The other night, we opened our C3 static into a new system as normal. When I went in for the first look, we found it was not quite normal: there was a Tengu wreck, as well as some sleeper wrecks on scan. I looked at all the anoms and they were not there. I figured that as is often the case in wspace, the wrecks were out of reach. So after a look around for players (none visible), I deployed probes and started scanning.
The very last sig I scanned down was a relic site. I don't recall why I thought to look at it, but dscanning showed that it is where the wrecks were. I warped in; the wrecks were there (Tengu wreck included) as well as three sleeper battleships and a cruiser. I alerted my corpie Jayne, and then Real Life kicked in and I had to go AFK.
Jayne came in a Tengu and soloed the rest of the site, and salvaged while I was idle. A nice little haul of 50m ISKies or so. Then he took off, figuring the site would despawn. We have known for a long time how difficult the relic and data sites in C4 are. Relic sites are worth doing if the risk is not high, but even so take many minutes per can because the puzzles are very hard indeed. The minigames feature 90/20 Firewalls, 60/40 Anti Virus nodes, and numerous Virus Suppressors and Restoration Nodes. (Here's my tips on the minigame.) Data sites are just as hard and the loot is just not valuable, so they are not worth it at all. In a foreign system, with four incident wormholes, doing things solo seemed like a bad idea.
After I returned from AFK briefly, I warped to the site and it was still there. The despawn trigger, at least for this one type of site, is not a ship. You have to crack a can, or perhaps just try. Since I was in my exploration Buzzard, I cargo-scanned the cans. They seemed to have about the same type and amount of loot in them as C4 sites. So, I figured they would be worth doing if we could get eyes on the local tower, and have someone dscanning regularly to see any probes before they resolved the relic site.
Later on, when we were both back, we put a cloaky at the tower and got cracking on the cans. I figured that it would be a slog, just like in C4. In C4 the games are so hard that it usually takes multiple tries, 3 or 4 on average, to complete them. (Unlike in kspace, the cans don't blow up after two failures.) But I was surprised: the C3 minigames were really easy. Small board, 50/20 Firewalls, no Anti Virus except rarely when you click on a Data Cache. No Virus Suppressors or Restoration Nodes at all. So we tore through them, getting every game on the first try, often after only a minute of clicking. About 90m ISK in loot, so very well worth doing.
With games this easy, I think even the data sites may be worth doing. In any case, I'll at least be giving them another look.
One other item of note, don't warp your salvage ship in until your attack ship is already being shot at. I was too eager to salvage/loot the Tengu, that I nearly got our salvaging Venture killed. 13% hull when you warp out is cutting it REAL close. Had it not been a pulsar we'd have been a venture down for sure.
ReplyDeleteA special Thank You! to whoever lost that Tengu PACKED to the gills with Scourge Fury missiles.