EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'd like some critiques of my first (admittedly uneventful) adventure in Wormhole Space.

So I was about a third into the Sisters of Eve noob missions and kind of bored, so I decided to take out my Imicus for some exploration. Basic pure exploration fit I found on the Eve University wiki. Couple analyzer Is, Core Probes, Salvager I, basic Microwarp Drive and a Cap Recharger - along with a couple Nanofiber Hulls & Hobgoblin Is in the drone bay.

Tried D-scanning a combat site in the local and seeing if my probes could do anything with high sec ratting. I got halfway into hull before I decided - no, they can't - and ran for it. Tried relocating around high-sec and couldn't find any hacking sites, But I did find a single wormhole.

It's just a cheap Imicus which even I can replace with my noob wallet easily. So I thought, why not? Sat outside the thing for a minute indecisively, then took a deep breath and went in.

The music changed to this quiet-too-quiet kind of creepy stuff. First thing I did was bookmark the wormhole sitting nearby in a fit of paranoid (don't want to get stuck here) feeling. Then I hit a 360 D-scan at maximum range, and picked up moons, planets, and several POS-like structures. No ships on scan. I ran the name of the wormhole system through Dotlan on my in-game browser and found out I was in a C1 wormhole and that there'd been some action here in the last 18 (I think) hours. Jumps, kills, that kind of thing. But nothing showing on my D-scan. Very quiet.

Creepy.

By now I'd been sitting at the wormhole entrance about a minute. I thought maybe someone's cloaked and watching me, and I'd better move. So I selected a random planet and warped to within 100 km. Saw a planetary interaction customs office there. Hit D-scan again - again nothing new. I noted my D-scan was picking up a lot of stuff I wasn't really interested in, and wondered if I should do something about my D-scan display sometime...

No signs of life - so I decided to send out my core probes. I'm not experienced at probing, so probing anomalies out took some time. I made sure to hit my D-scan at max range every.... I'll say I did it every 30 seconds on average. I managed to probe out about 3 gas sites, one magnometric, and a new wormhole. No data or relic sites. I'd been hoping to go after a relic/data site if I found one.

It's been a good 5 plus minutes at 100 km off this planet, and I'm getting antsy from being in one spot - even though D-scan is still showing nothing. So I warp to 100 km off another planet. I try accessing the seemingly abandoned planetary interaction customs office there just out of pure curiosity and unsurprisingly found nothing.

I want to see if there's an actual POS in this system and heard that they're located by moons. So I warp to 100 off of one. Nothing there.

I heard that Sleeper rats will attack at gas sites but that they're on a timer. So I decide to warp to a gas site and test the theory. I arrive and slowboat up to the edge of the cloud and stop. I waited there what felt like a good 5 minutes while continuing to nervously D-scan. Finally I got bored/felt I was pushing my luck, and decided to leave.

This time I warped to the new wormhole I'd found and bookmarked. Decided to enter it and see where I ended up in K-space just for laughs. Wound up on the other side of the universe in a Faction Warfare system. Checked my map to see how many jumps it would take me to get back to my high-sec base of operations and decided it would take too long. So, back into the wormhole. Once in, hit D-scan, then warped directly to 0 on my bookmarked first wormhole. Entered without trouble and returned to high-sec with a silly feeling of having maybe gotten away with something.

The end.

My question is - how did I do in approaching an unknown wormhole system? What would you have done differently?

Thanks. I hope to try this again with ships that can actually do something productive in WH space.

Heh, guess it's a good thing I didn't find any relic/data sites then. I probably would have died quickly.

I'm still a ways away from having the wallet to freely lose a Helios (I think that's the easiest cloaked ship I can get) without it hurting a lot, so I guess I'd better do my exploring in High-sec for a while.

Thanks.

Yeah there are benefits to a cov ops cloak but its more to reduce the vulnerability when you can't focus on the overview.

You know... it never even occurred to me that you could put a cloak on an Imicus. I didn't know the difference between core probes and combat probes either.

That helps a lot, thanks.

Well, considering a couple Serpentis rats in hi-sec space managed to get me to half structure, I didn't have a lot of illusions about going toe-to-toe with the Sleepers in my Imicus.

Though, as noted above, I could have ended up killed by them anyway if I hadn't been "lucky" enough to not find any relic/data sites.

How far out do those towers usually shoot at you?

I am slowly researching wormhole corps. Or I might take a stint at Eve University and see what I like.

Mine can reach from 0-300Km give or take, and have several kills from people warping in and getting caught in the bubbles.

I would recommend Eve University, I have never been with them but I have corp-mates who have and they say good things,or finding a good corp. In Eve knowing how things work is just as important as skill points and fittings IMO.

Sounds like you did pretty well!

Everything suggested so far is good advice. Especially the fitting of a cloak and the advice to never loiter on the wormhole entry. You'll be surprised how many entries have pilots cloaked and watching, or at least listening, if an active corp resides inside.

Most threads you read of a new explorer's journey into w-space ends with a explosion, either due to the sleepers or other pilots. Good to see you made it out intact!

Thanks for the responses.

One thing that occurred to me - does it make a difference that I was in a C1 wormhole?

I kind of got the impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that the really dangerous wormhole occupants are in C3 and up, but that C1s are often either abandoned, or carebearing pockets.

Am I completely off-base there?

The higher the number, the more dangerous the wormhole and the bigger the profit. Higher number whs start from inside other whs and cant be accessed directly from k-space.