A Second, Classy 85 Mage

No real intention to play this mage yet she's better geared than my "real" mage at the moment. *sigh*

Sucker for Nostalgia

Usually not one to re-buy games yet Steam ownership is extremely convenient, their marketing is persistent/clever and their sales are amazing. So when the Elder Scrolls Morrowind and Oblivion "everything editions" were on sale together for $15 I couldn't resist. Bethseda's mission accomplished… more excited for Skyrim. *smirk*

Well Watson, What Now?

No idea.

4.2 Blood Tanking Set

Finally took the time to map out what I'm aiming for in the short-term:

Head: Helm of Blazing Glory (Firelands - Baleroc)
Neck: Stoneheart Necklace (Valor Points Reward - 1,250)
Shoulders: Spaulders of Recurring Flame (Firelands - Alysrazor)
Back: Durable Flamewrath Greatcloak (Avengers of Hyjal - Friendly)
Chest: Carapace of Imbibed Flame (Firelands - Beth'tilac)
Wrist: Bracers of the Fiery Path (Firelands - Majordomo Staghelm)
Hands: Elementium Deathplate Handguards
Waist: Girdle of Indomitable Flame (Avengers of Hyjal - Honored)
Legs: Elementium Deathplate Legguards
Feet: Cracked Obsidian Stompers (Firelands - Lord Rhyolith)
Fingers: Lylagar Horn Ring (Firelands Invasion) | Deflecting Brimstone Band (Valor Points Reward - 1,250)
Trinkets: Moonwell Phial (Firelands Invasion) | Scales of Life (Firelands - Trash Drop)
2H: Skullstealer Greataxe (Firelands - Shannox)
Ranged: Deathclutch Figurine (Valor Points Reward - 700)

Much thanks to Ice Veins for their easily browsed list. Not sure what I'm going to do for the four piece bonus. Thinking the Beth'tilac chest would round things out the best.

The Nerfs Just Won't Take!

Looks like the techs are having trouble deploying all those new nerfs!

Finding Agents, Click Click!

Still getting used to sifting through the miasma that is EVE. Been using eve-agents.com to find agents but there are ways of doing it in-game. Trying to use those more often. Some old guy had a pretty good suggestion:

1. Go to the character sheet in game and select the “Standings” option.
2. From there select the tab labeled “Liked By.”
3. There will be a list of umbrella entities, factions, shown at the top of the page, like “Caldari State” and “The Servant Sisters of EVE.” . Click on the info button for one of them.
4. In the info window that comes up, click on the “Member Corps” tab.
5. The list of member corps will each have their own info button. Click on one of them and select the “Agents” tab.
6. The agents tab list the corp agents, divided up into those available to you and those not.

Internet Spaceships Stalled

Some serious EVE downtime. The website isn't returning an error as before, it's like there isn't even a DNS entry for www.eveonline.com. This made me suspect something on my end so I did the usual relase/renew/flush—to no avail. Figured it was time to find external verification. EVE-Offline has a very clean interface with user count graphs of different intervals going back a year.

Looks like the website is coming back up. I'd only learned that the server is reset daily a few days ago, and their explanation makes sense:

The EVE server Tranquility, being one single cluster, is in high demand and operating at peak performance nearly all the time. In order for the server to operate smoothly and for maintenance tasks such as cleaning up space, building statistical data for the market and API, etc not to affect gameplay, Tranquility requires regular downtime for maintenance and improvements.

As a result, there is an official daily downtime from 11:00 to 11:30 GMT/UTC (EVE Time) every day.

Training continues during downtime. Agent missions do as well, so before accepting one close to downtime make sure time constraints on the mission will not result in your failing the mission before the end of downtime.

Please note that agent mission complexes marked as completed, wrecks, containers and other perishables in space despawn and disappear from space during downtime. Despawned mission complexes do not respawn after the downtime is over. Make sure you have claimed all necessary items for your agent mission before downtime hits.

Extended downtimes are used in order to fix persistent or unforeseen problems with Tranquility, fix other software or hardware issues that may have presented themselves after previous downtime or to deploy patches/upgrades for the server. Extended downtimes may also be required for additional hardware installation, such as the addition of RAMSAN units.