The thing about MMOs is that they’re always moving ahead, or at least they feel like they are. I know a lot of folks like to maintain a stable of alts, whether it’s across servers to play with friends, to try new classes, to fill in content that was skipped with other characters, or to just act as functional and mobile banks. Creating alts is also a way to go back and maybe correct mistakes that were made with other characters, and while I don’t really have an example of what those could be, I do know that often times I forego certain content because I don’t want to derail, distort, or lose some aspect of my character to a Bad Decision.

EVE Online popularized the phrase “don’t fly what you can’t afford to replace/lose” and that’s been my underlying mental state in many games for years. When I played EVE, I’d only take my Best Ships out when with other people; otherwise, I’d be puttering around in junk ships. In Star Citizen it was different because I could never really lose my ships if they blew up, but it would be a massive pain in the ass to reacquire and refit them. The same went for my earlier forays in Elite Dangerous, back when I was struggling to find a reliable and non-tedious way to make money. While I could always get a free Sidewinder should any of my ships get destroyed, keeping enough money on hand to pay the insurance re-buy cost was always something in the front of my mind when leaving the station. Even though I might be able to re-acquire the base ship I might not have enough to cover the cost of replacing all of the customizations I had made to it.

Now that I’m getting more comfortable with ED and have been learning about all of the ways I can make money — some more successful than others — I’m relaxing a bit in how I approach things.

Very shortly after my first million CR, I got a windfall of 5m CR for my participation in last week’s Faction Assignments which was something I was not expecting. Then I went out and finally found some biologicals to scan, and turning that data in netted me another 16m CR. Even my oldest, longest running character Way Back When had only ever had maybe about 10m CR at a time; now it seems I can’t stop earning something as I’m trying out all of these systems.

As a result, I’m not so careful with what I do. Since I bought the Mandalay with ARX, I assume I can never lose it, but I would have to pay insurance to get the ship back in the same form as it was in when it was destroyed. The Cobra, however, being an in-game purchase, costs a lot more to insure…but I have it covered in spades now so if it blows up, who cares?

This isn’t to say that I’m out there putting the “Dangerous” in “Elite Dangerous”, but I’m more willing to buy parts, tackle missions and assignments that I wouldn’t have done five years ago, and I feel that my experience is better for it. I’m enjoying the game more now that I’m not feeling like even my best hustle would never be good enough or that an activity might end badly and put me back at square one (I really hate repeating content in games, and being forced to do so often causes me to quit them).

The only question is with the Odyssey content. This week’s faction assignment wants me to steal data from opposition outposts, meaning that I have to land and sneak into the planetary bases to interface with the data ports; I’ve only done FPS content through the tutorial, so I have absolutely no idea how this kind of mission might unfold. At least it’s cheaper to buy a new flight suit and weapons if I die than would be to replace the Cobra.