Hello
I used to play ED a few years back. Ran an RP community hub, Elite & Real and sank, like many, a LOOOT of hours into the game. I was mainly a vulture / T6 pilot, and worked hard to pimp them out. I was a vulture pilot simply because as a guy with a job, family, kids yada yada, bigger ships just seemed out of reach. Making money often felt like 2 steps forward, 3 steps back and very slow, but I kept dreaming, flipping boards to get decent slave runs and a lot of time sitting in the station. Trading never really made me the big bucks as much as I enjoyed it, it was a measly 100K here, 100K there and slow! Then I had a the fabulous idea of grinding navy rank for that cheap(ish) shinny clipper.... Well I did the grind. Endless board flipping and data runs, donations etc and finally hit Baron after gawd knows how long! Weeks damn it!
Purchasing that clipper should have been a joyous moment, but alas, I didn't really have enough money to do it justice and when I realised how ghaaaaaaaastly under powered she was with my budget, I ended up selling it back and re-purchasing my vulture and T6. Talk about an anticlimax. The idea was to work for more credits until I could finally pimp out the clipper. Well sadly, as a casual player I just simply burnt out and eventually drifted off to other games.
ED kept popping up on my YouTube feed and I occasionally stuck my head into a few of them and got that little pang to play again. I did download the game and log in about 6 months ago, but as I sat staring at station menu, I realised I was still really in the same predicament, had forgotten everything, and would have to re-familiarise myself with it all as well as the new changes. Engineers.... mind boggling! Needless to say I logged out and uninstalled the game when I needed SSD space for something else.
Anyhoo.... A video popped up on my feed last week from a guy who you all probably know. TheYamiks. After picking myself up of the floor and wiping away my tears of laughter, I started watching some more of his videos, not for ED, but because the boy is a scream, and I just p***sed my self at his style. One in particular was his Money Making META : NEW MINING 60-130 Mil. After watching this, I then went on to watch other tutorial videos on deep core mining and I realised maybe making money is easier now, MAYBE I can fulfil my dreams of flying bigger ships, MAYBE I can be riiiiiiich!
Well I reinstalled the game, sold all my assets, bought a Krait MKII, pimped it for mining and headed off to a closest ice belt. After some trial and error and thanks to the detailed tutorials on YouTube, I was soon filling my cargo hold with opals and g
randidierite and flying them off to a 'best buy' station, jaw on the floor as the credits (like i've never seen) started to flood in. After a few mining sessions I upgraded to a Python, and continue to mine, getting more skilled and faster at spotting them rocks.
I finally feel like the opportunities in ED have opened up. I've enough money to pimp out that clipper but instead, I'm thinking of going for a budget Anaconda as shown in Down to Earth Astronomy's YouTube Guide. With this, I can do Robigo passenger missions whilst at the same time increasing my Navy rank to Duke in order to eventually get a Cutter whilst at the same time, slowly upgrading the Anaconda. Having some more opportunities and not having to focus on making credits means I can essentially start focusing on doing fun things and exploring other aspects of ED.
So anyway, I can see the rate in which players can earn money now is a controversial topic, especially for old school players who've done things the hard way. I can understand it. With that said, slow progress is in games like ED push casual players like me away as we slog away in small ships making low profit. Whilst there is plenty to do in ED even in a small ship, everything requires credits, and the temptation to focus solely on that aspect funnels us away from actually doing things that are FUN.
So for a burnt out returning player, this is a god send, and I say YAY!!!
