Finding my way

I've been playing EVE online for around 3 months now, and I haven't had more fun in a game than I've had for the last 2 weeks.


When I started in EVE, I guess I was like a lot of people, with no real idea what to do.

I'd done the initial tutorial, and I was sitting in a space station in a rookie ship. So I needed money, I knew that, and off i went into the nearby asteroid fields and started mining.

Pretty soon I had enough isk to buy my first frigate, a little Gallente Bantam, which I continued to mine happily in.

A few days in, and I got invited to come and join a happy little band of miners who were noob friendly, a little corp called Extraction of Prescious Ores. EOPO. I spent my first couple of months there growing to realise that I found mining kinda boring, and I enjoyed combat quite a lot. within a week I had managed to get a 120mil implant drop from a faction spawn rat, and a blueprint for a Daredevil.

So I stopped mining and started ratting and doing missions. Like most noobs I still had it in my head that bigger was better with ships, and I raced into a Battlecruiser.

I was concentrating on missiles for weapons, and i did pay some attention to the certificates ingame and tried to get the skills recommended for each ship I flew.

I managed to complete quiet a few of the level 4 missions in my drake. I did lose it a few times though, and there was that fateful drunken night when i lost 3 in a row.

With all this ratting and missioning, I did have a few encounters with those nasty pirates ingame, since I was seeking rats in LowSec for better bounties, and I was running missions from a system next to LowSec, so I did get sent in there sometimes. Most of these encounters did not end well for me. I lost numerous ships, and quickly learnt to keep my eyes on Local for hostiles, and warping away from combat in my Pod before I wound up back in the clone vats.



One encounter stands out more than the rest though. I was ratting in Fliet, near OMS, and I had happily taken down two cruiser sized rats in my shield tanked drake, and I was approaching their wrecks to loot them. Since I wasn't paying as much attention as I should, I didn't notice the -10 pirate enter local. If I'd noticed, running and hiding was the plan. As it was, I heard something targeting me, and then I was warp scrambled and webbed, and lasers were eating through my shield.

I returned fire. Using my target painter and quite a lot of heavy scourge missiles, while limping along at some miserably low speed.

I have no idea how long we traded blows, our damage kept pace with each other, and as we both reach around 60-70% armor, the pirate broke off. I was left shaking, adrenalin pumping through me from the thought of losing my ship, at the same time I was almost euphoric that I had survived an attack from a -10 player.

To this day, I can't remember who that pirate was or what ship they were flying.

This encounter was to lead me to the life I live in EVE today.

I continued to run missions, rat, and haul for the mining corp. I set my self a goal. Get my standings to 8+ with the corp I was running missions for, then turn pirate once I had some jump clones.
And that's that I did. I left EOPO with the best wishes of the corp, and some pleas to not come back and shoot them. I bought a few rifters and some basic T1 equipment for them, following the guidelines of some of the 'how to be a pirate' guides in the official forums.
I roamed LowSec, from Yvangier through OMs and beyond Murethand. It didn't work very well. I got in a few fights, and I lost my ship each time. I even got podded. After a few days of this, I was beginning to think maybe I'd made the wrong decision, maybe I'd just been really lucky that day, and pvp wasn't for me. But before giving up, I thought I'd check the forums for a possible corp to join, maybe there was a pirate corp out there that didnt have a 5 mil SP requirement, or a KM requirement.
And there was! Newly formed Pyrotechnics Inc. was recruiting noobs interested in pirating, I posted on the forums went to the office and submitted my application. I haven't looked back since.