Many years ago, I had started an epic arc and never got around to finishing it. Since it is quite a low-level one. I thought why not pick up where I left off? The biggest reward is just some faction.

While sure my retribution would have been more up for the task. I decided to fit out a coercer. A ship that I rarely fly unless I'm using it as a salvaging boat or if I'm in faction warfare or something like that.

These ships are a glass cannon of the skies. It has eight weapon slots. Not much room for a tank. Let’s be honest I was tempted to go with the triple heatsink setup but I felt I should have an armor repair just in case things did not go so well.

Most of the time I tend to group all my guns up into a single grouping. That way I only have to press one button. Having eight guns and knowing I was going to be way overkill for what I was about to do. I decided to break it up into three groups. That way I could shoot at three targets at a time if I was feeling like it.

This also kind of reminds me I need to stop being lazy and grind up my faction standing with a few other factions. Getting Epic Arcs from them requires having a certain level of standing.

These Epic Arcs as one might expect is a large change of missions. They usually have some kind of big payout at the end of them. This one however is just for faction for the most part. Not the most exciting.

The cool thing is these Epic Arcs can be done every couple of months. If I'm not mistaken The Blood-Stained Stars has over 50 missions. There was also a lot of traveling around. So having a bit of a fast ship was ideal here. While I could have gone with a bit of a bigger ship. I wanted to finish this one off.

At least in the good news of all of this. I had some missions already done. Exactly how many I'm not sure. With all the fancy UI and information, the game now shows. I’m sure I could have found where along I was in progression on this epic arc. That did not matter to me as I was in a rush but not really.

Many missions seemed to be about a smuggling hub and dealing with some bad people. With it being a mission arc there is an actual story behind it. I for one just wanted to know who needed the killing and that was about it.

Some of the missions I'd end up taking would require me to clear quite a few enemies. Then I'd have stuff like this where it felt like having three weapons groups was almost too much. A couple of gun cycles each and they were all dead.

All I can say is the Sisters of Eve that give out this level 1 mission arc were out for blood. So many of the missions were named things like marked for death or wanted to me to whack this person or that person.

Am I ever glad I have never been on the wrong side of that faction before? This whole time I just think about them as being the kinds of probes I like to use for exploration. Turns out they are more bloodthirsty monsters than the Gallente.

While it was my goal to get the rest of the mission I had done in a single sitting. I forgot Eve Online still has a daily server reset for maintenance. It’s nice to see they still only take fifteen minutes. I recall back in the day when that was not the case.

Instead, I settled on working on this mission arc for a couple of days. I’m sure if you wanted to it could be done in just a few hours. Even with that many missions if you were just flying around like a crazy person. I am however only slightly insane from all those years of living in wormholes.

A big part of this mission arc is just flying all over the place. If I wanted to speed things up I should have brought along a couple of modules to swap out for faster aliening time. I could have perhaps saved myself a couple extra minutes over the long run of this thing.

Many times, I'd be ordered to go out and murder some people. Steal their stuff and show proof that I finished the mission. Then I'd be ordered to haul that stolen item off to someone else. Not saying I was acting like a space pirate but it sure felt like it.

I was rather glad when one of the missions gave me an analyzer needed to hack a site. I did not bring any with me thinking I needed any. While it was quite low level I had enough in the skills for it to make the job quite easy.

Meanwhile, while I was working that out. I still kept my guns firing taking out some further pirates. I am so glad I broke up my weapon groups into three. They came in quite handy.

The only thing I hated doing was needed to swap out my laser crystals for different ranges. I was a bit lazy on that front. Since I was using pulse anyway, I was using long-range crystals anyway.

I kind of knew I was getting to the end at one point. I needed to make a choice. The fun thing about these mission arcs is they tend to branch out into some different options.

The option I'd end up going with here would determine which of the main factions I was going to be getting a nice faction boost with. They would also “help” me on some of my final missions.

I took a few moments to look over my faction rating. While I had some decent ratings with Amarr and Caldari. I know my ratings with Gallante and Gallente are dreadful. I also know for some future things I want to do that those last two factions will continue to lower my standing with them even further. So, I ended up picking Gallente knowing that faction would be the hardest hit for some plans.

After a few more missions I was down to just needing to take out one of the people I had been after most of the mission. The Gallente helped out if you could even call it that with that final mission.

Final Thoughts

It was nice to finally after all these years spend the time to finish this one off. I’m not sure I'd do it again unless I want to try and increase my faction with one of the Gallente again whenever the mission comes out again in a few months.

I made a couple million ISK along the way. Nothing huge. It was at least interesting. While I did read the storyline along with this arc a bit more then I let on. It was a nice little break from everything else I had been doing.

On top of that, I also got to finish off the Epic Arc part of the Enforcer AIR Career Program. This was another reason I felt now was a good enough time as any to finish one off.

Information

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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Online.