7k Rifle

Well, i don't have an elaborate exposition in me at the moment, but i found satisfaction in reaching 7k in Rifle skill a few days ago, all of it natural (~171k PEDs medium cells since RDA). My Handgun is at 5100 and has pretty much stayed there since i unlocked Coolness and made the switch. Two years ago, i'd be about halfway to 10k in Rifle by now, but since the big one, the same skilling only gets me to 7k (about halfway to 8k).

My Whip skill is still below 2k, which irritates me on a regular basis. Unfortunately, i don't have the patience anymore for the Viper or even Mamba, and my Cobra ME is even pushing it (not to mention really uneco at my proficiency). I did spend a day taming Daikiba Stalkers when Skippie and i went to CND for our disastrous Daspletor hunt a couple weeks ago (no globals...), and even globaled off the last one, but all in all whipping is below my tedium tolerance these days.

I finished the final project for a really interesting course, and may possibly have some consulting work come out of it, which would be fabulous. I've been back in EU since then, but will need to cut back again for work soon.

I chipped up my Engineering for my armor manufacturing scheme, reducing my PED reserve to a dangerously low level, and have finally managed to collect the entire Rascal (L) bp set and all but the harness bp for Zombie (L). I haven't really tried buying off auction in a long while and the experience brought back old memories of frustration with blatant market-manipulating resellers. Big Pygmy Afrikan or whatever his name is has been listing and relisting a set of Zombie BPs at ridiculously inflated prices several times since i started watching. I think he buys them out with another avatar if they start timing out, thus maintaining the market value at the level he wants to sell them at. I'm determined not to buy my Zombie harness bp from him, so hopefully another shows up that's not bought out by him before i can see it.

Anyway, by my estimates, i should be able to manufacture both of these (L) armors at a markup cost comparable with their advantage in decay over the UL versions, making for essentially "free" skilling for me. An added bonus is that the needed minerals are almost all lootable from various robots, so i don't have to mine unless i want to (and i really need the HP boost, so i wish i wanted to more ). Rascal and 3B is about perfect for me for big drones and other tougher robots, and CP domes 1 and 2 (at least, it was before VU 9.3) with 5B plates, and Zombie will give me slightly more protection than Gremlin in dome 4. Judging by my last sortie there in a team on a day when crits were frequent, that's probably a good thing.

I went on a scip hunt not long ago, the first i've been able to stomach since that noob popped off his third ATH on them in three months (not sure if this one was with a (L) weapon like the other two). It was a fairly mediocre hunt and i went back to grinding drones and warriors, hoping for a Hi-Tech Storage Box (one of the few looted items i'd really find personally useful with my current gear) and building up my PED reserve for another go at CP since a really bad couple of weeks. I had to quit the scips because i knew if that bimbo picked up another ATH on them when i was hunting them, i'd not be able to play EU again.

Hmm. Elaborate or not, it looks like my mind dump was much larger than i'd anticipated.