Featured CMDR Druidic “Non-Bio” Fireball

What was your first experience with the Elite universe and what keeps you playing it today?

Like most people, my first experience with Elite was clumsy and bumpy. I’m not ashamed to admit that it took me at least four hours to figure out how to navigate the outside of an Orbis station, line up with the mailslot, then enter and land without hitting anything. This game has a pretty steep learning curve! But also like most that make it beyond the first few hours, I found it highly rewarding.

I keep playing today because I still find the game very relaxing. Even after 1750 hours, it’s great to just turn on some youtube and explore in my Anaconda for a few hours every now and then.

Tell a quick story about your favorite moment in Elite: Dangerous.

I don’t know if I could pick a single favorite moment playing Elite. After 1750 hours, you have so many moments that are awesome. But I can single one out.

The moment I learned how the Engineering system worked. It’s not glamorous or sexy, but figuring this system out made me feel very accomplished. Putting the whole thing together from Reputation to Building your Relationship with them, gathering mats and using traders… having it all click together is a moment that paid off about 40-60 hours worth of grinding and work. I felt accomplished and that was awesome for me.

Tell the story of how you earned your callsign.

Hooo boy, ok. So we’re about midway through the second part of Lost Souls 2. I’d been with The Fatherhood for years at that point and had survived without doing anything “Callsign Worthy”. One Sunday afternoon, I’m coming in to land at one of the Waypoint Meetups at Biological Signal 5 on this planet. While making my approach I thought I was the first one there, which was odd because I was never the first at the meetups. So I ask in the Discord: “Hey, where is everyone?” thus began about a 30-minute back-and-forth about me swearing I was at the right spot and the group saying they were at the right spot. I would have given it up to instancing, however someone finally asked “Hey, Druid, are you sure you’re at Geo Signal 5?”

And thus, my callsign was earned that day!

Tell us about your favorite ship in the game.

My favorite ship in the game, hands down, is the Asp Explorer. Ships’ name is the TFS Oban 14. The AspX is a spritely little explorer ship that can pack everything you’d want for deep space exploration and still be fun to fly.

It’s a ship that with minimal thruster upgrades can really zip through canyons and around mountains and just be a general hoot to pilot.

What drew you to join The Fatherhood?

Easy, I needed help. I wanted to be good at this game, but just hit a wall. I looked at Squadrons on Inara and came across The Fatherhood. The casual mission statement combined with the friendly and helpful membership were an easy sell.

I initially joined Bravo, I believe. Whatever the first PC Squadron was. Since then, however, I’ve been in Delta and Hotel, helping those Squadrons grow overtime.

What’s your day job, and how do you balance your home, work and gaming life (or do you)?

I’m a Cyber Security Incident Manager for one of the worlds’ larger banks. I keep pretty strict work hours and try my best to respect my time away from work. However, I have so many hobbies and things that I’m into that video games only get a small piece of that pie. But usually when my girlfriend is at her own D&D sessions, I’ll spend a few hours playing games.

I, unfortunately, don’t have regular gaming hours so it’s a bit hard to catch me online. If anyone wants to wing up for anything specific, feel free to ping me in the Discord!

How did you come up with the name of your Commander?

It’s a common gaming tag that I created based off one of my old Dungeons and Dragons characters. They were a Druid that really liked to blow things up.

Any fatherly advice for new CMDRs trying to make their way in Elite: Dangerous?

Two things:

Find a community of people who can help you. This game is very difficult to learn and until you’ve climbed the hill, it can seem impossible. Find a group of people who are willing to help you through it and your enjoyment of the game will increase dramatically. I firmly believe that FDev meant for this game to be played communally.

Learn how to Mine. It may sound weird, but learning to Mine will teach you a great deal about the basics of the game all while doing an engaging task. You’ll learn how trading works including the galactic market, you’ll learn how to land and take off from platforms and Orbis stations, you’ll learn how to fly your ship in a dangerous environment and know how your thrusters work, you’ll learn how a great many ships functions work as well. Plus, building a mining rig will take some understanding of ship building. It will also make you a boatload of credits! So yea, learn how to mine!