Sunday, December 19, 2010

The Mining Lasers on the Osprey Go Zzzt and Zzzt

Turns out, making friends in EVE is a damned good idea.

Joined a corp a few days ago (2 days, really) and found they were kinda like me. They stick to high security space (like real wimps), run missions against NPCs (like rich wimps) and accept new players (like real pro gamers, right there).

Basically in high-sec, you best source of money is mission-running or playing the market (which is hard), so most people mission run. Missions in EVE are repetitive affairs of 'take this to here' or 'go here and kill this' or 'go here and kill this and bring something from the kill to here'. Grind missions to get ISK (ingame currency also, amusingly, currency of Iceland) use ISK to buy stuff.

I'm gonna primarily do mission-running for money but, I got bored today so I mined.

See, I ground up a lotta cash today from missioning with friends (more like leeching; they kill everything for me and I still get a portion of the rewards). I actually doubled my wallet total. Used a bit of the cash to buy a new ship and start mining.

I found to my dismay that mining in EVE is depressingly similar to mining in Runescape and is only slightly less tedious.

It follows the same formula of go to asteroids (rocks), finding one and locking it as target (looking for an empty rock), turning on your mining lasers (the actual mining), waiting (waiting), letting your cargo hold fill up (letting you inventory fill up) and then warping back to station to drop the ore off (teleporting to the bank to drop the ore off).

Hell, once you're done mining, you even have to refine the ore into valuable minerals used in production. Right; production. That's where you turn the stuff you mined into stuff you can use to make stuff you can use. Like Smithing. EVE Online's economy is about as close to a fully-player driven economy as you get. If you buy a Tech I (average quality) ship, it was sure's hell player made. Vast majority of average hulls are player made and sold on the market. So's most of the equipment that doesn't drop often from NPCs.

I say mining in EVE Online is only slightly less mind-numbing than Runescape because f a few simple things;

Rocks don't disappear. You can mine a single rock for hours and hours and not have it deplete. Because of that, you don't have to check back every few seconds to switch rocks. No fighting over rocks, either.

There's no obnoxious 'tik tik tik' sound when I'm in another window. In EVE, most sound is muted when you switch windows or minimize. Oh, sure, there's a zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt sound, but you can switch that off without impeding yourself.

You're mining in a spaceship with lasers. If you had to choose between a career of mining in clothes/armour with a pickaxe and mining in a spaceship with lasers, what would you choose?

Storage is easier. I don't have to click all the time on the map to get somewhere. I right click on my destination station and press 'Dock'. That's it. Game takes care of the rest and I just have to drag my ore into the hangar.

Making a difference. Most players in Runescape can only mine up to mithril or adamant. Most players on Runescape don't even bother using mithril or adamant the way it was intended to. We don't make weapons for combat use, we make stuff to grind our skills. In EVE, every single mineral, even the most basic has uses. The most basic mineral is Tritanium. It's the most common, but is also the one needed most when manufacturing. I've maybe mined less than 5 hours in my entire EVE Online career and I'm making a difference for my corp-mates.

Mining in EVE is still only slightly nicer than grinding skills on Runescape. It's still a grind and it's about as bad as it gets in EVE, in terms of boring. It's still boring.

I miss mission running. The other guys in the corp are too busy doing other things and I'm stuck out of an income. ;-;

Regards, IVIilitarus

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