End of Year 2020

And so we leave 2020 behind us, all things considered I can say good riddance!

I've been looking back at 2019s update, and realised how my engagement has really dropped off this year. Of all the years where I can dedicate a lot of time to trading in EVE it was this one, but I've just felt very little motivation to log in for a while now. A lot of that is that I've got back into WoW (particularly playing TBC private servers as that was when I first played and it holds a lot for nostalgia for me). Some of it is just that I've been doing the same thing for so long in EVE that it gets dull, and I think I need to vary things up a bit. I have major life changes coming up though and so my time for video games full stop will be greatly reduced, but maybe EVE would be better than WoW for that as I don't have to be fully engaged to trade and can step away from the keyboard more easily! Time will tell.

The observant among you will notice there's no start of December update. This annoys me, as it would mean 2 full years of blogging every months I march (well, amble) towards the Trillion. But the simple fact is I didn't log in around then. 

Anyway, my end of year position:

I have a total of 782.2Bn ISK. This is an increase on the start of November of 15.6Bn ISK. That's probably the worst couple of months of the year, which makes sense as I've simply not logged in. Also indicative that I have 339.7Bn ISK just sat in wallets! That's frankly criminal. 

Lets have a look at this time last year:

This time last year I had 566.5Bn, so this year I have earned 216.6Bn. that's compared to 296.1Bn for 2019. That's a decrease of 27% in terms of profit. I predicted that by this time I'd have 900Bn, so I've fallen well short. Disappointing, but you could argue for the amount I actually played the game it's still pretty good. I think I'll become a trillionaire in 2021 still, but it'll be a lot more work to get there than I thought. Here's hoping I find some motivation next year!

CCP has created another set of "your year in EVE" videos, which you can customise this year. Here is mine for Lornor:

https://www.eveonline.com/my-year-in-eve?videoId=3536/0000/cb1dx2k17t31l1xaizfy3283j1b3ge0qu2iuz1j

It's a bit disappointing as it only looks at 1 character, and I use 11 for trading but gives a reasonable snapshot. Interesting to note that over 1 trillion has passed through just Lornor's wallet, and he's not my Jita buyer!

Though having said that, the market buys and sells is a much lower ~480 Bn. The difference is probably accounting for this character being a buyer for my Amarr seller, and there being plenty of moving ISK around to and from the corp wallet.

I would compare with my EVE-Mogul stats, but the overall stats graphs appear to be a bit screwed up on there, and have been for a little while.

I'm not going to make any grand promises about 2021, other than that I will get to the Trillion. I'll update as things improve.

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Sobaseki Seller

I've expanded the items sold on this character, though there's still a lot to do. I need to buy this character a Crane so he can do his own hauling (1 jump). Currently has 11Bn in sell orders.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 165Bn in orders and investments. A lot of this money will go to Sobaseki and beyond.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~81 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 52 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 82 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 17Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 22.4 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 1% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 78.5 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 13.8Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

As stated, I've moved this character to just being a seller. Currently 106Bn in sell orders.

Manufacturing Character

Nothing has happened on this character recently.  

November Update

 A shorter month this one, after my last update was on the 10th. Not as profitable on a day by day basis either, but I did log on a few times. I find it easier if I don't try and do too much in a single session. My current position:

I currently have 766.6Bn ISK. That's an increase of 14.6Bn. As it's a 23 day update it works out to 634Mil per day. Not huge, but not terrible either. 

I've managed to expand the items that  my sobaseki seller deals with, though only up to about 30Bn so far. I've done a little more investing this month as well, and been able to flip some items for profit fairly easily thanks to the ore redistribution and war going on.

I've also managed to utilise the money for my Jita station trader a bit better, leading to much less money lying around. I still have a lot in wallets (172Bn at time of writing) but I'm starting to work to bring this down now, and I should be able to do more this month.

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Sobaseki Seller

I've expanded the items sold on this character, though there's still a lot to do. I've nearly finished training trade and transport skills, so he should be in a Crane sometime this month which will let me do much more regular runs for him (a mere 1 jump). Currently has 21Bn in sell orders.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 170Bn in orders and investments. A lot of this money will go to Sobaseki and beyond.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~135 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 87 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 119 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 37Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 20.2 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 1% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 72.8 Billion. A much bigger jump this month as I've really started to utilise the money this character has. I spent the time to get faction and corp standing up with this character, and this is my attempt to take station trading seriously. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 13Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

As stated, I've moved this character to just being a seller. Currently 123Bn in sell orders.

Manufacturing Character

Nothing has happened on this character recently.  

October Patch Notes - Ore Re-Distribution!

 A new patch has dropped, the notes of which can be found here:

https://www.eveonline.com/article/qi4t9e/patch-notes-for-version-18-10

I don't normally talk about patch notes, but these will have huge effects on the game as a whole.

First off, the big economic news. Ore re-distribution. Basically you will only be able to mine for Tritanium, Pyerite and Mexallon in High sec, Hedbergite has been massively increased in availability in Low sec, and the high sec minerals have been all but removed from Null Sec.

This is essentially undoing the "farms and fields" idea of Null where you could harvest all the resources you need and alliances could be self-sufficient without having to import goods and materials. I liked that idea initially, but it lead to huge alliances mining like crazy and compressing prices to the point where you can (allegedly) buy a supercarrier for 7Bn in Delve. When ISK is that meaningless it threatens the health of the game. 

This re-distribution and accompanying shortage will mean that players have to buy some materials in high sec, and risk moving them around the cluster, which will further add to the cost. You can see the effect of this on the Tritanium prices in Jita:

And people are also speculating that larger items that take a lot of trit will jump in price. For example here is the Orca:

The changes haven't been live long enough for this to be the actual build cost of an Orca, so this is definitely market panicking and predicting the future cost based on increased materials price. I realised this too late to invest in this, but for those who did you're looking at a good 40% profit per Orca you bought a couple of weeks ago.

The next big thing is the Triglavian Invasion. 27 systems that hit "final luminality" have had their stargates shut down and Triglavian gates installed, to create a new region called Pochven. This is the first change to the layout of the cluster since wormholes were released in Apocrypha in 2009! Crucially for us marketeers one of the systems moved is Niarja. So it seems the 47 jump route from Jita to Amarr is permanent! This adds a lot of flying time to people like myself, but might also allow Amarr to establish more as a hub as people won't simply bypass it for a quick run to Jita anymore. Amarr is now the furthest high sec hub from Jita, when it was the closest!

I'm a bit gutted I missed the boat on Trit speculation, but I'm intrigued to see how these changes will affect the market as a whole. I'm going to try and explore the new Trig region (probably on my null character) and try and grab some nice screenshots. Interesting times for all!

October Update

 Quite an odd month this one. I've once again played very little, though I did manage to set up a proper set of sale in Tash-Murkon. The results this month are impressive though:

I currently have 752.3Bn ISK. That's a monthly (ish) increase of 43.5Bn ISK!!!

That's a massive increase. A part of this was setting up a bunch of sales in Tash-Murkon - I take 20% provision against having to relist, and the sell margin was above 20% on average there. Another aspect I suspect is that during the last month CCP announce resource scarcity, which majorly shook up the market - more on that in another post. There's also a big war going on in null sec, which usually drives up demand for pretty much everything and means that I've made a good quantity of sales this month, despite not updating very much. The rise in activity has also contributed to the PLEX price, driving it up by 200k this month which is a 2Bn increase in my net worth. The overall uptick in prices has allowed me to sell a bunch of investments at a profit as well.

I managed to put up over 130Bn in sell orders in Tash-Murkon, and yet I have about the same amount of ISK lying around as I did last month - 213Bn ISK at the moment. That's a lot knocking around! Time to set up a proper sell list in Sobaseki I think!

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Sobaseki Seller

Not much to report here, has continued training trade skills, but I haven't expanded the items sold. Currently has 2Bn in sell orders.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 187Bn in orders and investments. A lot of this money will go to Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~123 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 93 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 128 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 55Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 19.7 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.5% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 66.5 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 12.6Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

As stated, I've moved this character to just being a seller. Currently 125.8Bn in sell orders.

Manufacturing Character

Nothing has happened on this character recently.  

Setting up Tash-Murkon

 For a while now, I had a character that set up region wide buy orders in Tash-Murkon region then flew around and picked it all up to sell in Tash-Murkon Prime. This is a good money spinner and I would recommend it to anyone as a good source of trade income (I turned 70 mil into nearly 7 Bil this way). It is though intense on the flying around part. As I don't enjoy doing that I've increasingly left this character alone making no money. So I decided it's time for a change.

I decided to set this character up as a selling character. Just as I do in Amarr, Rens, Dodixie, Hek and to a lesser extent Sobaseki. So I used about 95Bn ISK buying items on my Jita buying character and building up a market quickbar for Tash-Murkon. This was almost entirely implants, similar to my other characters. A lot of high priced ones for which there is no competition in the region. Then I set off to pick up my haul.

Normally, Tash-Murkon Prime is 10 jumps from Jita. But as Niarja is currently camped null security I decided to go the long way round:

47 Jumps! (I'd already made on in the picture). Still, something I can do in the background whilst working, especially as it's an empty BR I'm flying. Not so empty on the way back:

The tooltip say 86.6Bn, but it was actually closer to 95. Probably my most expensive haul yet! I was much more careful flying back with this, but I hardly encountered anyone, and no gankers. I safely landed in the IChooseYou Citadel in Tash-Murkin Prime. I chose the Citadel because it has a 1% sales tax, much lower than NPC. Also IChooseYou has a network of Citadels and mercs on hand to defend them/remove competition, so it's not likely to be destroyed anytime soon.

I set my sales up for mostly a 20-30% markup on Jita. In places slightly more. Nothing over 50%. I want to encourage actual sales, and totally ripping people off will limit the number of sales I make. So I ended up with the following:

134 Bn ISK in sell orders. I'll ilkely weave this into my normal trade runs, and have this character flying at the same time as my Rens seller as they're on different accounts. This fits my playstyle much better, and finally puts 100Bn ISK to work that I had lying around! Now just to do the same with my Sobaseki seller, and possibly look at some other high-sec opportunities ("Eden Trade" on the forums has been setting up shop in various regions without a "Big 5" trade hub to some success). Glad to have something ticked off!

September Update

 Another month, very little done. This one is even a week late! Don't expect big things...

I currently have 708.8Bn ISK. This is an increase of 8.5Bn. Another reflection of next to no activity.

I managed a solitary trade run, which was further extended by the fact that Niarja is currently taken over by the Triglavians, and is now lowsec and permacamped. I didn't even attempt to go through there and took the long route through high-sec. I'm not ricking a camp even in a bloackade runner with over 60Bn in the cargo! I'm beginning to realise that the biggest thing that's putting me off is the long 2 and a half hour full trade runs that I feel I have to do if I'm going to achieve anything useful. I need to break that down and do smaller things more frequently, like update orders on a single character, then do a mission or some PvP or something to keep things interesting.

To that end, I've finally achieved what I said I was going to with my Tash-Murkon trader, and torn down all of my buy orders, collected everything and put them up for sale in Task-Murkon Prime. This is going to become just another selling character, with items bought out of Jita or possibly Amarr (as it's just 2 jumps away). Region-wide trading is a good money spinner as you're able to pick up items for very low prices, but involves a lot of tedious flying around the region to do pickups. The way I play I'll benefit from treating it as just another stop on my run, or a run to do in parallel as he has his own BR, so there's less flying around. I just need to build up a quickbar of things to sell on this and the Sobaseki seller.

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Sobaseki Seller

Not much to report here, has continued training trade skills, but I haven't expanded the items sold. Currently has 3Bn in sell orders.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 222Bn in orders and investments. A lot of this money will go to Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~131 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 117 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 135 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 59Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 19.1 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.5% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 64.5 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 12Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

As stated, I've moved this character to just being a seller. Currently 4.3bn in sell orders.

Manufacturing Character

Nothing has happened on this character recently. 

August Update

So, I made big claims last update about how I was going to kick on and update loads and really push things! I really shouldn't have done that. The last time I made a claim like that I claimed I was going to be blogging more then took a huge hiatus. Due to various things I've barely played again this month, but at least I have passed a marker of some sort:

I currently have 700.3Bn ISK, an increase of 8Bn. A small increase that reflects the fact I did next to nothing for the third month in a row. 

I've been playing EVE on and off since 2009. 11 years is a long time to play a single game. Whilst I would still say it is my favourite game of all time, I'm currently in a lul of motivation to play. I've been playing other things (notably Classic WoW), I've been on holiday, and just generally it feels a bit daunting to log on and do everything I'd like to do a lot of the time. This is not me saying I'm taking a break from the game, I'm not, at least, not really. But I'm not going to be promising big things for a while. I think what I need to do is just play it by ear a bit, and when my motivation returns (and it will) I'll make the most of it then. 

Until then I'll log on here and there and work on the changes I want to at my own pace. As I make the changes I'll blog about it, which will hopefully feed back into the motivation. 

There's a big war going on as well, maybe I'll get involved in that a bit? WWB round 1 was fun.

Sorry, not a grand update, but that's just the way things are for me at the moment. 

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Sobaseki Seller

Not much to report here, has continued training trade skills, but I haven't expanded the items sold. Currently has 3Bn in sell orders.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 195Bn in orders and investments. A lot of this money will go to Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~141 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 127 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 133 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 67Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 19.1 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.5% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 64.5 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 11.7Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

I haven't touched this character, though all of his orders have come down. One of my challenges will be to set up a new quickbar for sales and get some items to sell from Jita or Amarr.

Manufacturing Character

Nothing has happened on this character recently. I want to ramp up my build queue a bit.

July Update

I barely played at all this month. I think I logged on once during the month, and that was about it. I guess I can partly blame it on ennui/boredom, and partly because I've been playing other games which is good to do from time to time to keep things fresh. This has had a devastating effect on my income though:

I currently have 692.3Bn ISK. This is an increase of 2.6Bn. Yeah....

So that's bad. Like, worst in years bad. I actually checked several times that my numbers were correct. I did just put up a load of orders which bring my 20% provision to nearly 100Bn, but that's always the case so I doubt it's that.

Anyway, this will be quite a short one. For July I'm going to really put some time into the game. I want to update my orders every day, set up Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon as selling hubs like the others and get my Raitaru production running on a conveyor belt. I've just done my usual trade run before this, so that's my "base" starting point. I really want to challenge myself and see how much money I can make if I really put my mind to it. I am going away for the last week of July, but I'm still hoping to get 50Bn out of this month. It'll be a lot of work, but I'm hoping the challenge will spur me on and keep me motivated.

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Sobaseki Seller

Not much to report here, has continued training trade skills, but I haven't expanded the items sold. Currently has 3Bn in sell orders. I want to use a big chunk of the money sat in wallets to ramp this character up to at least 50Bn in sell orders over the next couple of days.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 190Bn in orders and investments. A lot of this money will go to Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~150 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 124 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 129 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 66Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 18 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.5% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 63 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 11Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

I haven't touched this character, and one of my challenges over the next couple of days will be to tear down this characters buy orders, set up a new quickbar for sales, and get some items to sell from Jite or Amarr.

Manufacturing Character

Nothing has happened on this character recently. I want to ramp up my build queue a bit this month though.

June Update

There hasn't been a huge amount that I've done this month. I've not logged in too much and when I have I've basically spun the wheels, not expanding any money making areas.

My current situation:

I currently have 689.7Bn ISK. This is an increase of just 13.9Bn on last month. I did have to take a write down of about 9Bn from re-listing 30 skill injectors so I would have made 24Bn, but it's still a poor month and reflects that I haven't played much. I'd love to see what the new invasion is about and expand my sobaseki trader and do some manufacturing, so I'll try and play a bit more this month.

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Sobaseki Seller

Not much to report here, has continued training trade skills, but I haven't expanded the items sold. Currently has 6Bn in sell orders.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 174Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~145 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 128 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 156 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 69Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 17.2 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.5% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 62 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 10.6Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

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 7.9Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably. I frequently find I struggle for motivation to fly around a region collecting a million here, 3 mil there, so I am thinking of changing this to being a selling character. Being just 2 jumps from Amarr he could even do his own hauling, buying from there and selling in Tash-Murkon Prime. Will partly depend on how the Sobaseki seller ramps up.

Manufacturing Character

Nothing has happened on this character recently. I want to ramp up my build queue a bit this month though.

Adjustment, a mistake, and big write-downs

So, I've basically not logged in this month until yesterday. I'm not really sure why, partly been busy with work and gardening/doing things around the house. Partly I've been playing some Classic WoW for a bit of variation, partly I've just not had the same motivation to log in.

All that meant that when I did log in I was greeted with this on my skill point seller:

Oh dear. Over a week of no skill training at all! On a character with +5 implants! I promptly extracted 4 extractors worth of skills and sold them on the market, and set up my queue again. Skill points aren't worth what they once were, with the price of PLEX dropping but this is only meant to cover the PLEX cost of my 4th account, so the exact ISK amount doesn't really matter.

Skill points is a nice segue into my other mistake, one that's lead to a huge write down in my valuation. On the same character, I used to trade Large Skill Injectors prior to the broker relations change. I would buy from 1 jump buy orders in Perimeter, and sell them either in Jita or Amarr, Amarr being the higher margin but slower moving market. This worked well, until the changes came in, and the value of PLEX, and therefore Skill Injectors, dropped continuously. I had a sell order up for 30 skill injectors for 1079 mil each in Amarr at the time. As they never sold, I left them hoping the price would rebound and I'd get the sell eventually. This hasn't happened, and when I logged in yesterday I found myself with a lot less in sell orders and 30 injectors sat there. Oh dear.

I decided to bite the bullet and take the hit. It'll leave me with a more realistic valuation anyway.

I flew to Amarr, and put up a sell order at the new value - 777.4mil.

1079 * 30 = 32,370

777.4 * 30= 23,322

So that's a write down in value of 9Bn ISK. Ouch.

Painful, but it's a more accurate reflection of my actual net worth. Overnight 19 of them sold, so I might have to adjust to get rid of the additional 11, and then work out how to re-use that capital. Speaking of capital, I have over 100Bn sitting in wallets. This is a first, but also a bad thing, that 100Bn is earning me nothing! need to up my game significantly. I also carried my highest value blockade runner cargo yet today, at 84Bn! Can't imagine how deflating it'd be to get ganked carrying all that.

I've done my normal trade run and after all of this I'm 5Bn up on the start of the month. If you add on the write down it would be 14Bn. I'd expect to be 22Bn up at this point, so you can really see the hit from not logging in. Going to be a poor month but I won't let it happen again!

May Update

This has been a pretty good month for me in game. I've had slightly more time in game due to a bit of time off over Easter and generally settling into the new routine. I've been really happy to be able to start to ramp up a few new ventures, although there is more to come and I have more plans afoot.

Anyway, my current position:

I currently have 675.8Bn ISK, an increase of 33.3Bn on last month, on a 30 day month as well! It's great to be back making over 1Bn a day. I would have made more than that but the price of PLEX has been crashing:

I have 10,000 PLEX, bought for as much as 4,187,000 ISK. PLEX is currently worth 2,700,000 and falling fast. For every 100,000 ISK price change I gain or lose 1Bn as I have 10,000, and the price has dropped from 3,195,000 over the last month, or about 500,000, which equates to a 5Bn ISK loss for me! If it weren't for that I'd have made 38Bn this month, it would have been record breaking! Alas, my market choices do not occur in a vaccuum, so I have to take the bad with the good.

I suspect the reasons for the drop in PLEX price are twofold. One, CCP has licensed another server in China, and recent changes to Chinese law demand all players play on their own server, not with the rest of the world so Tranquility will be/has lost a chunk of its population. Less demand = lower prices. In addition to that we are in the scarcity phase of resource changes in EVE. There have been nerfs to resists and fighter application, making ratting more challenging/less profitable across EVE. Mining anomalies in null have been significantly reduced in size, and normal minerals removed from high sec moons, reducing the supply of minerals and pushing the price up. All these taken together means that items and ships cost more, and are less effective at earning money, which means people have less to spend on PLEX, which pushed the price down. Where this will balance out to I'm not sure, and it may not until resources are redistributed and a new normal is found.

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Sobaseki Seller

A change! and finally getting this character going. I've set this character up in the IChooseYou Sotiyo in Sobaseki, 1 jump from Jita. Crucially it is in a different region, so items can be sold at a profit vs Jita. I've been training him up as a normal selling character, though dealing with slightly different items to my Hub sellers as Sobaseki is not really big enough to warrant routinely selling implants for hundred of millions. He's primarily been selling things like +3, +4, +5 implants, probe launchers, skillbooks etc. He's got a decent turnover, though I'll be adding more orders and ISK as the month goes on. Currently has 8Bn in sell orders.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 132Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~145 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 120 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 153 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 68Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 17.4 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.5% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 71.2 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 9.5Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

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 7.9Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably. I frequently find I struggle for motivation to fly around a region collecting a million here, 3 mil there, so I am thinking of changing this to being a selling character. Being just 2 jumps from Amarr he could even do his own hauling, buying from there and selling in Tash-Murkon Prime. Will partly depend on how the Sobaseki seller ramps up.

Manufacturing Character

I've finally built my first Raitaru! I spreadsheeted everything up, bought the minerals, set up a public courier contract for 10mil to haul the minerals to Hurj... and then found I was 40,000 Pyerite short. Quick trip from Rens later I was good to go. All in it cost me about 580mil in minerals, fees and couriers, then I hauled it myself to Rens and it sold after 2 days for 650mil. Pretty good return! I need to ramp this up and work out the transport kinks, but I think this is going to be a good background earner, especially once I branch out into other citadels and maybe get my own set up for doing the manufacturing in.

Finally ready to build

I've finally finished training Outpost Construction on my building character, so I went out and bought a Raitaru blueprint for 4Bn from an NPC. I've created a tab in my spreadsheet that totals up the materials needed to build the components to build a Raitaru, I just put in the material cost and it spits out the total cost of a Riataru (minus job fees):

This shows that a Raitaru will cost me about 480mil in materials. I've bought them in Jita and have set up a public courier contract to have them delivered to Hurjafren for 10million. A bit low perhaps but I've seen contracts picked up for 1% before, so here's hoping. If no-one bites I'll transport it myself (I have an Orca and a Charon lying around). I should be able to sell the finished product in Rens for 650mil, or Jita for 570mil. Pretty healthy profit either way. What I'll probably end up doing is producing runs of them and selling one in each trade hub, replacing them as they sell.

This has also freed up my Sobaseki trader to do some skilling up which he desperately needs. I've had pretty decent success with a few items from Jita, so I'm looking forward to ramping up his items for sale with more orders from training.

This weekend I also managed to get some PvPing in for the first time in a year! I joined a thrasher roam  and got on a couple of kills before being primaried and then a Ferox fleet that turned into a bashing op for some annoying neighbours Astrahus shield timer. It was great to have a bit of a change of pace and I'm hoping to fit a bit more in as the lockdown continues.

https://zkillboard.com/character/1340716799/

Feels great to be finally making good on some plans I've been talking about for 6 months!

Surgical Strike

CCP is coming in thick and fast with major game changing updates! Next up on the 15th April is Surgical Strike, which makes some huge changes to combat across the game.

The first, and most wide ranging, change is to lower the effectiveness of ALL resistance modules by 20%. So for an adaptive invulnerability field II, currently it gives 30% shield resistances, after the change it will give 24%. This is a massive hit to EHP of pretty much every ship in the game (freighters don't use resist modules, but everything else can). This is ostensibly to reduce the survivability of caps and supercaps, but will have a drastic effect on every ship in the game. I'm in favour of of more ships dying, more turnover is better for the economy and my wallet. I just hope this doesn't lead to people being too risk averse since losses will likely be a bit more expensive than previously.

There are changes to super carriers, removing their light fighters and adding another set of heavies whilst reducing the ability of heavies to track smaller ships. Big fan of these changes, more DPS against caps and less against subcaps means they have a proper place as cap killers and are less of a ship of all trades. I've never owned a super and have always fancied having a Nyx to rat in as well as PvP, but I guess I'll just have to use one for PvP when the time comes.

Next is subcap rebalancing. Battleships receive a buff to HP and scan res, which is great, and some T2/3 cruisers get nerfed. I'm not in a great position to comment on the rebalancing, so I'll leave that to people who are better at that sort of thing.

Buff to T2 short range ammo increasing their damage by 15%. This combined with the resistance changes has the potential to be massive. Not for fleet fights, but for ganking. I don't have overly strong opinions on this but I will have to re-asses my Crane fit.

My Crane for highsec hauling is currently fit with the following:

[Crane, Lornor's Crane]
Damage Control II
Inertial Stabilizers II

EM Ward Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I

I've been using this for a long time and it has never been ganked. It currently provides 41,679 EHP. Typical Blockade runner roulette attempts in high-sec consist of 3 Tornados. A Tornado alpha stike hitting perfectly does 14,000 damage roughly. Therefore 3 tornados hitting perfectly do 42,000 damage. The odds of all 3 hitting perfectly is slim so this fit I have can tank most normal gank attempts, and I have on several occasion with one particularly scary attempt getting me to 30% hull.

After the update though a tornado is likely to be able to do 16,100 damage. Meaning I'll have to tank 48,300, with the bonuses from resists reduced. I could (and likely will) spend a billion or so pimping the modules to faction/deadspace variants to get there, and possible invest in some implants as well. I suspect at least initially the gankers will be emboldened to try more often as most people are lazy and will not update fits, and when I'm typically carrying 30-40Bn I don't want to lose it!

From an overall economy perspective I support these changes. More destruction is good for the game and if more abyssal runners are losing ships then there should be more demand for the kind of wares I sell. I only hope that the resultant slight scarcity doesn't push people into being more risk averse on a large scale which would tank demand and then we'd really be in trouble. Really, the health of the economy, and the game, will rely very heavily on how they handle resource distribution. Null blocks need something to fight over. If CCP can redistribute resources in such a way that provokes conflict and triggers wars then great! If Goons can still quite happily stay in Delve and rat and mine to their hearts content then I worry for demand, and if the economy fails, the game probably fails as well. I am glad that CCP are addressing this though, and I'm optimistic about the final stage, resource distribution.

I'm all alone....Trek

For some time now, I've wanted to have a character with really good faction standings with all 4 empires, for the purpose of trading high-value, high-turnover, low-margin items like PLEX and skill injectors. The Broker Relations changed kind of destroyed that idea, with relisting fees being what they are I just don't see it as being worth my while.

So that mean finding something else for my character to do. He doesn't currently have very many skills, in fact he has almost no trade skills at all yet as his limited training was driven towards completing missions to raise standing. He's also sitting behind my manufacturing character in the pecking order who has another 6 days of training to go before I switch.

Regardless, I've decided what I'm going to try. Inspired in part by a player on the Market Discussion forums who is trying to create his own markets outside the trade-hubs in high-sec. Judging by his EVE-Mogul leaderboard standings he's doing rather well. I'm also aware that I have limited time at the computer playing games, even with the lockdown. Being a homeowner is a never ending list of jobs it seems.

So, I had the idea to try and add another selling character to my roster. I don't want to add much if any hauling time, ideally I want something haulable. I also want a region with pretty high market activity. I already operate in all the main hub regions (including The Citadel if you count Perimiter) so the next one down the list in terms of activity is Lonetrek.

Sitting next door to Jita, Lonetrek is a large region of predominately high-sec, with some low-sec systems. Proximity to Jita makes hauling extremely easy, either to do myself, or contract if I buy bulky items. The market is smaller then Perimeter, but still pretty large. The station I have chosen to set up shop in is the "IChooseYou Market and Industry" Citadel in Sobaseki:

This has a Broker fee of 1%, partly mitigating my lack of skilling, and is where most of the PLEX trade for the region happens, so is my best bet for making sales. I'm going to be trading slightly different items to my other sellers due to the limited traffic. I'll be looking at more probe launchers, rigs, learning implants, that sort of thing. I only have 13 trade slots to start with, but that'll kick up soon. I'm hoping this is a low effort way to increase my stagnating returns!

April Update

This has been a very weird month, as I'm sure you can imagine, but I'm going to keep this all strictly game related, aside from the fact that working from home has allowed me to take a little more advantage of what would be my commuting time for EVE. This hasn't actually been all that much yet though as work has been very busy. I've got a bit of time off coming up though and I plan to take a proper break and enjoy myself!

All that aside, my current position:

I currently have 642.5Bn ISK, an increase of 27.4Bn on last month. This is still a dip on my highs of over 1Bn a day, though it's a lot better than last month. It feels like things are starting to settle after the market changes and I can take a little bit of stock.

For my part, I've continued my business of buying items in Jita with at least a 10, ideally 20% profit margin and transporting them to Amarr, Rens, Dodixie and Hek for sale. This still accounts for most of my business and is largely unchanged. The market changes mean that I pay a larger amount of ISK to update my sell orders, so I have to think about whether it is worth adjusting them or not. Since the change I've started letting orders of 1 implant or module go, in the hopes that I get subsequent sales (I tend to sell in piles of 3). After initially being quite cautious about adjusting my orders though I've started to be a bit more aggressive like I used to, I might pay a little more in fees but I'll get the sale faster and can recycle the money. This seems to have worked as my turnover is up this last week. I've trained advanced broker relations to V on all sell characters to mitigate this, and with my margins the costs really aren't that prohibitive. I suspect part of the turnover is due to people being at home more due to lockdowns around the world, so I'd expect more in game activity for the next few months.

The extra training has meant that I haven't been able to sell and extract SP to even out my PLEX cost for account 4, so in a normal month you could add 1.8Bn onto my earned total.

Speaking of PLEX, the price has been slipping recently. I suspect this is largely due to the offer of 50% PLEX + multi-character-training, and the resource scarcity changes meaning some people are not PLEXing their armies of null sec miners. I anticipate an uptick once redistribution changes kick in and people adapt to the new meta. The flip side of this is mineral prices are jumping, which I've not managed to work out hot to take advantage of (I missed the boat to buy a bunch of Tritanium). I should have been more on the ball for this, but oh well.

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Skill Point Trader

Not sure if this is actually going to be a skill point trader any more. TBC.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 110Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~159 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 120 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 157 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 71Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 16.8 Billion. Thinks are starting to move on this character, which is great! Feeling a lot more positive about this.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.5% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 68.7 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 7.4Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

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 7.3Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably. I haven't touched this character at all this month. Another thing to correct. So much to do, so little time!

Manufacturing Character

I was all ready to go with this character, at long last! and then..I didn't have the skills trained. Currently training Anchoring V then Citadel Construction.

Time to Build a Citadel! ... or not

My office has been closed for the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic, and likely will be for some time. The result of this is I'm working from home which I don't like doing for long periods but it's hardly the end of the world considering.

The upside of this is the time I would normally spend commuting I can now spend playing games!

I've done a bit of sorting out of my trading the last couple of days, and today I turned to my manufacturing character. my Structure component blueprints finished ME 8 research a while ago, so I finally delivered them today:

Going to ME 9 would take 122 days. I'm not waiting for that. So I set out and spreadsheeted up the totals to build a Raitaru, it takes 1 of each component so it's quite straightforward. Pleased with myself I was ready to set off to buy a Raitaru blueprint and the requisite materials, when I noticed I don't have Outpost Construction trained...

I also don't have anchoring trained, which needs to be at V....

I'm currently training Advanced Broker Relations V on the Hek trader on that account, with 10 days left. Once that's done I can switch to going for outpost construction, which will take another couple of weeks. So I'm actually about 3 weeks away from starting to build my first citadel.

Woops. This is something I could have easily resolved if I'd checked properly months ago. Ah well, I guess I'll just have to be patient. 

Next up, working out exactly what to do with the third character on this account. The plan was to trade skill injectors with slim margins across the trade hubs, but that's not really feasible after the market changes. I'm currently thinking another regional trader, but I may have a lightbulb moment before I put that into action.

Broker Relations D-Day

Today the March update was released, with the new Broker Relations changes dropping. The full patch notes can be found here:

https://www.eveonline.com/article/q6z2qy/patch-notes-for-march-2020-release

I've also been working from home today, and managed to use the time I would normally be commuting to finally get a little bit of EVE in. I decided priority number one was to update my sell orders before the patch dropped, allowing me to do this for 100ISK rather than 1-2%. I managed to get 2.5 characters out of 4 done this way, as well as both my station traders. Not too bad. Having the rest to do allowed me to see the new mechanics in action, and make my first mistake very early in the new patch. 

The mistake I made is related to the 4 significant digits rule. I had a sell order for (I think) 149,999,999.98 ISK. There was an order below me on 149,999,999.97 ISK. I did my usual right click -> modify -> use the scroll wheel to bring the cents down, and hit enter. I expected this to put me at 149,900,000 ISK. Instead, it rounded up to 150,000,000 ISK, and charged me about 8 million for to the privilege. Whoops. Although I think that the final window should tell you what it's going to round your order to, rather than doing it afterwards. Bad UI design CCP.

I finally remembered to log in and set "Advanced Broker Relations" to 5 on as many traders as possible as well. I already had it to 5 on a couple of characters, 4 on a couple more, and 0 on everyone else. Could have been more prepared there. 

The formula for working out the relist charge is as follows:

• BR is the character's effective Broker Fee rate at the station/structure (factoring in skills/standing/settings as appropriate)
• RD is the character's Relist Discount rate (factoring in Advanced Broker Relations skill)
• Fee to create a new order at price P (this is unchanged):
• Fee = BR * price
• Fee to modify an existing order, changing price from P1 to P2:
• Fee = max(0, BR (P2 - P1)) + (1 - RD) BR * P2

CCP have given the following examples:

Example #1:

• Character has Broker Rate of 3% (from skills/standings) and has a Relist Discount of 60% (from Advanced Broker Relations skill)
• Character creates a sell order for 2,000,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 60,000 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • BR * 2,000,000 = 60,000
• Character then drops the price to 1,950,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 23,400 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • 0 + (1-RD) BR 1,950,000 = 23,400
    • (In this case, the delta is negative, so the first part of the fee is 0)
• Character then drops the price again to 1,900,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 22,800 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • 0 + (1-RD) BR 1,900,000 = 22,800
• These two modifications cost them a total of 46,200 ISK

Example #2:

• Character has Broker Fee of 3% (from skills/standings) and has a Relist Discount of 60% (from Advanced Broker Relations skill)
• Character creates a buy order for 2,000,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 60,000 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • BR * 2,000,000 = 60,000
• Character then raises the price to 2,050,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 26,100 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • BR (2,050,000 - 2,000,000) + (1-RD) BR * 2,050,000 = 1,500 + 24,600 = 26,100
• Character then raises the price again to 2,100,000 ISK. They are charged a fee of 26,700 ISK, calculated as follows:
  • BR (2,100,000 - 2,050,000) + (1-RD) BR * 2,100,000 = 1,500 + 25,200 = 26,700
• These two modifications cost them a total of 52,800 ISK

I tried to input my own values for a change, but couldn't come up with the same fee CCP is charging. I think it stems from not knowing my "BR", but when I change an order from 58,700,000 to 58,900,000 I get charged 895,500 ISK for the pleasure. That works out at just over 1.5% by the way. When I can work through an example clearly I will on here. 

What I can say from all this is that I don't think station trading is dead. Moving stuff from hub A to B and selling is definitely not dead, I just have to be careful about order updating. I may up my acceptable margins to accommodate a few price adjustments. What I may do is change the plan for my character I was meant to be grinding standings for. The plan was to trade high volume, low margin items like skill injectors within and across hubs. This looks like it'll be even more challenging with these changes, so I may get him into blockade runners and use him to region trade in Lonetrek in a similar way to how I'm doing in Tash-Murkon. We shall see.

Interesting times to be sure, really not sure how this will shake out.

March Update

This has been a month where I've managed very little in game, which is a shame because there's a lot of changes coming to EVE - and especially the market - that deserve writing about and that if I had been clever I could have used for some speculation. This post is not about that though, though I intend to jot down some thoughts and predictions at some point. This is just a monthly update though.

Storms have been ravaging the UK, and as I live in a fairly rural area we've been hit with a few instances of power issues. This was most annoying for storm Ciara, as I had all the time in the world that weekend but couldn't reliably keep my computer on or have reliable internet access. As such I managed a single trade run this month, with the odd bit of station trading. I'm strongly considering re-evaluating doing my own hauling in order to save myself the time. I've had a bit of success with public contracts between the hubs, but I haven't tried any for 10s of Billions yet. Might be worth an experiment. Anyway, rambling excuses out of the way, my current position:

I currently have 615.4Bn ISK. This is 20.1Bn more than last month. ISK per hour at the keyboard this is really good, but as a month to month it's pretty bad, and reflects that I basically didn't play at all this month. On my single trade run I was transporting over 84Bn ISK in a single blockade runner - an extraordinarily risky prospect! Fortunately there were no issues and no-one so much as targetted me.

All this means though that my other plans haven't been touched. I haven't done any rep grinding on my proposed skill-injector trading character, although with the broker relations changes that have been announced I need to rethink my plan for him anyway. My structure parts blueprints have finished researching, but I haven't touched them yet. That's an evening all its own. I'd love to spend more time playing, but we'll see if that happens.

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Skill Point Trader

 Still grinding, a long way to go before this guy really gets going. I've completed the Caldari careers missions, and 1 of the 3 sets of Gallente. A long way to go here. This one really underlines how little time I get to play!

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 75Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~154 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 116 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 152 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub in Hek and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Currently on 75Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which isn't too difficult.

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 15.4 Billion. Thinks are starting to move on this character, which is great! Feeling a lot more positive about this.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, with 0.5% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump.

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 66.2 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. He also farms SP and sells injectors on the market.

Horde Station Trader

Station trading in the Horde Keepstar in R10-GN. I set him up with 1Bn and he's currently at 6.7Bn.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

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 6.4Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably. I haven't touched this character at all this month. Another thing to correct. So much to do, so little time!

Manufacturing Character

My latest character, pretty new. Currently has 11 building slot and 10 lab slots. Finished the research of component blueprints to ME8. Time to finally buy a raitaru blueprint and build a citadel! The plan will be to sell the items produced by this character in the 5 trade hubs I sell in.