We are here now at the 13th anniversary of my starting to try and figure out EVE Online. I’m still not there yet. Rather than marking the moment with the usual origin story I have told before, I am going to look at something else. I want to cover where I have lived in New Eden.
The in-game map shows me all the systems I have visited.
My personal map of New Eden
Each little dot of color is a system I have visited, with the size and intensity of the dots representing how often I have been there.
There are systems I have visited many times.
That last visit date is wrong
And there are dots on the map that represent system I have visited just once.
It has been a while
YVSL-2 is a dead end system in Cobalt Edge. The system to which it connects shows that I have visited it twice, so it looks like I didn’t go all that way to get blown up. (Hey, I found the tower kill mail from that op!)
But what the map does not show, at least not overtly, is the places I have called home over the last baker’s dozen years. While people complain that EVE Online doesn’t have housing, a station can end up being more of a home to you than the captain’s quarters could have ever managed. Over the years a series of stations have served as my home in New Eden.
So, in something akin to chronological order, here are the places where I have lived.
Jita Planet IV Moon 4 – Caldari Navy Assembly Plant – The Forge Region
Back when I started playing EVE Online the first stop after the Caldari tutorial was Jita 4-4. I have long theorized that this is why the main trade hub in New Eden is where it is. Rolling up a Caldari gave you an advantage, and everybody who did that ended up with their first agent in the same station. Where else would you sell your mission drops? That is the first station I spent time in.
That has to be hilariously wrong… clone jumps don’t count I guess
It was from this station I was launched on my first mission, the level 1 version of Worlds Collide, in my starter Ibis. I was, of course, blown up immediately. But like many people, that made playing the game about revenge as much as anything. I mined, sold, saved, and went back in a Cormorant and finished the mission before it expired.
This is also where my first cache of junk started. And it remains the place where I dump stuff when I can, because it is the place to sell things. I usually live elsewhere, but I still come home to Jita now and again.
Hagenek Planet V Moon 2 – Caldari Navy Assembly Plant – Lonetrek Region
Even back in 2006 Jita was obnoxiously busy, so I decided to break away from the crowd. I wanted to get far away and go to some remote system and explore the wilds of space. So I went to Hageken, which I can still recall feeling like I had made it to the wild frontier at the time, but which is all of six gates from Jita.
That number looks right
It was there that I started mining, ran missions, and lost my first ships in PvP. I was jet can mining and some Goon… no, really… stole my ore. So I thought I would show him, pulled up in my shiny new mission Caracal, and was promptly blown up. Can flipping and robbery were common, which prompted me both the start dual boxing accounts and to move further away from Jita. So I packed up all I could and headed for Amarr space.
Ebtesham V – Amarr Navy Assembly Plant – Domain Region
Navy assembly plants seemed to have all the best agents back in the day. I moved to Amarr space not just to get away from Jita, but also because I was told you could mine kernite there. I mined and ran missions for quite a stretch in Amarr. Our little corp, the Twilight Cadre, did most of its operations around there, its office being a couple jumps over in Gid.
Spent a lot of time in this area
I also did production, invention, data core research, market games, and my first ventures into WH space from around Ebtesham. (Which I could never pronounce, so we just called it “EBT.”) I still have a lot of stuff in that station, including a mission Raven, some mining barges, a lot of mission loot, and a few of the POS parts Potshot collected for our never realized WH expedition. That was where I got bored of EVE Online and logged off for what have might been for good if CCP hadn’t tempted me back with Incarna. Of course, Incarna only made be quit almost immediately. It seemed I might be done for good.
0P-F3K – Deklein Region
The stations are all gone from null sec, so I don’t know which planet or moon the Amarr Factory Outpost was anchored near, except that it was a gas giant. I gave CCP and EVE Online another chance with the Crucible expansion in late 2011. But I was no less bored with high sec and missions and whatever. The Gaff said I should come join him out in null sec space. He had asked before, but I was always worried about “mah stuff” in high sec. This time I left it all behind, joined TNT, set my home station out in Deklein, and self-destructed to death clone into null sec. Among other things, it was pretty close to VFK-IV, for a long time the coalition staging system.
Happy times in Deklein
There is was that I learned about null sec ratting and mining, and it was from there that I packed up to go off to war, first in the north, then to Delve, and so on. I bought my first capital ship, an Archon carrier, which I still have, and joined my first SIG there, Reavers, of which I am still a member. This was my formative time in null sec.
PBD-0G – Tribute Region
With the coming of the Aegis expansion and Fozzie Sov the CFC, rebranded as the Imperium, consolidated and spread people out. TNT gave up what had been the longest held system in the game and we packed up and moved to Tribute, next door to Circle of Two who acted like we stole their space. I moved all my stuff there, but I was already tired of mining and did not rat very often. I spent most of my time deployed.
Legit low traffic, I would just jump clone in
In one of my few bits of foresight in the game, I packed up most of my stuff in my Archon and jumped out of Tribute less than 24 hours before the mass evacuation was sounded. I chose the system because of what was within jump range, which worked out in the end.
Saranen V Moon 12 – Quafe Company Warehouse – Lonetrek Region
This was far more of a home to me than Tribute, though we did not end up staying all that long. This was, of course, the station where the Imperium retreated during the Casino War.
A brief but active stay
In many ways being in Saranen was a high point for me in the game. Despite our defeat we undocked every day, multiple times a day, took fights, and got what kills we could. But the money couldn’t last and the Quafe Company was talking about raising the rent, so the great migration began. Once again I undocked my carrier and started traveling, jump by jump, to Delve.
NIDJ-K – Delve Region
TNT was given a couple of systems to watch over in Delve. Since every alliance can make a system its capital, it makes sense to hand out a few systems to allies, though GSF still owns the ihub, and the ihub is what matters.
A home in Delve
This is where I settled in once Delve was tamed. I did my ratting here as well as my first real run at Planetary Interaction. I tried to set up PI in PBD, but it wasn’t until we got here that I had time to figure it out.
Life went on, deployments happened, and I got bored. I stopped ratting, pulled up my PI, collected all of my stuff, moved it to an NPC station in Aridia, and decided I was going to give up EVE Online at last. But there was a Reavers deployment, so I figured that would be my last fling before I signed off.
ROIR-Y II Moon 2 – Food Relief Food Packaging – Pure Blind Region
I wasn’t sure if I was going to count this as a home or just an honorable mention as a location. But we were based there for almost a year and went through a series of doctrine changes which ended up with me having enough ships and excess modules and so on that I figured it ought to count.
Number seems low, but we bridged a lot
That eventually built up to what we might call the Keepstar War as it ended up being mostly about deploying, attacking, and defending Keepstars. Freed from any pretense about earning ISK, just logging on for fleets and fights, I was refreshed and felt again like I was part of the bigger tale of New Eden.
1DQ1-2 – Delve Region
No war lasts forever… except Afghanistan maybe… and eventually peace were declared and we all packed up to head home in a giant move op. I followed the path back to Delve and dumped everything in the Keepstar of Dickbutt in 1DQ1-2.
I am indeed here
And so it goes. Those are the places where I have stayed long enough… or in which I have hoarded enough junk… to feel like I really lived there for a while.
Honorable Mentions
Of course, there are places that almost made the cut, systems or stations where I spent time, but which didn’t quite rise to the level of being a home. So, even though this post is clearly long enough already, let me pile on a few more locations.
Gid V – Moon 4 – Imperial Chancellor Bureau Offices – The station nearest to Ebtesham where we could afford to rent an office for our old high sec corp. Still holds most of the POS modules that were stored up for the wormhole expedition that never came to pass.
VFK-IV – Home and staging system for the CFC back in December of 2011, while I lived in 0P-F3K I stored many combat ships and undocked for many fleet ops from the one time Mittanengrad station.
Badivefi VI Moon 2 – Expert Distribution Warehouse – Where Reavers once staged to assail Querious back when Darkness lived there. I still have a pile of special, go fast, Reavers specific fit ships stored there. Shield Ishtars.
ED-L9T – A special location for Reavers, home of the one time Jacket Disbursement Station and scene of the glorious station defense battle.
H-ADOC – Another Reavers deployment system and the source of many fish related puns. I left an alt there to hunt MTUs after we left.
That is about it. There are many other systems that hold memories for me, locations that saw memorable fights or events, but few other places where I have left as much space junk sitting around in storage… unless I start looking at my alts. Those maps… those are a whole story on top of all of this. Maybe some other time.
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