4. How to safely enter nullsec

Previous:

  1. Why you should be living in nullsec
  2. How to avoid ‘catch bubbles’
  3. How to make gate bookmarks, and why

 

Every nullsec entry point is considered a ‘chokepoint’, and its often religiously guarded by whichever alliance owns or lives there.

This usually means they have cloaked scouts on the lowsec side of the gate, alerting the fleet on the nullsec side about the ships about to jump through.

The nullsec side of the gate will have ships waiting for you. All the gates leading out of this nullsec system will likely have warp bubbles on them (see the guide about How to Avoid Catch Bubbles), ready to ‘catch’ you should you escape their fleet and try to make your way to another gate.

So how to escape them?

Make sure you have a MWD and a cloak fitted, along with as many warp core stabilizers you can fit into your low slots. Every two ‘stabs’ you have will protect you from one ship trying to prevent you from going to warp. Don’t bother with 3 stabs, you either use 2 or 4. If you’ve got a third slot free, put a nanofiber into it to improve your maneuverability.

Note: officer and faction warp scramblers have a warp scramble strength of 3, instead of the normal 2. Therefore, if you are able to put 3 or even 5 stabs on your ship, it may be worthwhile if you think the risk is high that you’ll encounter someone with an officer/faction warp scrambler.

Upon entering the nullsec system, don’t panic when you see the ships and drones buzzing around you. You’re cloaked for 60 seconds, so you can use that time to evaluate your options.

You’ll probably have a route already selected, so your next system in the route will show as yellow on your overview. Click once on it. Your camera view will realign so that the system is in the centre of your screen. Move your cursor over it, and hopefully it will show a number of other celestial objects in the ‘group’ around the gate. One of them should be a planet.

Right-click on that planet and select ‘warp to within 70km’, and then activate your cloak so that you cloak as you start moving.

Your enemies will think you’re warping to the stargate, so they’ll go there – but you won’t be there.

If that gate has a catch bubble on it, you’ve just avoided it.

From here, can modify your Directional Scanner down to 15-30 degrees, have the gate in the centre of your screen, and use the Scanner to see if there’s anything or anyone on the gate. If it’s busy, you can wait until the gate is clear and then warp through.

If the gate didn’t have a nearby planet in its group, then choose another planet somewhere to warp to instead. This avoids the catch bubble traps.

If there’s no planet near your destination gate, warp to any planet (except the planet near your arrival gate) and then to your destination gate – it will ensure you don’t arrive within the flight path that’s intersected by the catch bubble.

 

Click here to read the next guide – The secret to travelling nullsec without dying