Sweet!

After telling my tale of woe to another some friends who have been playing much longer than myself, I was given some great advice as well as replacements for everything waiting on contract for me in Jita!  Thanks!

I'm now being more careful with my Vexor.  I'm still ratting, but I choose to stay in 0.5 or above space. Not that it's that much safer, but least it makes me feel safer.  Still ratting for scraps though.  Need to make some ISK.

Dominion is coming tonight.  Won't be much change for me I think, although I have been thinking about creating an alt and the new exploration career path looks cool.

Frack!

Lost my Vexor last night.  Had almost completely fitted it out according to this link and was ratting in .4 Mara when a couple of bullies came along.  The prevented me from warping out and I lasted about 20 seconds.  One guy did 99% of the damage.  I ended up lossing 28.4mil.  Ouch.  Considering I only have about 34mil in the wallet right now, that really hurts. Not sure what my next step is.  I already bought a new Vexor but haven't even picked it up yet.  I was starting to get some decent drops too.  Need to re-focus on making ISK in less risky ways I guess.

It's been a while...

I'm still here.  Logged on for a little while this past weekend to sell some loot.  I'm still looking at ways to increase the wallet and at the same time have been training up for that Vexor setup I keep talking about.  I'm pretty much there, but am finishing out some Heavy Drone Operation so I can run some better drones.  All in all though, I'm ready to make the 16 or so jumps back to my Vexor and try some pew pew action.  I will probably start ratting in lower sec space and might try some PVP although I can't really afford it right now. 

Buying all of the necessary items for my new Vexor config would pretty much break me, so I won't buy all of it right away.

I'm working on some trades too.  I need to develop a system of find good trades.  It takes a lot of work though.  I really need to get an alt in Jita, but don't want to take away from valuable training time from my main.  Maybe when I hit 10mil SP I'll create an alt.

I'm on travel this week, so I will probably have lots of time to play.  Here's hoping!

Downtime

No posts recently, because I just haven't been playing.  I got sick of running missions for little, or in some wierd cases no standings bump.  My corp wasn't really up to anything I was qualified for, so I decided to take a little break and mess around with X-Plane for a while. 

I did start training for the Vexor setup I wrote about last time.  I got my longest skill out of the way (Hull Upgrades V) and then commited the cardinal sin of not training anything for over 4 hours!  Back on it again though training Afterburner IV.  Haven't bought the necessary learning skills do decrease the total time by a few days.  Not worth it to me at this point.  Still need to buy some cheaper skills to finish out the requirements for the Vexor setup though.

Surprise! More mission running!

I'm running out of titles for mission running posts.  Ran some more missions for Ovoli last night.  Finally got another storyline mission.  It seems like it took a lot more than 15 missions this time and the storyline mission was a simple courier mission that only neted me a .01 standings increase with the Minmatar.  Weak.  I think I'm done with mission running for a while.  Money is slowly coming in from all of my sell orders from loot, but I still don't have enough.

I found a sick Vexor setup in CrazyKinux's latest post.  I ran the required skills through EveMon and it would only take me 22 days to train up after buying some learning skills.  I think it would take around 25 days without learning skills which is quite doable too.  Very tempting for some more pew pew action.  I just wish learning skill books weren't 4.5mil a pop.  The rest of the skills are pretty affordable.  I think I will start training up without the learning skills.  Maybe I can participate in some more corporation activities if I have a better fitted ship.  Probably wouldn't be able to afford to lose it though until I got some wins and money under my belt.

Missions....and LOOT!

Coming off a three day weekend.  Had some quality EVE time this weekend.  More mission running for this chick.  Lots of pew pew missions, so I have been getting some very good loot.  My Catalyst has been tearing through L1s without any problems. 

Lots of sell orders up at the moment from all the loot.  I am also pretty close to another storyline.  Will probably hit that tonight.  I wish there was a way to plot a course to each wreck/can and just hit auto-pilot.  I don't think that is what waypoints do.  It's gets a little annoying having to work the tractor beam, salvagers, and also pilot the ship to get everything.  I understand you can't automate everything though.

Someone also bit on another ammo trade.  Total profit was 691,666.68isk.  Not bad but it took a few days.  Currently finishing up Retail V so I can grab some more order slots.  Put in a cheap buy order for Procurement too.  I screwed up the length my previous buy and it expired.

Missions, missions, missions with some trading

It's been a few days since my last post.  Amazing how fast the time goes.  I've had a chance to play a few hours over the last couple days.  More mission running trying to repair my standings with Minmatar and Gallente.  Got through another storyline mission last night which bumped me up to 0.85 with Minmatar.  Can probably find a better quality agent again now.  I have been running courier missions though and they are boring.  Need to find me some encounter missions.  I've also been listening to more of The Drone Bay and they recommend finding an encounter mission agent in mid-sec space.  Apparently the loot drops are better which makes sense. I never thought of that.

Was able to aquire some more ammo at decent prices again.  Put them right back up for selling at a much lower price that what was being offered in the same region.  Just a waiting game now.  I'm not sure there is a large enough demand for this ammo in my region though.  Still learning how to trade.

I watched some of the videos presented at Fanfest.  Looks cool I guess. I'm not deep enough into the game to care much about what they presented with Dominion and Dust514.

First Big Trade!

Made my first big trade tonight.  Found some ammo for 800 each and sold them for 1250 each.  9 jumps to pick up and 14 to deliver. 

Total Time  - 37 minutes
Profit - 513997.5isk

Not bad.  I'll take it.  I had to go into 0.1 space though.  First time I have been in anything lower than 0.4.

I also did some ratting in 0.5 space but didn't come away with much.  Salvaging didn't even yield anything.  Still not sure how people make good money from ratting.

I've been re-reading this forum post and I just don't understand some things.  More specifically:

What you are looking for is the percentage difference between the lowest sell order and the highest buy order ((sell minus buy)/buy).

you will find something where the highest buy price is far below the lowest sell price

Place a buy order that is noticeably higher than the highest buy order and then when you have a bunch of the item, sell it for noticeably lower than the lowest sell order.

If all goes smoothly, you will soon find yourself with a pair of open buy and sell orders with some percentage profit (15%-50% is a good amount - remember to subtract the broker fees and taxes!) between them. As your buy order gets used up, you will place a new one and the same for your sell order.

 I don't understand that snip-it at all.  Why would you be selling it for lower than what you bought it at?  That is the exact opposite of what I just did tonight.  I consider myself an intelligent person, but I can't wrap my head around that.  Still thinking of running it by my corp mates, but I know I'm missing something stupid.  Will they kick me out for being stupid?  :)

More Mission Running - Getting boring

A lot more mission running this weekend.  I was mistaken in my earlier post about running a storyline mission.  I confused the series missions with a storyline mission.  Storyline missions are when the agent emails you in game requesting your assistance.  Ran that one and my standings barely raised.  The standings bump did allow me to upgrade to a better L1 though.  Now running jobs for this guy.  I'm getting very bored though.  I need to do something else for a while.  Courier missions are very boring after a while.

I looked a little into trading last night because that is what my Gallente, Gallente is spec'd for.  I don't understand some things though.  Thinking about asking my corp for help.  Hopefully we have some good traders who are willing to show my some things.

Started listening to The Drone Bay this weekend too.  It's pretty fun watching football on mute, while listening to The Drone Bay, while playing EVE.

I almost got up at 5am PDT to catch some of the live streaming from Fanfest, but decided on sleep instead.

Mission Running

Last night I spent some time finishing up 4 through 5 of a storyline mission.  I'm attempting to repair some standings with the Gallente Federation by running missions for the Minmatar Republic from this guy.  They were pretty easy L1s, but when I was finished my standings didn't increase with either the Minmatar Republic or the Gallente Federation.  I still haven't figured out how standings work.  Thought I had finally gotten the hang of it, but I guess I still don't quite understand how it works.

Hoping to find some time tonight to run some more missions and learn some more about trading since that is what I am spec'd for.

Links

I've added a links section on the right.  I'll try to keep this list to links that maybe aren't all that well known.  Anyone can create a link list to BattleClinic, EVEMon, EFT, etc...  A lot of the links will probably lead to good forums posts I've found while searching for information.

First Post!

Lately, I find myself reading and watching videos about EVE more than actually playing.  However, I have found the more I read and watch about EVE, the more I play  I'm hoping this holds true for writing about EVE too. 

These are the tales of a casual carebear as the title suggests.  I am a very casual EVE player who is able to play a few hours a week.  Over the past several months, I have rarely logged on only to add to my skill queue.  I have only purchased 2 or 3 skill books and have just trained my starter skills, many to level 5, because I have no plan of what type of EVE player I want to be.

Hopefully that will change...