First Steps Into Incursions

Last week’s Saturday I finally got myself to try out Incursions. More than 30 jumps to the Amarr and Khanid homeworlds were a long way for something I expected to be just a possible ship loss or endless wait.

However I was surprised. I’d lie if I’d say I wasn’t surprised a lot. I’ve been playing MMORPGs for pretty much 10 years now and I’ve never seen a community so openly accepting “newbies” into high level content (yes, I consider Incursions to be EVE’s interpretation of high level PvE content). Well, the complexity isn’t that high compared to some of the dungeons MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online are offering. However you’re risking a lot more than just having to plea for a resurrection spell or having to return to the dungeon’s entrance. An unexperienced player in an important role (e.g. flying a Logistics ship) can break your whole experience get your fleet killed.

Especially in a world like New Eden, where treason, abuse and scamming are considered part of the gameplay, I never expected to fly there, ask for a group and be invited immediately. I even stated that I’ve never done an Incursion site before – no problem to the fleet commander. No problem? What? Big surprise! This wasn’t an “EVE is real” moment, but it was more like an “EVE is different” or “EVE is surprising” moment. Seeing more than 4 or 5 corp buddies in fleet warp? Epic!

Let me take this opportunity to give big thanks and kudos to all the fleet commanders I’ve been flying with so far, especially Laburous and lord solo for introducing “new” players like me to Vanguards and Assaults without any prejudice or “what a dumb question!” attitude.

So now, about a week later, I’ve seen a lot – and earned even more. I’m not really sure if that’s really intended. A Vanguard site with a good and powerful fleet takes about 6 or 7 minutes to complete, including the time to warp in/out, gather, etc. and it nets you 10 million ISK and some LP. That makes about 10 sites per hour, so 100 million ISK per hour? That beats any activity I’ve seen before. I’m also not sure if you’re able to blitz missions to earn that much. I don’t think it’s possible (feel free to proof me wrong!) but even if it is, it most likely involves more luck, investment and skill training time compared to the Incursions.

Thinking back, I’m a bit annoyed that I didn’t try incursions a lot earlier. Also the mentioned money gain is a bit too excessive to get me interested in going back to missions (for now). But what to do with all the money? I don’t know. I’ll definitely save some for the inevitable loss of a ship, but there’s more than enough on my account now. The new NeX store items aren’t that awesome either. I still haven’t found a fitting for a Machariel or any other Battleship I like.

Maybe I’ll get one to fill a DpS role in Incursions, but so far I’m still on my route to Command Ships and I’m more than happy to help others playing the (sometimes?) unthankful job of being the Logistics pilot. You keep them alive, but if something goes wrong, they might blame you, no matter what really happened. Okay, the game and its community might surprise me once more – but I’m not really interested in elaborating this. So far I’ve seen 3 ships exploding in sites, but there was nothing the Logistics could do due to people not following tagged targets and getting overwhelmed in the end. That could actually count as a surprise, but it was a one time thing only so far. Well, time will tell, although I won’t force it to do so (as I know you all love your internet spaceships after all).