And For My Next Trick ...

It's been two days since my last post, and in it, I said I was taking a break from EVE. Unfortunately for me, it's pull is too strong to resist. I've had a few ideas for challenges for myself, and I want to try and achieve one.

One of things that bothered me a little about the first trading challenge was that I was starting with quite a head start. My character had about 480M ISK of starting cash (after selling the Orca and buying the PLEX). That's quite a bit of money. Even if my returns were paltry, like 5% a day, that's still 12M ISK a day, or 1.5B in a month (if you compound the returns).

I hear a lot about how difficult it is to get started in EVE, and how old players have it easy, since they've benefited from the T2 BPO lottery, or inflation, or the initial land grab. I think these are just excuses. Gevlon and Vincent Tremain have both proven that it's possible to make a lot of ISK starting from nothing. And now I'm going to prove that even a lazy idiot like me can do it.

But before I outline my plan, meet Nate Mullenix

and Nate Reinheardt

These are my two latest trade alts. Nate M has about 1,000,000 skill points, and Nate R has 672,800. These are both new characters, fresh out of the academy. They've joined Fugawa Heavy Industries hoping to make a fortune. They met up at the latest FGW meet and greet, and decided it would be easier if they made their fortune by teaming up, rather than going at it alone.

Their plan is pretty straight forward: they're going to trade. They'll do a bit of missioning to help generate capital to invest and lower trading costs by improving their standings, but their primary activities will be trading and hauling. They're going to rely on the experience of Meili Jiang, their CEO, but what they won't be able to rely on is FGW's pile of ISK. They're starting with only the cash they've accumulated from the starter missions, station owner missions and the sale of anything they've picked up (starter mission donations and mission loot / salvage). Just to keep things simple, they've decided to pool their money, and split all profits 50/50. Here's their starting position:


Assets
Cash                          11,952,435.33 ISK
Sell Orders                    4,689,278.00 ISK
Escrow                                 0.00 ISK
Contracts                              0.00 ISK
                              -----------------
Total Current Assets          16,641,713.33 ISK


As you can see, they're starting with not much more than hope and blind optimism. But they're eager and ambitious, and that's a lot. Their goal is to reach 1 billion ISK between the two of them, and they don't have a timeline.


Let's see how this works out.