All Quiet On The South-South-East Front

It's quiet.

Possibly too quiet.

But then again I'm happy that it's like this, it's allowed me to concentrate on grinding standings with one of the NPC corporations in a fairly fast time frame. Zero to 8.34 personal standings with the corporation in a little over a week has meant that I now have access to all the Level 4 agents in the area. 

Mining PvE 

I've found the mining missions not as boring or repetitive as Security ones and much faster to finish. Mining missions seem to comprise one of three types, mining ore, gas or ice. I was told only to do the gas mining missions for best reward vs. risk but I've found that the ice ones (mine 20 blocks of ice) are quick to do with a Skiff or Procurer and are worth doing with Gas. I do decline all the ore missions as they take far too long and usually require two or three trips back to station to drop off what I've mined.

I invested some of my liquid ISK in buying six Ventures and fittings so I could get three characters running missions in the future, the LP rewards (between 7,500 and 12,500 LP per mission with Mining Connections IV) are excellent and I have some good items (Vindicator/Daredevil/Snake Implants) to choose from when I do cash out. 

One really good thing about the mining missions are that they take place in the system with the agent or at most 1 jump away so I don't have to worry much about being caught on a gate. 

Last night I was fortunate enough to get three gas mining missions in a row and not just the "rat free" 7,500 LP reward ones. I got the 12,500 LP mining missions with "drone rats" (which are very easy to tank in a shield boosting Venture) and an hour later I'm 36,000 LP better off and a few million ISK richer.

Towers

My towers are good, we haven't had any siphons since Brave Newbies Inc. moved out and whilst we get a lot of traffic this doesn't interfere with my towers or reactions I have running. 

I did make a mistake last weekend, I bought in new raw materials from Jita about three weeks earlier than I should have so. This caused my liquid ISK reserves to be depleted (read: I spent all my wallet ISK) and now I don't have to buy anything for six/seven weeks apart from fuel.

ISK Today, Gone Tomorrow

The lack of ISK isn't a problem, aside from Ventures I'm not in need of buying anything at the moment outside of tower materials or trading opportunities. I have nearly 20 billion in buy and sell orders active so I'm not really in any trouble it's just depressing to see my wallet balance so low.

The reason I'm so low is I finally bought, and injected into his skills, the Amarr Titan book for one of my characters, not that he has the titan nor do I have the need or ISK for one yet. 

What I'm Doing

Null Sec Local Market

 

My local market sales have slowed, I haven't seen any new people selling but I have seen a drop off in traffic which I put down to the new people in the area. I will have to relist items in a couple of weeks (I sell on 60 days cycles not the default 30 or 90 day ones) and I will check all prices to make sure I'm competitive but elsewhere income is good so I'm not really concerned with this dip in sales.

 

Capital Production

 

I've decided to pull the plug on my Capital Production line and as a result have a nice stack of researched BPO's ready for resale but also a large stock of minerals that I can use for other things or sell.

 

Why have I done this, two reasons:

 

1. Effort
2. Profit

 

My profit margin for Capital ship production has dropped over the past few months. A lot of people are producing capital ships and unfortunately this has dropped the price to the point where the effort to make capital ships hasn't been worth it. I'm sure others can disagree but for me it is time to get out.

 

I'll be listing and selling my capital part BPO's (22 of them) over the next couple of weeks and I think I'll easily get between 25 and 30 billion ISK for them. The actual ship BPO's (12 of them) I'll keep and will add some PE and ME to them before putting on copying duty and selling the copies on the market (for a passive income of at least 2 billion ISK)

 

Missions

 

I'm stilling missioning although not for Thukker Tribe at the moment I've moved on to Caldari Navy to see if I can get my Trading Alt's standings up and in turn lower his broker fees from 0.75% to (lowest possible) 0.185%. I've been told this can be done but so far no change but I will be missioning all this week to get my standings up so I can use Level 4 agents instead of the frustrating Level 1 and 2's I am able to use now.

 

One alt is now maximising his missioning skills with all social skills to V within 60 days. If this works out then I may have to update all my other characters that will participate in PvE.

 

Blog

 

I'm enjoying this blog, I do wish I had more to write about and I do have lots of ideas but I'd like to throw the floor open. If you have any ideas for posts you'd like to see please leave me a comment and I'll see what I can do.

Income Streams

One thing I have learnt in my three years is to have more than one income stream. ISK is the life blood of EVE and whilst it's nearly impossible to have no money, having very little limits what you can do.

 

This is one of the most wonderful things about EVE, there are multiple ways to generate ISK and you are never locked into one method, you are free to adapt and change how you do things.

 

So it pays (ha!) to have more than one income stream. Some of the most common ones are: 

1. Market Trading
2. Ratting
3. PvE
4. PvP
5. Industry / Manufacturing
6. Mining (ore/ice and/or moon)
7. Exploration
8. Wormholes

I'm sure there are variations I've missed but those are the eight main ones that come to mind and certainly everyone should have their ISK making spread across at least two of these.

 

When I started out in EVE it was mining that was my main income, this evolved into some manufacturing (which is logical) but I never was happy with what I was making. So I started doing Market Trading, this added a nice increase in ISK but it can be time consuming to manage hundreds of buy/sell orders and keep track of the market (there are tools available to help but again it's not something for a casual evening or two a week).

 

A lot of my friends utilise their skills to hunt down relic/data sites and anomalies within null sec, these can be a cash cow but more often than not it provides a little income for a reasonable risk. Wormholes provide a bit more of a incentive with C1 and C2's but any higher and you really need friends and a lot of ISK to start.

 

Whatever method of ISK making you choose I really recommend getting a second or third to help provide income when things markets are lean or there are issues preventing your primary income.