A new face.

Yaharrr maties! This is Lyticus of Sniggerdly, I just joined the eve-pirate.com gang and hopefully I will entertain you with my escapades. I thought I'd start off my introduction by giving you a little backround of my EVE experience. I've been playing since about 2003 even though for some reason my employment history disagrees with me. I was part of the Earth & Beyond migitation, sort of. I had actually started playing EVE about two months before the Sunset (shutdown) of EnB was declared, so I didn't have the benefit of a free month or whatever the ENB people got, oh well. EnB lives on in our hearts! *waves candles in the air* When I began in EVE, I found it difficult to find direction. EnB was my first MMORPG and EVE was basically my second, and after playing a Jenquai Defender to level 140 or so, I found that EVE's open-endedness left me feeling very small and insignificant in the eyes of a very big universe. And I was, just another noob cruising around in my low-end frigate. I remember my early days very well, I mined for many weeks to purchase a better ship, and even though I was an Amarrian, I quickly decided to train for Gallante cruisers and Drones, and this would serve me well later on. But in the beginning I was dreaming of mining Jaspet in 0.4 security space and using my powerful Thorax's Drone bay to fend off the vicious attacks of the NPC's. Yes, back in the day you could actually mine Jaspet in 0.4 sec systems. Interestingly enough I never had an encounter with a pirate when I was starting out in EVE. Mining alone, un-stabbed, with barely enough defences to fend off the occasional NPC spawn I was a prime target, but I was never attacked. EVE was a very big place back then, I percieved myself to be a forrunner within my group of friends, the first to be travelling into such dangerous space, and now looking back on that I realised how naive I was. So mining away in my thorax I turned my eyes to bigger goals, still somewhat lacking a direction within the EVE universe, I decided that by fitting some guns on my ship and taking on the npc's in lowsec I would not only be putting my own skill on the line for a better profit than mining, it would be a heap more fun. So I whacked some railguns onto my thorax and set off. I warped into the belt and engaged the npcs, and they got too close for my guns to hit them, and I died. Lesson learned, an expensive one at that, since I couldn't afford insurance and this was before a default insurance payout. I was back to mining in a frigate. After buying another thorax, I mined more for longer and built myself a Dominix from a blueprint copy I had bought. I felt like I was unstoppable, flying such a huge ship, how could anyone possibly stand in my way? The answer to that was of course a gatecamp in a 0.4 sec system. I jumped in and when faced with the enemy shooting at my ship, I was so afraid I actually quit the game. I couldn't stand to watch as my beautiful new dominix battleship was destroyed before my eyes. Also uninsured, I was back to the thorax. This time, I mined my way into a Megathron, and used that to pursue additional wealth. (Via mining of course, no self-respecting noob would be seen actually using a megathron for COMBAT!) About this time I joined the Brotherhood of Militia, an industry-orientated corp with a small wing of npcers. I met some good friends there and the corp is still chugging away to this day. I decided I wanted to pursue PvP after leaving EVE for some time because of boredom, and my corp reccomended me to Millennium, an allied anti-pirate corp. Things couldn't have been better, around the time I joined Millennium were accepted into the newly formed Deklein Alliance, and we had our own patch of 0.0 space to use. I mined for many weeks and eventually trained my way into an Armageddon battleship, which at the time was great for npcing against the guristas in Deklein because Pulse Lasers hadn't been hit with the range nerf. I made many millions npcing away in 0.0 and improving my skills and my ship setup, eventually swapping for an Apocalypse. I thought I was pretty good at what I did, but I still had very little proper PvP experience. In my limited experience, Millennium never saw much combat while I was a member. I eventually grew bored of the never-ending cycle of npcing and quit EVE altogether. I looked into other MMORPG's, like Ragnarok Online, Planetside, and World of Warcraft. I also played a bunch of FPS's over this time like Counter-Strike, UT, etc etc. I came back to EVE and after some deliberation left Millennium and joined the Hadean Drive Yards, stayed there for about two weeks and after enduring their ridiculous red tape and policies I was toward the end of my tether. And then it happened, I had my first 'real' combat experience, I was out NPC'ing in my Thorax, having since improved my combat abilities, when a Zealot flown by one "Verone" of Sniggerdly flew into my belt, and before I could work out what was happening, I was dead. Burning with rage, I let fly into local a fair share of smacktalk, although I don't remember exactly what was said. However, five minutes later a 1v1 fight was organised against Static Gal'rath of Sniggerdly, a new recruit of Snigg. Verone offered to buy me a new Thorax should I lose the fight, and the game was on. Thorax vs. Blackbird. One would imagine it would be a no-contest, but through what was mostly my blind luck, I won the fight. I was able to get a lock and send my drones to attack, much to Static's dismay. We verbally shook hands and agreed it was a good fight. Verone mentioned he would be making the fight into a video which would be released onto the EVE-forums. Having never visited the Eve-online forums before, let alone the video section, I was brimming with excitement at the prospect of a video of myself beating a pirate in a fair 1v1 fight. After Verone posted the video, I downloaded it and watched myself combat a Sniggerdly member. I didn't know at the time that Sniggerdly are some of the best pirates around, and honourable pirates at that, so I hadn't expected much on the forums. However, when I watched the video I was blown away, Verone not only portrayed the fight in a fair and balanced fashion, he even congratulated me on winning and linked to the Hadean Drive Yards website. This bowled me over, I was amazed and Verone and Sniggerdly immediately earnt my respect. I contacted Verone and explained how dissapointed I was with HDY at the time and asked if I could join Sniggerdly. I was accepted. And thus began my career as a pirate. I was still a noob, so my first fights were in poorly-setup ships, and since I had little isk, I couldn't risk much, but I slowly built up my skills both as a character and as a player. I have since released two pirating video's of my own, the first of which entitled "Solo Fights" was a few 1v1's I had in frigates, the fights arent that great, and the quality isn't very good either, but it was my first attempt and I got some nice feedback. My second video however made quite a splash, I released "A Pirates Life" which was a slightly more RP-orientated look at Lyticus and pirating. It was very well recieved by the community with over 100 replies and stayed on the top of the boards for a good few weeks. I am still very proud of it. As a pirate I specialise in Cruiser combat, I've never been very fond of battleships, and my skills reflect this, I have many more sp focused at improving frig and cruiser combat than anything else. I like the maneuverability of cruisers/frigs, their low cost and fighting against the odds. I enjoy pushing ships to their limit and seeing what they can accomplish when setup and flown correctly. Currently, I am loving my life as a pirate and I am producing my third pirating video, after a small setback when my hard drive failed a month ago, I am making good progress. It will be BIG. Not just big, BIG, in both file size and impact. I have over 150gb of FRAPS footage, of which I am only taking the best, 2v1's, 5v1's, squad combat, frig vs battleship, its all there. Consider that a teaser, hehe. The entire thing has been shot in 1152x864 and as such will be full-screen quality. I'll be releasing both a low-quality version which will be half-size (500x400 or something) and a full-quality version which will be the best of everything. So, now that we are better acquainted with Lyticus, I'll tell you a little more about me. I live in Australia, Queensland (north-east corner of aust) and I am 17 years old, I graduated from highschool last year and I am currently working with a financial group in a sales orientated environment, waiting for my course in 3D Animation and Graphics to begin next year. I like long walks on the beach, evenings by the fire and wtfpwning noobs. Oh, and I have red hair. ph33r m3. Thanks to Ander for giving me the opportunity to start a blog here, and I hope you all enjoy my ramblings, since it is now 11pm here and I have to work tomorrow, I'll be going sleeping. Expect a post soon about my recent piracy adventures. Yarr!! - Lyticus