The missions start out rather easy but slowly get more difficult. A couple of the missions gave me a formidable challenge, but I managed to go through them without losing any ships or having to ask others for help. I had to warp out of missions to save my ship a few times. Agent mission rewards for completing the arc sum up to 8 million ISK. Mission time bonuses are pitifully low. Loot and salvage are good compared to the tutorial arcs. End of chapter missions weren't harder than the others and didn't offer any special rewards. Completing the arc didn't yield any epic rewards either, which is a shame.
When I started the arc there were nearly 100 pilots in Arnon and someone asked what are they all doing there. He told the system used to be sleepy backwaters, with local counting around 10. Not all the people were newbies, the novelty had attracted older players as well. Some of them were helping out those having difficulties in their missions, some were recruiting or otherwise advertising their corporation. Soon more came and the can baiting and duelling right next to station formed a constant spectacle. I marked some of the griefers by changing my standings towards them so I could be wary of anything they had jettisoned. When I managed to finish the arc there were already over 200 pilots buzzing in the system. Today local peaked at 300 and lag started to rear it's ugly head.
First one of the more difficult missions was Lair of the snakes from the Automaton impediment chapter. I completed it succesfully in my rifter, but the serpentis pirates gave out a tough fight. In fact, so tough that I started to think about upgrading to a destroyer right away. Soon I bought and fitted the Relentless Kitten (thrasher). Sporting that fine piece of killing machinery I didn't encounter any serious problems until Burning down the hive from the Queens and drones chapter. I closed in on the drones and found my destroyer webified and warp scrambled. I couldn't move or escape and they were eating my fat shields at an alarming rate. I thought I would soon lose the ship, but didn't give up. I concentrated on taking out the scramblers which weren't exactly of the lock and pop variety and warped out as soon as I could, shields completely gone and a dent on the armor. The next run was more manageable and I didn't go into armor.
By the amount of help requests I had witnessed in local chat I thought that Chasing shadows from the Closing in chapter was going to be tough. Nevertheless, I decided to go bravely in my destroyer and found myself facing a battlecruiser supported by a group of frigates! I kept my cool, closed in quickly and started peppering the beast with autocannons. It's shields came down disappointingly slowly. On the bright side, I was orbiting so close it had difficulties dealing damage to me. It used an energy neutralizer and the capacitor was soon empty. My afterburner shut down but luckily the autocannons weren't affected. I was still orbiting fast enough to avoid getting seriously hit and the frigates didn't pose a problem. The battlecruiser went down under my relentless assault.
No comments:
Post a Comment