Reflections of the wormhole stalking

It's been several days since I try to create a new post, but keep staring at a blank sheet. A huge respect goes to the bloggers like Talvorian Dex from Target Caller and writers in general that keep pumping out quality posts ever so frequently. I'm lucky if I have an interesting encounter to write about, but if it's a simple gank, it's really tough to pick up a pen. I often have to remind myself that I started blogging because of a wish to speak my mind and write about my adventures. I'm very happy to hear that some people enjoy reading about my encounters along the way, but once you feel the pressure to stick to the schedule, from a hobby it can become a chore real fast.

Sometimes I like to reflect on the progress I've done. I've been stalking wormholes for awhile now. 1.5 year ago my corp disbanded and I tried getting back to low-sec, though unsuccessfully. I then decided to play at my own pace and create a corp where I would focus purely in hunting wormhole site runners. I used to do those trips while being in corps, but now it had my full attention and "unlimited" time to do what I want and not worry about not being there for the corp. Fast forward to now and it's a good time to reflect on my journey.

As of the moment of writing, I have done 97 bil of damage. That's less than what a null pilot can do in one day in an escalated cap fight. Furthermore, that's almost all exclusively wormhole pve gank targets.

But more than total damage done, I like to view the ship kill count, which is - 312. The special thing about this number is that most of these ships were hunted, stalked and killed only by me. If we take out solo and pod kills, probably around 200 pilots had a pleasure of meeting my Dominix/Nestor fleet while doing sites at the wormhole.

So what's my take on the wormhole stalking experience so far? Well, I would not recommend to anyone apart old, bitter vets. I would recommend only to people that can play EVE in the background and can multibox as they probably have a real chance to fully enjoy this play style. If you fly a solo Stratios, you might need to miss out on some juicy targets. I always recommend playing with a corp. To be honest, that's about the only way to play EVE in an engaging way regardless of what space you are in. Even for a guy like me, that has been playing on his own for over a year, a partner joining my corp has improved playing experience, which brings us to the following story.

When things come around

There was a lack of action in our current system so me and my partner decided it's a good time to find a new home. Trey went ahead to scan the chain. Few jumps out he ended up in the wormhole that had an active connection with The Last Chancers home system. It's one of the most active pvp corps in w-space. When I usually see one of their pilots around, I try to be as invisible as possible and not do much scouting. Trey flies a cloaky nulified Legion, but in just a few minutes, d-scan reported activity. He was clearly spotted and The Last Chancers were quick to camp all the active connections. On the way back a Sabre with a few other ships were patiently awaiting for Legion's return. While it has a covert cloak, it's not exactly a fast aligning ship. If Sabre pilot is good, he can decloak and tackle before you can enter warp. My advice was to wait it out. It's better to be patient than risk a loss against a corp that can field fleets we have little chance beating.

As expected, the, eager to kill, enemies got bored and warped back home. I suggested to stick around for a little while longer to avoid any unexpected surprises. Neither of us were in rush. While chilling and occasionally checking d-scan, Trey reported a Megathron. He quickly found that our aggressive friends were rolling the wormhole. Unfortunately for them, calculus mistakes were made and the battleship ended up on the wrong side when wormhole collapsed. It caught us both by surprise. For sure these guys could roll a wormhole in their sleep. Luckily, huge grid allowed Trey to see where our lost friend warped. He was warmly greeted mid-way in our scanned chain by our Nestor fleet.

We killed his ship and sent back to the empire via pod express. The name carries a big weight in EVE. Since we knew who we were ambushing, we kept spamming d-scan until very end, expecting a large fleet land on us at any moment, but the space stayed empty as it almost always is.