Mission Log 46

45.5 said I was going to work on getting to the next rank over the weekend. I did that. Kind of. I went from 80% to 90%. I could have gotten to the next level but I took more of a break from gaming this weekend that I thought I would. Spent most of Saturday with dogs. And that’s nice. Sunday, though…well…Sunday was all Elite.

All of that 10% increase in Federal Rank came from Sunday morning. The Avenging Hammer’s discord was active and the veterans were sharing tips with a bunch of our newer members when in walks d20monkey (here he is on twitter). To say d20monkey is a good friend of mine is an understatement. Be sure to check out his webcomic and links to his stuff on his site. I can’t recommend Karthun: Lands of Conflict enough. It’s an amazing setting.

He’s had his eye on Elite Dangerous for some time now and finally all the planets aligned for him to give it a go.

Now, anyone that’s stepped foot in this world knows that starting out is a pain. I love helping new players get acclimated cause there’s just so much you have to know and maintain in order to not die horribly every 5 minutes. When I started, I had to walk up hill to flight school every morning in 10 feet of snow and it was 100 degrees in the shade, IF I WAS LUCKY!

I googled so much.

But still….when you get passed that initial frustration of figuring out how to do stuff in the game and you settle down and fly a wobbly line towards the edge of a crater or you flip over and get all turned around…you realize “I’m in a spaceship.” And it all starts to feel worth it. For all it’s frustrations, Elite lets me fly around space in cool spaceships. And I will always love it for that.

So how did d20monkey, newly minted recruit of The Avenging Hammers do?

In a word, amazing.

He chose the Horizons starter location which was a lot further out from the normal one (relative to Hammer Orbital).

After we got him qualified for basic flight (re-mapping joystick commands, launching, docking, etc.) I tool him to the closest station to give the mail slot a go. Here he is lining it up.

He made it through no problem on the first go. Landing was a little try the first time. His first landing practice was at a planet side port where it’s easier to get your bearings. Stations like this can get confusing inside real quick if you’re not used to it. But he made it. And subsequent landings in stations seem to be getting better.

Now that had practiced docking (and was in a better position to respawn if something bad happened…) we set off for a local RES to make some money. When we were trying to leave the station we couldn’t figure out why he was going so slow…until I got a look underneath him.

The RES in the system was a bust. No one was wanted. We set out for the system’s Nav Beacon and found it to be a bust too. I have a theory that since this is a starting system, maybe there’s not a lot of hostile ships? I don’t know. We may have just instanced weird. Not able to find anything, I showed him how to navigate to another system in the star map and high jump. We had a lot better luck there. We pulled in some cash and then headed to the closest station to turn in bounties.

Around that point I had to log off for dinner. When I got back, I bought a sidewinder and checked to make sure he could afford to refit it and make to to Hammer Orbital. I left instructions in the discord on what I did as far as upgrades go so he could do it on his own. Valthonis flew his newly minted Hammer Mercy out to the station to be on hand in case he ran into any trouble. Around the time I was wrapping up my Star Trek game, I got this text.

d20monkey has arrived.

I know I said no more spending last week…but today I’m going to build a version of Hammer Mercy so we have two rescue vehicles in the fleet. Then I’ll take it out to Felicity Farseer to mod the FSD. The week ahead will be focused on ranks and money as per usual with breaks for bounty hunting with recruits to help build funds.

Here’s a ship I built just for Valthonis. He knows why.

Here’s a station I just thought looked really amazing.

Here’s how far Gamercow was from home at some point last night. #ComeHomeCow

Hey, how was your weekend?