The Solo Player Sanctuary
We came to a stark realization: there simply weren't any clans in the area at all.
It wasn't that our standards were too high, or that we were refusing to join some no-name outfit. We would have settled for anywhere — anything that might scrape us even a little extra profit. The problem was that clans themselves were completely absent from this stretch of space.
Jessica and I sank into a long, genuine stretch of brooding over what on earth could explain it. That didn't last long. Digging through the gallery for answers, we soon discovered the cause was none other than our very own Marianne.
Bro for real every five minutes hundreds of thousands of pirates roll up
And the second those guys clear out, the Earth or Empire bastards drag in fleets of a hundred thousand
Then the Beasts mobilize a million and everything goes to hell all over again
Thanks to that our clan's command structure has already been blown up twice here
We're seriously thinking about packing up the whole clan and moving to a different sector
Fuck man the resource zone was juicy enough that we tried to tough it out somehow
That whole stretch is a border zone so the tension is already maxed out
Pirates keep pouring out in bulk and sweeping the surrounding regions
Which makes every other faction pour out right after them and start brawling
And if a clan led by someone from a faction opposed to whichever force shows up happens to be sitting there?
They just dump attacks straight onto that clan, no questions asked
Just look at last time — Justice Clan set up a forward base over there and got triple-teamed by Beasts-Empire-Earth and bailed
Hell, even the #1 clan Humanity tried to take that sector, ate one solid hit, got driven off, and then built their forward base in a sector farther back from the front line
And even then other faction fleets keep crawling into that zone every five minutes and raising hell, supposedly
Save me lmaoooooooooooo
Oh my god.
The gallery's reactions ran the full spectrum, but boiled down, the story was this: Marianne had been flooding the area with pirates under the banner of protecting us, which forced every other faction to keep pouring in fleets of their own to safeguard their interests. In the process, every clan in the vicinity had been wiped clean off the map — leaving nothing but individual players behind.
Holy hell.
The moment we grasped that the region had effectively been sanctified as a pure solo-player zone, we also understood that — like it or not — siphoning resources through a clan was simply impossible around here. A truly mournful feeling settled over us.
Not that I was about to blame Marianne for any of it.
Tch, what a bunch of softies. If you're a real player you hold the line through an NPC offensive and dig in. Pathetic.
Even though the scale of those assaults was realistically impossible to stop, I still pinned the blame on those weak little clans and, with genuine regret, decided to give up on the resource buff that came with clan membership.
Still turning that over in my head, I opened the chat window for the first time in a while. Curious how the other solo rankers were even sourcing their resources, I decided to casually fish for an answer. Of course, once you hit ranker level, how much you're actually pulling in is basically classified — so if they didn't feel like talking, I had no intention of pressing.
Somehow every last one of them seemed to be eating better and living better than I was. They weren't just mining resources the way I was — they were running plunder economies, freelancing as mercenaries, the whole package. Thanks to Golden Sun laying it out so thoroughly, I walked away with a genuinely solid haul of information.
So I thanked him for the tip and started thinking that once my fleet rebuild was finished, maybe I'd try mercenary work against other players myself…
The moment I saw what came next in the chat window, the thought that maybe I was being ostracized began to bloom, fresh and vivid, in the back of my mind.
Heh heh heh. That guy's the weakest among us rankers.
Meanwhile, at the very same moment Icarus was seriously fretting over his own ostracism theory…
"Come on, no way he actually doesn't know…"
Ranked seventh, Indefatigable — whom most people simply called Golden Sun because his full nickname was far too long — watched Icarus enthusiastically casting fishing hooks into the chat and could only stare in disbelief.
And why wouldn't he? This was the number-three player in the entire ranking. Among everyone who had never joined a clan, this man was the de facto first-place powerhouse — and here he was dangling bait like some clueless newbie.
No matter how he turned it over, Indefatigable couldn't make sense of it. And then, at last, he grasped the "truth" behind those fishing hooks.