I am actually pretty nervous, even after having tried to shake being really tense as I approached warp. I am facing a single exhumer with no weapons and which only had a hauler for company earlier, but when making other capsuleers targets there is no knowing what could happen. I suppose I’m not nervous about losing my ship, more about not making mistakes. I am also potentially about to make someone’s day quite a bit worse. I stalk closer to the target, sub-warp engines at maximum cloaked speed bringing me in to the 30 km range of my bombs. One last check of d-scan shows no new activity. Decloak and launch!

Before the bomb even hits I am punching my systems in to action, locking the Hulk in preparation of loosing volleys of torpedoes its way. The bomb’s explosion is grand, causing a suitably impressive alpha strike against the target as my torpedoes launch. His mining lasers are still active, but it looks like he is turning. I keep pounding him with torpedoes, hitting his armour behind the burnt-away shields, but a few more seconds sees my Manticore drop its lock as the Hulk warps away, presumably back to the safety of its tower. I don’t get the kill.

Today’s lesson is in appropriate ship fittings. I am still rather inexperienced at knowing what modules to fit, partly because there are simply so many different possible configurations, and I tend to copy ship configurations from sources that seem reliable. My Manticore’s fitting is not poor in itself, just not appropriate. The sensor dampers fitted are perfect for preventing a target from getting a lock on my ship as I sit at range shooting torpedoes, but this assumes targets that will be fighting back. For an unarmed target whose only thought will be fleeing, I really need a warp disruptor instead. Maybe I don’t get the kill, but I learn more about my ship.

The Hulk pilot is also hopefully taught a lesson. He may have got back to his tower, where he can repair the Hulk back to full integrity, but he will need to replace his five Tech II mining drones. On top of that, his five jet-cans of ore were in the initial blast radius and are destroyed, no doubt a fair investment of time by the pilot. W-space is dangerous. In fact, I don’t consider the encounter to be over yet. I know where the tower is located and I have a persistent cloak fitted. I warp to the tower at range and watch the ship movements. I doubt the Hulk pilot is stupid enough to assume that I will move away within a few minutes, allowing him to continue his operation, but I am curious as to what will happen next.

There are some ship movements. The Hulk pilot swaps in to an Imicus and warps off, but I see no scanner probes launched in the system. I assume he’s headed to a neighbouring system to look for signs of life, or leaving for k-space to buy replacement drones. Or maybe he’s logged off. Even that could be a ruse, hoping I’ll get bored within a few minutes to let him come back and mine in peace. Another couple of pilots log on at different points, one looking like he’s grabbing bookmarks from a shared can, but there are no ship movements out of the tower. It was already late for me when the corporation fleet disbanded after fighting Sleepers, yet here I am sitting outside a tower’s shields simply watching signs of activity. I now understand the patience of the PvP hunter. But eventually I need sleep, so I turn my ship around and warp away.

Returning home, I feel the pang of guilt that compells me to justify my attack on the Hulk. I could say that anyone who misses such obvious and prolonged warning signs that any d-scan must have reported over a period of minutes is asking for trouble, that I am reciprocating against any available target for the times I’ve been shot for no fault of my own, or some laughable excuse that I am protecting our own w-space borders from the real threat of miners. But any justification will necessarily be a post hoc excuse. The simple answer is: because I can.

I warp cloaked to the wormhole exit to our system and jump, finding myself alone in the neighbouring system. Some sites have been bookmarked along with the wormholes, which gets me a little excited about finding an unsuspecting miner, but it seems the only sites that have been resolved are in this unoccupied system, no doubt for potential corporation use. There are no ships on d-scan within range of the mining sites, so I warp to the outwards wormhole to continue my optimistic roam. The next system along is occupied. Not only is it occupied, but there is a Hulk showing on directional scanner, along with mining drones, a couple of jet-cans and a hauler. I’ve got a target! Unfortunately, what I don’t have is information about where the miner is.

Being by myself, I rush back to the tower and swap in to my Buzzard. I need to scan to find the site the Hulk is mining in. Despite finding an active miner I am far from confident that he’ll remain mining for long, particularly as I am far from a good scanner. I take care to warp out of range of his directional scanner when I decloak and drop my scanner probes, but as soon as the probes are positioned and I start scanning they will appear on the d-scan, surely spooking the miner in to halting his operation. If I were a more accomplished scanner and had a wingman I may be able to get the drop on an inattentive capsuleer, but anyone mining out in w-space in a Hulk must surely be keeping an eye on d-scan. Never the less, I start scanning, hoping to get lucky.

I am not going to be lucky. There are two dozen signatures in the system, finding the gravimetric site will not happen quickly. But until the Hulk warps out, I have time. I resolve a few ladar sites first, but because the target is a Hulk he will not be mining gas, I am looking for a gravimetric site. And I get one! I resolve the signature to 100% accuracy, allowing me to bookmark and warp to the site. I must surely be too late by now, it has taken me a good ten minutes to resolve the gravimetric site, and I don’t yet know if it’s the right one. I warp to the site to see if there are any signs of the Hulk.

Oh my goodness. Despite minutes of my scanner probes appearing on d-scan, the Hulk is sitting next to a bistot rock and is shooting away. I create a bookmark of the rock he’s mining, which essentially pin-points his position and allows me to drop in on him at any range, and speed home to the tower to swap back in to my Manticore. If he doesn’t run when probes appear, or even when they disappear, it is looking good that he’ll be here for a few more minutes. During this time, some of the engineers have appeared and are looking to shoot Sleepers. ‘Let’s kill a Hulk’, I say, and grab my Onyx heavy interdictor instead of the stealth bomber. It takes a little longer to assemble than simply swapping to my Manticore, but I soon have a fleet with a Zealot heavy assault cruiser, Rook reconnaisance ship, Drake battlecruiser, and Hurricane battlecruiser to fly out with my Onyx. A further engineer is out in the target’s system in a covert operations boat, monitoring ship movements. It is looking to be a bad day indeed for the unsuspecting Hulk pilot.

We fly out. The operation should be simple enough. I am given command of the wing, as I have the bookmarked location of the target, but I will warp in alone initially. My Onyx can activate its warp bubble to prevent the Hulk from escaping, and once I am in the site the rest of the fleet can warp to my location at their optimal ranges, rather than us all dropping on top of the Hulk. We are on the other side of the wormhole, ready to jump. Everyone knows to hold their cloak after jump for as long as possible. The Hulk pilot seems oblivious, but maybe if he sees our small but threatening fleet he’ll bug out. But seconds before we make the jump in to the system our cov-ops pilot tells us that the Hulk and hauler have both returned to their tower!

We jump in anyway and I warp the wing out to the farthest planet, out of d-scan range of the gravimetric site, hoping the Hulk heads back to continue mining. But he doesn’t. It looks like we were a minute late in making his day bad. He definitely didn’t spot the fleet on his scanner, as we weren’t visible before he had returned to his tower, so there was no operational error on our part. I wait a couple of minutes, but there is no activity reported from the local tower. I warp the wing back to the wormhole and we jump back, returning to our tower where we change for our more familiar PvE ships and reconfigure the fleet for Sleeper combat. It may have been a notionally benign target, but I am impressed with how efficiently the engineer fleet scrambles. I am also amazed at the miner being apparently so unaware of danger whilst in a Tech II exhumer in w-space. I make a note of this system just in case I encounter it again. The evening is then spent clearing five anomalies of Sleeper activity without problems, for some good profitable action.

I rush down to the faire to get the pet frogs from the young orc fellow, but he only has the common tree frog to sell. The other, the wood frog, is an occasional offer only. I wait with Jubjub’s owner whilst Livya finds the huge open gate that separates Burning Steppes from Redridge Mountains to complete her map, and I pester the orc kid each time he passes, but there is no wood frog. I am tickled, therefore, that Livya saunters down to the faire and casually manages to buy both the tree and wood frog straight away, without realising the artificial scarcity of the latter. She’s kind enough to let me give the wood frog a home. We then use our dark iron ale to tempt Jubjub our way, before pouring dwarf alcohol in to her wide mouth until she lays an egg. In a week, the egg will hatch and we’ll have a our own miniature Jubjub.

Three pets gained and the night is still young. A quick visit to Hellfire Peninsula in Outlands sees us slaughter a bunch of orcs to get the quest for Hellfire Ramparts in preparation for a later date. Livya also lends me some gold so I can buy the riding skill. I foolishly bought the death knight flying mount, costing 950 gold which I stole from Kiska, not realising that standard flying mount costs have been reduced to a mere 50 gold. Caveat emptor, I suppose, particularly when buying from the evil dead. But we are both ready to enter the ramparts at some point, and can both fly our mounts in the Outlands, and still the night is young. Not wanting to gain lots of experience whilst missing Qattara, I browse my lacklustre list of achievements.

Moving from paladin to death knight has reset all of my dungeon achievements, and the Filesystem Checkwits have visited nearly all of the standard dungeons. Missing those achievements isn’t so bad, as the meta-achievement of ‘classic dungeonmaster’ can only be gained if Ragnaros, Nefarian, and C’thun are defeated, the original 40-man dungeon bosses, and I doubt we’ll ever do that. But there are reasons for me to revisit a few of the old dungeons, and Livya is happy to come along for the journey. First stop, then, is Deadmines, where the pirates have been known to keep pet parrots.

I have visited Deadmines many times and seen only a few green wing macaws drop, so my hopes are not high, but the run through shouldn’t take long. I think it’s quaint that Livya tries to defeat every mob in the dungeon, taking on only a couple at a time. But she soon catches up as I hurtle at full-speed down the mine until an obstacle forces me to stop, at which point I turn around and use my howling blast to destroy the low-level elite mobs in one hit. Dungeons lose a lot of their sheen when they present no danger or challenge. Wantonly destroying anything in my path also reveals the contrived difficulty of levelling, yet is balanced by clearly showing the progress our characters have made.

The various areas of the Deadmines are quickly passed through, only pausing to open doors or say hello to Colin Woodcarver, and we are soon back at the dockyard where the pirates roam. Pirate after pirate is killed and searched, but no parrot can be found. We fight to the top of the ship and defeat Van Cleef before he can finish his little speech, jumping down to kill his chef Cookie and clearing the rest of the pirates from the ship, but still no parrot. There is one last encampment of pirates, just a little distance away from the exit, and I swim across to greet them with my sword. The last pirate in the Deadmines drops a green wing macaw, and Livya is kind enough to let me keep it. Mission accomplished!

Another achievement that is feasible to get and needs me to visit earlier dungeons is ‘keymaster’, where the holder has keys to various dungeons in the world. One of the keys is to the back door of Gnomeregan, and the two of us should be able to blast through the leper gnomes much like we did the pirates. Having visited Outlands, we have sensibly set our hearthstones to Shattrath City, offering portals to any Azerothian capital. This lets us use one of the portals to travel quickly to Ironforge, which sits conveniently close to Gnomeregan. Well, I use the Ironforge portal, Livya somehow ends up in the elf lands. And she’s not just stranded in Auberdine, she’s also ’sharing the dock with an RPer’. Although the motivation is present, there is no quick way out of there, having just used our hearthstones, so it’s a race to see if Livya can catch up to me before I can complete Gnomeregan!

I ride out to Dun Morogh and onwards to Gnomeregan, but I honestly don’t expect to get particularly deep in to the dungeon before Livya intercepts me. The home of the gnomes has always felt like a huge, sprawling mess, and that it takes ages to complete is why a back door is installed in the first place. At least I can mostly ignore the troggs, slimes and gnomes that infest the dungeon. With my 60th level health bar I can also survive the occasional drop that a lower-level character wouldn’t, and when it looks like I can cut a corner and drop in to the slimes I wonder if I should. I’m not sure if dropping down would avoid the first boss, who holds the key I seek, so I go the long way, which turns out to be a simple matter of taking a staircase instead. And running through the slimes brings me to the first boss, piloting the Electrocutioner 6000. I break his springs and mechanics and steal the key, and then think about dropping down from his platform, again to cut a corner. This time I do it, as I have what I came for so any hastened progress is good.

It turns out that dropping off the Electrocutioner’s platform brings me to the last corridor in Gnomeregan, populated by dark iron dwarves. It’s a short trot to the end of the corridor to kill the final boss before he can even release a single bomb, and just as Livya walks in the front entrance. I’m not entirely sure how I clear the dungeon so quickly, as the usual procedure is to get lost and confused within ten seconds of entering, much like the last time Filesystem Checkwits went to Gnomeregan. It certainly felt a much more arduous adventure then. Never mind, we head out again and still have time to get the scarlet key from the Scarlet Monastery, flying to the north of the continent and riding in to Tirisfal Glades.

The scarlet key is rescued swiftly from Arcanist Doan’s chest in the library. All three wings and the graveyard need to have their boss defeated for the dungeon’s achievement, so whilst we are at the monastery it seems rude not to visit the armoury, cathedral and graveyard. Whilst we hack and slash our way through the scarlet zealots, Livya and I chat about spaceships and survival tactics in wormholes, without creating any kind of schism because draenei are goats from space and we’re obviously talking about that. It turns out to be a relaxing evening, once we get in to the swing of things.

As I look for the Bustard in the corporation hangar I realise that fleet bonuses can now be applied for being in a legitimate fleet, which includes mining bonuses. I ask the miner what level his mining foreman skill is, knowing that my own is rather low. Indeed, my colleagues skill is higher than my own, increasing his mining yield a little more, so it makes sense to make him the squad booster for the mining operation. But the Bustard is a brick with booster rockets when turning, and I would quite like my nifty boost to ship agility to be in effect, which requires me to boost the fleet. I don’t need the mining boost, so I wonder if I can finagle a way to get the best of both our skills.

I move myself upwards in fleet rank, placing me at wing commander. Setting myself as wing booster then gives me all the boosts I get from my leadership skills, whilst keeping my miner colleague as squad booster. But when I ask if he is still getting the boost he says he isn’t. I suppose that makes sense, as he no longer has a squad leader. Only having two fleet members restricts our options somewhat. Also, I believe the best boosts available across the fleet are applied to all relevant fleet members, and even if I’m not sure how the ‘best’ booster is determined I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t apply my agility boost and my colleague’s mining yield boost separately. I’ll just have to endure the Bustard not entering warp a couple of seconds sooner, which is far from a hardship. But the user interface grates again.

I didn’t much enjoy being shot at by ‘blue’ pilots, and I write at the time about the deficiency of the interface in showing the other pilots as allies without any indication that the relationship is not shared. If there is a visual way to indicate an ally, I maintain that there should be a way to visually discriminate between mutual allies and an aysmmetric relationship. Rather than a solid blue square, perhaps a square divided along adjacent corners, with one triangle’s colour denoting your relationship to the pilot, the other the pilot’s relationship to you. The asymmetry of the interface turns out to be the same with fleets.

There is no way of determining if the fleet you are in is legitimately commanded at all levels. I get the green tick of validity when I place myself as wing commander, but am given no feedback that my mining sqaud member is no longer in a valid fleet because of my change in rank. I have to ask to find out that he is no longer getting the booster bonuses. This makes determining a legitimate fleet hierarchy more awkward than necessary. It may only affect relatively inexperienced commanders, but without useful and immediate feedback the problem of determining legitimate fleet configurations will persist for longer, as it is more difficult to apply corrective actions if a problem remains unseen. For a fleet, it may be useful to apply a coloured translucent overlay to the fleet window. Fleet members in a legitimate configuration can be highlighted in green, those not in a legitimiate configuration highlighted in red, in much the same way that the overview shows capsuleers with low security ratings and corporation members. If this information were available at a glance, it would be much easier and quicker for pilots to form good fleets.

As it is, it takes some communication between me and the miner to ensure his mining foreman skill is helping his yield. Forming a legitimate fleet is far from a critical situation for this simple, two-man mining operation, but I would rather not have any complications should I want to form a fleet quickly for possible PvP. Hauling ore in the Bustard from the gravimetric site to the tower, and then hopping in my own Retriever to help shoot rocks, gives me the time to reflect on the inadequacies of the user interface. It keeps me occupied whilst mining, at least.

The exit wormhole to New Eden is reaching the end of its lifetime, so I won’t be using that in case I can’t get back again. Apparently, the class 2 system also found may have an exit, but I am told in the same breath that the wormhole leading to the class 2 system is also at the end of its lifetime. As an exit is only as stable as the entire route I don’t bother going to scan for an exit. With little else to do at the moment, I fly out to check the status of the low-sec exit anyway, finding it is indeed really quite wobbly. But J100001 is truly a vast system, well over 100 AU across. The maximum range of my core probe scanners only reaches 32 AU, and I cannot hope to cover a quarter of the system with a standard probe configuration. A single probe planted on top of the star doesn’t reach to the third planet, and there is a much more distant fourth. It seems like it would be an exercise in frustration to scan this system daily.

I consider an efficient way of scanning the system, for my own curiosity as much as anything. I end up chaining the probes around each planet’s orbital path looking for any return signal, which can then be concentrated on by overlapping probes. I find nothing beyond the already bookmarked signatures, including the low-sec exit and a null-sec exit. Checking the positions of the signatures, I muse that it is likely that all signatures in all systems appear within a certain range of a celestial body, probably within 16 AU because of probe ranges. Scanning this vast system would be too unwieldy without some strange attraction between celestial bodies and cosmic anomalies, and learning a general rule like this one would also help in scanning other large systems. I think it is worth investigating in subsequent scanning sorties.

Whilst finshing my thoughts, an idle check of my directional scanner shows me an interesting situation. There are no ships visible on d-scan, which extends out to the occupied tower in the system, but there are Sleeper wrecks visible. It is possible that the occupants have cleared an anomaly and have moved on to a different one before salvaging. I am intrigued. Without dropping further probes, I perform a scan of the system using the default ship scanner, which reveals the few anomalies currently present. As the system lacks any other sites, the wrecks must be in an anomaly. In my cloaked covert operations Buzzard I warp off to one of them, ending up in empty space. No wrecks are here, but a Thrasher warps in to my location within a few seconds of my arrival. The Minmatar destroyer is probably being used as a salvaging vessel. It looks like this anomaly has been cleared, salvaged and has despawned, though. The Thrasher warps off. I’m curious to find out what’s happening.

I find the occupied tower in the system using d-scan, helped by seeing in which direction the Thrasher warps away, locating it at planet 1 moon 6. Warping to the tower I see the Thrasher, a Raven battleship and Cheetah cov-ops boat. The Cheetah is stored and the capsuleer boards a Navy Issue Scorpion battleship instead. And off they warp. With the list of anomalies still in my ship’s computer I follow, safely cloaked, enjoying the voyeuristic journey. The Navy Issue Scorpion and Raven dive in to an anomaly, both repairing the other’s shields when necessary, and the Sleepers are being easily defeated. I get a small tingle of excitement seeing this, as I maintain my distance and keep moving, wondering if I could wait until the pair of battleships moves to the next site before swooping in to grab some of the Sleeper loot for myself. The Thrasher would no doubt be on its way, but it wouldn’t be fitted with weapons and I could probably steal loot from a few wrecks before having to flee from returning battleships, and it would be quite naughty. Sadly, the Raven has a tractor beam fitted and is actively looting all the wrecks. No being a ninja for me.

Leaving the fighting battleships behind, I warp to the low-sec exit to at least see where it leads. If it’s a simple jump to get to high-sec I could perhaps pick up my Crane quickly. But the system on the other side of the wormhole could hardly be lower in security status without becoming completely lawless. I find myself deep in the low-sec region of Aridia, in a 0·1 sec system, almost a dozen jumps needed just to get back to high-sec. The low-sec jumps may not faze me if I had my Crane, but even if my transport ship weren’t docked in a station in Amarr the twenty-seven jumps to get to corporate HQ makes this exit less than convenient. I can’t steal loot, there are no alternative routes to scan, and the exit to New Eden is too remote to be useful. I’ll just head back home to our tower.

It is time to scan for ourselves. It is odd to feel out of practice at scanning, considering I seem to spend most of my time chasing signatures around, but I still forget to bookmark the wormhole home before warping away from it to drop probes today. I like the new feature that remembers the point in space where you enter the w-space system, so even though I don’t have the wormhole bookmarked I can still drop probes on top of it to scan it quickly instead of having to resolve every signature until I find the way home. After locating the wormhole home, an initial scan of the system reveals five anomalies and two additional signatures. With one of the signatures being the way home, the other must be another wormhole outwards bound.

The next system along is also bereft of interesting sites, holding only three signatures of its own, two of them being wormholes. Both systems are occupied, explaining their lack of sites and profit-making opportunities, but we have a few anomalies scattered around. If our neighbours remain inactive we may be able to plunder a system of some loot. We head back home to our tower where the engineers form a fleet and get ready to rampage through some Sleeper anomalies. This is apparently my first fleet in my own Guardian since we fled in to high-sec from strategic cruisers, which I realise when I find I have no drones to launch, left to the Sleepers as we ran from bigger trouble.

Having no drones makes piloting a Guardian much easier, as I don’t need to target any Sleeper ships and can concentrate fully on keeping our own fleet repaired and energised. I’ve mentioned before that the squad ‘watch list’ is invaluable for monitoring incoming damage. Capsuleers’ names actively flashing in red when they take hits is a more direct indication of damage than noticing which of the white bars under several icons of targeted ships is perhaps getting slightly more red. But there is something even more obvious than the watch list, and that is the corporation communication channel. I can just read whenever one of the DPS ships is getting hit, and often whilst the Sleeper-fired missile is still in flight and far from its intended target. It is more advance warning than the watch list offers! I only need to watch out for anyone saying ‘ouch’, ‘where have my shields gone’, or ‘zomg im dead’ to know who to repair, although curiously that list is in reverse order of damage taken.

After the troubles and mocking I’ve received for taking pictures whilst having the responsibility of repping the fleet I try to promise not to take any pictures this time. The hundreds of pictures sitting on my system, discarded in to folders that are likely never to be opened again, also suggest that maybe I take too many. But I have almost no self-control, and I know it. I end up taking some pictures anyway, probably looking just like many other images of our small fleet battling Sleepers in identical anomalies. But the missiles, lasers and explosions can be so pretty, I can’t help myself. Fin says that she’s the same way, having no self-control herself. ‘I keep repping Riyu’, our Rook pilot, she shamefully admits. I feel her pain.

We clear five anomalies in our neighbouring system with no problems. The Megathron sitting at the occupied system’s tower remains inert the whole time. In case it wakes up and brings friends, our fleet is modified slightly to start with, a Dominix swapped out for an Ishtar heavy assault ship re-fitted for rudimentary salvaging. The modified HAC lets us move between anomalies without leaving any wrecks behind, which an opportunistic capsuleer could pinch if we weren’t careful, and loot and salvage is the only means of profit from sites of specific Sleeper interest. Half-way through our run through the system another engineer returns to w-space, one capable of salvaging, so the Ishtar pilot returns to his Dominix for added DPS and we get a dedicated salvager. We continue in this configuration for an anomaly back in our home system too, before calling it a night. The loot is added up and we each receive a share totalling 100 million ISK, which makes it quite a profitable sortie.

Even if I don’t scan for wormholes or sites of specific Sleeper interest, I spy an Anathema turn up briefly on the directional scanner. Having been startled by and run from an Anathema before, I now know that it is only a covert operations boat, the Amarrian equivalent to the superior Buzzard I fly. It is no threat by itself, and I have a shiny new Onyx that I have little experience of piloting. I wonder if I could set an ambush for the snoop. I probably won’t be putting myself in to danger, I hope to get a better idea of how the Onyx works, and I am quite unlikely to actually get in to a position to shoot anyone. It should be fine.

If the Anathema is in our system, and the only exit available is our static wormhole, then it must pass through that sooner or later. The plan seems simple enough, I merely need to sit the Onyx on top of the wormhole and, well, make up the rest of the plan. It is almost inevitable that a warp-scrambled ship will jump through a wormhole if it can get close enough, and even with a HIC’s warp bubble covering it a light-hulled cov-ops boat should be able to burn to the exit before popping. I fully expect to have to follow the jumping ship to the other side, where I will need to warp-scramble it again. The problems of hull polarisation effects of multiple jumps will prevent the target from escaping through the wormhole again, so as long as I can stop it from warping after it jumps I should have time to attack.

With the assumption that the Anathema is in our system, I decide to lock and warp-scramble the ship using a warp disruption field generator module loaded with a script. The script replaces the bubble with a single point of infinite strength, which is just fine for a single target. I am expecting to jump straight through the wormhole anyway, so I don’t want a bubble to inhibit this. As I’m pondering all this, our scanning man returns from his sortie and jumps through from the other side of the wormhole to where I am stalking in my Onyx. This is a good chance to try to lock and warp-scramble a cov-ops boat. As soon as his ship is visible I start to gain a lock, but he warps cleanly away before it completes. I’ll need a bubble to catch someone coming in.

I have only assumed that a HIC’s bubble prevents jumping through wormholes. I know that it inhibits the HIC warping, as the HIC is in its own warp disruption bubble, but I haven’t tested jumping yet. It doesn’t look like the Anathema is in the system anyway, as there are no probes visible on d-scan, making it likely that I saw the ship moments before it jumped out of the wormhole. It looks like I am here for a test flight only. I punch my primary warp disruption field generator and the glorious sight of HIC’s bubble balloons out from my Onyx. The thirty-second cycle makes timing of the bubble important, which is the cause of my reluctance to rely on it for a wormhole ambush without testing to see if I can jump with it active. I try to jump, and I am sucked through to the neighbouring w-space system as normal. On the other side of the wormhole, my systems are all reset, and I can generate another bubble immediately.

It looks like the best chance of a successful trap depends on the direction of travel of the target. I don’t want to hold an active bubble all the time, because if a ship in my current system bounces off it they may just turn and flee, gaining me little. I’ll need them to jump, where I can follow and bubble, polarisation effects then solidifying the trap. But if someone comes from the other side of the wormhole the HIC’s bubble will be needed, as my systems will not guarantee a lock on the target in time to warp-scramble them. If they jump back, I can follow and bubble again, at which point they are again polarised and warp-scrambled. This needs me to be alert, but if I am setting an ambush I really ought to be alert. I also don’t want to throw up a bubble too early when a ship jumps in to my system. It would serve me best to watch for any additional wormhole flares, indicating additional ships jumping, before creating a bubble, otherwise I could find myself in the middle of a hostile fleet stuck in my own amber.

I could fly out in my pod, its agility making the journey relatively safe, and plant myself in a ship at the first opportunity in k-space. But it seems awfully frail, particularly without first having travelled the route through w-space to see what activity is around. I could take another ship, but unless it can be hauled back in the Crane’s hold I will only be swapping one abandoned ship for another, and any rigs will be destroyed when a ship is repackaged. However, the engineers have a shuttle or two sitting in the hangar, which provides an extra layer of protection over a pod, whilst being small enough to squeeze in to any reasonable cargo hold. I’ll take the TIE Fighter.

The journey through w-space is quiet and straightforward and I am back in The Citadel soon enough. Sitting on the high-sec side of the wormhole feels like I’m hiding from everyone, present in the system but at a location no one will be warping to. If I could take care of everything here I would be happier, but some tasks need physical interaction. I head to my manufacturing base, delivering jobs over a fortnight old on the way. I have a slew of modules coming off the production line along with another colony of Badger Mk II industrial ships. I don’t have the time this evening to deliver the Badger IIs to market, instead taking the simple option of putting them up for sale in the station they were built, but all the modules fit in to the Crane’s hold and there are excellent gaps in the market within three jumps. Delivering useful modules to empty markets is worth a few minutes of my time.

Back in my Crane, shuttle in the hold, I once again feel speedy, fast enough to pop down to the high-sec corporate tower to refresh my overdue ME research jobs. I exit dock, point towards a stargate, and flick on the auto-pilot. I admit that it is a simple pleasure when returning to k-space to be able to use the static network of stargates to jump effortlessly between unchanging systems. But there are so many other people here. So much chatter on local, so many pilots lurking around stargates, so much activity at stations. Diverting briefly to pick up a couple of new skill books—the market being the other lure of k-space—the traffic around the station is unnerving.

This must be a common occurrence in high-sec, a couple of dozen ships loitering outside a station. I remember when I used to find it interesting, so many months ago, seeing the different hulls and racial technologies. Now I feel like I’ve seen so much more. More advanced and dangerous-looking ships have targeted and attacked me, I’ve lurked silently around Tech III strategic cruisers and confronted the bizzare alien technology of the Sleepers. As my Crane glides in to the docking perimeter I know that I must seem like just another pilot to the others, if they even notice me. Maybe it’s good that they cannot see the scrapes on the hull from arkonor and bistot asteroids, the polarisation effects resulting from countless wormhole jumps. I can simply slip in, conduct my business, and disappear again. After all, I don’t know how many of these pilots are on shore leave from a null-sec war either.

Skill books picked up, I continue to the corporation laboratories. The ME research is continued on my BPOs, some of it close to delivering a blueprint or two useful for production. And my trip down to Amarr space has brought me close to my Guardian, left out here when running from Tech III cruisers in w-space. As much as my Crane is adapted to moving around New Eden, the Guardian is a more useful ship to return to the w-space tower. With a cargo expander, it can even take the shuttle back with it. I wonder if I will have time to take the Guardian back and return the same evening for the Crane, but I think I know I won’t. My priority now is to retrieve my fleet ship, and the journey through noisy high-sec is soon replaced by the deadly quiet of w-space. Sorry, Tigress III. I hope to be back for you soon.

Rather than visit either of the two remaining fundamental 60th level challenges of the old Azerothian world, Scholomance and Stratholme, without a core member of the Filesystem Checkwits, it seems better to run amok in what is now a vestigial dungeon tucked under a long-deserted rock like an unwanted tail. Not that I can think of any reason why a tail would be unwanted, but the simile is otherwise solid. Lower Blackrock Spire used to be the gateway to Upper Blackrock Spire, holding the initial quest and items needed in the long chain to create the key to the upper dungeon. But now the door upwards is jammed open, offering permanent access to greater challenges, more notorious bosses, and higher-quality loot.

Lower Blackrock Spire is now no more than an artefact of a lost era, unnecessary to visit for anyone but tourists, its previous utility further undermined by the relative ease with which we scamper through it. We defeat only three of the six or seven bosses in the dungeon, one of those encounters being accidental and almost unnoticed. Although on reflection this rather defeats the object of experiencing Azeroth before the cataclysmic changes, missing Vulzerda makes tonight’s adventure more of a jaunt through content than the nostalgic last look that inspires our guild’s creation. And bypassing a chunk of the dungeon doesn’t stop us completing the two quests for the spiderling hatchling and worg pup pets, and only the final boss is needed to be defeated to trigger the achievement for completing the dungeon. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The short-cut past half of the mobs in Lower Blackrock Spire presents itself early in the dungeon. Passing through an antechamber and turning right offers a leap down to a latter area. I try to convince ex-Horde Livya that the route is a secret of the Alliance, but she doesn’t believe me. ‘The secret Alliance route would be to fall off the ledge in to the lava.’ I laugh off her wild guess, and instead follow her series of jumps on to the safety of rock in order to preserve the secret of the fiery swim. Once at the lowest section of Blackrock Spire we need to pass some orcs to wend our way higher again. The orcs are rather awkward to navigate through, though, and fighting in close quarters with mobs that flee results in our first wipe, nine orcs apparently above our safetly limit for a single encounter. I really should time my acceptance of the druid’s in-combat resurrection, as my habit of popping back to life a moment before everyone else dies is not helping my repair bill.

One soulstone recovery later, and we soon mow down enough orcs to slink past the rest. Onwards to the spiders. ‘Grab your eggs everyone’, I advise, ‘and I mean the quest items’. If we gather enough eggs for an NPC she’ll hatch one to give back to us as a pet. There are an awful lot of spiders, though, and again I remember too late that the big spiders burst to spawn more little spiders when killed. Being poisoned and temporarily crystallised is more of a problem in a smaller group too, and we wipe again. It is only on the run back that I realise we’ve already killed the boss spider, it being so inconspicuous amongst the other spiders that I thought the loot it dropped is a random good drop. As we return to life on coming through the dungeon’s entrance we have to take the short-cut again, finding another orc patrolling along the way. ‘Oh, he’s a Firebrand Grunt, I misread that entirely’, particularly as he debuffs me with a mark of flame, increasing fire damage significantly. But it makes me look fairly sinister too.

We work our way past the spiders, plenty of eggs for everyone, and pick off a couple of loitering ogres. Without picking up a polearm or encountering an ealier boss we cannot trigger the event here, so we move on. There are some swarming scorpions in our way, probably only there to add yet another type of vendor trash drop to clutter up our bags, truly a sign of a classic dungeon. ‘I’ve never been down that corridor’, admits Livya at the following t-junction. There is only a room of orcs and a minor boss in there, maybe something to do with blacksmithing. I have previously tended towards running in that direction under the mistaken impression that it leads to the entrace to Blackwing Lair, confusing it for the corridor in Upper Blackrock Spire that may look somewhat similar. But I remember this time and avoid taking that route, target set on the next pet quest.

Capturing a worg pup is more overtly dangerous than collecting spider eggs. The eggs are inert with occasional surprises, whereas the pups are alive and biting with hostile intent. And they are guarded by a minor boss, a huge wolf. We have to grab a pup and shove it in a carrier whilst fending off attacks, but once that is done we can slaughter the rest. Who is the real beast here: the worgs defending their territory, or the adventurers, with their suits and ties? Well, suits of armour and, uh… I hope it’s the worgs. Once the mother worg is defeated, pops comes running down from his den to meet a similar fate. A few more orcs are killed and we are facing dragonkin Overlord Wyrmthalak, the final boss of Lower Blackrock Spire. He calls some friends to help him half-way through the fight, and hits me so hard that I find myself standing on a rafter at one point, but Wyrmthalak poses no real threat and we stand victorious over his corpse.

Having taken a short-cut to get here that involves a few significant leaps down, without a way to jump ten times our heights, or twenty times for Livya, we have to use our hearthstones to escape without more fighting. Or I can use my deathgate to send me to Acherus, which turns out to be more convenient considering we still have plenty of time and decide to spend it getting the key to Scholomance ready for another day. Getting the key involves completing a chain of quests and travelling across two continents, a task that is mostly better shared. Only I have yet to start the quest chain, the NPC not recognising my change from paladin to death knight, but the advantageous proximity of Acherus to Chillwind Camp in the Western Plaguelands lets me kill the requisite numbers of skeletons and ghouls whilst Livya flies north to join me for the second part, planting beacons for All Along the Watchtower.

All four towers are found without confusing one for another, and as I fight the no-longer-elite skeleton guard Livya plants the beacon, speeding along the completion. Qattara joins us for the third quest, the only one that is both helped and hindered with more participants, as it requires fifteen drops from skeletal mobs in Andorhal. The drops are not cumulative across the party, so we need to get fourty-five in total. But our small group is able to pull a moderate number of mobs at a time, rather than face them in ones or twos, which probably speeds up the quest despite needing more drops in total. Once we have the fragments, we can either give Livya grafts to make her taller, or hand them back to the NPC to continue in the quest chain. He asks us to head from northen Eastern Kingdoms across the sea to southern Kalimdor, seeking a goblin in Gadgetzan.

The Mould Rhymes With… quest gets us the mould for the Skeleton Key to open Scholomance. But after that we need to create the key, which requires a couple of thorium bars each to be melted in a volcano in the adjacent region of Un’Goro Crater. If only we had a mining paladin instead of a stupid death knight. Not knowing you need thorium bars can make the quest even more tedious, having to travel backwards and forwards for petty tasks, and even knowing we need it adds that extra complication. But I have a plan. Qattara is sent to Ironforge to buy some thorium, thankfully not quite as in demand as when it was the highest valued ore in Azeroth, whilst Livya and myself board the ship in Menethil to travel to Theramore Isle and fly south to the Tanaris desert. My poor spider doesn’t seem to like water and waves its goodbyes.

I had hoped that we could use Livya’s warlock powers to summon Qattara to Gadgetzan, but we would need one more character to assist in the ritual. Livya amends the plan to use the summoning stone of Zul’Farrak instead, which only requires the two of us to activate. Livya and I hand in our quest in Tanaris, getting the mould and now needing thorium, and then ride across to Zul’Farrak to summon Qattara. The thorium is divvied out and Livya and I ride down to Un’Goro Crater, whilst Qattara heads over to Gadgetzan to complete the quest for the mould. She can then fly to Un’Goro Crater and head south, where we all meet to love parrots and toads near Flame Crest. By the way, ‘mould’ rhymes with ‘rip-off’, as the quest costs fifteen gold to complete. Whilst far from a fortune these days, back when the quest was more relevant, as the key is required to gain access to one of the final dungeons, fifteen gold was a lot to spend whilst trying to save up the thousand or so needed for an epic riding mount.

At the top of Flame Crest we find the pool of lava that is apparently the only place hot enough to forge this key from the thorium and skeletal fragments. So naturally we dip our feet in it and put everything together with our bare hands. ‘These little earthquakes are part of Cataclysm, aren’t they?’, Livya points out, as the ground shakes beneath our feet a few times. No, it’s just the quest trying to add a touch of drama to an otherwise tedious procedure. ‘These little earthquakes are nothing to do with Cataclysm, aren’t they?’ And we have the key! But not a working key, it apparently needs to be imbued with magic, requiring us to head back to Chillwind Point. The other two use their hearthstones to get back to Stormwind and fly north, whereas I open a deathgate and return to Acherus to be handily close in the plaguelands again.

The final stage in the quest chain is to kill Araj the Summoner and return his Scarab to the alchemist in Chillwind Point. As I am first to Andorhal, where Araj stands in wait, I clear some of the mobs surrounding The Summoner, thankfully no longer elite. Araj is weaker too these days, and when Qattara and Livya arrive we have no trouble in thoroughly destroying all the undead within a ten metre radius. It helps that we have hit 60th level as a result of the Lower Blackrock Spire Quests. My new talent point gets me the excellent howling blast ability, which hits multiple targets, and training in Acherus grants me the death and decay AoE spell. I am now much more potent against multiple targets. And we finally have the key to Scholomance, perhaps taking a little longer than running through the dungeon earlier. The final dungeons of Azeroth are now unlocked for our last few adventures before heading to the Outlands.

I grab the bookmarks for today’s wormholes and sites so that I can haul ore from a neighbouring w-space system. The system is unoccupied and has a bounty of rocks to mine, as well as holding plenty of sites of specific Sleeper interest to plunder. I make three trips in a fattened Bustard transport ship to return bistot and arkonor to the tower, then the mining operation is halted in favour of fighting Sleepers. This w-space system holds a magnetar celestial body, providing a bonus to all damage. This will make it more challenging to repair through the damage spikes, and repair in general, and myself and Fin will need to be focussed in our Guardians. I wonder aloud if I can still take pictures. ‘As long as they don’t have us blowing up.’ That sounds like a yes to me. Besides, all the best pictures have explosions, just ask Jerry Bruckheimer.

The first anomaly shows that the increased damage caused by the magnetar’s influence is significant, but only really a concern when an ECM cycle fails or before it kicks in. At the same time, our systems receive the same boost to damage and the Sleeper frigates pop in a second, even the cruisers only surviving two shots from our battleships. With this damage boost, we are cutting through the Sleeper ships much faster than normal. I also realise that getting a message that the Sleepers are trying to scramble fleet members is a good sign that an ECM lock has been broken, helping me react to damage spikes more quickly. The magnetar also affects the ships’ targeting systems, dropping the Guardians’ targeting range down to 73 km, but as this is the range of our remote repair modules this is far from a concern. The DPS battleships probably feel the loss of targeting range more.

When a wave of Sleepers warps in outside of the Dominix’s targeting range he punches the micro-warp drive and burns towards them. ‘Cap please’, he asks, quite reasonably. But the same situation occurred in the last anomaly, and the Guardians were asked to feed him cap for a few cycles to power his MWD, so when I see the Sleepers appear so far away this time I am ready. His Dominix’s capacitor is being replenished by my energy transfer array, having received about five cycles’ worth so far. ‘Oh, so I am.’ We have become quite organised as a small fleet, defining and getting comfortable with certain duties. We know which ships chew through their capacitor and under what circumstances, and have split each Guardian’s focus to certain ships or pilots. The rest of the fleet also have an idea of the limits the Guardians work with and are understanding when we need to deny energy so that we can repair the fleet. We are well-versed in Sleeper PvE.

Despite his rush to get in to range of the Sleepers, the Dominix is largely being ignored by them. ‘I should fix his shield bar’, says a colleague, noting that it’s not as red as the rest of the fleet’s. ‘The Abaddon pilot wants you to come within 40 km of him’, he adds, but we’ve all heard that one before. And mentioning things turning red, the ’sticky’ meta key glitch occurs again. Thankfully, this time it is out of combat and when I am trying to shut-down my systems, but I somehow manage to overheat a repper instead of turning it off. I have no idea how I this happens, not realising there is a hot-key for overheating systems, so even when I ‘un-stick’ the meta keys I flail around for a little in trying to turn off overheating on that module. The module ends up a little heat-damaged, but apparently that won’t affect its performance. I am a little upset that I damage a borrowed ship, though. But overall it has been another profitable and enjoyable evening, blasting through several Sleeper anomalies with a smooth efficiency.