The Worm is quite a popular ship for running tier 1 Abyssal and it did not take long to see why. Outside of a couple of encounters that were a bit closer than I'd like. For an Alpha, this thing is quite powerful.

While the build I ended up going with was a little more expensive than I was expecting. There was one rather nice benefit. The whole thing is passive. If I wanted to make it even safer to run I could upgrade to faction fittings. That would however skyrocket the price to the point I don’t think it be worth it.

Most of the damage from this thing comes from drones. There are two rather large drawbacks to this ship. The first is a target range of just 35k. The second only has 10 Mbit bandwidth limiting you to two Hornets.

So, it is a bit funny that I have a higher drone range than I'm able to lock onto targets. This did make it go easier by wanting tier 2 misses. Since I can’t target a crazy distance anyway. They are quite cheaper than faction reducing my costs a lot.

A rather nice thing is tier 1 filaments are rather cheap compared to higher-tier stuff. To the point, I'd sometimes wonder why I'd run anything else on a more expensive ship.

Tier 1 is also quite a large jump-up. To the point, there are a couple of different kinds of spawns that would end up being quite close calls. Since my build is passive shield regen. Overloading only helps a little in terms of getting my afterburner to move me faster and hoping to take a little less damage.

First, however, I'd run some tier 0 filaments. The biggest reason is that I rarely run drone boat ships. Having to manage and pay attention to them is not something I tend to do second nature.

I’d have a few times I'd lose a drone, or one came rather close to getting killed. The biggest thing to overlook are the short to medium-range platforms that attack drones and missiles. With these smaller drones, they take quite a beating. Thankfully the next ship up has some drones that deal with them much better.

I would end up running quite a few tier 1 Abyssal with this thing. Since it’s a frigate it would be hard to beat with the loot multiplier it gets over a destroyer or a cruiser that can also enter Abyssal. I feel to the point you would have to run higher tier Abyssal to make up for the loot difference.

This is also when you start to deal with some rather nasty stuff. Certain types of Tyrannos can get me rather close to death. Then you have the ones that love to hug the Abyssal arena wall. With how much of a beast they can be to take down I've had a little bit of a dance to be in range to hit them with missiles and me kissing the red wall of death.

Thankfully I did not have any deaths while in the Worm while running Abyssal. While I would not call any of the loot that memorable. In tier 1 you do have a chance at getting Fierce filaments and some of them can be worth 4 million ISK. There are also many I'd end up looting that were nearly worthless.

The biggest thing I wanted to see was what kind of mutaplasmid I'd have a chance at looting in tier 1. If I was lucky in a tier 0 I'd be getting some that was worth 1 million ISK. Most of the time they were nearly worthless.

While I did not loot anything that crazy in terms of mutaplasmid. I did get some 3-4 million ISK drops. That all would end up helping add up for the next ship I wanted that would cost around 400 million ISK to buy. While not a crazy price since there is quite a bit of risk in running these it’s also not one to be ignored either.

For some time, I'd be just a couple of jumps out from Jita for quick selling and resupplying. While it’s quite known that gankers love to kill Worms some people have them far too blinged out. I felt the risk was worth it for the most part.

There was this one instance. Where I just had finished off Abyssal. I had like 20 million in loot in my cargo nothing crazy. I was rather tired and decided to warp off towards a station to dock for the evening.

Not even a second into warp a bunch of ships warped past me that were also in warp. Here is the thing. I did not just make the first bookmark possible as a safe spot to run Abyssal in. The only way I'd expect to be passing a group of players in the warp to the station is if they were warping from that station to my safe spot.

Needless to say, I quickly logged off after that. I also decided regards if they were gankers or not. There were far too many in the system to have gotten their names to check their PvP activities. That it was time to migrate away from Jita. While it would be a bit annoying not being so close. Sometimes you just have to accept the warning signs and go elsewhere.

One rather nice thing about running the lower tier filaments for Abyssal like tier 1. Was just buying up like 100 of the kind I wanted to run at a time or more. They cost next to nothing. I’d then just blast enough quite a few of them.

There was a bit of a downside to relocating further away from where I wanted to sell my loot. I only like carrying so much loot on me at a time. I assume at some point I could get ganked hauling my loot to go sell. There is also just sometimes crazy stuff going down into Jita where anyone undocked is getting murdered left and right.

So that meant I was taking a lot more trips back to my new location and Jita. I even checked out some other trade hubs but even for the travel time, the prices were worth going to Jita even if there is more risk involved as well.

As far as anything that could finish me off in tier 1 Abyssal in a Worm is considered. It was the Devoted Knight. I ended up going half a week thinking I had dealt with everything tier 1 had to toss me at. Then I ended up getting three of these across five Abyssal runs one evening.

These things have some insane range. So, you would think if you could just get close enough and go fast enough you be fine. Expect this thing also has webs and neuts. So, getting too close and you are dead.

So, I even tried getting as close as I was willing to risk it. The darn thing still hit me. On top of that these things love to dart towards the Abyssal walls. As if wanting to add yet another way to try and finish you off.

In the end, my way of dealing with them is getting close enough to at least get some missile damage on them. Then just start overloading everything I can. Not the best since I'm a passive fit. I’ve almost burned out the afterburner a couple of times as well which would have been bad.

I have ended up coming a couple of times close to taking armor damage. With the way those things it it would not take long to finish me off once it’s through shields. Perhaps this is why people bling these Worm ships out a bit just due to this single threat. It’s also why I don’t feel like testing out tier 2 Abyssal in this ship.

Final Thoughts

Other than a couple of close calls. The loot ended up being worth a bit more overall. I might have been making around double what I was in tier 0. Granted if it’s a bad loot run it still sucks. These do however feel like they have a bit more risk involved in them.

Information

New to Eve Online or a returning player? Use my recruit a friend referral link and get 1 million skill points on signing up or logging into your Eve Online account (can only be claimed once per account). Disclosure: I might receive in-game rewards.

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