Friday, December 11, 2009

Just going to pretend I didn't post for 7 weeks...

Alright, traders, Dominion has come and made some of us rich by selling Hulks at 150m each and some of us a little poorer with buy orders for megacyte at 3300 that filled up awful quick.

First step after any big patch in any MMO is to revisit whatever spreadsheet, cheat sheet and formulas you use to be successful. EVE being a more spreadsheet intensive game than most is even more susceptible to this. To that end, I have adjusted the values in the "Starter" Reprocessing spreadsheet that I shared back in September. These values are based on what is happening in Essence tonight. Your mileage may vary, and you can change them on your copy. It only has a few items on it, but as you start adding mission loot to the list, you will start to find amazing opportunities.

I still spend a lot of time missioning and took the new NPC corp tax as an opportunity to start my own vanity corp, Small Time Trading (STTCO). This allows me to take advantage of the one thing I always liked about EVE corporations, the hangers. I know that with the ability to see into containers that was added recently, I could work without hangers, but I like them. The corp wallet also allows to me experiment and keep the results separate. With some help from @stmistaken of the #tweetfleet, I was able to use the cluster map to find some cheap ($10k per month) office space in Essence that suits me just fine. I would be totally thrilled, except I have to pay rent to a Caldari corp (boo!). But then I look at my fleet of tricked out Badger II's and the Caldari shuttle I am sitting in and pipe down.

I have been enjoying a lot of the fan fiction, especially well written accounts of wormhole activity. The lack of "local chat" and the suddenness of the action is very gripping. Keep up the good work, folks.

Final trading tip -- I mentioned using your mission loot as a starting point for things to buy to reprocess. I have recently been placing buy orders for rigs with some success. It requires a bit more up front money, but most don't have any buy orders up at all. I am getting these for 1/3 (or less) of what they cost to make. Now the manufacturers aren't going to be selling these so cheap, but filthy dirty pirates will. And, lately, I am loving those PvPing scalliwags. When they pop a ship and scoop up the remains, rigs are often found. Like any other loot, if they have no direct need for it, it just gets sold. Take a look at your local market and see if putting a few million out there can net you big returns. (Thanks to @casiella of the #tweetfleet for reminding me that T2 gear can also be acquired in this way!)

Buy low, sell high and fly safe!