Haven’t done all that much in EVE recently except update orders and skill queues. There was an occasional mission or two and I did try to finish that rogue drone escalation I got since the first 2 systems were relatively close by, but I must have done something wrong in the second site. I warped in and killed the sentient immediately, after which I got a message that the rogue drones were scattering and that I had deciphered the location of the next site (similar to what happened in the first site). So I warped off, not wanting to bother with killing the rest of the drone horde. However, upon checking my journal I didn’t see any entries telling me where to go next and I had of course neglected to bookmark the original site so I couldn’t go back to finish it. Welp. Guess that takes care of that.
I’ve been in kind of a holding pattern waiting for Rubicon to drop. Unfortunately it also means I’ve been having a bit of a shopping spree, which I tend to do whenever I start planning on things that I want to do. Plus for some reason I noticed that the prices of a lot of deadspace modules seem to be declining steadily. I was originally trading in a couple of these, but now that I would make a loss if I resell them I’m more inclined to write them off and use them myself. I can always resell them next time if the price improves. Most of these modules are stuff that I’m contemplating fitting on my Marauders after Rubicon. I’ve got 2 Imperial Navy EANMs for my armor ships, a couple of Pithum C-Type Medium Shield Boosters (may switch to these on the Vargur and Golem if the tank with Bastion proves to be sufficient), a Gist X-Type Large Shield Booster (originally for resale but may use it to upgrade the current Gist B-Type Large Shield Booster I have) and the biggest item, a 700M Gist A-Type XL booster. I picked up the XL booster on impulse since someone had listed it for 80M cheaper than the usual price. I’ve been meaning to pick up an XL booster to try out, but all the deadspace XL boosters are horrifically expensive (and non-deadspace XL boosters are inferior to large boosters). I’m a bit hesistant to use it though since it instantly turns any ship into a loot pinata. I’m also not looking forward to having to pick up and transport a couple billion ISK worth of stuff from Jita/Amarr. Now that the loot from an Orca’s corporate hangars is fair game, I’m not sure what is the best ship for moving expensive low volume goods. I’ll probably go with my Viator blockade runner or a stealth bomber, but I’m still not sure how fast some of these new insta-lock ganker fits are.
Path of Exile
The main reason, however, for my lack of EVE time is Path of Exile. I’d previously heard of this Diablo-clone, but didn’t pay much attention to it as I was looking forward to Diablo 3. Well, that has pretty much died though my wife and I probably lost out in about 200 bucks or so worth of gold that we didn’t sell off before prices tanked. So I was kinda surprised when Wilhelm talked about Steam and PoE. I hadn’t expected it to be F2P, which is a huge draw. So I downloaded it with my Steam account and gave it a try.
And I have to say I like it so far. It really brings back the old Diablo 2 experience, with interesting items (the lack of which really killed Diablo 3) and interesting skills. No messing around getting Nephalem Valor stacks, farming for randoms and uniques that are complete crap. It also has a very intriguing skill system which is tied to socketable gems, which can also be unsocketed at any time. It’s similar to FF7’s materia or FF8’s junction system, where your gear has gem slots into which you can plonk skill or support gems. For example, you can put in a Fireball gem into any blue socket which then lets you cast the Fireball skill, regardless of class. If the gem slots are linked, you can put in support gems that then modify all other linked gems. So I can put in a increased AoE gem together with my Fireball gem to get a Fireball with a bigger AoE radius. Or I could link it with a totem gem to make it plonk a totem down on the ground which automatically fireballs enemies in range.
Right now I’m playing a level 19 Witch that is going for a Spark/Fork build (otherwise known as Spork). It’s supposedly one of the most cookie-cutter builds out there for magic finding, but hey I love cookies. I don’t gain any enjoyment from being a beautiful and unique snowflake so I’m perfectly ok with being just another Sporker blowing stuff up easy-mode.
Intellimoo's Corner 