So my time with Aura has come to a quick end, however I feel like she’ll be around again at some point. Her last action directed me over to the Royal Amarr Institute in Pasha VII, where I had a selection of agents ready to train me up.
I’ve chosen the rather scary looking Zidah Arvo to teach me the ways of industry.
Our first mission was easy enough, equip a new mining laser and head out to a specific way point to mine some veldspar. This seems to be the common ‘metal’ used in Eve, so I’m guessing I’m going to be mining a lot of this in my time here.
Her second mission she gave me was practically the same, but with less guidance as before, and with the added challenge of processing the ore into tritanium afterwards.
Needless to say, with my comment about being disorientated in my last post, without proper (read; easy) navigational guidance I couldn’t find the blasted asteroids. I had found my way to an asteroid belt, but no asteroids were showing up. Surely the classification of an asteroid belt is that it contains big lumps of rocks. Alas on my third jump to a asteroid belt I stumbled across a huge collection of them.
Not only was I able to find veldspar, but the asteroids I’d discovered were highly concentrated veldspar… whatever that means.
I passed the few minutes waiting time, while my lasers did their mining bit, visually exploring the system I was in. A much bigger ship, with a few smaller ones alongside, were hammering several other asteroids nearby. Even with my PC running Eve Online at fairly basic graphics, it was still visually stunning.
On return to the Institute, I quickly reprocessed my new ore into the more useful material tritanium. Scary ol’ Zidah was very happy with this; giving me a bunch of spacey credits and even a new ship. A Venture. In industrial yellow!
I fit out the new ship with my mining laser, my gatlin pulse laser and my small repair module… before heading back out on my own to mine me some more ore.
10 minutes or so later, with a belly half full (or thereabouts) of ore, I come back for some re-processing and to cash my first paycheck. What Zidah doesn’t know wont hurt her.
The reprocessing screen shows me something interesting…
The 9K units of ore on the left can be converted into the 2K units of tritanium on the right, however the sale price of both stashes is 161,000 and 116,000ISK respectively.
So by reprocessing my ore I actually manage to devalue my cargo. Why, because I’m rubbish and I’m being taxed basically!
The station looks like its taking about a 4.5% cut for tax purposes, so I’m only converting the goods at 47% efficiency. If I were a bit more trained up I’d hopefully get a better conversion rate, and therefore a higher ROI.
I decide to hang onto the ore.
Zidah then gets me to use some blue prints, enabling me to make some civilian afterburners. Nothing too difficult about this, but it begins my journey into manufacturing goods and items.
I notice the afterburners sell for 140K, for only a handful of tritanium. This could be an easy way to make a fortune I naively think. Sadly though, after the training mission is over I lose the ability to make any more after burners.
Boo
Can’t be destabilising the economy just yet I suppose 🙂