Okay so I’ve been a slacker the past few weeks in EVE and have barely maintained the Planetary Interaction I have going in the wormhole. To that end, I decided to take my main/combat pilot out of the Wormhole and go out to null sec somewhere and try my hand at Exploration. I still have two chars farming planets, but I figured I’d do something else with my main/combat pilot. Like pick out a null-sec system and go exploring to see what I find.
So I scanned for the exit and found it led to Arzanni, a system that is kind of out on the edge, not close to anything like a trade hub. OK, so this isn’t the time to have my PI farming alts load up and take good to market, obviously.
I looked around and saw that Arzanni was at least close to Khanid Prime, which appears to have reasonable services. So I flew Aurora there in the Buzzard, taking care to bookmark the K162 wormhole first.
Aurora left behind various supplies, and a Drake. I’m not rich enough to leave the Drake, so I wanted to go back to get it.
After getting to Khanid Prime, I looked to buy a cheap ship to fly back to the wormhole. I settled on a Caldari Shuttle for 25K ISK. Since I was really just making a one way trip (flying a different ship back) I just wanted cheap.
I spent another 9 mins (yes I timed it) getting back to the wormhole, switching to my Drake, and flying that back to Khanid Prime. Which took 22 mins because the Drake is slower.
At this point I also wanted to grab my other stuff, which meant buying a Badger and doing another round trip between Khanid Prime and the wormhole. As much as I like EVE, the time spent just setting up to do something else is crushing my will to play. I wanted to stop, but the wormhole would collapse and reappear in another system, possibly quite far away from Khanid Prime.
After I bought a Badger for 1.25 million ISK, I flew back to the K162. Time elapsed: 18 mins. In the wormhole I scooped up all of my stuff out of the Personal Hangar Array and flew back to Khanid Prime, also 18 mins.
Finally, I had Aurora’s stuff out of the wormhole and can gear up for null-sec exploration in the future. It just took me 68 mins plus the initial trip I forgot to time, and a bit extra for buying ships and loading gear. Makes the WoW Garrison upkeep look optimized in comparison. 🙂
Being back in known space has some other advantages too – I can do normal missions available from various agents for example. I don’t need all of my chars in the wormhole.
Anyway, you may ask – if you want to explore, why don’t you do that in the wormhole? Ah… great question, and the answer is that the relic/data sites in wormholes are guarded by Sleepers, who are too tough for me to fight in my exploration ship, since I don’t have a tech 3 cruiser. I’ve heard that out in regular null-sec, relic/data sites aren’t always guarded, making ninja-looting and sneaky exploration possible. I’ll have to dodge players, but there is a chance there won’t be any around. So I want to try that out, meaning I need to take my character and stuff out of the wormhole.
Class 1 through Class 3 wormholes have null-sec type data and relic sites. They do not have sleepers as they are exactly like those that appear in null sec. Something to consider if you find null problematic.
I was doing all my exploration in a C1, and there were always sleepers at every data and relic site. Maybe they were unguarded originally but now they are, or I’m very unlucky.