be investing most of my profit into long-term market orders—primarily simply to avoid having a lot of isk in my wallet (a bad thing given how frequently I often add zeros when putting up orders).

Third, I have stopped doing PI. I actually really enjoy PI. It is rewarding to build colonies that passively generate income, sort of like setting up a city in SimCity and seeing it run smoothly on its own. However, it was becoming too time consuming to travel to this remote low sec area and transport the goods.

Investing 100 Billion Isk - Update I

About three weeks ago I started an experiment: I imagined investing 100b isk in items which I predicted would increase in price over the next four months. My goal was to see if I could make a profit with very conservative assumptions, buying from sell orders and (attempting to) sell largely to buy orders (or, at least, taking the average of the buy/sell order prices during the period I would sell the stock). This is my first update on the progress of this little experiment. As it turns out, I did actually make some of the investments, and I explain how those have panned out along with what I would have done with the rest of the stock thus far.

tl;dr - so far I'm up to 5.69b profit with no "mulligans" (i.e., I calculated my profits according to when I actually would have sold / started selling the items, instead of simply calculating the profits by the highest buy or sell order price since July 12th). Considering how little time I've spent on this project (e.g., I didn't even start checking most of these prices again until Crius, and then only occasionally) I'd say this is a success thus far.

Category 1: Moon harvesting arrays.

Estimated profit: 400m

Between July 20-27^th MHAs spiked in Jita from 20m to a high of around 34m. Whether from market manipulation or an actual increase of use, I began selling them off as soon as the prices hit 25m. I did (actually) sell a few MHAs I had (actually) bought at 30m isk, but I will assume here that I would have managed to sell all 100 of my stock for an average of 24m. That makes for a modest profit of 400m and I didn't even have to ship them out to sell at local trade hubs like I thought I might have to do.

Category 2: Logistics.

Estimated profit (guardian, oneiros, scimitar): 1.3b

Some of the logistics ships were coming down from a spike when I invested in them. Since the beginning of July, besides the basilisk, logistics ships have slowly been increasing in price, and on August 3^rd I decided to cash out. Guardians were up to 170m in sell orders with a few buy orders for around 164m, so I estimated that I could liquidate my stock of 20 for an average of 165m. I bought 10 scimitars for 146m and now they were up to 169m in sell orders, 161m in buy orders. I estimate I could liquidate the 10 through sell orders at an average of 168m. The oneiros has especially jumped in price, from 150m when I bought 10 to between 200m and 220m in sell orders at the beginning of August. Buy orders on the 3^rd were at around 181m, so I estimate I could liquidate my small stock for an average of 190m.

Category 3: Recon Ships.

Estimated profit (falcon, rook): 1.17b

All recon prices spiked after Crius. I could have sold at least some of my stock in sell orders during this price and made 10-20% profit. However, I felt this was jumping the gun on most of the recon ships given that the rebalanaces have not even been announced yet, and given that my goal is to make profit by selling to buy orders, ideally, even if when I do these investments for real I will likely sell most of my items through sell orders (obviously?). So, I only cashed out on two recons:

I invested in 30 falcons at 168m. Buy orders jumped to 185m by the end of July and sell orders were around 195m, so I estimate modestly that I could liquidate the stock at an average of 188m each. Sell orders and, briefly, buy orders, for rooks spiked as well, though far less rooks move each day. I picked up 30 for 126m, with sell orders around 160m by the end of July and beginning of August. I would have slowly cashed out over this period likely starting when sell orders hit 135m so I estimate that I could have sold them for an average of 145m. For the rest of the recons, I want to wait for the rebalance announcements at this point, which I expect is the next time they will spike in price. Hopefully I haven't been too conservative here!

Category 4: Limited edition items.

Estimated profit (leopard): 1.27b

First of all, shortly after I did my July 12^th “investments” some people started manipulating the price of leopards. At one point roughly around the time Crius hit, nearly all of the stock of leopards were bought up in Jita. Sell orders peaked at 99m and have slowly been going down, hitting the low 70m spot currently. I picked up 75 leopards for (again, always rounding up) 63m before this spike. Fortunately for me, leopards were one of the items I actually did (for real) invest in at this point, though not as many as 75 (closer to 40). I sold my stock at an average of 85m, and estimate I could have sold 35 more at 80m, so I am going to make a safe bet and say I could have liquidated my 75 leopards at an average of 80m, so a profit of 1.27b. Geckos, on the other hand, have dropped a bit. I am a bit worried about this investment. I am predicting geckos will spike right before—or during—the alliance tournament. Both genolution implants have continued to slowly increase in price. I could begin selling them off for a profit, but I am going to wait out the trend longer as unless players directly manipulate the price by selling off large stocks, these implants should continue to rise in price over the next few months.

Category 4: PLEX

I picked up 32 PLEX for 795m a piece. Prices spiked to 820m or so and have since dropped to 785m as of August 3^rd. So thus far, unless I would be willing to ship these PLEX to other regional markets and sell them for higher prices there (something I know some other, crazier traders do!) I don't have any option besides sitting on the stock. Realistically, if I did make this investment, I would be PLEXing my accounts in advance and so I wouldn't count this investment as a “loss” but as needed assets.

Category 5: Nestors

What I knew was a terrible decision, fueled only by irrational expectations that the nestor would soon be improved, the nester has dropped by 100m since I picked up 3. This is the purchase I was least likely to make in the beginning, and most included them out of curiosity at how their market would develop.I guess my pretend nestor investment is a placeholder for bad decisions I will inevitably make in the future when investing.

Category 6: Bombers

I made a small investment in bombers. Since July 12^th their price has increased by a small 6-10%. I am holding out for slightly higher prices.

Category 7: Strategic Cruisers

Estimated profit (all): 1.54b

Finally, strategic cruisers. It turns out this was another set of items I actually did purchase around July 12 (though not in the same numbers as on my experiment's chart), and I've since sold my stock for a decent profit. 15 legions at 127m easily sold at 164m. 15 tengus at 134m sold for an average of 155m (underestimating a bit I think). 15 proteuses at 134m were selling for as high as 180m, but overall I estimate I could have sold 15 total for an average of 165m very quickly. 15 loki at 127m sold at least at 142m a piece. Total, I made a fairly quick 1.54b on strategic cruisers.

Current totals: So far in my experiment I am less than a month in and I've turned a fairly quick 5.69b profit. I didn't even start checking the prices on most of these items until after Crius, and, as explained, I would have sold most of the stock thus far to buy orders, reducing my investment of time. Of some the items I did actually invest in—a few MHAs, a few leopards, and some strategic cruisers—I've made a decent profit. Crius has had a much bigger impact on the prices of tech 2 and 3 goods than I expected, which is actually a positive sign for my experiment since most of my investments were long term. Most of the investments were made from predictions about how the market will react to future rebalanaces—recon ships in particular—as well as long term trends of limited stock items. Since my goal is to have all stock sold by December, I still have over three months left in my experiment to turn a profit on the remaining items. As is probably painfully obvious to experienced traders etc., in this experiment and in my regular trading, I am learning that the more isk you have, the easier it is to make more and with it with less of a time commitment.

Teams are really cool

Patch day today and I'm excited. I am doing some hauling to restock my markets as well as some casual exploration but I'm fixated on the teams system. It's unlike anything I've seen in a game, like a virtual ebay system, and even though I don't do much industry I am fascinated by the information the team bidding offers.

I sort the teams chartering selection by current highest bid. The highest bid right now is for 300m (!) with over 2 days left. It is for manufacturing capital class – titans – freighters – supercarriers. The bid location is for T-AKQZ. I look up where that is—wow, the middle of no where, a systems owned by The Kadeshi. I guess that means they probably want to build titans and supers etc., out there. Not surprising, I guess, but a cool bit of public info the teams chartering provides.

High sec bids are winning quite a few of the highest current bids. Some of the same systems re-appear a lot. I see some of my trade areas winning a few bids! I don't know if this is a good thing, or a bad thing. Good, maybe, because it will mean the markets there will grow, will see more buyers as well as sellers. Maybe bad, though, because it might mean more local competition.

It looks like one or a few people went through and put a bid on almost every team for Sakenta—very close to Jita. Not a bad idea. But then maybe a bad idea if it draws too much industry and raises the taxes too high etc. The industrialists who hate uncertainty are probably going crazy. Then again, some or all of them probably already know how to game the system in ways that would go far over my head. But, in short, only a few hours into Crius and an impressive amount of isk is being thrown at the teams.

The starmap has new info--a tab for industry! It was really only briefly mentioned in a dev blog but it is pretty huge. After my nerdgasms I check out the new info. Jobs Started in the Last 24 Hours: As one might expect, virtually all the industry is in high sec. It is interesting to see all the locations where people do industry. New player systems and mission hubs are comparable to major trade hubs in terms of jobs, which I didn't expect. It is hard to find low sec systems with any jobs in the last 24 hours. The few that stand out are areas where large groups live—some systems in Placid, for instance. There are only a few minor blips in null, particularly around Providence. It will be interesting to see if the blobs of activity spread out more—most are clustered around the Forge currently, no surprise there.

The Systems Cost Index should be very valuable. The Forge is painted with red blobs, with costs mostly .06 or higher. Genesis and Aridia are looking especially low-cost for most activities. Should builders set up a POS or should one be a traveling industrialist? I have no idea but I enjoy ignorantly speculating. 

Of course, what I'm really is: will Crius will bring any conflict-drivers? How will the market actually react--will prices go up generally, down, or stay the same? I look forward to seeing what develops from Crius in the coming weeks. 

A Month of Amarr Faction War

About a month ago now I posted about my PVP “dry spell” of sorts. Since then, I've joined an Amarr faction war corp with the goal of pvping in an area of space I've never really visited—pretty much the entirety of Minmatar/Amarr low sec. A month in and I'm having a blast.

So far, I've found this area of space quite welcoming for the solo PVPer, if subject to more fluctuations in activity than areas like Placid and Black Rise. Avoiding only Amamake, I've found more solo fights and less blobs than back in Gallente/Caldari space, while also a bit more periods of complete inactivity. I typically don't have much stomach for faction war—too many targets I can't shoot. Amarr FW is especially bizarre, in that some groups will consider you an awoxer if you shoot lore-friendly targets like CVA (the only Amarr RP group I happen to know). The farmers are also a constant annoyance. Some farmers, contrary to perception, are not new players, but alts of PVP characters in FW. As I recall from stints in Gallente FW, some players strongly disliked other FW players who killed Caldari farmers, as some of those farmers were Gallente alts making isk on their second account. I wish FW were more of a FFA—or at least that there was a pirate based militia that did not punish killing members of one's own militia—as it isn't in my personality to do things like kill friendlies, spy, or do other sorts of meta-gaming, yet I also can't stand seeing purples in local. As much as I want to like FW, this is essentially why I've spent the majority of the past year as a pirate.

It has been a month of learning and firsts:

I've learned just how common stealth bombers are in faction war space when that faction is at T3/T4, and I've learned just how expensive some of them can be, with 100-200m fits quite common. I'm still working on my skills for killing these farmers in stealth bombers.

In my quest to solo at least once in every combat-capable ship in EVE, I've just about completed the Amarr destroyers and Amarr T1 frigates, with only a few ships left to lose. I've learned a lot about how versatile lasers are in their tracking and range, as well as how frequently ships like the tormentor are underestimated.On the whole, I'm up to around 70 kills total in the tormentor.

I've also scored my first solo kills in the lowly punisher, the ship everyone seems willing to fight. With the recent boost to the punisher's powergrid, you can now fit crazy combinations like a 400mm plate, an ancillary armor rep, and a small nosferatu all at once. Kiters love to attempt to warp into a plex on top of a punisher, and the nos helps it avoid typical counters such as neuting ships, double-neuting-firetails included (it's a thing).

I've also learned just how strong neutralizers are, particularly neut-bonused ships like the dragoon. The dragoon is, well, insane, so long as someone fights it. I've come to like the 400mm plate version with three neuts and a microwarp drive personally. This ship has led me to many fantastic fights, including my first daredevil kill ever and my second ever worm kill, not to mention the joy of killing a player with only 17 losses to 1k+ kills in one.

Among other firsts include my first solo worm kill, my first experience flying the rifter (I'm only a decade or so too late here!), my first successful solo fight against a remote-rep gang, my first solo kill of a HAC, and my first kill of an Orca, solo to boot—that's a lot of my EVE-virginities taken in one month!

Up next month are the Minmatar T1 frigates and then some of the remaining T1 frigs I haven't seriously flown.