Getting on the bandwagon

It's that time of year again where everyone who has something to sell is advertising that they have are having some form of "MEGA BONUS UBER ONE TIME ONLY SALE". It can be a little overwhelming or just plain annoying if you see the same adverts over and over again.

Almost a Fire Sale

This year I decided that I would join in but instead of advertising I'd just drop the price of my items as if I was having a fire sale. Not everything I trade was covered but all my T1/T2 modules and ships. Thanks to some unknown person who has cleared up the Metamaterials and Sylramic Fibres market these too were included.

From the 20th December to 2pm (AU TZ) I've been selling over three thousand items in both High Sec and Null Sec at under market price. As of 2pm today this is my trader's wallet:

Normally I try to keep as little ISK as possible in my wallet but in three days I've gone from a little under 1.5b to almost 10.5b ISK, 

Why Do This

Aside from the title, I wanted to clear out my current stock of items in my locations because they were annoying me and I was a little tired of the 0.01 ISK price updates I'd have to do several times a day. By dropping the price to well under market I may have lost some profit but I sold the item and no longer have to keep trying to sell it.

By selling it I now have ISK I can use to invest in the New Year on things that will generate me more profit. Believe me, I've spent the past two weeks looking for new opportunities for 2015.

The Week That Was

A Week with Phoebe

It's been six days (for me) since Phoebe was deployed. It was painless update for me and after I'd returned from an evening out I updated my client and was logged in about 30 minutes after Tranquillity came back online.

The new sensor overlay was amazing to see in space, my CEO had fits of pleasure when he saw all his tacticals, perches and other bookmarks when he undocked. I've turned most of the overlay stuff off for day-to-day use but there have been a few occasions, around camped gates, that having the bookmarks appear in space has saved me precious seconds that could have seen me captured. 

I haven't been doing jumps since before Phoebe so I can't say how much jump fatigue will effect me (not much is my prediction). I will be doing some jumps in the coming week, friends need stuff taken in/out plus its good to at least move my market items to high sec ready to move to Jita for sale.

Domination Commander

I've been doing ratting in Curse not because I was bored or in need of ISK but because I was testing out new ships and fits. My current Gila does the job but there are other ships I've never flown that may be better. It has been quite fun using different Faction and T2 ships to see what could replace my Gila as my primary ratting ship but nothing so far has come anywhere near the Gila in terms of cost/dps although I'm going to look at Polarized weapons as an extra 25% damage may be worth it.

During one run I even managed to get my first ever Domination Faction Battleship spawn, previously I'd always gotten Cruiser sized faction spawns, I was hoping that this time I'd get some decent loot and I kind of did but a Domination Shield Amplifier, 1,000 faction ammo and a faction tag was quite a let down. I swear I had better cruiser faction spawns in Providence when I was there, Domination just seem to be ammo, tags and not much else. 

I shouldn't complain too much the Domination Shield Amplifier was worth around 60m.

Results of my tests have been mixed and as much as I love my Amarrian Lasers I've found them to be seriously wanting against the local rats and I've not been at all happy with the fits I've been using. I've been keeping copious notes so in the future you can expect to see a blog post on what I've been doing.

Metamaterials Pricing

Being a producer of Metamaterials I've been saddened by the unit price over the past 8 months. As I've previously written, the price has been very volatile but not in a predictable way. Sure its market so its dependant on other factors but the more T2/capital ships destroyed the more metamaterials will be needed to build new ones. We've seen a lot of ships destroyed but volume of metamaterials sold has been all over the place and pricing with it.

I'm going to see if I can get Lockefox (EVE-Prosper Market Show) to have a look at the prices to see if there is an correlation or pattern to the pricing/volume. I am certain there should be correlation, i.e. certain ships need metamaterials thus more of these destroyed the need for metamaterials increases, but I'm yet to see any proof that this is true.

All Quiet on the Southern Front

There is an active war front near to my home system and as I said last week having PL as nearby neighbours is somewhat concerning but I'm happy to report so far that aside from a few PL or PL-affiliated characters passing through I haven't seen any of them.

I've seen Battle Reports and linked kill mails about what their exploits against HERO but they seem to be nice and busy again them rather than trying to take over the region.

Of course that could change tomorrow but at the moment things are quiet.

Market Activity

Since coming into a "gift of ISK" I've changed my approach to my market activities because I no longer need to make "x ISK per day" in order to keep my accounts active and buy what I need. 

I'm stockpiling the materials I'm making at the moment with no plans to sell unless there is a major market price change. Hopefully what I learn from EVE-Prosper will help me see that well before it happens and I can take advantage and profit greatly :)

EVE-Prosper Show Update

Episode 003 is live and it is much better than previous episodes. Best. Episode. So. Far. as comic book guy might say. The show was more polished this week and I'm sure we'll only be hearing less err.. and ah's" from Lockefox as he gains more confidence in his presenting.

*drool* graph p0rn

The interview with Diana Dial was interesting but it was frustrating with the delays and empty air that happened a few times. Not a production issue more Skype or whatever method of communication they were using (I believe) but this was more than compensated by the excellent discussion between Lockefox and Diana.

I'm loving the graphs that are appearing, as well as looking great they are presented so simply that even an idiot like myself can see the important bits without needing a degree in mathematics.

What If

Imagine you're doing your evening routine, managing your tower setup, reading chat channels speaking to friends when you receive a conversation request from a character whose name you don't immediately recognise but after a check of their notes you realise is the alt of a friend. This person says hello then your wallet blinks and you find yourself with a significantly larger wallet balance.

Aside from thanking the person, what would you do if you received a large amount of ISK with instructions to enjoy it?

This is what happened to me last night, completely unexpectedly and without any warning. My friend had already liquidated their assets and they'd gifted me some but this donation was quite a shock and I'm sure they were laughing at me as I was trying to gather words to thank them.

As a result the Tracker inside jEVEAssets looks like this for my character wallet balance:

Mount St Wallet has arrived. She's gonna blow!

This is the Tracker view of my day-to-day character who received the ISK, as you can see they normally have between 5 and 7 billion ISK in their wallet for use over all my accounts. 

Plans

My first thoughts was to invest in PLEX, I already have a sizeable investment and they have given me a good return (5% to 12% depending on when I bought them) on my investment but the more I thought about it the more I realised that this is not the best use of the ISK I've been gifted.

I will be using a small amount to PLEX two of my accounts for the next 3 months and I'll invest a few billion in buying up cheap moon goo materials I need for my reaction towers and be safe in the knowledge that I can stockpile what I make for a while without the need to make frequent JF runs to high sec to sell what I make.

Aside from that I don't know, I could invest in a Super carrier or a quarter/fifth of a Titan but I don't see that as a good idea in the current climate (I've been seeing A LOT of capital characters appearing for sale on the official forums since Phoebe was announced).

Toodlepip o7m8

Lorna Sicling, of the A Scientists Life in EVE, has gone but will no be forgotten. Fortunately I have their RL contact details and when I do return to the UK I shall certainly be heading to the pub for a drink or two with them.

Who knows, I may also join them in Warframe which is showing a lot of promise...

Can I have some of your stuff?

No. It's mine, MINE.

Any similarity to The CEO is intentional

Wares to Market

I've had a good collection of wares to take to market this week, I've been usually frugal in my stockpiling of Metamaterials so I had a nice stack of around 170,000 units each of Photonic and Terrahertz along with the loot from my missioning/officer spawn.

All up my cargo bay said it was worth around 7 billion worth of materials I'd be shipping and this is good timing as I'm only a week or so from needing more input materials for my towers.

Jumping Out

Shipping the materials out of Curse was simple enough, I have two cyno chains I can use and I fired up one and had the materials in high sec within 5 minutes of filling the Jump Freighter. 

I have two cyno chains because sometimes a mid/end-point system may have too many pilots in it for me to want to jump. This is especially so when I'm carrying such an ISK amount.

Moving to Jita

Next I unloaded everything in my local high sec station and setup courier contracts to another alt to take the stuff to Jita for sale. I do this as a precaution against ganking, by splitting up the wares and using courier contracts I'm hoping that the casual ganker will ignore me and I'll be able to pass unhindered. 

Of course this means multiple trips but a alt with a full mid-grade Nomad set and extra warp speed implants doesn't add much time to the journey.

For Sale

Once in Jita its time to sell and this is where patience really counts. I want to make the most from what I'm selling but I also don't want to sell, at first, to buy orders so I look at the price of what I'm selling and then lower the price by a small amount so as to give myself some "daylight" between my items and the next cheapest.

For Metamaterials this means lowing the price further so I will only change by, no more, than 3 ISK but in fact I only dropped the price by 0.75 ISK. Other items were put on at just under current lowest with the hope they'll sell fast.

I setup my sell orders just before downtime and when I logged in this morning I'd sold roughly half of what I had available, which was good, and I spent a little time redoing orders and changing prices as needed.

That's my days market work done, now its time to earn some more ISK via missions and ratting.

Know Your Scams: ISK Doubling/Tripling

Setup

A message is posted in local advertising, by someone purporting to be either "an alt of a very rich player" or the "alt of a player who wants to give back to EVE", a "multiplication game" whereby you send an ISK amount to the player and they will multiple it and return a larger value. 

The scammer will then write in their bio details of the game along with instructions, in varying font sizes so as to confuse/mislead the reader, how to play:

Reading this bio you can see the "game" breaks down into several brackets depending on how much you send, the more you send the more your money is multiplied and you get back. Some variations even have a link so you can "view their wallet" transactions and see that they are legitimate, that's a more involved version of the scam that is more work for the scammer but does help.

Notice the tiny text at the bottom that states "Amounts not listed are considered donations and there is no refund", so send in 49m or one cent over 300m ISK and it's a donation.

What Happens Now

When the mark sends ISK the scammer will receive it and just keep it, but they'll post in local something like this:

As we can see, we have a real character as they're interacting in Local but they aren't paying out and keeping all monies sent. This tries to show a semblance of respectability by the interaction and how some people do benefit but those that do typically are friends, alts or characters only a few days old.

Update: It's been pointed out that the site eve.apiverified.com is fake and is actually a payout simulator setup by someone in order to help perpetuate this scam. I cannot confirm this but the site is very suspicious.

Variations

There are a few variations of this, typically ISK Doubling or Tripling will be seen although I have seen ISK Quadrupling offered in Amarr but not Jita. The advert and details within the Bio of the scammer will vary but generally the same details will be used (copy and paste anyone?).

A minority have their perported wallet linked for you to view but it will be a man-in-the-middle scam that is a fake wallet journal, that looks like a legitimate one, that is on a site that is setup to appear like its one of the character valuation sites.

How Can You Protect Yourself

Rule #1 in Jita is: anything in Local is a scam to take your ISK.

For simplicity, and this should be remembered, anything that appears in Jita (or any system) Local should be ignored. 2013 was the "Spaceship Barbie "my isk for a single piece of tritanium"" and copycats, this year it is this scam that is the favourite. Like the real life "Microsoft and AOL want to give you FREE money" emails, why in their right mind would someone want to give away all their ISK, it doesn't make sense.

The age of the character will be days and not weeks or months, they've been setup especially for this scam and as such they have no audit trail or history with anyone else so the money received can be laundered quietly and without any links to legitimate characters. 

For ones that include a wallet link, make sure to check the URL or web address you're seeing, most likely it will not be from one of the character valuation sites but a name very similar or mispelt in a minor way.