I took a family related break from EVE but always wanted to come back, because I really liked the game. First I started to log in and collect the free daily rewards, but today the plan was to stay at home, catch up with the newest season of “The Expanse” and play EVE a bit further then the login screen. Can’t go to work and I can’t leave the house, it seemed like a plan.
As I am an alpha pilot for now I couldn’t board any of my trusty vessels but a Venture, but that didn’t bother me much. It was time to get some ore and to use those free blueprint copies I got. (I know those are more or less trash tier items, but I just wanted to play EVE again and that seemed like a start. Maybe lose the frigates I build in Fraction War thereafter. (Do omega Pilots get the same trash tier blueprint copies or something useful?)
As I know EVE can be quite unforgiving to the clueless I tried to educate me about all the changes that happened while I was away. Highsec seemed to be pretty much the same, apart from the “Triglavian Invasion“ and citadells. As far as I get it they invaded some systems that are a potential danger even in HighSec now, but you get a warning when entering such a system. No biggy. I left the new Jita station (looks cool to me) and remembered, that there are no roids in Jita. The new agency window tells me there are belts with Pyroxeres ore a few jumps out and I am on my way. But there are no rocks left, only a few NPC Ventures idle in space. Whatever…
I check wiki for the NPC miners and as far as I understand you can shoot the transports and they drop ore. So “gun mining” is back? Doesn’t sound bad to me. Looking for belts that aren’t empty I find more NPC fleets, but noone is shooting at them and the other players in my Corp are not even sure if you are supposed to shoot them and tell my the whole purpose of the fleets is to annoy us.
The agency window promises me Pyroxeres again a few jumps away and I jump into a NPC HighSec gatecamp. There wasn’t a warning, the system isn’t shown as a triangle, it’s a dozen red ships and a few player wrecks … I have a few seconds of gate-cloak left so I decide to burn back to the gate when it drops. Those Triglavians lock fast and start to shoot immediately while I overheat hardeners and afterburner. Pop, ping. Webs, points and target painters and quite some DPS would have been tricky on a mission ship, but I guess I could have cleared the points and jump. But my Venture had no realistic chance to jump back. Maybe I could have warped away before I got pointed, but nevertheless it was a bit overkill for a group of NPC on a HighSec gate.
The corp-chat assumed the Trigs followed an other player to the gate an I had just bad luck. OK, fine. But what I didn’t get is why they shot my capsule too. I instantly jumped when my ship popped, but my capsule was in structure when I was back on the other site. Capsule instant locking NPC on HighSec gates… bad luck or no bad luck, that was not the welcome I was expecting. Didn’t know getting some ore in HS is THAT dangerous now. Guess I will try to get back into a more or less empty frigate wormhole. Loved that place but I need to earn some backup ships first. Back to mission running I guess, at least the mission ships can shoot back.
