Christmas Retriever

After skilling up for days, I'm now able to fly a Retriever. To celebrate, I treated myself to one in Jita and set out to fly it back to Ellmay for its maiden mining-run.

17 jumps in a Retriever takes a long time. Its 92m/s top-speed has a lot to do with that. My limited capacitor skills added to that by requiring me to perform a lot of intermediate jumps between stargates. Also, I could not fit a Mining Laser Upgrade in addition to the dual T1 strips. Not even with a CPU Upgrade. Must up those skills!

That said, when I finally got to Ellmay and took out the Retriever for a trial-run all was well. The sound of dual T1 strip miners sucking the ore out of the asteroids at breakneck speed (compared to my Navitas) was very gratifying!

Truth be told, having a lot of ISK makes me less likely to do a lot of mining, but I like it, so having the skills and the equipment to do it is a goal in and of itself. Besides, a lot of ISK is a relative thing. I've spotted a very nice Nighthawk that makes my heart race and will require me to invest heavily in hardware and skillbooks.

Zen And The Art Of Mining In A Navitas

Mining for me is one of the most relaxing ways to earn some much needed ISK. So relaxing in fact, that it borders on a full-blown Zen experience. It's hard not to blank out your mind so far as to fall asleep at the helm of a Navitas if your churning through endless roids of Veldspar.

I can hardly wait until all those mining runs pay off and I can fly my Covetor. Still 36 days to go before I finish my skill training for flying that ship, so I'll probably go for an intermediate Retriever as that will only take me 11 days of training.