While there are highs and successes and proud moments, my neurodivergent wife, son and daughter maintain their steady flow of fuckery, with a healthy dose of shittery thrown in for good measure. There is no finish line with this – it will go on forever. For my own sanity I have made a point to find time this year to play computer games more often.

I decided to now try the Sisters of EVE introductory Epic Arc called The Blood Stained Stars. I’ve run it before once or twice, but so long ago I couldn’t remember the details aside from a fight near the end where the NPC has a very strong tank.

I picked a Dragoon to run this Arc with. I have never flown it before, and I did not notice it being used by other people running the Arc with me. There was a strategy to this choice which paid out at the end.

[Dragoon, SOE Epic Arc]

Damage Control I
Small I-a Enduring Armor Repairer
Extruded Compact Heat Sink
Compact Multispectrum Energized Membrane

1MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Eutectic Compact Cap Recharger
Small Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery

Small Focused Anode Pulse Particle Stream I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Anode Pulse Particle Stream I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Anode Pulse Particle Stream I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Salvager I
Salvager I

Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Processor Overclocking Unit I
Small Capacitor Control Circuit I

Hobgoblin I x5

2.45 – 3.68M ISK, 5.5K EHP, 35EHP/s tank, 104 – 157 DPS, 300m3 and 6s align time

I did read comments where it was suggested the Arc could be run in a few hours. I took my time to read the storyline, looted and salvaged all my wrecks, and looked at the scenery. It took me 3 sessions of a couple of hours each with one hiccup.

Early in the chain I warped to an agent in space to hand in a mission. The agent said they were busy talking to another Capsuleer – although I was the only one on grid. Then the mission completion window popped up. My hand-in item was still in my cargo hold, but the agent would not speak with me. I flew back to the overall agent for the chain, and they would not speak with me either. I gave it some time to correct itself, which it did not, so I had to log a support ticket. Two friendly GM’s quickly reset that part of the chain for me and I continued with no further problems.

There is a lot of couriering and moving around and you get to see a fair sampling of Hi-Sec, but you do get a bit of combat. Here I wasn’t sure what was going on – because my less than a week-old character with less than 1M SP handled situations I would not have thought it should have. I didn’t know how much of this was influenced by my knowledge of fitting and flying, and how much were gimped and overly weakened opponents.

There were only a few points through the main chain which required much care. A couple times where you could agro a lot of DPS if you didn’t do some mediocre kiting, and one NPC which drained your cap. This was one of the reasons I took a boat with drones. Missiles would also have done the trick.

There was only one battle which had me scrambling – the final fight against Dagan.

I went into this fight with around 105 DPS according to the Pyfa fitting tool. While I could tank the damage from Dagan without much problem, I would only get to scratch his armor during short gaps in his own active tanking.  So, I then went to my backup plan.

I retreated and went and fitted faction crystals to my guns and selected drones with the best damage type. I would have also gone to shorter range more damaging pulse turrets, but there were none in the area. I returned but while it was an improvement, it was still going to take a very long time to win.

So, I went to the backup to my backup plan. I had already amassed around 250K SP of free skill points from the various daily and AIR career rewards. So, I trained Drone IV to V, and the supporting drone skills which I had already pre-purchased to at least rank III. I also increased Amarr Destroyer to rank III and trained a few other low hanging Gun skills and in a few minutes got my DPS up to 150. The battle was then shortly over.

The main reward, which new players won’t really understand the benefit of, was a somewhat free boost to the standings with one selected faction. I also picked up around 15M ISK in salvage and loot, and maybe around 15M ISK in bounties and mission rewards.  By the end of the run my client said I have 1.3M Skill points, a wealth of 82M ISK, and a Caldari State Faction standing of 1.93. There were also a couple storyline missions that popped up.

That is a surprisingly good starting point for a new player.

Look but don’t touch.

Dagan – done in by hoarded free Skill Points.

There were two little moments that stood out. One of the GM’s gave me some helpful tips which possibly alluded to maybe the problem was me not handing the missions in correctly. I wanted to say I have been playing the game for 19 years and know a bug when I see it, and that I had already read lots of posts about it happening while trying to help myself, but then I realised I didn’t care if the GM thought I might have been a moron. The second was the final fight took longer than I had anticipated, and I ended up only getting to bed at 2am. Been a long time since a computer game kept me up so late.