++Log 06++
Current Ships: A̶s̶t̶e̶r̶o̶, Venture & Stabber Fleet Issue
As if jinxing myself from my previous posts, we all knew it would come, but my luck finally ran out and I’ve had my first death within wormhole space.
Let’s start this log from the beginning, as I had a day off that I felt like being adventurous in wormhole space. Unfortunately, there weren’t many wormholes in the systems near my homebase. Finally finding one, I Identified it as a C5 wormhole, and with my previous luck in high class wormholes, I thought I would take a bit of a risk and try go down a chain of wormholes within the C4-C6 range.
Unlike my previous success, it was quite a dry spell on the exploration side. Most of the systems I explored had few anomolies to scan down, or they were mostly combat relic/data sites and more wormholes. I did however, find quite a few valuable gas sites, which meant that it wasn’t a complete loss. The chain was probably the furthest I’ve travelled since my first attempt down a wormhole chain, going about 4-5 wormholes deep with a bit of backtracking to explore other interesting looking wormholes. This continued for a few hours with nothing to show for it, so I decided that I should head back and look for some lower classed wormholes to at least find something to bring home. There was however, one more high ranked wormhole I had left to check…
Jumping in, I took my time to scan the sites, and set up my Venture to mine some gas in the mean time, and I finally found a site! A singular relic site that I could loot. So after scanning the remaining sites, and making a couple of safe spots (I’ve been putting it to practice!), I warped to the site, checked my D-scan to see if there was any visible threats, then scanned down the cargo. Some of them had decent cargo, and I was willing to take anything at this point, but in particular, one of the cargo containers had a larger drop of ~14 million, so I slowly made my way over to it, hacking the containers along the way.
Finally arriving at the juicy container, I double checked my D-Scan and activated my relic analyser, as I heard the whir of the hacking starting up and I started studying the grid to see where I wanted to go first, an unfamiliar beep appeared. Looking through my menu’s to see what was going on, I noticed another player on my overview, which was quickly followed by a target lock and a Warp Disruptor!
I had heard stories about this during my initial research about wormhole space, a hidden ship by shiny loot, I immediately recognised the situation I was in and how it came to be, which I thought I might have been somewhat prepared for (I wasn’t). With my vision obscured by the hacking site, I was panicking, more so than I would have liked to admit. I turned on my micro warp drive, closing my unneeded windows, and poking my eyes at the overview. My reaction was slow as my shields whittled down rapidly, instead of relying on my safe spots I bookmarked, I jumped to the celestials out of habit, picking the closest one. I shouldn’t have done that.
Already trying to speed away from this predator, my ship did a 180, flying straight towards him instead of away, trying to align to the warp point! I was spamming the warp button, trying to get out, forgetting to overheat my MWD to try get out of range, my shields were gone, my armour barely holding on, it was at this moment I knew the ship was lost.
Changing gears, I prepared myself to warp out in my capsule, to at least save the various expensive implants I had, waiting for the inevitable, counting down the hull, 3…2…1… BOOM, my ship exploded, and I was spamming my hotkey to warp away like my life depended on it (Because it did!). But nothing was happening, I thought maybe there was some latency, so I kept at it. Still nothing, so I decided to use the overview instead, but it was too late… I was locked again, and my capsule taken out.
I sat back on my seat, seeing myself enter a new clone from my home station, trying to realise what happened, just about ready to rage at the latency issue. Instead, I got a pretty good chuckle, I realised afterwards that I was spamming my hotkey for docking/jumping through stargates, instead of my warp to hotkey, which is why it didn’t work. It was a little relieving (although a little embarrassing) to know it wasn’t the games fault, instead, my own that I lost my capsule (And ship), so I felt more ok with it.
I then took a moment to think about what happened and what I could have done differently, and I’m sure there is more than what I can currently think of, but I might as well go through it (and reiterate it at the lessons in the end). Aligning straight away then activating my MWD would have been a good start, or even if I already had my MWD, taking a moment to look where I’m travelling and picking a celestial/bookmark that’s somewhat in the direction so that I keep running AWAY from my pursuer instead of back into them. There were probably other signs, like a single good can in only 1 site in a high class wormhole probably should have triggered some flags.
Having calmed down a bit from that adrenaline rush, I decided the first thing to do was to rebuy my implants so that my training would still be at a faster speed. As I was making my way to Jita to make my purchases, I was trying to decided what ship I should get, but unsurprisingly, I’ve grown quite attached to the Astero. It saw me through quite a journey, and it was quite a reliable ship, for a not so reliable pilot. It wasn’t a hard decision to get another to stay as my exploration partner in dangerous space for now (Sorry Porpoise, you’ll have to wait).
~200 million ISK down the drain to replace everything, but I had already earnt so much more from my wormhole exploration, so I figured it was best to call my losses for the day and get myself pumped up for the next dive into Wormhole space.
–Lessons Learnt & Mistakes Made–
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D-scan doesn’t find ALL threats - I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, stay vigilant. It only takes a moment for things to go south. I grew quite reliant on the D-scanner, and it did save me from various situations multiple times, but make sure to not solely rely on it.
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Align, then Warp! - Another mistake I made, was that I tried to warp straight away, and then I aligned. This time around, I was already travelling with my MWD so it wasn’t the worst case scenario (except when I turned around) the warp command doesn’t do anything if you’re hit with a disruptor/scrambler!
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Warp in the direction you’re travelling - It can be life saving to take a moment to check what you can warp to in the direction you’re moving if you weren’t able to align before hand.
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Overheat your propulsion! - When trying to get away, maximize your chances by using going even faster. Much better to repair it later on than to lose the entire ship!
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Know your hotkeys - It also helps to practice using them! Muscle memory for the right hotkey for the right situation can be invaluable. I had muscle memory for warping away, just the wrong muscle memory.
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Bad things happen - Things won’t always go your way, you’ll have loses, and that’s fine. Take time to cool down, and to take the loss in stride.
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Don’t give up - Keep going, keep learning, keep exploring! If it’s what you enjoy, then don’t give up, take a break if you need to, but don’t give up! You can bet I’ll be jumping straight back in, head held high, with more experience in hand, ready to enjoy the thrill, now that I’ve reconfirmed how dangerous this occupation is.
Fly safe out there o7
-Explorer Runni, Signing off-
