Last week EVE Online announced the new 3 part expansion to Revelations....Revelations II.

No points for originality in naming, but the feature list looks pretty awesome. The press release says (in addition to other stuff):

Revelations II sets the stage for the third chapter of Revelations to be released later this year and will feature enhancements for the most experienced players to the newest. It will introduce major challenges and complexities to the game, enabling players to engage in even more strategic warfare, providing significantly expanded content for exploration and offering more possibilities for sophisticated corporation and alliance management. In addition, it will include enhancements to EVE Online’s core technology to improve the player experience as part of CCP’s ‘Need for Speed’ initiative that addresses server and client performance issues through optimization of existing features and content. As with all previous expansions, CCP offers Revelations II as a free download to subscribers.

In particular, Revelations II enables greater opportunities for strategic operations between fixed structures in space by encouraging siege-type gameplay, enabling attrition warfare, opening up new tactical opportunities for smaller attack groups, improving the economic vitality of outposts and allowing individual outpost services to be attacked with precision strikes. New starbase tactics, for example, will be introduced that allow players to perform localized scanning for ships, jump between starbases owned by the same corporation and quickly bring capital ships into a battlefield – or prevent them from coming in. Players will also have direct command of starbase weapons, allowing them to control individual assets such as turrets and missile batteries.

The new Chapter also gives players more sophisticated tools for managing their corporations and alliances while providing transparency to ensure effective governance. Corporations will be able to take control of their finances using divisional wallets to categorize corporate budgets and a transaction log for each wallet. They will be able to search corporate hangars and remotely manipulate assets. There will also be detailed shareholder reports which list individual member ownership of corporation-issued stock.

For new players, Revelations II includes a fully revamped New Player Experience, which allows them to immerse themselves in the game and acclimate more quickly. The revised tutorial begins directly in space in Revelations II, within a private environment accessible only to the new player. For more seasoned players, the Chapter introduces Level 5 Agents, offering the most challenging Player versus Environment (PvE) encounters ever, designed for capital ships or small gangs, and involving facing major adversaries which require significant firepower to take down.

I have to admit the general attitude towards free expansion content is what keeps EVE installed on my machine. It'll be really fun to see how this works out for non-corp related advances!

And where did my 6 million isk go?

Oh...I know.

One of the things I like to do is try to look down the line and see what skills I may need down the road. It's not that I need them immediately, but eventually I will, so I go ahead and invest in buying them, maybe do the "learn them for about 10 seconds" so that I don't have to lug them around, and then when I'm playing I can burst through those first, usually pretty fast, levels right quick like.

I actually found that I hadn't finished training Electronics Upgrades to level 1, so I went ahead and did that before letting the currently running skill finish (it's about 3 hours from finishing, but I ain't gonna be here in 3 hours, so I was going to switch it to another skill anyways until I got home or could handle it tomorrow).

Which made me think - hey, I hadn't bought some of those skills that I wanted yet, I should look into that. I looked at Advanced Spaceship Command - 45 million isk - and Heavy Assault Craft - over 28 million isk - and I said, you know what? I can wait on those until I'm certain I can actually fly one of the ships that uses them!

I do have a ton of other skills to learn first, after all. The Caldari HAC I can't even fly until I get Caldari Cruisers to 5, and that's almost a month's worth of training right there.

So I figured, hey, I'll go ahead and look at what other skills I don't have but that I either want soon-ish, or that I can see on the path down the road. Despite my push for HACs, I'm reconsidering and will probably wait.

First off, though, I needed up upgrade my clone. It couldn't handle the amount of skill points I have now, much less more. So I went ahead and dropped over a million isk on a new clone. Then I started going through the list.

EM, Kinetic, Thermal, and Explosive Shield Compensation - those give a bit of a bonus to your shield resists. It's not a GREAT bonus, but one thing I've been learning is every little bit helps. Or, more to the point, it can't HURT. I believe - and I'm sure Vance or Krist or someone will correct me if I'm wrong - that they help active shield tankers more than passive, and I've been trying to go passive - but right now I'm actually doing active, so we'll see.

Combat Drone Operation, Drone Durability, Drone Navigation - My cruisers are the first ships I've had with drones. While my drones haven't taken a hit yet, I'm sure they will soon enough, and durability will help with that. Meanwhile navigation will speed those buggers up, and combat drone operation will help them kill stuff for me. As I start to wonder what life is like as a miner, it wouldn't be bad to have a combat drone or two guarding me while I mine. (I already have mining drone operation and scout drone operation.) My drones score is still at 4, and eventually I'll want to get it to 5 for the additional drone, but also for the raft of abilities that starts to open up past there.

Target Painting and Weapon Disruption. I just got my first modules of these the other day or so; I'd like to be able to use them. Also, they seem to be fairly useful skills to have for group based PvP, and in the long run, that's my goal. (Part of the reason why my long, long, long term goal is to be able to fly everything out there is to help in group PvP - when the group needs something, I can help out. Obviously, it'd take forever to be GOOD at everything, but as long as I can help.... I know the arguments, that you should specialize, but the biggest thing right now is that I still don't know what I'd want to specialize IN. Thus, I keep trying new things, to see how I like them.)

Survey, Astrometrics, Metallurgy, Industry, and Trade. Some ships require mining skills to fly; I'm also starting to wonder if perhaps I should take a break from mission running and do some mining for a while to help build up my cash reserves. I'd been planning on saving up the minerals that I need to have a Raven built for me, simply because I'd rather buy a Raven using materials I've mined and from a friend of mine who got the BPC then to buy one at random off the market. However, that friend is now taking a break. Trade will also help me in selling stuff, I've already run into the order limit.

Advanced Weapon Upgrades and Small Railgun Specialization. One of those advantages of just having hit Weapon Upgrades 5 is that I can buy these, and they were the skills I was specifically looking for at the beginning. In particular, I need the powergrid reduction that Advanced Weapon Upgrades gives, and since I really like to fly my small ships, such as my assault ship, and I just got interceptors, the small railgun specialization will help with those. After all, now I should be able to use tech 2 railguns.

Leadership and Empathy. Some ships require Leadership. Honestly, that one will probably sit in the background for a while, though I want to get Military Connections, so I'll need it for that, too. Empathy is the learning skill for Charisma, and so getting a bit of a boost will help with those pesky social skills.

Target Navigation, Warhead Upgrades, and Torpedoes. More joys with missiles. The torps skill is mostly for the future, when I'm looking at Caldari Battleships; that's a few months down the road, probably, but might as well get it while I'm getting everything else. Target Navigation and Warhead Upgrades helps with those missiles, too.

Acceleration Control and Fuel Conservation. I want to use my afterburners more, and I need to start working on WMDs. These will help.

Infomorph Psychology. Stupid me, I never got this while I was in EVE U., so I couldn't have a jump clone. It'd be very handy for me to have a jump clone, especially since there are some things I want to try, PvP-wise, but I'm hesitant as I fill my head up with implants. It's almost more the pain in the butt of having to replace them all then the cost, but yeah, the cost sucks, too.

So, like I said, I'm not training all of these right away except enough to have them listed as empty spots. But the money I have isn't doing anything right now, and from watching the tracks on the costs involved with them I'm not saving or losing money by buying them now, so I figured what the heck.

For now I'm just going to work on the skills that will help me the most in my Battlecruiser as I start doing the level 3 missions. I'll also start thinking about the mining stuff, and debating if I want to give that a shot.

So I did get EVE installed on my laptop.

The first night I just mined. I took my Badger I out, fired up the mining laser (I have mining 2) on an asteroid of concentrated veldspar, and stayed at it until I started getting shot by rats. Then I flew to the next empty belt and repeated.

Dull, tedious, and boring? Yes. But I was watching TV and talking on IM, so I didn't mind.

The next night I tried to run a mission. Let's put it this way - it was a good thing I brought a Ferox to a level 1 mission, 'cause the game lagged hard enough I was having serious issues. So, instead of fighting the enemies, I just blew up their buildings, and my drones took care of them.

It was one of those missions that left 50 units of metal scraps in one of the containers. The system it was in was pretty empty, so I flew back in my Badger to pick them up since they take up 500 m3 of space. (And no, it really isn't worth the time to do that if I was playing for real - but I was watching "100 scariest moments in cinema" on Bravo and didn't care.) Then I went and mined away in that system until I was full up, then went back home.

Man, I have a lot of tritanium. Guess I'm going to need it if I want to help my guildmates build Ravens.

(And to answer one person in particular first: YES VANCE IT WOULD BE FASTER TO RUN LEVEL 3s AND POCKET THE MONEY TO HELP. In this case, though, I couldn't. :-) )

Heh heh.

I have to admit - I'm starting to debate all my combat piloting stuff. There's something almost zen-like about mining. Maybe it's my real life mining heritage from my male relatives...

So what have I been doing in EVE?

Well - a whole lot of nothin'.

I know it's disappointing to hear (yeah, right). But again, it's one of the things I dig about this game. I've been so busy in real life I've barely had time to log in. It doesn't matter, though, because I just remember when my skills are done, log in then, and update them.

Except Saturday night. Forgot that medium hybrid turrets was hitting 4 that night thanks to a cause of the drunks. Didn't update that until the next day. But I've upped some shield related skills, some energy management related skills, and I'm hitting Starship Command 5 right now. After that, I'm working on Weapons Upgrades.

I still haven't actually BOUGHT the Interceptor skills or the Battleship skills yet, but I'll probably do that when I get back.

One of my goals within EVE has been to acquire an ORE Syndicate mining barge - namely the Covetor. Because I couldn't wait for my skills to get to the point where I could pilot a Covetor, I went ahead and bought a Procurer. Man, was that a waste of money...

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Saccia alluded to this in his last post, and I wanted to elaborate on it. It may seem pretty basic, but since I was asked to blog from a newbie perspective, I'll go ahead and post.

Last night, Saccia and I found out that one way you can list Agents within your corporation is to click the Corporation tab, and then choose Info. From there, there is a tab for Agents.

We found that if you do missions for Agents within your corporation, you tend to receive Skill Books as rewards. These skills are typically ones that you would be training anyway, for your chosen profession. Since Saccia and I hadn't done too many missions for our respective corporations, we had already bought alot of the skills that we were getting as rewards for the missions from our corps Agents.

I just thought I would pass along that tip that will help someone save time and money with skill learning.