Thursday 14 March 2019

Skill book rebalance

So, the skill book changes have come in, much quicker than I expected.

The long and the short of it is that core skills can now be purchased from your character sheet, for a 30% markup, and the skill books sold by NPCs have had their prices adjusted. Skill books have long been the biggest ISK sink in the game, and CCP is keen to reduce the net amount of ISK being added to the game, to balance the game economy a bit.

Before the patch I speculated that capital skill books were a bit under priced, and would likely be seeing an increase. To this end I bought 5 of each racial carrier book and 2 or 3 of each racial dreadnought, coming out to 11Bn at NPC price (500Mil and 100Mil respectively). After the patch carrier books are being sold by NPCs for 550Mil, and dreads for 150Mil. Turns out I should have bought more dread books, oh well.

I've put my stocks up for sale, carrier skill books are currently being sold in Jita for about 624 Mil, and dreads for about 170 Mil. Assuming all sell I'll have made 2-3Bn for holding on to some skill books for a week. Not bad all things considered.

Sunday 3 March 2019

March Update

It's been an inexplicably terrible month for me. Hot off the back of my best month ever, activity on all my characters seems to have fallen through the floor, and I'm not overly sure why. I've even been playing quite a lot so I can't blame that. Regardless, my current status:


As things stand, I have 318.6Bn ISK. That is just 11Bn ISK more than last month, which makes it my worst month since I restarted blogging in July. My investments haven't increased in value in the same way as they did in January, but my trade hub sellers haven't seen much turnover either.

I have 3 accounts, with 8 characters dedicated to trading:

Jita Buyer

This is a character that sits in Jita and contracts items to my other characters. This character has little training, and mostly buys from sell orders and contracts the items to my other characters. I tend to have this character logged in to act as a real time price comparison whilst checking my other characters orders. This character also manages my long term investments, though that doesn't take much work. I'm not doing a good job of accounting when it comes to these profits, but it's definitely earned me a few billion for very little work. I am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. I've also taken a gamble on some dreadnought and carrier skillbooks, bought at NPC prices, in the hope that when CCP rebalances skillbook prices capital skillbooks see an increase. 100 Million for a dreadnought skillbook seems very cheap to me. Currently holding about 64Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~126 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing.  I'm training Tycoon V on this character to increase orders to maximum. Takes implants and faction/deadspace modules delivered by my Rens character and sells them in Amarr.

Dodixie Seller

Very similar to the Amarr seller, he sits in Dodixie, takes receipt of items, then set up sell orders. Currently has 69.8 Billion in sell orders. No news with this character.

Rens seller/Hauler

Like the other characters, this character takes items bought in Jita and sells them in Rens. Currently has 61.7 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Amarr station trader

Sits in a player owned Fortizar in Ashab, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a range of 1 Jump to cover Amarr. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 1 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 6.7 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.3% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump. This covers Jita. Most of my items are bought and sold in the Jita 4-4 station. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 10 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 36 Billion. I spent the time to get faction and corp standing up with this character, and this is my attempt to take station trading seriously.

Horde Seller

A new addition to the trading roster. In a very similar way to the other selling characters, he takes items bought by the Jita Buyer, then contracts the items to "Valhalla Deliveries" (a delivery service for Pandemic Horde) to transport the items to the Horde Keepstar in BWF-FF. He then sells them there for a profit. He trades primarily T2 modules, drones and scan probes. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 2.1 Bn in sell orders. Horde has changed their staging system to BWF, so I had to tear down all my sell orders, taking quite a hit in some cases, and set them up in the new Keepstar. I've taken the opportunity to re-evaluate what I'm selling, switching to items with bigger margins, for now at least.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

Another new character, and a different strategy altogether. This character sits in a player owned Fortizar in Tash-Murkon prime, and set up regional buy orders for modules, implants and drones. When a lot of orders have been filled I fly around and collect it all to sell in Tash-Murkon Prime. I set this character up with 100mil to buy his own skills and get started, after skills he had 70mil to buy items. Currently at 1.4Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably. I'm really happy with the turnover and profit margins this character is making. The running around the region to pick up items is annoying, but I can leave my orders up for a week and a lot of them won't be contested, which is really nice. The margins are amazing as well. Will definitely keep this up.