Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
6129
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Posted - 2016.05.23 06:45:56 -
[2] - Quote
I do remember my early days. Very clearly. Like paying for a full year subscription within the first hour of gameplay.
I remember exploring and doing things that were fun. I never had a goal to make ISK. I just did whatever I enjoyed and ISK appeared in my wallet.
Now, so many other ISK earning methods have been added to EvE.
Heck, one can now sit in a station and earn 100k every few seconds with Project Discovery, as much as killing a hisec belt rat frigate, and probably more. Or with minimal skills earn >20m a week doing a very lazy job at hisec PI (tip: water and oxygen).
My first combat level 1 missions were in an Ibis with a single drone. The drone did most of the work. By the time I was doing level 4 missions, I think I was averaging around 10m per missions, plus salvage and sale of drops. These days I do a couple missions a month to earn LP for charters for my tower, usually level 3 missions using an Assault Frigate, because I find that fun.
Incursions didn't exist back then, and I've still never done one.
My first big ISK income was from hauling. First, for a miner who took a chance and trusted me, and paid me more than he had originally promised. Later from trade-hauling, primarily ore bought cheaply, hauled, reprocessed, and sold at a trade hub. This earned me an Orca and later a Charon. I still do this from time to time, just for fun. A typical evening of hauling will generate 200m or more with a freighter, but it takes a while for the buy order to be filled. There are better things to trade for more profit, but I like the challenge of seeing what I can do just with simple stuff like ore; it's fun for me.
I got into manufacturing because I like creating pixels, and EvE has so many pixels to be created. I thought carefully about my first BPO purchase, and bought a Small Tractor Beam I BPO, because even I when salvaging a mission fitted multiple tractor beams to my ship. It wasn't a huge single-item profit maker, so I then considered my second BPO, and third, and ... , pretty soon I was making a decent amount manufacturing and selling a lot of different "junk". It is a lot easier to make 100k from ten items, then 1m from a single item! When I ran out of manufacturing capacity, I pruned my list to the more profitable items.
I still collect T1 BPO as a hobby. I have no idea how many I have, as I lost track a few years ago. I just know I still don't have them all; a whole bunch were added in the Citadel release. The collection allows me to manufacture a lot of stuff other people consider junk, and earn billions a month doing it. However, I'm so lazy that I don't really bother anymore. I'll do some manufacturing when I'm in the mood, and that will be fun then.
The I was introduced to wormholes. OMG. The ISK came rolling in. A really bad night earned us 700m each, and a good night was about 1.4b each. When it wasn't fun anymore we left w-space.
These days, over 7 years later, there isn't one particular thing I do to earn ISK. It is whatever I think is fun at the moment. That can be doing PI on a few planets (not even using multiple chars or accounts), or doing a level of Project Discovery (or two, or three, or five ... my gawd that thing is addictive - my journal just filled for many pages with deposits from that), running missions, hauling, manufacturing, trading, etc., and even mining (sometimes in a Venture because that seems like more fun than using a Hulk).
Anyways, there are so many ways to earn ISK in EvE that if you are not having fun doing X, try Y. You can even create your own Y, your own personal mini-game, with your own rules and your own measures of success. 
P.S. I still own my first Hulk. It has survived w-space, NPC, ganks and even CODE. I even chat with gankers from time-to-time, as some of them are really great people to chat with. |