The 4 Billion Isk Golem: A Tale of Woe

This is actually a caper from last week, but I was a little preoccupied with all the Fanfest-related goodies over the weekend (as were all of you I’m sure) to get to putting on paper. Better with age, like a fine wine or Sean Connery, its now here for your enjoyment.

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Some of my like-minded scallywag peers in this game tend to advocate wanton destruction and chaos with the end goal of sowing fear and paranoia rather than monetary profit. Personally, I couldn’t agree more with the first part of that, and I’m even into the second part to a certain degree. But I can also say without shame that I am very much motivated by a deep-seeded interest in isk; more specifically lining my pockets and filling my Scroog-McDuck-sized swimming pool with it. So, as I’ve gotten more into the AWOXing game as of late, I’ve taken to stalking and going after more targets of wealth and potentially high returns rather than those purely of opportunity; what can I say, I’m space-greedy.

Continuing on from the “Wolf In The Flock” series, after finally getting booted from In Omnia, my guy was off in search of more trouble. Through various sources and tip-offs though, I’d soon come across DarkHamblett and his 4 billion isk deadspace-fitted Golem, and a plan was put into motion.

Of course (as always) this being Eve, the plan grew a bit more complex than originally intended. For one, my primary AWOX/infiltration guy had a tail he couldn’t seem to shake. Its seems someone from my days in In Omnia still had a very, very sore bottom over getting hosed in the 13 bil Ponzi scheme, and was going out of their way to warn recruiters about my nefarious intentions; even getting me booted in under 20 minutes from the first corp that took me in. Critical eyes are not something you want on you when you’re trying to fly under the radar.

For another thing, I ran the target’s Golem fit through Pyfa, and found that in addition to being ridiculously cap stable, he was shield repping more than 1600 hp/s with his Gist B-Type XL booster, or a disturbing 2800 hp/s overheated.  The fit and the butthurt ex hounding my shadow were the obstacles, but the mark’s lackadaisical sharing of his fit and eagerness to run missions with other corp members were two signs that I had a shot; and I do love a good challenge.

The plan was two-fold: I’d need more than just a Talos for this one, and definitely some neuting power alongside it. I also couldn’t just have my primary guy hanging around in the target’s corp or he’d get called out by my stalker and the jig would be up. Instead, I managed to get a second alt into the corp first with no real bad history, and got him training into a neut-Domi as quickly as possible. The way the corp recruitment UI works now, joining a corp is a two-way agreement; you apply, they accept and send you an offer, and then you accept back. The idea was to get the main shooter a hanging invitation to join so that I could set up the kill with the Domi, and then hit accept and immediately undock with the shooter to commence with the murdering in the face.

The last piece of the puzzle here was that my target only logged into Eve twice a week, on an alternating schedule; the timing would have to be good or I’d end up having my shooter logged off with a suspicious hanging invitation for a week or more. I spent Monday chatting up the target in corp, making nice with him, and learning all about the intricacies of mission running that I never cared to know about, until finally we made plans to go run some level 4s together when he logged in on Wednesday.

My buddy Psychotic Monk, aka Pirate King, agreed to help out in the RR department, and on the day of the plan, we got into position and waited.

And waited.

 

…and then we waited some more.

Domi Alt > we had a mission date and everything =(
Psychotic Monk > How dare he stand you up.
Domi Alt > its like prom all over again

After another 2 hours, it looked like we were indeed getting stood up. Monk headed off for a nap, and I decided it was way too nice a day to spend all of it inside and went for a run.

Somehow, I think my pent up aggression and frustration helped, because I ended up running my best 10 mile time yet (1:19:30). I came home, started a shower and checked Eve; hanging there on my screen was a convo request from the target: “hey sorry I’m late, still want to run some missions?”. I turned off the shower: it was game time.

Scrambling, I tried to wake Monk from his nap to no avail, and started hitting all the intel channels I knew of looking for rep assistance; Quality Assurance guys, Suddenly Ninjas, Ninja Dojo, Belligerent Undesirables pub, and any other evil scheming collection of scumbags I could find. Timing-wise, the hour was late for EU and a little too early for most US timezones, so it was a bit tricky. However, I soon had my buddies Kris from QA and Leffy from SN heading my way as fast as possible while I stalled the target.

Eventually, we were all ready to go: the team had the mission BM, my shooter was in corp and out in space, the Domi was on the gate waiting for the target to finish off the rats in the room, and Monk had just woken up in time to see that this was going down and got into position as well.

What happened next was predictable: I pointed the Golem with the Domi, began the heavy neuting, and brought in the Talos and ludicrous amount of RR I had waiting in the wings. Active tanks, even massive, beefy deadspace ones, are about as good as a wet paper-bag when you’ve got 4 heavy neuts and close to 1100 dps on you, and DarkHamblett’s shiny toy went down like a rock. I pulled my patented “it-was-self-defense-he-attacked-me-first” routine in corp chat, which is guaranteed to devolve the entire conversation into an utterly confusing he said/she said mess and Monk and I went hunting for more targets. Sadly, the rest of the corp logged off or went afk, and eventually, we called it off. I pointed my killers in random directions, let Eve run, and went to grab dinner.

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I didn’t really bother to set an alarm to log in after downtime, but somehow the next day I was still in corp when I logged in. Oddly, a bunch of guys who had been there yesterday while I murdered their corpmate in cold blood were now chatting me up as if nothing had happened, and I grinned; I smelled a trap. Since I knew a.) I was prepared for this, and b.) they most definitely were not, though I’m sure they thought they were, I put up a fleet advert in corp looking for “mission help”. With the Domi and my bud Jedi in RR on standby, I sat in my safe waiting to see what they all brought.

Sadly, it ended up being 3 Drakes instead of anything fancy, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t get my Talos to half structure before RR landed. Between the Talos and the Domi, I kept all 3 ships pinned and neuted out while I worked my way through them, helped by some tremendous reps by Jedi.

An extortion attempt was made for me to leave corp, but they weren’t biting. This time I did set an alarm for downtime, but in what I must say was a very impressive commitment to his corp, one of the directors, at what had to be something like 4:30 am his time, managed to beat me to it and got me booted before I could log in. Well played sirs, well played.

Content with the 4.3-ish billion isk I inflicted upon DarkHamblett and the Praetorian Cohert though (as well as the none-to-shabby 1.5bil drop), I’m now happily in search of a new home; updates to come.

 

-Aiden

 

~ by Aiden Mourn on April 29, 2013.