And... 20!

I've held off posting until I had 20 deaths on the clock. And now I have them! At the moment i'm at 100 kills to 20 deaths, so a 5:1 kill:death ratio, which isn't too bad I don't think. The Tuskers have had a massive contributing effect to my kills with my wolf getting 28 kills to it's name before finally popping. So then...

Highlights:-

- Affording a Wolf, then losing it. These ships are loads of fun, and definately worth the expense. Next time I can afford to fit one i'm getting another.

- Flying a Thrasher. Even though I only got a few kills before losing both of these, they had no tank at all and full gank. So when they did get targetted, they pretty much died. But still loads of fun to fly, might try a gank coercer next.

- Fleet fights with the Tuskers. Alot of these fights are basically just jump in and hope, which suits me perfectly. I've lost a couple of ships from baits or "blobs" going wrong and having another fleet land on top of us, but we always took a couple of them with us.

- Watching Ka Jolo get primaried, just because it's Ka Jolo. They even brought a Thanatos to make sure he died.

- Commanding a Fleet for the first time. I've never FC'ed before being in The Tuskers, and now i've done it twice. It's a good experience getting a kill as an FC, though i've got a few people sent to their deaths, but it's a learning curve and there's only 1 way to learn.

OUCH

Alexia Morgan has started her Open University for Celestial Hardship (OUCH) and has quite a few members learning the ways of null-sec now. But she needs teachers! Check out the following recruitment posts and see if you can help out! Recruitment for students has been put on hold until January because there's not enough teachers to meet the demand!

Alexia's Blog Post.

Alexia's EVE-O Recruitment thread.

Tuskers Bloggers

Turns out there's a few people in The Tuskers who blog. Go check them out:-

Onslaughts of an Outlaw - Jaxley

The Bald Buccaneer - Bourreau

Do I Dream of Electric Sheep - Rael Valen

Life Among Pirates. The Romance and the Reality - Romeo Blakstorm

Rifter Drifter - Wensley

Your Money or Your Life! - Tuskers CEO Ka Jolo

Also there's The Tuskers Public Relations blog with posts from a few Tuskers.

I'll do a proper post at some point. Possibly in the new year, who knows? Until then...

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

100!

I've hit 100 kills in EVE now! Hurrah! About a day after Kirith Darkblade hit his 100 as well! Here's the lucky guy who gave me the 100th kill, thanks!

In other news, Alexia Morgan has started the Open University of Celestial Hardship, or OUCH for short. I went on about this in my last blog post, and now that it's up i've added my help and will do so when possible. Read up on it, help out, it's a worthy undertaking and by no means will it be easy for Alexia. So good luck!

So recently I've been killing a lot more than I've been losing. The last loss on the board was a Rifter with 16 kills under it's name, now I'm flying a wolf with another 17 so far, but you won't notice that on the kill:death ratio as I only update it when I lose a ship. I've got a lot more kills now and I've got the Tuskers to thank for it. I did a bit of fleet warfare before but never like in a pirate corp, and it's a lot of fun in here doing fleets. This is definitely the move I should have made a long time ago because it's definitely worth it.

So far I've earned a nice ransom of a POS thanks to another blogger Cyberin, over at Hands Off, My Loots, who joined the Tuskers recently as well. I've been in a fleet with 00sage00, and I've helped kill Spectre3353 who kept coming back for funsies! I'm at 34 kills so far this week, and I'm loving every minute of it.

So until I lose my 20th ship...

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

OUCH

Fellow blogger Alexia Morgen from Punishment is putting together a new group in EVE called "OUCH", the Open University of Celestial Hardship. The point of it will be to train new players how to survive in null-sec and low-sec, by operating completely in null sec.

Unlike the EVE-U this means getting involved in fleets, roams, alliances at a starter level and learning the hard and fast rules of EVE. And I fully support it. The EVE-U is based in high-sec, and thus the members will rarely be in danger, where in OUCH the player always has the potential for danger, and so will learn hard lessons pretty early on in the game when the loss isn't that much to worry about.

I learned the hard way. I started EVE, read the Piracy 101 guide, strapped a missile launcher, scram and web to my Inquisitor and went straight out to low-sec space to forge a name for myself, and I would have loved to have some support with me to teach me the works, even if I do solo most the time. I've learned my lessons the hard way like most people in EVE, and as such i've learned them first time usually. The element of danger adds alot to a learning curve, if you don't do A then you'll die. If you forget about B then you'll die. etc.

I agree there should be a some way of learning if not in a safe environment, then in a structured environment. Hopefully people will join the corp and will die. But dying is a lesson that must be learned at some point, and I hope it's learned first time how to avoid being caught like that again, or what targets to go for with certain ships and such like. How to scan down ships and see if a ship is scanning you down will be immensely valuable knowledge to learn from the beginning, learning to warp immediately if your ship is destroyed to avoid being podded. Learning how to fit an effective PVP ship and what ships are used for solo, support, RR, tanking active or passive/buffer, the list goes on.

EVE is a hard game outside of Empire space, and players need to know how to survive, and the best way to learn is to actually try.

I'm going to wish Alexia good luck on this venture, as it's one of the better enterprises any capsuleer can undertake, sharing knowledge without expecting a reward for the services. I'm going to try to make donations every now and then to help this, and hope others will do the same. Now I just need to figure out where to make any donations :D

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.