Weekend refit: My Merlin gets teeth and my skill queue a trim

These past few weeks, I've had the focus of a fruit fly on speed. Everything seemed like a shiny new toy. So this weekend, I sat down and took an honest look at what I actually wanted to do over the coming weeks, and also longer term.

On one side, there was PvP. I've been wanting to dabble for a while now, and I had a small collection of Merlins sitting in hangars without a proper fit between them. I knew the ship could brawl. I just hadn't put in the work to make it happen.

Then there was the Hecate I'd recently purchased. I'd started training for it with this idea of testing it as a fast-align, small-cargo hauler — something to replace the Sunesis now that the Catalyst update clipped its wings. A T3 tactical destroyer doing courier work. Admittedly a strange choice, but if the numbers worked, it could make for an interesting story.

And finally, blockade runners. Rixx brought them up during our last recording of The Safe Spot (YouTube | Spotify). He'd mentioned the Amarr Prorator as a solid ship for the job. So I started poking around the intertubes, and that's when I came across the Caldari Crane. Love at first sight. Covert cloak, decent cargo, warps cloaked — everything the Sunesis wishes it could do.

So there I was: a skill queue that looked like a capsuleer suffering from an identity crisis, ships scattered across half a dozen stations, and Merlins without a proper PvP fit. Something had to give. 

I needed to put things in order before this mess became my undoing.

Clipped wings, new teeth: Refitting the Sunesis after the Catalyst nerf

Three days. That's how long my "Learning to Fly" post lasted before CCP clipped my wings.

I'd just finished writing about the Sunesis — my fast-align small hauler, Athena's Wings — and how she could haul almost 1,200 m³ of cargo while warping in 1.75 seconds. Sub-two. Practically uncatchable. The whole point of the ship.

Then the Catalyst major update dropped on March 18th, and CCP decided the Sunesis had been having too much fun.

Learning to fly: Finding my wings in EVE Online

Just like that Tom Petty song, I've been learning to fly over the past few weeks. Not in the poetic, soul-searching kind of way — more in the 'please don't let me die on this gate' kind of way.

A few weeks back, a new acquaintance within New Eden (thanks for the intro, Rixx!) asked me to help gather a ton of stuff scattered across a few dozen systems — some in high-sec, some in low-sec. We're talking stations I’d never visited, assets worth Billions of ISKs, collecting dust like forgotten relics of a past life in space. The kind of stuff you want to move quickly while unnoticed. 

To pull this off, I needed a ship that could do three things well: carry a decent amount of cargo, move fast, and — most importantly — get out of dodge before anyone could lock me down. Not just fast. Sub-two-seconds-to-warp fast.

Enter the Sunesis.

Detour into the unknown: My first steps into Exploration flying a Heron

I'm hitting pause on my Enforcer grind—and my eventual dive into PvP—to try something completely different: Exploration.

After months of security missions and getting my Merlin into proper fighting shape, I figured it was time to learn scanning, cloaking, and the art of sneaking around New Eden. You know, useful skills for not getting podded too quickly when I finally do jump into PvP.

Right now I'm sitting at 665 out of 750 Enforcer points (still not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds impressive). I could push through those last 85 points running the same missions over and over, but that familiar itch kicked in—the one that whispers, what if you did something else?

So I took the detour.

My first Cormorant: a practical PvE-to-PvP guide for first-time pilots

After running Level 1 missions along the Enforcer career path over the last few weeks*, I was awarded a ship I’d never personally flown before: the Cormorant. And it came with a SKIN. Sweet!

This was perfect timing because I’ve been sitting on SKINs for ages thinking “cool cool… how do I actually use these?” But couldn't figure it out! Turns out: this was the push I needed. And I had two AIs to guide me through the process of getting it on this new ship.

This post is basically my “new ship, new chapter” brain-dump. 

The joy of figuring it out: what the Merlin taught me about EVE Online

One of the things I’m genuinely enjoying right now is rediscovering how much of EVE Online lives outside the actual game play.

What?!! I hear you say. Bear with me a second...

In EVE, skills matter, obviously — but they’re only part of the equation. The real learning happens in the fit and in how a ship is meant to be flown. Lately, that’s been my trusty Merlin, and figuring out how to lean fully into its brawler nature instead of fighting it. Short-range blasters, afterburner over speed tricks, scram and web to keep fights close, and a solid shield buffer so it can sit in the pocket and trade blows. I’m training into the guns and support skills that make that setup work, and paying attention to why each module belongs there.

That process — reading, testing, undocking, exploding, tweaking — is where the fun is.

Seriously! That might sound like a chore to some, but it's allowing me to learn the game nice and slow. At my own rhythm.

In EVE, your ship doesn’t reach its potential just because your skills say it should. It does when the fit makes sense and you fly it the way it was designed to be flown. Now go back, and read that last sentence once again, cause it says a lot about the game.

I’m pulling all of this together into a more detailed post soon, in which I'll be digging into the Merlin itself, the modules and fittings I’m training toward, and how brawler and kiter tactics actually play out once you’re on grid.

But for now, I'm heading out 12 jumps, getting myself a new skill in order to use my new Tech II blasters!

Fly safe!

Making sense of PvP in EVE Online: Merlin ship fitting and skill training

I’ll be upfront: this is fairly new territory for me. Not EVE Online new of course, but more like spaceships new. More like small-ship PvP fundamentals, up close, personal, and a tad more complicated. That part is definitely new.

So I’ve been dabbling, searching, and reading lots. Asking questions about fitting ships. Undocking. Going for PvE missions. Then re-docking. Staring at my ship's fitting, trying to decipher it all like if they we’re ancient runes, and hoping to understand not just what works, but more importantly, why it works.

This post is me trying to make sense of it all — out loud. So bear with me.

If I’ve misunderstood something, I genuinely want to know. If I’m on the right track, I’d like that confirmed too. Either way, I’m hoping some veteran PvP pilots will help steer me in the right direction. Maybe after having had a good laugh at my expanse.