Besides missions, deadspace complexes can be a good way for a new player to earn money in EVE Online. If you completed the tutorial (which you really should) you will already have visited a deadspace complex. If you haven’t, they’re basically EVE’s version of dungeons*.

I wouldn’t suggest trying deadspace complexes (complices?) if you’re really new since level Is aren’t really worth it. And to be honest I never tried level IIs, but level IIIs definitely are. I can do them in a badly-fitted cruiser without much of a problem so a well-fitted Frigate shouldn’t be out of the question, and if you can get a friend in there with you you’ll be fine.

Inside you’ll find lots of drones which unfortunately don’t have bounties on them and they don’t drop much cool loot. What you will find though is a couple of interesting containers with “Overseer’s Effects” in them. Although it may not be guaranteed, the ones I’ve seen are 5th Tier Overseers Effects and 7th Tier Overseer’s Effects - the latter are worth 600,000 ISK if sold to the right people. The right people being DED (a division of Concord). It may take you a few jumps to get there but 600,000 to a new player should make it worth it.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about an advert for ntl:Telewest offering unlimited broadband that was unlike other providers - despite small print saying their services were subject to a fair use policy. Since then I have discovered that their unlimited service is actually unlike others. The fair use policy actually makes no reference to bandwidth limitations at all.

The reason I bring it up now is there is one part of the issue I didn’t mention. I actually sent a complaint to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) about the advert. Yesterday I was amazed to actually receive a reply about it. Not only that but a personal reply.

The irony in all this is that ntl:Telewest seem to genuinely offer unlimited downloads but say in such a way that broadband savvy users wouldn’t believe.

I recently said I might need a visa to visit America because of new rules regarding biometric passports. Well it seems I’m okay. You’ll only need a biometric passport for passports issued after October and not just for traveling after October.

This page at the UK US Embassy site has more info.

I just got the Level I mission, “Worlds Collide”. The story is that some civilians got caught up in a fight between Guristas and Angels and you have to rescue them. It was offered to me for about 250,000 ISK (including bonuses) so I accepted.

The first part was easy. Lots of pirates and my Moa (a Caldari cruiser) freshly fitted with heavy missiles barely got scratched. Unfortunately the acceleration gates (there were two - one Angel and one Gurista) only accepted frigates. I tried in a badly fitted out Condor and lasted about three seconds… Luckily NPCs pirates don’t go for pods and the Condor was given to me free by an agent. Since I couldn’t be bothered to properly equip a frigate that wasn’t going to use again I had to give up on the mission. So beware of that one.

EVE needs a mini client. Something that can run as a normal window without taking up lots of resources that lets you do most thing you might want to do in a station. Things like sending/receiving EVE mail, accessing the market (setting up orders or just plain immediate buying/selling), changing skills, possibly accessing player missions (or contracts as they will become) and corporation management.

There’s lots of times when I don’t want to play EVE as such but I’m waiting for something to happen. And in windowed mode EVE takes up a lot of system resources and performs far less well.

Maybe this would be better mentioned on the EVE forums…

Julia is currently on an exchange program in America and I plan to visit in November. Which unfortunately means I need to get a visa.

America (like a lot of the world) runs a visa waiver programme whereby people in certain situations don’t need a visa to enter the country. At the moment holders of a UK passport listed as British Nationals going for business or pleasure trips of less than 90 days that haven’t been arrested don’t need a visa. On October 24th that will change. As well as the above requirements you will need a biometric passport.

Biometric passports are being brought in over here slowly.Any passport applications may, or may not receive a biometric passport as the increase the volume of BPs they can produce. Which means I can’t just apply for one.

Sometime in “early October” however the change over to biometrics will be complete and all new UK passports will be biometric. But that is cutting it very close. They do have systems in place whereby the application can be sped up (down to as little as one day) but that involves extra hassle and extra cost. Possibly less than that needed to get a US visa though…

A new patch called “Dragon” was deployed to EVE recently (it took a whole day and they still have an extended downtime today to fix some problems it introduced).

The biggest change for new players (or anyone hanging around Empire space) will be the new agent missions. For anyone really new, on board stations are agents. These are NPC characters who hand out missions to players. Early on, missions are the best way to make money. To be offered a mission by an NPC you need good standing with the NPC (or with the NPC’s corporation such as Lai Dai or even the NPC’s faction such as Caldari). New players will always have a good enough faction standing to find an agent who will help them. Before, most missions were courier missions. Go somewhere, pick something up, go somewhere else, drop it off. Courier missions have new been almost completely removed. Instead you get combat missions. For the low level agents (I and II) these involve killing pirates and rogue drones. Occasionally you also have to fetch back some loot or blow up a structure as well.

For the most part this is a good thing for everyone. The main advantage is they’re more fun. The second advantage is that overall, you get more money. Although you may have to pay for ammo you also get the bounty for blowing up pirates. The only disadvantage is combat missions get harder much faster than courier missions. If you do lots of missions then level II agents (who pay more) become available to you before you can actually do them. Yesterday I nearly blew up when I came across pirates that were harder than I expected: Level I missions tend to have pirates around the 3000-6000 ISK range which you can do in a frigate. A couple of level II missions I did had the same pirates but lots of them. Then suddenly I come across a pirate in a Moa (a Caldari cruiser) with a bounty of 50,000 ISK. Since I’m in a Moa I managed to complete the mission still but I had to regroup and recharge my shield and do it in two attempts.

So to summarise, the new missions are good, but beware.

I found an interesting post through Technorati tagged Pimsleur about how to learn a language. And for once it actually seems quite sensible and plausible. It’s also made me think about grammar and how it should be handled in my language learning app.

At the moment it plays the audio at you without anything on the screen. Perhaps the screen could display explanations of interesting or important points about what you hear? I’m worried about distracting people from listening and limiting the offline usability of precompiled lessons though…

One of the Mono developers apparently had a problem with Northwest Vanline, a delivery company that managed to delay delivery by about a week, twice. In other circumstances, it would be a very funny story, at least the way the guy phrases the “punchline”.

Anyway, go read his complaint about Northwest Vanline.

Ooh, after reading the forums I found a way to increase the number of research points you get when doing R&D in EVE Online.

After starting R&D you can also ask the agent for missions. The rewards for the missions are extra research points instead of ISK. The reason I had to go to the forums to find this out is because it apparently isn’t available until a day after you start the R&D.