I’m sad that this carrier’s future is going to be as burning scrap next to a large spice blow as enemy assault ’thopters hover nearby.
I guess I don’t really think the carrier is going to be shot out of the sky. But we live in the Deep Desert now – and it’s the kind of place where that kind of thing happens.
We’ve been in the Deep Desert for more than a month now, but our moment of recognition came when we decided to make multiple DD bases – we thought it wise after we got ganked last week. I made a simple forward base – a box base – centrally just south of the line. The line that separates the northern PvP zone from the southern PvE zone. Talk to someone who lives in the DD, and talk about the line; they’ll know what you mean.
"The Line"
Calrain made a base right at one of the Deep Desert entrances, right in the flight path in and out of the desert. They had to wonder who we were. Then Stingite/Tree Trunks/The Friendly Necromancer made an even bigger, brighter base right next to that one. It was more than just a base at zone-in – it was a complex.
Not our base, someone else's
I was reminded of my first trip into the DD, where I found a huge complex with a large spice refinery, a carrier, a harvester, lots of support craft and machines, just everything. It was my first time seeing a lot of these things. I haven’t seen these folks since, but it made an impression.
I haven’t seen these folks since. I suspect they are First Wavers. The people who leveled up quickly and moved to the DD as soon as they could. Then, I assume, there are Second Wavers, who came soon after and represent most of the sophisticated bases we see. I place us, the Order of the Wombat, in the Third Wave; people who leveled up slowly and are just beginning to build the infrastructure that allows one to succeed in the Deep Desert.
Sting, Calrain and I were flying in Calrain’s assault ’thopter, doing bases and ships both before and after the line, when a stranger in a scout ’thopter came up behind us and demanded to know who we were. I was a little creeped out – it was a PvP zone, and seeing someone at all was unusual, someone right next to you more so, someone demanded to know who you are… well, almost unheard of.
I’d say entirely unheard of, except that every NPC, as they’re trying to kill us, demands to know our identity. So usually, when someone asks, it means we’re fighting.
Large spice refinery is large
I was getting a lot of this information about waves and guilds in the DD and all by chatting with folks over the public channel. Public channels are so important to this kind of game. There’s every chance that we could team up with others for the tougher labs; we did okay in an above-the-line lab, once we finished clogging the pentashields with our battered corpses, but four would be better. Even more would be better-er. We could do a I-level base and get the best stuff.
A couple of things have me considering us finally, fully arrived. The carrier was an important milestone, but we cheated a little – we bought the required spice mélange from the auction house, during that time when an omnipresent player, TalonQueen, was selling them cheap. 200 spice mélange for 20K solari – a fantastic deal. I’d do it again in a minute. TQ hasn’t been around lately, though, and I’m thinking she was one of the last of the First Wavers, just selling off the store before closing up.
The second was Calrain making a large spice refinery; 200 spice mélange for 10K spice sand, a 1:50 ratio. The regular spice refinery had a 1:100 ratio, and the medium one, 1:75. So the medium was good – the large better. The regular one should never be built, except that you have to have processed spice to build the other two.
With that, me and Calrain did an insane amount of spice harvesting and processing, as did Tree Trunks and Skips Leg Day. Team 1 has over 1500 processed spice, now. That should be enough to let us make the Large Ore Processor after the storm passes and we go back into the DD.
Why am I always taking pictures in the dark?
So, now the plan is to make a spice harvester to sling beneath the carrier. We’ll fly scout thopters to find large spice blows and then we’ll have a team of at least four to harvest it – one for the carrier, one for the crawler, two to defend. As long as you’re not an easy target, folks will think twice. I hope.
Otherwise, carrier hits the ground in a mass of twisted, burning wreckage, and we probably stick to the protected Hagga Basin on the private server where nobody but the guild plays for awhile, maybe hope for better luck as a Fourth Waver :-)
Update: Team 2 has just made their carrier, and now Cal is talking about making a harvester crawler… there may be another update coming with pictures!
Hey! We made a crawler!
Well, Cal had enough spice for the crawler, Sting said to go for it, Skips was online, so the three of us made the crawler and cleared that particular quest out. Now we just have to harvest spice with it….
