Moving into the PLEX market

A PLEX is a fairly valuable item that (for such an expensive item) moves in high volume. PLEX are currently going for over 600 million ISK with around 3,000 a day being sold in Jita alone.

No doubt many of those sales were actually the same PLEX sold twice (bought and resold on station at a profit) but even if we assume half were bought for resale (I doubt it's that many) that'd still leave 1,500 a day moving on Jita.

What is PLEX?

A Pilot License Extension (PLEX) is an item that adds 30 days of game time to your EVE Online account. PLEX can be purchased with real money from CCP's website here. PLEX can be converted from any game time code and can be traded on the EVE market in game.

Players can also use PLEX to:

Perform a Character Transfer.
Perform a Character Resculpt.
Convert PLEX to Aurum and use Aurum to purchase apparel and cosmetic accessories for characters from the Noble Exchange.
Enable Dual Character Training for 30 days.

Of course PLEX are often used to trade real money for ISK. Many players will buy a PLEX for real money, then sell it on the market for ISK.

It's great for players with plenty of real cash because it saves them time grinding ISK in game and it's great for those with plenty of playing time (and ISK) because they don't have to spend any real money to pay for their subscription(s).

That's a win win situation for everyone involved. It's something anyone can do without breaking any rules and risking getting banned like they would with RMT (Real Money Trading) transactions.

The PLEX market

On the main hubs and many secondary hubs the PLEX market is heavily camped by no-lifers and bots constantly posting and updating buy/sell orders. Combined with a high price this makes it a tough market to break into, especially on the busier stations.

In the past I avoided trading PLEX because they're so heavily camped and tie up a fairly significant amount of ISK. I bought PLEX one at a time and only when necessary to pay for account subscriptions or dual training.

I never bought PLEX for resale. Lately, with 12 accounts and usually at least 3 dual training I've been buying a PLEX about every 2 days on average and getting to know the PLEX market in many different regions better.

My Strategy

I can buy PLEX at good prices in several regions fairly reliably so I'm going to buy a few extra for resale and see if I can resell them in a reasonable timeframe. I've already bought two in about half an hour, posted 1 for resale at an 11% profit and posted a 3rd buy order.

So far I seem to be buying them faster than I can resell them on station but it's too early to be certain of that. If it turns out I can't resell them quickly enough that's no big deal, I got them at a good price and I'll use them to sub accounts in a few days anyhow. Or alternately, my buy price is good enough I could always transport to Jita and sell to buy orders there at a small profit.

I'm going to leave that character logged in for the rest of the day and semi-camp PLEX.

Semi-camping meaning I'm not going to just sit there obsessively checking for cuts every 5 minutes but I'll check it several times throughout the night and cut when necessary. For example, every half hour or so while writing this post and doing other things on the computer, or later tonight during commercial breaks while watching football (Go Riders!).

Assuming it works out well I plan to start buying and selling PLEX in multiple regions. I'd drop a whole bunch of lower end, less valuable items and increase my presence in the PLEX market. That should take far less time and effort on my part than working hundreds of less valuable items does and hopefully it'll increase my ISK per hour too.

Note: October is traditionally when PLEX prices are at their highest. This is when you want to buy PLEX for quick resale. Sitting on them in speculation of even higher prices later would probably be an expensive mistake.

Selling Baggies $100.00 each!

Here's a real life business plan following the brilliant business model of a certain well known Eve Online real money trading gambling business.

1. Buy a box of baggies for a couple bucks.

2. Add some weed (or parsley if you're a scammer) to each bag.

3. Sell the bags for $100.00 each and rake in the profits.

You can't get busted for selling drugs because you aren't selling weed. You're just selling baggies (which is perfectly legal) and giving the weed away as a free bonus reward for your valued baggie customers.

If you put parsley in your baggies instead of weed your customers have no legal recourse to do anything about it since all they paid for was a baggie. Even if they wanted to do something illegal about it they couldn't because you're hiding behind a compu... er wait...nm.

<note for the humor impaired - this is satire>

RMT or Gambling?

Somerblink has been in a bit of hot water over their RMT (Real Money Trading) business lately. I didn't feel it was worth posting about before. However Somer's defenders have been making some incredibly stupid claims. In particular the claim that Somer isn't involved in RMT at all, it's just gambling.

just gambling? Really?

In most countries illegal gambling is a federal crime if done as a business. Federal crimes are serious crimes with big fines and long jail sentences.

There's no doubt Somerblink is a business and does make money. If they're making their money from gambling rather than from RMT that would make it illegal gambling.

You can't have it both ways. They're either an RMT operation or an illegal gambling operation. If they're an RMT operation they're just breaking the rules of the game and risking being banned from the game. However if they're an unlicensed gambling operation they're subject to real life law with big fines and long jail sentences.

It's not very bright defending something that's merely against the rules of a game by claiming it's actually a serious crime in real life.

Another question that's not being asked and should be is why was an infamous "illegal" (not quite the right word but close enough) Real Money Trader like Markee Dragon ever even allowed to be in involved in the GTC program in the first place?

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Markee Dragon and anyone affiliated with him (Somerblink for one) are involved in shady business.

Blockade Runners Revisited

I've totally loved Blockade Runners ever since getting My First Blockade Runner a few months back. Since then the more I get the more I like them. A month ago I had 6 Prowler pilots, in the 30 days since I've trained up another 7 for a grand total of 13 Blockade Runner pilots in Prowler Fleet now (they all fly Prowlers). Number 14 is a month away and after that I'll have more coming at a rate of about 1 every 2 weeks for (at least) several months yet.

The thing I like best about BRs is how incredibly safe they are to fly. For the most part high sec gankers seem to completely ignore BRs and even in low/null they're quick and agile enough I haven't had any trouble yet.

In the entire time I've been flying BRs (over 3 months now) I think someone tried to gank one of them in high sec once. I was AFK on auto-pilot at the time, but when I came back I noticed I had an aggression timer so someone must've taken a pot shot at me. I doubt he did much more than scratch me though (if that even) since shields, armor and hull were all at full.

I assume that means gankers really don't like attacking anything they can't cargo scan first, especially not if it's something they can't pop with a single volley from a cheap ship. In other words, yeah sure being immune to cargo scans sounds good, but the reality is it's even better (much better) than it sounds.

I do expect I'll eventually run into some crazy suicide ganker who just doesn't care and goes for it anyhow. Or I'll get caught in low/null eventually. It hasn't happened yet though. When it finally does I'll just consider it a cost of doing business. Even if he gets extremely lucky and nails me with a big load worth billions.

Another thing that's great about BRs is the Covert Ops Cloaking Device. The ability to warp while cloaked is huge especially when travelling in low and null.

I also really like BRs for the low alignment time, high warp speed (which is going to get even faster in the next patch) and decent tank (7k - 15k depending on skills and active hardeners). The warp speed greatly reduces travel time (especially when flown manually) while the alignment time and tank make you harder to kill.

The good sized cargo hold (4.06k m3) is nice too. That's more than enough to ensure I can almost always pickup everything in a region in a single run without having to drop anything off to make room for more. Once (and only once) I had a capital remote repper in cargo taking up 4k m3 all by itself, that's the only time I had to drop something off before I could finish doing pickups in a BR. I've since stopped buying capital remote reppers altogether (for several reasons but mainly for that one).

[Prowler fit - 4 second Align]

Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Festival Launcher

Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I

That's the fit my Prowler pilots start out with. With mediocre IIIs and IVs in applicable tank, navigation and agility skills it's stats are:

Tank: around 10k with invulns on, 7k with invulns off

Alignment time: under 4 seconds with MWD off (under 6 seconds with MWD on)

Cargo capacity: 4.06 m3

speed: 2300 - 2400 m/s

warp speed: 9 AU

The nanos and polycarbons get alignment time under 4 seconds with mediocre agility skills. With Evasive Maneuvering V you can drop one of the Nanos for a DC-II increasing tank by nearly 50% while still keeping alignment time under 4 seconds. With both Evasive Maneuvering and Spaceship Command at V, you can drop one of the polycarbons for another rig too.

In that case I like replacing 1 Polycarbon with a Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer (increases warp speed) but with the warp speed changes coming in the next patch a Warp Core Optimizer (reduces cap usage for initiating warp) might be better. That'll depend on just how much cap usage goes up due to the shorter warp times.

With all Vs in applicable tank, navigation and agility skills, replacing 1 nano with a DC-II and 1 Polycarbon with a Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer, the stats are:

Tank: 14.7k with invulns and DC on, 7.58k with active tank mods off.

Alignment time: 3.99 seconds with MWD off (5.99 seconds with MWD on)

Cargo capacity: 4.06 m3

speed: 2319 m/s

warp speed: 10.8 AU

If you want more tank you could replace the Polycarbon with a Medium Core Defense Field Extender. And though I wouldn't recommend it, if you want/need even heavier tank you could always replace the MWD with a Large Shield Extender II and about double the tank (28.4k with all Vs in applicable skills and an LSE II but no MCDFE).

I intentionally left one high slot empty because I don't do anything with BRs besides transport stock between stations (on autopilot more often than not). Others might find a probe launcher, salvager or something else useful but for me even if I did put something there I wouldn't use it anyhow. The only thing I'd consider is a Covert Cyno and that only in a covert fleet with Bombers, Black Ops and Recon ships.

Edit: As suggested by Noizy I put a Festival Launcher in the empty high slot.

Mailbag - Regional Pickup Question

The Question

Re: Re: Trade
From: Tubrav Sadarts
Sent: 2013.10.18 02:19
To: Moxnix Induli,

I had another quick question too; how do you deal with all the pickups? I have a large amount of 10-system buy orders in a few regions, and when I go to pick up all the accumulated items every few days, it's on the order of 70 jumps per region. Do you do this constantly?

My Reply

I only do pickups when there's stuff worth enough to make picking it up worth my time. Just how much it takes to be "worth my time" keeps getting higher as I get richer too.

Trying to pick everything up all the time would be so time consuming it'd drive me nuts!

In the very beginning 1 million was more than enough to travel across the entire region and 100k was enough to travel several jumps.

A few months later I wouldn't even undock unless I was looking at picking up at least close to 100 mil in total and I wouldn't bother picking up from any station unless it either had at least a few million worth of stuff to pickup or I was already in the system anyhow.

Now I don't usually bother undocking until a character has at least 500 million or so to pickup without having to make much more than 5 or 10 jumps. I won't do very many more jumps unless there's a billion or two that needs picking up.

I'll often use public courier contracts to help cut down on the travel time too. Anything worth much over 500 mil is usually worth couriering.

I rarely bother picking up from stations that don't have very much of value on them unless I'm already in the system either picking up from another station in system or passing through on the way to somewhere else.

Sometimes I'll spend half a day afk autopiloting to clean up a bunch of little stuff on one character. But that's mostly afk flight time with maybe 10 minutes or so in total where I'm actually at the keyboard.

Flying blockade runners helps a lot too. They're much faster than any other cargo ships, quite safe on autopilot (in high sec anyhow) and carry quite a lot more cargo than any combat ship with speed anywhere near the same ballpark.

What's going on?

No doubt you've all seen it many times before but I get a real kick out of this little clip!

It's just freaking hilarious! Anyone know where it originated?

On another note, this has been a quiet month for me so far. I haven't done very much other than updating skills training queues and getting prowler fleet's numbers up (expect an update on prowler fleet in a few days).

My market activity has been mostly passive (for the most part I'm just letting orders sit without updating). It looks like I'll still be making a pretty decent profit for the month though (already up 16 billion now).

Contest Prize Feedback

I've been considering organizing and sponsoring a contest for quite a while. Without giving away exactly what the contest theme would be let's just say it'd be combat oriented and held in null but open to everyone. A major issue for me is deciding what would be appropriate prizes to hand out. I'd want to give out plenty of prizes, including some nice ones.

I'd also want to encourage both newer players and PVE players to hop into combat ships, head for null and participate.

The first contest would be sort of a test of concept with a total prize budget of up to about 20 billion ISK. It would be entirely self funded with donations neither required nor requested.

Some possible prizes I'm considering include:

Dreadnaughts
Carriers

Raven Navy Issue
Rattlesnake
Tengu
Manticore
Hound
Drake
Tornado
Catalyst (likely in stacks)

ISK prizes in various amounts
PLEX

I'm looking for feedback from readers on what you think would be the best prizes. Please include both large and small prizes. Feedback on suggestions from others would be very useful too, especially reasons why you think a particular thing would or would not make a good prize.