First Ever Kill

https://zkillboard.com/kill/45391617/

..shortly followed by...

https://zkillboard.com/kill/45391629/

After a couple of hours of running combat sites in a c2 (and thankfully, having already stashed the loot from the previous sites), a sleeper battleship finally cracked my tank and got me down to 50% hull. I warped out to a deep space safe and went AFK to let my shield regen while I got dinner prepared... meaning these guys got in the hole while I wasn't looking. So when I went to warp back to my MTU, there was the Flycatcher. Up went the bubble... the whole fight was over in under 30 seconds.

I got a tiny insurance payout, and thankfully had jumped into a clean clone so no additional losses with the pod. And so ends the saga of my first 7 years of EVE; 1.3 bil in losses, 300 mil in kills, 1 solo kill.

Mining

Busting rocks in a Proc

The What

As the name would suggest, mining is the harvesting of mineral resources from celestial features - asteroid belts, ice belts, or gas clouds. It's one of the easiest ways to make ISK: unlike 'rats, rocks don't shoot back. However, it comes with its own risks, most notably bumping and ganking. Despite the risks, it's still one of the most boring forms of PVE; grinding, pure and simple.

The Where

There's something to mine everywhere in New Eden - usually multiple kinds of things, so it can often be hard to know what's the most lucrative choice. The rule here is the same as with all PVE: more risk, more reward. Asteroid belts in highest sec systems have the smallest rocks with generally the lowest worth, working their way up through to the lower sec systems, then with better rocks and the other better value options becoming available in the lawless areas of space - lowsec, nullsec and wormholes. Disclaimer: I'm only familiar with high sec and wormholes at this point in time.

Huffing gas in a C1 wormhole

The How

You warp in to the belt or site. You target the rock or gas. You switch on your lasers or harvesters. You collect ore. Mining is one of the simplest activities in EVE, which is probably why it is one of the career paths many players try early in their career. However, there is still quite a bit to think about in order to optimise mining, even for a brand new player or account:

• Rule of solo mining #101: don't sit on the warp in - move your ship to the other side of the belt. Don't be the low hanging fruit for gankers. 
• It's generally not a good idea to refine your minerals until you have all of your reprocessing skills to V and sufficient standings with the corporation whose station you are using to refine. Generally, taking the time to train an industrial like the Miasmos and haul all that ore to a market hub will be a better option initially. For more info on reprocessing, check out the Eve Uni Wiki.
• It's generally worth checking which are the most valuable rocks to mine, not just in your local area but in the market hubs through a site like Eve Central. If you're at the point where you are reprocessing minerals to sell, then it's worth going even more in depth on an ore calculator with a site like Fuzzworks or Grismar. At the end of the day rocks are rocks and spending more than a few minutes looking around for something better cuts down your overall ISK/hr efficiency, but it's worth knowing what to look for.
• If the drive for bigger and better rocks sends you into 0.5 or 0.6 security space, don't make the mistake of thinking your Retriever or Covetor will be safe. Predators are out there and they live for juicy killmails from expensive barges. A well tanked Procurer can survive the 30 seconds it usually takes Concord to respond to a ganking attempt. Stay tuned for some fits.
• That being said, Rettys and Covs have their place - generally in fleet mining. Even in a more basic ship, the yield and range boost from an Orca pilot can make mining considerably easier and improve your ISK/hr quite a bit. Flying a well organised fleet op with Covetors and an Orca/hauler combo can pull over 10m ISK/hr, even in highsec. 

Warning: not all mining ops include celebratory fireworks...

For a more in-depth guide to mining, check out the Eve Uni Wiki page.

The Why

As suggested in the How, mining is one of the easiest ways to start making decent ISK, and relatively simple to get into - the tutorial missions give you a Venture, which is a solid ship to start flying and my tool of choice for Wormhole gas, which can provide way better income than you ever get mining in highsec (helped along by the rise in demand due to the ongoing release of T3 destroyers). Even if you find it bores you to tears, it's a part of the gameplay that everyone will have a brush with at one point or another, simply because minerals are the base of the whole EVE economy.

Many players mine because they need the minerals for manufacturing, but (in EVE and IRL) I'm no industrialist. For a grinder like myself, always looking towards the possible income, solo highsec ore mining is one of the least effective ways I can spend my time. But it's relaxing, simple, and, assuming the above precautions have been taken, fairly safe. If there isn't a fleet on first thing in the morning and I'm in highsec, I'll usually undock and pick up a hold ore two in the Proc while I make breakfast, etc. And there's even AFK mining - which I'll cover in another post - that allows you to play EVE and make ISK while doing the groceries, laundry, etc.

The income from my minerals is only a small portion of the month's total, but it appeals to the proletarian in me to be toiling away at the lowest tier of industry.

Another Day, Another Space Dollar

WAR! Woah-Woah-Woah-Woah

So it turns out a fellow lefty on my Facebook page likes to prey upon the carebears of Eve. I can't really figure it - in many ways we are the proletariat of this game, collecting the raw resources through various forms of basic grinding that go into the hulls and modules for PVP fights and alliance tournaments. Almost all minerals being collected out in null sec space get put straight into making titans and other capital ships, so most of everything else out there is bought in the market hubs and comes from us too. But each to their own. Now we are at war with CODE. Fuck 'em.

One of my golden rules for playing EVE is - never take a risk you don't have to. A legal war dec means CONCORD won't keep us safe from our war targets. That means regular activities like mission running, mining or hauling goods all come with the risk of getting ganked. Our Alliance's SOPs are not to do any of these activities during a war; if we can see there are no WTs online we might risk something, but for notorious suicide gankers like these guys, its not really worth it.

So what can a highsec carebear grinder like me do for the week the war will last that doesn't incur unnecessary risk? For a long time for me, the list was short and mostly involved playing other games or doing productive things, but lately I've been branching out a little more. I'll make more confession posts in full about each of these activities, just wanted to reflect on what there is to do during wartime for anyone who might be tempted to stay in an NPC corp and avoid war forever.

• Planetary Interaction (PI): It is generally a background process, but when you spend more time than usual sitting in station it can seem a little more fun to micromanage the process. There's still danger in taking a hauler through space to sell the goods, though, so if need be I collect them in a station until war is over.
• Station Trading: Although I've got a Dodixie jump clone to safely get in & out of the closest market hub to home, I'm finding it more fun and profitable to trade in our home region of Verge Vendor. It's a pretty quiet market, but has some virtues: less need to babysit orders and adjust them every 15 minutes to ensure they aren't outbid by another player, and with the right mix of items which people want to pick up close to home, I can trade enough volume to be growing my ISK satisfactorily. Plus if I were to get caught by the WTs, backup is only a few jumps away.
• Cloaky cloaky: using a cloak and microwarp drive it's possible to navigate lowsec space fairly safely, and the same principle applies in highsec too. This is a way to move goods around discretely, although I don't have room to move any ships or large quantities of rocks which will also have to wait before I can sell them. I've also recently gotten into a stealth bomber, which can warp while cloaked without the use of the cloak+mwd trick... and could be used for laying traps on our enemy, too ;)
• Wormhole Living: Some of our alliance mates live in a wormhole - we've got bases in both a c1 and c2 - and this war is the first time I've joined them living there for an extended period. Other corp mates have tried basing themselves out in our lowsec base also. Both come with the risk of PVP violence, but I think the wormhole is a little safer due to the lack of a local chat channel obscuring who is inside. Normally I just have my PI running in here and occasionally pop in when someone's scanned a good site; now I'm having a bit of fun being the one who does the scanning, and gets first crack at whatever goodies pop up. It's brought in a fair bit of ISKies, although since the risk is higher I'd normally be happy just grinding away in high sec :)

This isn't exhaustive, of course; more a chronicle of what I have been doing than a suggested check-list. There's many forms of PvE at which I'm still a n00b, and one of the reasons why I started this blog was to force myself to stop procrastinating and giving those different activities a go.

At the end of the day, I think of myself as a high sec care bear, but I can enjoy the thrill of flying in more dangerous space and earning the rewards as much as the next player. They just aren't at the core of my gameplay. It comes down to your goals in the game - what you find fun about it - which will be the subject of a future post.