Starting a New Alt

A week or so ago, I started a new alt. My original plan was to start up a few more trade alts, since my trade ‘dabbling’ has slowly slid into full scale obsessive trader syndrome. But instead, I decided it would be fun to have a sort of anonymous, ‘escape’ pvp alt. I have no set goals or plans for him, except to wander around and try and do whatever strikes my fancy at the time.

I decided to start by doing some of the tutorials. Even when I was really a newb, I don’t think I ever did much of any of the tutorials. Maybe the first few, just to learn how to move the ship around and etc.

I more or less made it through the two military tutorials, but quickly started to get bored and annoyed, so mostly was skimming them by the end. Honestly, I was a bit shocked at the state of the tutorials—they seemed very unpolished and not well put together. The missions made me feel like I was going in circles, rather than progressing toward anything. Some things were excessively repetitive. And in the ‘advanced’ military tutorial, I took one look at the massive wall of text being constantly thrown at me and pretty much said, “yeah, right. Not going to happen.”

When I ‘finished’ those I didn’t have a plan, so felt a little lost at first. I traveled to one region, but changed my mind and then traveled to a different high sec region, and finally settled in to do a few Minmatar level 1 highsec missions. I also ran around a bit in the belts, killing a few rats to earn a little ISK. In the beginning, I wanted the toon to be completely self-sufficient with no ‘help’ from my other characters. 

I was saddened by the NPC changes I noticed after doing a bit of belt ratting and mission running. One thing I clearly remember as a newb was how much fun I had killing the NPCs—and looting the wrecks. Everything is new at that stage, so it used to feel like going on a treasure hunt. I remember learning aspects of the game by reading the descriptions of the various modules and ammunition stacks that would drop. And, I remember learning about what a lot of modules did by simply putting them on my frigate and playing around with them.

It seems that now, all that low level NPCs drop, literally, is junk metal. It made me very sad.

However, on a good note, I did notice something that made me pleasantly surprised. And that is how quickly I felt I reached a point where I could fly a decently fit ship. Within a few hours, I could fly a reasonably setup pvp frigate, and within a day or two, a decent destroyer. YAY for meta modules.

I quickly grew bored of level one missions, and finally gave up on them. I transferred some ISK over from a trade alt, bought up all the skill books I was still lacking and could train, and headed out to do something a bit more pvpish. I settled on Faction War. I know, big surprise! But it seemed the perfect thing to do on a few day old alt that you want to pvp with. I chose Gallente because it is the one militia I’ve never been in. But, I havent’ always had great experiences hunting Caldari, so I went to part of the Minmatar/Amarr warzone instead. 

The first thing I did was burn through a fifteen minute small plex. And gleefully look at the 43k+ LP earned from the Gallente’s tier 4. Considering how cheap I was flying ships, and the fact that 43K LP is almost enough to by a Navy Vexor, I would definitely not need to worry about being self-sufficient here on out. Running level one missions in highsec, for the mere pittance I had received, seemed like a very big waste of time. I should have just gone directly to Faction War.

Another thing I noticed is that you don’t seem to lose standings when you cross plex. Which is excellent. I didn’t want to start out my alt by building up a bunch of negative standings that would be difficult to grind back later.

I also got my first taste of blood on the character. First, my own –dying to a large Amarrian gate camp. Then later, I bounced to a planet and accidentally came across a Magnate just sitting there AFK. I killed and podded him, and scooped all the random salvage materials he dropped. First kill.

My second kill was an Amarrian plex farmer, and was kind of a funny kill. I had logged out on the inside of plex, probably to do something quick on another toon on the account. When I logged back in, I landed on the outside gate, just as the plex farmer also landed.

I quickly scrammed him, and killed him. He was stabbed, but while I was killing him I noticed that he had apparently warped to the gate at 0 instead of 10. He was having difficulty moving, warping, or etc because he was stuck inside the gate. lol. Rookie mistake. Noob Amarrian Farmer Alt Scum Bag.

Anyway, I got my first real fight last night, with a breacher. It didn’t go so well for me, but it was fun. And we had an entertaining chat in local afterwards. Apparently, it is somewhat amusing to a low-sec hunter to warp into a plex, and have the five day old character inside charge you full throttle, instead of warping away stabbed.

I have no idea what I’ll do next. Maybe I’ll stay in Gallente a while. Maybe I’ll wander. Maybe I’ll train some exploration skills. Maybe I’ll join the Amarr and secretly kill my Minmatar friends. (evil laugh) Maybe I’ll turn him into another trade alt after a while.

I guess I’ll have to wait and see where my fancy takes me.