Monday, November 3, 2014

Luckiest Guy In Eve: Didn't I Learn This Lesson Already?

I got really lucky yesterday. I mean REALLY lucky. Like I just won the Eve Jackpot Lotto lucky.

If you've read my blog for a long time, you know this has happened before. It's happened to almost all wormhole dwellers. That dreaded message. The one, where when it pops up, and you even knew when it was coming, it strikes fear right into your heart.

"The wormhole has collapsed behind you, are you trapped?"

At this point, we all pull a double check. Am I in the correct system? Whew, sigh of relief.

At that point yesterday, my eyes popped open wide in horror. My Orca was now on the wrong side of a closed wormhole. But the terror subsided a bit, as I knew I had a Core Probe Launcher in it's cargo just for this instance.......wait......didn't I unload all my cargo in Jita the other day? I would have had to specifically make sure I put it back.....and I don't remember doing that......

And I was right. It wasn't in my cargo hold. My Fleet Hangar, no standby Magnate in the Ship Maintenance Array for real emergencies.

Well shit.

I was in a C2 with static low sec, and one onlined POS in system. I hadn't seen anyone on DSCAN yet, but someone had to have been here, a K162 had opened into my wormhole, hence the whole reason I was stuck here. So SOMEONE must have passed through here.

I began calling for help in local after I cloaked up off DSCAN from the POS. A nice juicy Orca kill was not what I wanted my possible saviors to see before I received said help. Few hours later, no help was found. I mentally calculated my possible ISK loss in ship and implants, and it was close to half a bil.

Wormholes really do bite you when you stop respecting them. And the stupid thing is, it was totally my fault. I did four back and forth jumps with my AB running on a 2 bil mass wormhole. At 300mil per jump of mass with the AB going, that's 2.4 bil. I'm surprised it didn't close on me sooner. I didn't pay attention enough, and wormhole space was going to teach me a lesson.....again.....

This isn't the first time I've been stuck in the black, alone with no hope of rescue. When I first began exploring wormholes in Apocrypha, I tried my hand at mining the new ores I had never seen before. I hadn't learned about mass limits, or even checking the info on the wormhole to see if it was unstable.

So one time too many I rolled the dice and finally came up snake eyes. I was flying my first Hulk, and the hole collapsed in front of my eyes. I spent a few days asking for help in local, but back then, wormhole space was fairly empty, and no one ever came to my aid. So I said a fond farewell to my Hulk and left it adrift for someone to come upon and find my corpse floating next to it.

I figured that was the fate that awaited my Orca and it's pilot. However, with the changes to wormhole space, there are so many transiting wormholes that there is almost always someone coming and going in every system in W-space.

So I kept calling for help.

About two hours into it the next day, I saw a Tengu on scan. Argh. Since there was no convo attempt or any respond, I figured he was looking for me. So I tried to speak to him directly.

All of a sudden I got a fleet invite. Hmmm, I thought, he might be just trying to get a warp to me, so I asked for a convo in local, and the pilot obliged. He told me he was not the Tengu pilot, and that he was in a Buzzard and from a null sec connection. He said he was on the low sec hole, and to warp to him at 10km.

It was too good to be true, and I just couldn't trust him. It is Eve, after all, but what did I have to lose?

As soon as I fleeted up with him, and uncloaked and warped to the gent at 100, just in case this was all a trap, which again, this is Eve. As soon as I had uncloaked, I caught the Tengu on scan again. Hmmm.

I landed on grid, and sure enough, there was the A239 wormhole exit. A Buzzard  uncloaked and the guy said that was the prudent move, he didn't blame me, and GL, careful it's a low sec hole.

I was amazed, to say the least. I'm certainly nowhere near the bloodthirstiest person in Eve, but even I give very little quarter anymore after a long life in holes.

So I warped off and cloaked again, since the Tengu was still looking for me. About fifteen minutes later, I decided to go for it. Landed on the hole and cringed, figuring I had company waiting outside.

I arrived in low sec, no ships anywhere near, two jumps from Hek.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

I could not believe my luck as I docked up in system, but after checking local I realized the Orca might not be making it out of low sec. Local was full of flashies, as a gang of criminals warped in and out of system. Oh well, at least I am certain to get my pod out.

I decided to chill out for awhile, already having pushed my luck way way too far. I got onto my main and scanned our my B274 and found I was only 13 jumps from Hek, so jumped in my new stealth bomber to go outfit it and scout my way out.

About half an hour later, I jumped Firt and the Orca clear to high sec! All I had to worry about now was wartargets...oh yeah, I was at war.

But, none showed themselves, and my Orca is bathing in the wonderful black seas of home space. Hopefully I'll be a little more careful, at least, for a little while, I'm sure.


Forgotten Heathen out.







1 comment:

  1. A tale worth telling. Thanks.

    -Xavi Bastanold

    ReplyDelete