So I’m minding my own business mining in hi sec in an edencom system. I fly over to a second asteroid field and notice that there are a lot of Red Gurista Ventures. I have not seen that in hi sec.
Right after I noticed those, I saw a bunch of red Gurista kestrels and production condors. Never seen Production Condors either.
So I fly back to base in my retriever and pull out the caracal. She never fails to get the job done. I fly back to the spot and target a production condor.
She is fast. Much faster than me. Pretty soon I’m warped scrambled. It doesn’t seem to matter to me though because I know I can destroy this Condor pretty quickly. But I can’t. My missiles are only barely hurting her. Taking away maybe one fiftieth of her Shield every time they hit. But her missiles are taking away like 1/5 of mine. I cannot get out of there. So the caracal is destroyed.
What is she doing in highsec not in a pocket, just in a regular asteroid field? What are these Gurista Ventures and what the heck is a Production condor? Apparently a very powerful ship.
I’m not sure if it’s safe to fly my retriever to that field anymore. I might have to go to a different system but I’ve been mining for a long time, maybe every single day for a year, and I must say I haven’t seen these Gurista ventures or production condors. I definitely cannot fight them with my mining ships, or even with my regular fighting ships. Not much of a fighter though, but I have played this game for a while.
If these powerful ships are going to be in regular hi sec asteroid fields, that’s going to screw everything up for me.
Sounds like you had a pirate stronghold in your system. Might that be correct?
Their rats are above and beyond usual hisec belt spawns and definitely not to be engaged by one person In a T1 cruiser. Sorry, you had to learn this way.
If I’m not mixing Things up, those rats that killed you are often referred to as diamond rats - they are marked different so you can see, that something is different from the usual…and more dangerous.
Oh…and on a side note: if you are mining all by yourself: don’t fly a retriever unless you really know what you’re doing. A procurer is the safer, better choice. A retriever is basically an invitation to get ganked and it would be a shame, if that post would be the next one you have to write here…
Well I’ve been playing for a few years but I’ve only really been mining for like a year. I have a procurer and I have a retriever. Retriever mines much faster. I’ve never seen this type of stronghold outside of a pocket. This was just Archvionet, Placid. Regular asteroid field. There were no special marks next to these guys, and I’ve been mining the same field everyday for about a year.
I think I’m going to leave this system and look for a different one.
I’m lucky I was able to get the retriever out of there, but they would have destroyed the procurer just not as quickly. Sure it warps slightly faster and aligns better, but these guys killed my Decked Out caracal in like 5 Seconds.
Seems to me that these guristas are tanked far above what even a perfect pilot using the same and hit way above what anyone with max skills and max implants could ever do, kinda breaks the game I think.
They were diamond rats, they come from Pirate Strongholds that spawn randomly in the universe. And you indeed shouldn’t attempt to kill them if you don’t know what you are doing
You can see if there is a Pirate Stronghold in your system by opening the Agency and clicking on the Encounters tab. I recommand you do that everytime you go mining, it takes 5 seconds to check and you will know if the system you’re in is safe !
That’s a great tip. I will search for pirate strongholds in every system before I start mining. I didn’t know they could be right in the middle of a regular asteroid field, but I guess it is pretty easy to check.
