EVE Online: Bullet’s, Bird’s and Buy Orders at .01 Isk

It was the financial skullduggery that first caught my interest in EVE Online. Pulp Fictionesque tales of corporate espionage and embezzlement that the blogosphere has talked and wrote about ad nauseum for years. These tales are now legends but the game still rages on. And it’s got me by the collar of my white shirt and red power tie for the past two months now.

I love the stock market. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I did my time in the pits of Wall Street and I can tell you really what market pvp is. It’s not dropping your order by .01 isk to beat me out, it’s the bodybuilder trader that hears that Oil is dropping below 100 dollar a barrel, shoves you and 4 people out of the way to place an order. That’s what I call real PVP and it leaves a bruise.

I just felt like commenting on some of the stuff I have been into lately, I have been rather quiet so I would just like to share some of my EVE experience with you. So two months in I have a fully fitted Caldari fleet: 2 Caldari Badger II’s that I lovingly named AHT Humper 1 and 2, my Drake, 2 cruisers, a handful of Frigates and my biggest problem is do I settle for the Raven or go big for the Rokh. Since close to the beginning I ended up getting lucky and getting recruited by a decent corp that the CEO and second in command have both been around on and off since beta.

It’s a running joke, “when we played in beta all we did was mine, in the snow, uphill, both ways. We didn’t have mining lasers; we kicked the ‘roids til they coughed it up!” Needless to say, I have a ton of laughs as well as a wealth of EVE knowledge at my fingertips. We run L4’s nightly, have regular Wormhole raids and even some pvp…occasionally. I would like more pvp and less mining ops but we are based in lowsec so the latter usually brings the former while I babysit the miners. Just kidding!

Back to the market.

It’s a shame that a certain blogger from mmorpg.com took his post down called “Introduction to EVE trading”. It was an 8 pager that luckily I got a chance to read, the blogs gone but the impression that he left got me to try out EVE. I can also give you a few pointers if you’re interested, this is just some real life tips that maybe can help you make some virtual loot.

Location, location, location.

I have an alt in Jita, the major trading hub, an alt in Rens and I mainly stay around Hek. So I have my view of 3 markets to choose from and sometimes I can capitalize on something called arbitrage. It is when the order to buy, is higher than the order to sell between 2 markets. Use it, abuse it, and exploit it. Some people lack the next subject and will hike their buy order just to “own” whatever they are trying to outbid you. Often I find an outlandish buy order that I just hop, skip and jump to another system for A LOT cheaper and sell to you at a profit. Thanks.

PS: the mexallon market is really out of sorts some of the time. I will often find a 5 isk difference either way between systems. It’s like none of the miners talk; they just want to get rid of it. That’s alright with me.

Patience.

An investor’s number one asset or Achilles’ heel. If you need something that bad, ok buy it. But if you can wait, put a low bid order out in an active system for 10+ jumps. Lowsec or not, someone will dump it to you. I always see order to buy for .01 isk, it is sort of a sneaky trick but it looks to be effective, personally I don’t do it so be careful and always look before you press the button.

Also, if you have a sell order out for a few days, for a few thousand plus pieces of ore, don’t drop the price like a rock (pun) to sell it because Joe shmoe put an order to sell 100. You have two choices: either do what we call, get him out of the way; buy his product at cheaper and add it to your order. Don’t make this a habit unless you have enough VOLUME in the product. And more importantly; WAIT. Sometime’s when my queue is full I am tempted to pull something and crush it to minerals, only to have it sell overnight.

Whew, glad I kept those Caldari Navy Terror Assault Missiles up when I did.

Volume.

Be careful of large price items. Wall Street Rule Numero Uno: Something is worth only as much as someone will pay for it. If it is not going to sell at 10 million, DROP YOUR PRICE. Sometimes I would sell stock cheaper or take a small loss just to put the money somewhere else, know when to cut your losses. And know when a particular market is not going to move.

Need it to move, sell it at the low offer (to sell) and don’t go nuts if someone puts an order to sell 1 in front of you. If it is a larger order than yours then adjust accordingly, sometimes I log on just to make some adjustments sometimes.

PS: Caldari Navy Terror Assault Missiles move, but extremely slowwww. It is a 3 million investment to make 10, but darn it doesn’t move faster than the good old Scourge Missiles.

Don’t waste anything.

Are you kidding me? Don’t waste a hair of the animal. Even civilian boosters and small hull reps are worth something. If it really isn’t worth a lot, then crush it and create something with it. I always have a Salvager on everywhere I go and hey, you get popped outside of a gate doing some foolish pvp because he was a pirate, I am going to salvage your stuff and keep it moving. That’s the lawwww of the west.

Take risks, but don’t bet the farm.

Sometimes you have to grab ‘em like you own a pair. But it doesn’t have to mean you drop your wallet in something because “you have a hunch”. Test the market on a small level, if it works then buy more. Wall Street Rule Numero Dos: Don’t put all thy eggs in one basket. I don’t care what Warren Buffet says, don’t do it.

Lately since the last patch I thought the rig market was going to boom since they changed all the rigs to coordinate certain sizes with certain size ships. It was a change that was very necessary and I SWORE that Medium Core Defense Field Purgers and Extenders where going to be the rage. Well, it is if you fly passive shield buffer tanks like Drakes and Ferox’s, but not everyone uses them. At the end of it all I have all my cruisers fit with rigs and made my money back. If you aren’t making rigs for yourself it is more profitable to sell some of the salvage outright.

Do the math.

I might sound like a nerd here but I have a pen, notebook and a calculator that looks like it should be in a starship next to me whenever I play. I found that some trades aren’t worth it for pennies on the isk because of the broker’s fees and tax. Geez, the IRS even gets you in space these days. Hey, at least I don’t have to pay an accountant here on April 15^th.

And secondly, work the percentages. Do you know what most investors would be happy making in one year as a return?

10-15%.

Surprising, isn’t it? I was shocked when they told me I didn’t have to swing for the rafters every time I got up to bat. “Just a series of base hits, and then, when the bases are loaded and you get a meatball down the plate, swing for the stars”, a random comment from a real life millionaire. If you’re going to make only 10% on something, do it. You might lose a few isk along the way down the road and this will make up for it. It’s like a balancing act, more like a tightrope to me. I guess falling would be getting caught in a gate camp with a hauler full of loot. Yes, I hated when that happened but I got back up, dusted myself off and moved forward. But I’ll be damned if I even trade through Hagilur the Horrible again!

Skills.

Train ‘em if you can. But if you are smart and train some of the basics you might not need all the bells and whistles. I think at this point it is my real-life skills that are triumphant over EVE skills. Honestly, my skill queue I have for EVEmon only has 11 days left on it for what I call my set of “B” level trader skills. Eventually I would like to get all the training skills up to V and really be a Tycoon.

But I can’t train it all, and I have been “counseled” by the corp high muck-e-mucks to step it up to a battleship. So by Monday September 14^th I will have to make a choice, is it bullets or birds? Rokh or Raven? I have been told Raven is the way to go, but the Rokh just looks so powerful and this is going to be (oh please let it be) a onetime investment for me. But there is some realism that it won’t be, anything can happen in space. I’ll just keep trucking along in my humper.

NEVER RIP ANYONE OFF.

Last but not least have some code of ethics. Stealing and making shady contracts: Don’t do it. Karma is a M———–r. I never ripped anyone off during 12 years at The Wall, I am not going start now. OK,OK,OK. Sometimes I would take unnecessary chances with someone else’s money, but it wasn’t without them knowing full well the risks. But, if I have to stoop to stealing virtual currency from someone else to have a good time, then I have a warped sense of fun. And that’s why I play EVE online, no matter what line of work or play you decide to do it should be fun.

As for the future of EVE and I, we will continue on together through the release of Dominion all the way to Dust 514. I have lastly found a home, now if I can only find a way balance life, writing and gaming I have got it made.

As for that tightrope, a whole other story.

Thank you for listening.

Play safe,

Frank