No mojo. Enemies, opponents and the difference between players of the meta and players of the game.

I've lost my mojo and I'm struggling to get it back.  No dear reader, I'm not quitting the game (at this time) but post my bout of PVE I am still not in the mood to play EVE - despite a desperate but maybe not well thought out remedy.

 In a bid to get out of the rut I rejoined my old corp in null sec.  They are in one of the CFC Emporium Imperium alliances.  Despite my best efforts to get a corp of 90 members to move we are still there.  Selfish sods... ;-)

Their reasons though are sound - the corp has a number of active small gang/solo pvp'ers and their argument is that right now there are few other places that can provide us with the content we are getting.  Sure you can join some other null/low sec bloc or whatever, but then you have to go out and look for content.  Currently we can sit around almost on any station undock and content comes to us.

For someone like myself that is less than proficient at hunting and D-scan they do make a compelling argument...

The availability of all content in the world is not proving to be the catalyst to return my mojo though.  I am very lethargic.  I seldom log in.  I have joined one corp fleet.  I died once as hero tackle in a Jaguar.  I joined no PAP link fleets.  I am NOT a corp asset as it stands...

In retrospect, maybe the choice of corp was not that wise - I have a timezone difference of 11 hours between myself and the main body of the corp and I'm still playing mostly solo.  In addition, arguments of content or not I am starting to dislike what the Imperium stands for post what I call the kickstarter of hubris and maybe this too servers to scare away my muse, who knows.

The people in corp though are fantastic - we hunt, kill (and die to) MOA, TISHU, PL, NC and neutrals alike.  For this corp our opponents certainly are not our enemies.  It is what I have come to expect of the corp and something I really admire about them.

As an aside  this illustrates the dichotomy between the players of the game and the players of the meta.  None of the guys are ignorant about the goings on in the meta - they just look past that to the game - their game.  As long as the position the corp finds itself in serves the aims of the corp's game we will stay.  If and when it does not we will leave - as such the allegiance of the corp is much more to its members and the content than any alliance or other entity in the game.

Of course opponents will call us goon pets and the like, but there comes a time when all of us in never never land has to grow up and realise that this is a space ship game and for most of us minions it is just fun, entertainment - the players of the meta are almost irrelevant to us.

;-) That's my story and I am sticking to it.

P.S.  Even though I like my corpies and corp, due to the timezone difference and the fact that I have never lived in a wormhole I might have to jump corp again.  If you know of any good wormhole entities that will indulge an old, slow, sucky at pvp, wh noob  and at this time a very casual player of EVE, please let me know.

Cosmos missions: A humbling and character-building experience

I set of with great fanfare and even greater expectations to complete some of the COSMOS missions.

Now to be honest this action was not borne out of a burning desire to satisfy a noble curiosity, or to explore the virtues of PVE.... No far from it.  My reason was as petty as a promise of easy ISK an lots of it...

The terms "easy ISK" and "lots of it" are to say the least, relative.  With my "easy ISK" scale being at the easier end of things, and my "lots of it" scale on the higher end of things I ended up being slightly disillusioned.  

Yes I made some ISK, but due to the drudgery I experienced during the whole endeavour, I cannot in good conscience recommend COSMOS missions to anybody.  

I go into a bit more detail on how I approached the whole thing below but I have to stress that the advice comes with a very hefty caveat:  

Before I even completed what I call the "COSMOS missions" I was well and truly sick of it.  Sick of PVE, sick of EVE.  Sick of anything to do with EVE.  I did not want to log in, I read no blogs, and I neglected my own.  To be honest I don't think I have even now fully recovered.  

Your mileage may vary and you might have a stronger penchant for PVE, maybe a more moderate approach will help - whatever the case, just remember this: I told you so.

Without further ado here is the thick and the thin of it.

1. The good:

During the course of running the "COSMOS missions" I netted in total 8 billion ISK in rewards, loot salvage and mission items (ran with two characters).  

2. The bad:

Drudgery.  The big money is to be had in items granted by just two agents:

Zabon Michi grants Michi's Excavation Augmentor (1.5 Billion ISK at time of writing) and Akemon Tolan grants Inherent Implants 'Noble' Hull Upgrades HG-1008 (2 Billion ISK at time of writing).  The trick with these two agents is the high faction standing requirement (6.00 Caldari faction standing for Zabon and 7.00 Amar faction standing for Akemon).

If you have the requisite standings (or would rather do lvl 4 missions/tags/whatever to gain standings) your drudgery may be diminished.

3. The so so.  

Both these agents are in a highsec pocket in the Otomainen system (no station).  This means you have to cross a low sec system (Ihakana) in a ship that has a fair Gurista tank and enough dps to kill the ships in the complexes and missions.  In addition you need to fit a Gurista shuttle in you cargo hold.  Be careful as the pirates in Ihakana are fully aware of what goes on here.

Where Akemon Tolan is concerned some items are required that drop very rarely.  The first is Jakon's head found in the Otitoh system (see guide).  The second is Myrkai's Data Chip found in Otomainen itself, but is a very rare drop.  The best I could do is this forum thread that suggests the chip drops at most twice a day - and then there is a lot of competition for it.

There is a bunch of guys perma camping the system and seemingly making a living of afk mining the spawns of rats in the complexes in Gila's as well as snagging the Data Chip and putting it up on contracts for hundreds of millions of ISK.  

These guys know the layout (there are a couple of tricks, you need to know where to go, when to go, be quick, kill rats and avoid webbing drones).  The numbers and knowledge made this a bit of a challenge.  I did however manage to snatch the Data Chip on one occasion.   

This bit of pvp interaction was almost the highlight of the whole episode - these guys aren't shy to show up with gangs inclusive of logi.  In addition they don't have qualms going suspect in order to steel "your" Data Chip.  Unfortunately downtime falls very late at night for me - 00:00 (with respawn of Chip around 01:30) - thus I ended up making a deal for another Data Chip with one of the Otomainen inhabitants.

A little bit about my methodology: 

I ran the COSMOS missions with the sole purpose of extracting ISK.  Due to standing requirements I focussed on Caldari/Amar Cosmos.

I used two characters that had no standings.  To quickly build standings it is important to get your social skills up - this saves you a lot of heartache later on.  

I would run a couple of the starter missions for each char until I could access the lvl 1 Caldari COSMOS agents.  Then I would only run enough lvl1 COSMOS missions to gain access to the lvl2 COSMOS agents.  Ditto for lvl3 and lvl4 agents.  You will notice that your derived standing for Amar faction will also rise during this process.

When the Caldari agents are done (or at least the ones that I could do in highsec) I swithced to the Amar lvl1 agents (if you got your social skills up you should be ok here), then lvl2 through lvl4.

After the lvl4 Amar COSMOS agents were completed I was OK where the Caldari standings for Zabon Michi was concerned.  I was however short on the Akemon Tolan standing requirement.  It is at this junction that I decided to complete the Amar Epic arc.  This greatly added to my PVE shooting rats pain (There are a lot of rooms with a lot of rats in some of those missions... and I had to do it twice!).

If you are still short, try some of the tag agents, circle missions, starter missions or good old lvl4 missions until you get over the line.

Some of the guides I used:

Cosmos-Missions-101

Caldari_COSMOS_guide_by_Jowen_Datloran

Amarr_COSMOS_guide_by_Jowen_Datloran

These are generally good in as far as it gives advance insight into the missions and explains where to find the mission items.

In conclusion, I did not enjoy the journey through the COSMOS that much, but if you are a PVE person at heart, or go about it in moderation there is no reason that you cannot farm a number or the required items and then repeat the missions with more characters.  If one can manage to solve the scarce item problem and stand the drudge then this might not be a bad path to some ISK.