“This is how every great story begins”, says a new player mining Veldspar in a 1.0 security system, a few hours into his Eve Online trek and well after he’s saved the universe from what appeared to be a sleeper drone invasion fleet, thus becoming not only the hero of an entire race, but an immortal space-faring pod-pilot in the same stroke.
ONE OF MILLIONS
He had seen a fancy youtube video explaining that, yes, you too are a valuable contribution to the living, thriving universe of New Eden—one of millions of shots made per day, one of trillions of m3 ore mined, and with December’s much hyped update looming on the horizon, today was the best time to start playing Eve Online.
Somewhat bitter at having to die in the tutorial, he was given a Venture by the kindly and mysterious AURA robot who continued to instruct him to press Help and talk to a support agent of some kind a few jumps away. Seeing no reason in actually doing such a thing after having lost his Scientist and Survivors in the final blast that sealed his fate as an immortal space-faring god, he’s left with no real option but to using the Civilian Mining Lasers he had gotten from AURA telling him to strip and trash his corvette.
None of this was readily apparent to anyone until an outburst happened in local. I was, by coincidence, traveling to Jita at the time to monitor the market manipulation of Clear Icicles by two barons who will remain nameless.
TROUBLE IN SAFE SPACE
“Can we do something about these bots?”, the rookie flashed across local. “Every time I find an asteroid belt to mine in, they warp in and eat up the entire field.” Obviously, this rookie needed some help as he was two jumps from the nearest “protected” rookie area; multiple pilots soon came to offer some unique guidance—mainly in the form of casual griefing. EVE players are well known for welcoming new players, or as most people would call it, hazing.
Out here in the wilds of 1.0 space he would find nothing but trouble: A Thrasher was attempting to bump our Venture-clad new-blood miner while a Merlin was trying to bait him with jetcans. Undaunted, he continued to mine 5 units of veldspar at a time for hours more.
ESCAPE FROM NEW CALDARI
Despite the constant harassment (or as some would say, competition), he was able to fill multiple holds of Veldspar and make the four jump trek to Jita, a region that appeared to have the best prices and most buy orders. Netting himself a well-earned payout for filling his Badger, he was soon returning to the nearby field to resume his digital work.
Eventually interest waned and he had started practicing alt-tabbing to mine while playing other games—a critical skill in the vast world of EVE Online. As of writing a few days later, the rookie had forgotten to log back on and probably would not be seen again in New Eden as Overwatch was more fun.
