The Infinite Frontier
08 Feb 2019Mavrecon
Feb 8, 3305Decided to take my time aboard my spaceships a little more seriously lately. Only logged around 300 lifetime hours, which is a far cry from the time I've spent in other games. I always come back to the black however, and this time something stuck. Chalk it up to the improvements made to gameplay in the final Beyond chapter.
Previously I turned to bounty hunting and community goals to make my quick jumps in cash. I'd spend 2hrs farming HazRes sites in my trusty Vulture to bring in few million. A few nights of this and I would take away a massive reward from the top spots when the community goals would wrap up. It was slow going financially but the thrill of the dogfight was too alluring to give up. I had saved enough to buy a Python and decided to give trading a try. I wasn't super familiar with the missions yet, and found that to be a little to slow for my taste. My low interest left me going back to bounty hunting and wishing the game was more enjoyable for me. Thargoids, Guardians, and Engineering all seemed like parts of a completely different game to me. I figured I'd never see these things or enjoy the thrill of discovering cool parts of the galaxy, since my small FSD just wouldn't cut it for exploration. Then the final update came out.
The last time I tried mining it was a boring, shoot at rocks mini game and didn't hold my interest at all. I heard about other commanders making money in the mining markets, selling rare minerals such as Void Opals for millions a piece, and decided to give it a shot. I took my Python and followed a few guides far more experienced commanders had put together. Properly outfitted I pulled up EDDB and INARA to find a selling station as well as the closest major ice rings. I had to learn how to use the updated FSS and discovery scanner, which to my delight was actually somewhat enjoyable! A few tries and I was finally heading down into my first void hot spot. Turns out I'm not half bad I cruising through ice rings identifying loaded rocks.
After my usual run time of about 2 hrs I flew into the 1.6 million sell station that I had found 2 jumps from my mining location and made my first major chunk of cash. I. Was. Hooked. Not only was I sitting on more money than I had ever had in the game up to that point, but the process of earning it had been fun and rewarding! You could say I had an overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment. I wasted no time going back out to earn another chunk of cash. And another. Then suddenly, I had my very own Anaconda.
Now a little set up, I'd been dreaming of earning an Anaconda since the first week of playing. I just never thought with the amount of time I had to play that I would ever earn one. I even went so far as to purchase unique paint jobs and a ship kit for it...almost 7 months before I got one! One could say I was hopeful that my bounty hunting days would somehow get me there. And now it was mine. I A-rated it, pulled up the fantasy build that I had emailed to myself months before, and build my dream ship. She's a thing of beauty. I decided to take her on a few mining runs, a few bounty hunting runs, and that's where the real bug hit me. I decided to test out the fighter bay. Oh man. Talk about adrenaline. I had participated in CQC a bit, so I know how fun those little buzzards are to fly around, but going toe to toe with something like a FAS in one, while my mothership also attacked, was a whole new type of fun. I'm honestly mad that I waited so long to try it out.
So, having made a ton of cash and bought myself my dream ship, I decided maybe now was the time to take on some engineering. I'd messed with it one other time, when it was brand new and absolutely HATED it. Too many variables and too much left to chance for me to justify the massive time sink it was. But now it seems to be a little more updated, not polished but far better than it was. I've flown out to Bug Killer for some farming. Upon scanning the system I detected several non-human source signals, Thargoids! I left them alone for now and have successfully landed next to the downed Anaconda. I haven't performed a surface landing in a long time, and I have to say, seeing the downed ship and the whole landing experience in general has gotten me very excited for where this game is going for me.
I even decided to get an official account on INARA going and start a space journal! If you would have asked me if I thought I'd be doing this 2 months ago I would have said "yea right." Now I'm just excited for the next challenge, the next discovery, and I'm very very excited to get myself ready to fight some bugs.
More to come
o7