Quite the immoral title, yes? Well, I actually feel like I have. It felt like Frontier came to me and said “I understand that you’re not making credits as quick as you want. I could help you get as much to afford that ASP Explorer… all you have to do is smuggle. Sign this form, and you’ll have more credits than you ever dreamed of!”
And after much hesitation, I ‘signed the form’ by making it to Robigo and did my first ever smuggling mission of 2.5 million credits. And I completed it with very little issues! 😀
But getting there and not being prepared, is something you cannot do. Unfortunately, I did. See, I had a Viper MK4 from trying to do bounty hunting with a friend. It didn’t go so well.
To spare the details of all of that stuff and get right to the point, I decided to go to Robigo in my Viper. Back in my home system, I couldn’t view the system map for Robigo and assumed I would have no problem selling my Viper for a Cobra, and getting it ready for Robigo runs.
Took me 40 jumps to reach it. Finally I did, and … the Robigo Mines had no Outfitting or even a Shipyard. So I had two options. 1, go back to my home system. And 2, find a system close to Robigo that has these services.
Did the second one. Went there. Docked. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any Power Plants or FSDs for sale (and the Thrusters were not what I’m looking for).
I went on and sold my Viper for the Cobra, thinking I’ll be able to just re-buy what I had. I couldn’t. They took my perfectly good modules and threw them in the incinerator, and then pretended to be all “Uhh, sorry. We still don’t have any in stock!”
I was royally fucked! Not only was I forced to go back home, but I had to go back home slower than I was!! And damn was it painful.
Thankfully, this story has a happy ending. Finally jumped into a system with a station, that had some really nice upgrades. It wasn’t what I needed, but it really helped. I went from 57 jumps to go, to 27. Was able to make it home. Back there, I still didn’t exactly have everything I needed, but it was close enough to not be a problem.
Made it back to Robigo, landed, and the first mission I saw was worth 2.5 million. Wow. That’s one hell of a payout! That’s like 2-3 hours of bounties, in less than a half an hour.
I saw a bunch of other missions too, some offering 300k. Not too bad….but, I said that if I wasn’t able to pull off this single mission, I’d be done with the game.
I took it, and attempted to do it. Occasionally, I got this random NPC saying “Wait! Don’t flee! I have important info for you!” But I just ignored him and continued on.
About 4 jumps from reaching my destination, a random pirate spawned in and Interdicted me. I played it calm and submitted, but when I tried to jump away, it said how I was mass locked. Thankfully I was far away for him to attack me.
Did finally jump away.
Made it to the station with no issues. When I jumped in, I was facing the front of the station. I aligned myself to it and got within 7m of it, requested docking, then Silent Ran in. The cop ships were flying around me, but I never heard “Scan detected”. Stayed in Silent Run until I got close to docking, and docked.
Here my hands were shaking for gripping onto my HOTAS too tightly, but I have DONE IT!! 2.5 million in the bank! WOOT!! 😀 That completely pays for the hell I went through.
Even though I completed the mission, my head was swimming with uncertainty if this is what I would use to make my credits. I’m thinking if I grabbed a whole bunch of missions, would the risk be too harsh for me to handle? Debated if I should just go back to mining, or bounty hunting.
Then I thought “you know what? Just try it. See if it’s too harsh and go from there”. And that’s what I’ve done. Went back to Robigo.
This time there wasn’t that many missions for me to do. Most of them were unavailable. But I grabbed another smuggling mission (1.5 million) and a shockingly legit mission of delivering samples to a station for healing purposes.
This one had two encounters of pirates. However, it seems only one engages me at a time. I thought “this really isn’t so bad…”
Completed both of them with absolutely no issues. Maybe I got lucky. Though sometimes I hate luck, as it might tend to swing against you without warning.
Felt like I ‘sold my soul to the devil’ here (hence the post title) in order to get rich quick. I know this game is about literally doing what I want to do. There is no hand-holding. There is no path you must follow. You’re on your own. And I feel like I’ve finally chosen the path to riches. All I want, is an ASP Explorer. Nothing more. I just wish it wasn’t so damn expensive.
But it’s not really the cost of the ship that’s expensive — it’s the cost of the outfitting. However, there is hope. I’ve been told that if I go to any High Tech system that is controlled by the ‘Ly Yong-rui’ Power (examples are the ‘Lembava’ system, and the ‘Diaguandri’ system), I would be able to get the ship (and all of the modules) at 15% off the galactic average. This is nice.
All I need to do is to do a nice ASP Explorer build. A build I could live with until I can afford better upgrades. A build I could use with Robigo (instead of the Cobra).
Though someone has showed this build that they use for Robigo. It’s 20 million. But assuming what I hear with everything 15% off, the cost is… well, not that impressive. 12.7 million. That’s actually not that bad. Still, I’ll have a bit of a wait to get up that much. Though I feel I need at least 15 million. Once I get that, I will have my own ASP Explorer.