Journal entry, 21 June 2026, Jita 4-4, Caldari Navy Assembly Plant.

Moving to Jita 4-4

The frigate Fritz, tiny against fireworks on arrival at Jita. — Jita is setting off fireworks. Probably not for me, but Fritz and I will take them anyway.

Exordium was nice while it lasted.

I'm far from done learning, the road is still long. But Exordium is a tiny sandbox inside something very large, and the numbers there stay small: capped rewards, leaner ore, the surcharge on top. There comes a point when staying costs more than leaving.

I wanted the economic center. The cluster has several major trade hubs: Rens, Hek, Dodixie, Amarr. But the real center has a name every trader knows: Jita. More precisely: Jita 4-4.

Jita was Caldari for a long time, through and through. Lately not quite anymore: the Caldari State has handed administration of the system to CONCORD. The station itself formally stays with the Caldari Navy. I'm Caldari enough to notice the aftertaste — nobody announces a handover like that from a position of strength.

Since I can only fly one ship at a time, I naturally took Fritz. The rest of my inventory I left behind in Exordium. Selling was hardly worth it at those prices, and hauling it all after me would have cost more time than the contents were worth. So the old hangar stays full for now.

A frigate vanishes into the light cone of a Shipcaster at the edge of Exordium. — Once and only forward. There's no way back this way.

There's a quiet way to leave Exordium: through the stargate from Manifest to Yulai and onward through the cluster. I didn't take it. Fresh graduates may instead have a Shipcaster at the edge of the region throw them straight into the high-sec of their empire, once and one-way only. I wanted to have done that before the offer expired for me.

The throw was quick: a jolt, and Fritz hung in Onnamon, a Caldari high-sec system I had never seen before. The rest I flew the classic way, gate by gate. Seven jumps to Jita, a good bit shorter than the route via Manifest that I had turned down.

Jita is loud: I tried to read local, gave up after three seconds, and treated it like the quarterly figures of a corporation I didn't work for: skim, believe nothing, keep scrolling. The traffic at the undock never lets up.

Fireworks and advertising overlays in front of the flank of station Jita 4-4. — Jita 4-4 up close: fireworks over the station's flank, local scrolling offers without pause.

Drifting ship wrecks in space in front of station Jita 4-4. — Wrecks at the undock. There was nothing like that in Exordium.

Wrecks drift around the station. In Exordium no one could touch me. Combat between capsuleers was technically disabled there. Here it's different. CONCORD watches over high-sec, but CONCORD doesn't prevent an attack, it punishes it. Whoever shoots someone out of space here is dead seconds later too. That's little help to the victim, as the wrecks make plain.

For now I have nothing to fear from it. Fritz is a Kestrel, no prize anyone wastes an attack on. But caution costs almost nothing, and a habit forms best before you need it.

So I set two bookmarks: one far in front of the undock, exactly along the line the station spits me out on, and a second that puts me straight into docking range on approach. That way I never sit still where the patient pilots wait. Undock, straight into warp. Back, docked at once. Almost like a well-ordered filing cabinet, only with more thrust.

And I set Jita 4-4 as my new home. Should someone catch me one day and crack the capsule, I wake up here in a fresh clone, instead of several jumps away in Exordium.

Exordium was a good beginning: a place to learn before it gets serious. I'm glad it existed. But a beginning stays a beginning. Here the numbers are larger, and for the first time I have the room to put them to work.

— Ariane Quell

For new pilots: briefly explained

High-sec isn't Exordium: CONCORD, insta-bookmarks, and the clone

CONCORD punishes, it doesn't protect. In high-sec the security authority CONCORD responds the moment someone attacks unprovoked, and destroys the attacker. The higher the system's security rating, the faster. It doesn't prevent the first strike, though. At trade hubs like Jita, so-called gankers count on exactly that: a prepared squad shoots a worthwhile target out of space in the seconds CONCORD needs, and accepts its own loss. In Exordium PvP was technically impossible; here it is only expensive. Simple math: if the loot is worth more ISK than the attack ships cost, it was a profit.

Insta-undock and insta-dock bookmarks. A bookmark more than 150 km from the undock and exactly along the station's ejection line can be warped to right after undocking, so you don't sit on the undock vulnerable for a second. Conversely, a bookmark within docking range puts you at the station immediately on approach, instead of landing at grid range and crawling in. To make it, you fly close to the station once and set the bookmark there. Together they are the standard protection at busy stations.

The autopilot trick for docking. Using the autopilot across New Eden is dangerous and generally not recommended. With an insta-dock bookmark, though, it earns its keep: the destination station must be set as your route's destination, which it usually already is, since you set the course there long ago anyway. A quick glance to confirm. Then you warp to zero to your own insta-dock bookmark, not to the station. You activate the autopilot right after the warp command. It then docks automatically the second the ship drops out of warp. By hand you would have to hit the dock command in exactly that second yourself.

Home station and medical clone. Setting a station as home defines where your medical clone sits: if the capsule is destroyed, you wake up there. That works at any home station, with no clone bay needed (you only need one to jump between jump clones). Best to choose a home station where you are active anyway. It saves the long trip back after a pod loss.

Shipcaster. After onboarding, fresh capsuleers can have a Shipcaster at the edge of Exordium move them once and one-way into the high-sec of their chosen empire. A shortcut into the actual cluster, instead of flying the whole route through stargates.