Rewards and Encouragement

My post at Reddit yesterday got a good response and interesting comments.  The most amazing response, however, came in-game from a person who assigned me a contract.  I was still on a trial account, so I was prevented from accepting contracts and had never seen one.  I examine the details...."you will get 15 million ISK and 11 ships...what's a Vexor?"

My friend, who plays Eve, says "Could be a trap...it's probably a trap" and comes over to read the contract...."Nope, there's no fine print that forces you to do anything." And we both noticed the text that the person had included : "for future adventures." Wow!  My post had been rewarded with about 60M ISK in cash and ships! The Vexor alone is worth about 20 million. Needless to say, I won't be using it until I think I can handle it.

I converted my account to a paid-up subscription, going with the 3 month option. $10 a month is nothing for the amount of entertainment we are getting out of this.

We?

Yes, my wife is playing too! She has some experience with complex games, but the Eve tutorials are a hit and miss affair. Some are very good at guiding her through the concepts, but other skip important steps.  For example, in the tutorial mission "Mountains Of Molehills", she is told to obtain mexallon and pyerites, two minerals needed to manufacture something.  So she spends fifteen minutes jumping to asteroid belts looking for mexallon or pyerite asteroids!  One simple, bolded sentence in the mission text "YOU CAN OBTAIN MEXALLON AND PYERITES BY MINING SCORDITE OR PLAGIOCLASE ASTEROIDS, THEN REFINING THEM" would have really helped!

The phrase "I really hate this game" was heard several times, but she is persevering.

When I converted the account, my friend in Eve received a plex, which he sold and split the proceeds with me.  So I have well over 300M isk now, which is enough to buy and equip several seriously powerful ships.

BUT I'm not going to do that yet, because my character's skills aren't good enough to fly it well AND my own skills in knowing what to do with it are also deficient. But they're coming along nicely. See the next post for last nights activities.