Frustratiosed…

I got an early finish today, so out in the Vital Spark it was to hunt for booty… booty belonging to other people, that is. Or so I thought.

I first regrouped and dropped some modules off at Sasta before logging on an older character and extracting two injectors from him to augment some skills I’ve had cooking for a while.

First stop, Hasiari and a seemingly quiet J170552, replete with Sansha relic sites. It was time to log on an alt and plunder. I started hacking the first can and as if by magic, an Astero decloaked around 15km away from me. I raced to get the Vital Spark back to the pounce I’d pre bookmarked but on instinct I warped my alt out and the Astero cloaked and warped away as I landed. What a cock-up. I checked the pilot’s killboard and he’d flown the odd juicy fit with an equally juicy pod. I was pretty annoyed. That’s what happens when you rush. Most importantly the Astero pilot hadn’t seen me, but what I had noticed when spamming dscan was the brief flash of a Stratios. Hmm…

I pulled my alt out of system, not wanting to bait the Astero further for fear of getting third partied by the Stratios, and so decided to sit and wait. Around five minutes later the Astero decloaked at zero on the site and started hacking.

Guess what happened next?

Bob has blessed me with wisdom, it seems.

I warped down to around 30km off the Stratios, decloaked and dropped drones to try and get on the Astero kill. Sadly he was dead before I could engage and the Stratios then decided I was also on the menu. I however had different plans and retired to a safe distance, opening a convo with Fritze and asking him to share the kill and pod mails. No bling, sorry Fritze.

Exiting the hole I resolved to carry on hunting, but was ultimately distracted by my lust for loot and so I saddled up the Anathema and headed out to Derelik lowsec to do some hacking of my own. It was pretty bleak. I dived into around six or seven holes along the way and found little of interest, but returning by way of Arena I stumbled upon an Emerald Nebula so headed back to Sasta to pick up Lord Huffington, my favourite Prospect.

Pretty soon I’d loaded up on Lime Cytoserocin from the single cloud and headed back to dump and take a break. I mean drop my cargo off, of course.

Post the school run I jumped back into the Vital Spark and headed out towards Ivar, picking up a DED site I’d never run before, the 2/10 Angel Creo-Corp Mining Complex. I had the wrong drones but it wasn’t hard to run, just fiddly due to all those frigates. No drop today, but interesting nonetheless.

Holes seemed to be hard to come by, a hisec-hisec in Ivar back to Sasta (Bob clearly trying to tell me something) and a C5 offered little promise of adventure and killmails. I docked briefly to refit and run a Covert Research site and decided to stick around and watch the pretty lights, this was made even more entertaining by a Probe warping in just before the guards showed up, realising his mistake and hightailing it out just as they landed.

After dinner I went on the hunt again, entering J112250 in Yuzier and settling in on another Sansha relic site whilst I Netflxed. There was a little traffic from an adjoining C2, a Helios and a Tayra made a few runs, but nothing else really piqued my interest. An occasional warp to the Fort in system showed that the residents appeared to be absent and before long the static to Yuzier had closed, being replaced by one to Jeras. This promised some traffic due to its location and it wasn’t long before an Imicus showed up and started scanning.

I settled on my pounce and watched her hack a few cans but as it was getting late I decided to take her before she’d finished running most of them. I pulsed dscan one last time before hitting warp and imagine my surprise when I saw this…

Again? C’mon Bob. Really?

Well I wasn’t going to lose this one.

And that was that. No time for pods today, I know my limits and they don’t include taking on a Stratios in a non-kiting Astero… which is something else I’ve noted is quite popular and I have yet to try. I’m going to need some shield skills first though.

Fly safe o/

F.