[Editor’s Note: A few kills on zKillboard came up during a recent discussion on ALOD’s (Awful Loss of the Day), and they were interesting enough to warrant further investigation. We reached out to contacts who seemed to be involved and were put in contact with Degnar Oskold from Justified Chaos. While Degnar has not been the main hunter of this individual, he was able to fill in the story of what has been going on, and what follows below is his take on what has been happening. It has been edited for typos and clarity, but otherwise is as was told to us]:
Justified Chaos (JUSTK) has had a member, Burtakus, who has camped Litiura for a couple of years now. For people in Caldari Faction Warfare, Litiura is a bottleneck system that leads to 2 out of the 3 main entrances to lowsec. So there is a huge amount of traffic coming through of Caldari militia players every day. A lot of it is relatively new players who haven’t learned to use neutral, out-of-FW alts to move cargo or combat ships to the front. Burtakus has a broad range of ships in that system for catching ships of any size transiting through.
Burtakus first came across this Srydeau Denon guy on Jan 17 when he blew up an incredible 30 billion ISK Raven Navy Issue followed (much to his amazement) by a 9 billion ISK Scorpion Navy.
Confirming that this guy really didn’t care about the value of ISK, he then put a 2.4 billion ISK bounty on Burtakus. 2.4 billion casually wasted like that.
We don’t know much more except that the guy seems to be very stubborn. He keeps trying to go through the same area and has a really poor knowledge of the game. He loses expensive ships to CONCORD (presumably using burst jammers amongst people). He flew 9 billion ISK frigates to lowsec and dies to T1 destroyers [Ed: It was this loss that first alerted us to this player].
He flies blinged-out Marauders into Calmil staging system, all this at just 20 days old. That means he used a ton of skill injectors and had 150 billion left over for ships, and more on top to hand out bounties. This means he has spent roughly 60,000 PLEX worth in one month, which is about four times the size of the largest PLEX package that CCP sells.
Starting Out
Therefore, I can hypothesise a story based on his kill history.
The player joins EVE for the first time on Jan 8. He spends three days playing through tutorials, loves it, can’t wait to fight against players, and takes the newbie path into joining Caldari militia at 20:42 on Jan 11. He gets a Condor, slaps on a civilian prop mod and a civilian shield booster from the tutorials, 4 T1 launchers, and like an eager beaver dives into lowsec to get in on some of this EVE PVP he’s heard about. 15 minutes later he dies in about 3 seconds to an Exequeror Navy Issue. The guy is stoked. He got the EVE shakes. He thinks he could win the fight if only he was in a bigger, more powerful ship than the guy who killed him. The only problem is, he doesn’t have the skills to fly it; all he can do is a Caldari T1 frigate with basic modules.
Then he discovers PLEX and skill injectors. He is moderate at first. He PLEXes a little and buys a few skill injectors. Just enough to buy a bigger, better-armed ship that will help win the type of fight he just lost. He buys a Scorpion Navy Issue, a powerful battleship. He fits it with missiles and guns so he can fight at any range, a powerful shield booster because his tiny shield booster was overwhelmed in the last fight, two microwarpdrives so he can zoom really fast to catch up to anyone, and a scanner so he can figure out the weaknesses the other ship.
He hasn’t bought enough skill injectors though or he hasn’t learned about fitting skills, so he has to fill up his low slots with fitting mods; and nobody has told him about rigs. He goes into lowsec and dies immediately on the hisec gate to a carrier. This was on Jan 12, the very next day after losing his condor.
The guy now takes a few days to think and research a bit. His new, powerful battleship was broken like a stick! What could beat something that rips through a battleship? So he researches EVE a little more and discovers dreadnoughts. He makes a new plan. He is going to buy a dreadnought and be the baddest mofo in EVE. He somehow has access to a lot of money. Maybe he is independently wealthy and is what game developers consider a “whale,” that minority of players who spend a disproportionate amount of money. Maybe he is “borrowing” his parent’s credit card. Whatever it is, he buys $2000 of ISK, 4 x the biggest package from CCP, and puts his plan into motion.
He buys a bunch of skill injectors, enough to be able to fly a dread and its weapons, but now he sees a problem. Sitting in Jita, he realizes that although the cheapest dreadnought modules are in Jita, the closest Phoenix for sale is in Maila, in lowsec. So he heads out to Maila, buys a Phoenix, then tries to fly back to Jita to fit it out. While he is trying to figure out why he can’t jump into hisec, he comes across the carrier that killed him before.
It’s Purple, So It Must Be Good, Right?
Cue two days of raging and trying to figure out what to do next. He’s feeling frustrated now because despite spending $2000 on the game, he’s obviously far from being the badass he envisioned earlier. Applying his knowledge from other games, he reasons that purple equipment is the best and that a guy with all “elite loot” on his ship must be able to dominate anyone with “white loot.”
He researches the highest damage equipment in the game and puts them on his new Raven Navy Issue, the most powerful ship he can fly that is available in Jita, since no capitals are in hisec. He looks up fittings, but also includes some of his own ideas (like a burst jammer and a warp core stabilizer, so he can get away). He doesn’t understand that polarized weapons remove resistances, he only focused on the important stats: damage. Again, he mixes short and long range weapons so that he can fight at any distance.
At last, he looks at his 30 billion ISK ship, is pleased that it is fitted to handle any situation, is confident that he has enough purple and blue equipment to dominate anyone, and sets off to lowsec. Halfway there, in Lituira, he encounters Burtakus.
After the shock of that loss, he is fuming about his ship (WHICH MUST BE GREAT BECAUSE OF HOW MUCH MONEY HE SPENT ON IT) for a little while. Over the next hour, he tries to think of what went wrong and comes across e-war. So he thinks he can avenge himself and prove he is a badass, by fitting e-war onto his next ship and then using his superior damage while the enemy cannot harm him.
He knew he died to a Minmatar ship, so his new Scorpion Navy Issue has a Minmatar jammer, also a multispectrum jammer just in case someone else is there, a target spectrum breaker to shake off the enemy locks, and a tracking disruptor and sensor dampener. With so many different forms of e-war, he reasons that one of them will make the difference. He also keeps the most powerful short and long-ranged weapons he can buy on the ship so that he is effective at any range. Again, he doesn’t read the small text on polarized launchers.
Our brave hero promptly hurls himself into Litiura again and loses the 9 billion ISK ship. Maybe he noticed that he lasted slightly longer this time, and take that as a good sign that he is learning.
Now, he spends another 48 hours thinking about what went wrong. He correctly realizes that mixing long and short-ranged weapons doesn’t work. He also thinks that missiles perhaps are what sucks, and throws more PLEX into learning blasters. He has now also learned about polarized weapons and stopped using them. He fits up a Rokh and dies to Burtakus again when caught in Uemisaisan, the system besides Burt’s Litiura hunting ground.
Losing the Rokh convinces him that missiles were not the problem. He finally understands that Burtakas uses a Marauder, an exceptionally powerful class of battleship, and decides that if only he had a marauder of his own, he would prove that he is, in fact, the biggest baddest mofo in all of EVE!
He immediately flies back to Jita, buys skill injectors and a Golem, but is then horrified at how few missiles launcher slots it has. He decides to go with mostly short-ranged weapons, but with a cruise launcher as long-range insurance. Purple weapons, of course. He loses most of the e-war because it hasn’t helped him much in the previous fights, but now decides that he died too quickly before because after his shield was blasted through, the shield booster didn’t help. So he adds the best purple armor repairer that will help him with extra repping in the fight. Surely this is unstoppable…
How Unstoppable Was It?
Nope.
He now decides to take a break from trying to fight Burt and decides to get into some PVE. He buys an expensively fit Scorpion and shoots rats in it, reckoning that the Scorpion’s e-war bonuses will help fight off any pirates.
Unfortunately for him, Burtakus rightly viewed the guy as a loot pinata and was now running daily locator agents on him. When it came back that he was in a 0.5 system, Burt grabbed a buddy from Litiura and went hunting.
He then learned a lesson about burst jammers when CONCORD killed his 5-billion-ISK replacement Scorpion. This makes him take a break for a couple of days.
He now buys a Naga, perhaps reckoning that its combination of faster speed and battleship damage will be the solution to his problems. Purple guns, of course. He has to maximize the DPS to prove that he wins PVP. He is heading off somewhere when Burt and his friends spot him and run him down in Uemissaisen, again.
Finally, he learns his lesson and decides to avoid Burt’s area, and go do some more PVE, this time in Nourvukaiken, the opposite direction from Jita to Burt.
Unfortunately, once you learn someone is a loot pinata, you do not leave them alone. Locator agents tracked him down again, but this being a 0.8 system, it was much more dangerous for the attackers. The tackle Svipul got destroyed by Caldari Navy rats, giving our persistent hero the first ever PVP killmail of his life. Vindication! His first solid step on the path to being the biggest baddest mofo in EVE!
Unfortunately, as the rest of the gang landed, held him down, and began blasting into his ship, our bumbling desperate hero once more activated an ECM burst in hisec and evoked the wrath of CONCORD. 10-billion-ISK Rokh gone.
The lust for battle was now truly awakened in him. After a false start where he was presumably baited into shooting a suspect ship from Vendetta Mercenary Group and lost another Golem, 6 billion ISK, he managed to secure two more kills when his Rattlesnake ambushed two Goonswarm capsules in Sotrentaira (coincidentally back within hunting range of Burtakus, so clearly he didn’t learn his lesson).
By Jan 29, he learned that bigger was not better. Buying a couple of Jackdaws, he attempted to reach Akidagi in lowsec, but got intercepted in Litiura both times. His fits revealed that he was no longer mixing ranges but still had not learned that “elite loot” does not give a real edge in fights. Still, he was apparently learning…
Alas, hubris struck! After seeing Burtakas and friends in cruisers and command destroyers, our valiant eager beaver thought that if he swiftly returned in a Golem he would shatter the gang of destroyers and send them fleeing before him. 30 minutes later he was back, and of course, he had been spotted 4 systems out and so instead of Burtakus in a Svipul, his Golem had to face Burtakus’s waiting Vargur. Again. With the same result.
20 hours later, Srydeau Denon finally made it to Akidagi, the first system in lowsec Black Rise. In a Harpy. Worth 9 billion ISK, because “elite loot” fittings must be better, right? He died to a 10 million ISK Dragoon.
And so our valiant hero’s epic struggle to reach lowsec and prove that he is the master of PVP continues. Today alone he lost a Golem in Akidagi , a flycatcher and a raptor in hisec between Jita and lowsec, and a Raptor in Aubenall, at last deeper in lowsec. All ships had storyline modules of course. To be the best at PVP he must have “elite loot” on his ship, naturally.
There is a happy ending to the day though. He finally got on a lowsec ship killmail!
With 12% of total damage.
Remember kids, EVE is clearly pay-to-win! $2000 USD turned this guy from a zero to a hero!
