New or returning pilots: Exploration - Is it still worth doing? I'm kinda new to game skill point wise but I read and watch a lot about EvE. What I was doing since two days earlier was exploration. I have a nice null sec alliance in Blood Raider space I'm trying to earn some money out there but my treasure hunting was a bit ineffective.

So I bought a skill injector and leveled Archaeology to level 5 so I could fit a Relic Analyzer II. This kinda worked but it was not really effective. I tried going to Stain but boy Stain is hell of a place to be.

Then I tried creating a trade alt. Gave all my money to her. All she did was sitting on station and buying low selling high. She earned m in 3 days. Take out a astero, interceptor or a t3 travel cruiser russians love the bubbles - there are some really pretty bubbleart out there btw. Go to drone regions fit a data analyzer - there are no relic sites in drone regions.

And for the love of god, fit a cargo scanner. You need it for escelations and possibly ghost sites. Do data sites until you get escelations. Escelated data sites will most of the time give you augmented drone bpc's that in total loot value can be worth billions of isk.

On a good week I could loot around 10 bill isk worth of bpc's. I would personally recommend The Kalevala Expanse, The Spire or Etherium Reach. But keep a eye out on the market of what sells best etc. Use eve-central, dotlan, and zkill for research. You may wonder what augmented drone bpc's drop in each region?

I got you sorted. Cobalt Edge amarr drones , Perrigen Falls gallente drones , Malpais caldari drones , Oasa caldari drones , The Kalevala Expanse minmatar drones , Outer Passage amarr drones , Etherium Reach gallente drones , and The Spire minmatar drones. Doing data sites in drone regions require some kind of patience and luck.

You may only get 1 or 2 or non escelations every week. I got lucky one day and got 2 escelations within 30 minutes. It's a lot about luck, really.

And keep in mind that a failed hack may result in some drone npc's spawning.

Exploration - UniWiki

They are easy to get rid of. However, bring something to kill them with. Here is a tip: In the escelated site, leave one can non-hacked. That way every can in the site will refill after downtime. Just make sure you time the 24 hour countdown so you don't have to rush and do the site right after downtime. EDIT - Second tip: There are 3 different data sites that can escelate.

The third and the prettiest, you'll know when you see it is from my experience a bit weird. It's normally the site named with the highest number. And it will often not despawn if you don't hack the hardest can first. It's usually the can that stands out named vice. EDIT - Third tip: The first data site lowest number named data site that you can probe down in Etherium Reach or Perrigen Falls may contain a 10 run augmented hobgoblin bpc- and or both a 10 run augmented hammerhead bpc.

It's usually in the can furthest away from the 2 other cans. These 10 runs stacks up nicely if you can't get a escelation over time. I've never heard of hacking escelations, is this only a thing in the drone regions? And is the hacking the same as everywhere else in New Eden? Hacking is the same game. But as far as I know only data sites in drone regions escelate. I'm not sure about sleeper hacking sites in wormholes though.

Don't know about that, I looted some augmented hobgoblin and ogre BPCs while passing through the drone regions and it took me about two weeks to sell them via public contract.

Do you build the drones yourself and sell them or do you sell the BPCs via public contract? Yeah, I used to build them on my own. You can go hardcore like I did on it with a different alt for exploration permanent in drone regions , extra probing alt for scouting and wormhole probing , production alt, and market orders alt this should be on a seperate account if possibly, because the 0.

You can also do it chill with one or two characters. Depends on how much effort you want to put into it really. I lived in drone regions for all of last year. I had data sites escalate maybe 3 times. Most of the sites are completed shortly after down time so you better be quick.

This is the best single piece of exploration data that I've seen since I first discovered chruker years ago. Exploration as such is viable, and it is nicely accessible for newbies. However, it is by far not the most lucerative or most interesting job. Market trading has a high potential for making money, but for me it feels to much like actual work than playing a game to be attractive.

What do you need the ISK for? Just replace PVP ships? If the former, stick to the opportunistic stuff like exploration, or WH site running, etc. At least this is what I did to get my basic skills together, but it also burns you out a bit and at least for me is not sustainable in the long run.

How welcoming are those groups to new players. I know there are minimum skill sets and what not. But once those are achieved is it somewhat easy to find fleets? Warp To Me Shields and The Ditanian Fleet Armor are probably the most newbro friendly inc groups. Their fits are also the easiest to get into. The Valhalla Project shields typically will complete sites faster, and while they take newbros, their fits are harder to get into while costing more as well.

While starter fits may meet the min requirement, FCs will pick people out of waitlist based on the needs of the fleet, so starter fits may wait for a few hours to get in. You might get in instantly too, just depends on the time you are trying to get in. Even when I enter the waitlist with advanced fits i've waited hours to get in. Sometimes there aren't fleets running, or you may only do one site and then the FC docks the fleet for whatever reason.

For these reasons, its best to have an alt just for incursions. Right now I am running level highsec Security missions and I am looking for the next step in PvE. Exactly, you need the basic skills and fits dont be cheap, you get the money back very fast. They are very welcoming, and you get educated there, but you also have to be willing to learn and improve.

I personally had my first incursions as Logi with TDF was focusing on armor-based ships first and I can absolutely recommend this to everyone.

They are a fantastic community to start with, friendly, forgiving and they are very happy to explain everyting twice if necessary. TVP is more advanced, more focused on making money, so they expect you to follow orders once they are given. If you fail, you will get a warning, but there will likely be no second warning. I think they are a community that suffers from too lax requirements, you can basically come with meta4 guns so also the indirect gunnery requirements are much lower and you can bring basically any BS you want, which cuts down dramatically on their efficiency.

Atmosphere is however again more social here. It's still fun for me, because it's easy to put down and come back to another day, whereas something like getting in a fleet is a commitment. I spend most of my non-hacking time on comms with good friends, or helping newbies not blow up, or shuttling people out to landmarks and probing as I go. Why does your main need to work when you have a sugar mama? Are you afraid you will have to start transfering isk with snide little remarks about being a deadbeat?

That said, I like explo. Normally its kind of a side thing, I am out making bookmarks or looking for nearby combat exploration sites, see the other ones, and go do them and see what I get. That said, I have many times returned home after several sites with the value of my ship in cargo Combat exploration is a bit more fun, and dovetails nicely as a career path, I like shiny loot drops and running multi-room sites. Right now I don't do much of it because the main ship I have that can solo them is a domi and moving a BS around is cancerous.

Going to have a tengu in the next week or two, then I should have a much more mobile ratting platform. If you are in null and are going to be in one place for at least a week or two, set that shit up and get your base income. Its not going to make you rich but, its a nice steady base for 5 mins or so a day the setup sucks. All in all, I say yes its worth getting into but, nothing is worth being a main career, variety is the spice of life.

In the immortal words of Wu-Tang Financial "Diversify yo bonds". What this guy said. If you're doing well with market trading and it's not burning you out, do it. If not, go into low-class wormholes. I just went into my first WH yesterday, happened to be very active with a citadel. Since I had prototype cloak they definitely saw me and it was pretty humorous seeing them dock their mission runners for frigates and start trying to hunt me.

What wasn't funny was when I was trying to gtfo, I timed my cloak timer so I can cloak as soon as I get out of warping to the exit Hack relics in a cloaky interdiction nullified t3. Take it to Stain, Catch, Esoteria, or where ever you feel like and laugh at the bubbles. When you see another explorer in an astero or t2 covops ship, kill them and take their sweet sweet intact armor plates. Go to providence, unless you are kos to CVA. Neutrals are allowed to dock and the area is not far from high sec.

You can do exploration in relative peace. The locals are generally friendly and helpful and not allowed to shoot Neutrals. Imo its offset by the fact that you spend less time running and hiding. The rewards on that is also pretty low. I highly recommend training towards Covert Ops ships and Covert Ops Cloaking Devices. That will make you much more survivable.

If you don't know how to make bookmarks for safe spots, and for scouting gates, watch a youtube video and read articles. Having good BMs is very important for surviving in null. If there are other people in local, look them up on zkillboard or whatever and make sure they don't have a habit of hunting explorers. Providence, Catch, Stain, Paragon Soul, and Esoteria are all Sansha's space. Alternately, C1-C3 wormholes spawn pirate faction exploration sites as well.

When I explore, I use a T2 fit Astero. So far, I have never lost one by being cautious. I have lost 3 by being aggressive, and I could have avoided all three losses if I was trying to avoid pvp. You can still make a lot of money by running relic sites in Sanshas, especially when the population is low.

After reading this thread, I'm actually tempted to try those drone region escalations, though In fact, there are some new goodies that currently command nice prices Station trading is pretty much the most effective way to make money.

I personally can't stand it so I don't do it and do exploration instead but if you enjoy station trading then by all means have at it since it's the best way to make money for doing all the other stuff you might want to do.

I love when some jerk thinks he knows the market by undercutting my buy order. On top of that you get the occasional sites that alone give you m-1b. Damn man, what sites are you hitting? Mostly in tact armor plates. Ghost sites and Sleeper sites obviously.

You can also very rarely get bpc for faction pos in normal relic sites which sell for some m. There are other valuable bpcs also dropping. Sleep sites deal pretty high damage don't they? And I've never had any luck with ghost sites The nerds always spawn it and blap me before I even loot the first container. Most of the damage in sleeper sites can be avoided if you run them properly, and the ghost sites need to be completed within two minutes of warping in.

Station trading can earn you a lot of money, and it's one of the activities that better scales with your net wealth. That being said if you don't have fun or can't otherwise justify doing it then just don't do it, keep to what you think is fun doing. Then I started calculating how much profit I was actually getting and just how low my returns were because of standings.

Exploration can be very profitable. A single sansha relic site can easily be worth 50m, often more. That being said, you do need to have some skill.

Most importantly you need to know what regions to visit, which to avoid.

How to Make Money in Eve Online | LevelSkip

You should learn how cloaking mechanics work the MWD cloak trick is your best friend. You should be in the habit of checking local always. A T2 analyzer, I'm afraid to say, was probably not the best skillpoint investment, getting good scanning skills and a T2 cloak is probably going to serve you better. I used to explore as my primary income and I still had archeology IV and the T1 analyser, instead I'd made a point of having strong scanning skills, covops IV and flew about in my buzzard.

The only buzzard I lost was when I fatfingered my cloak and didn't notice till it was too late. Covops ships are fantastic, but even T1 explo frigates are pretty damn good and so cheap that the hull is basically disposable. All that being said it will only scale so far, while something like market trading can keep scaling up until you are basically chribba.

Dive into wormholes and use trip wire to see if you hole has a null exit. Use that exit and look for data sites. When you are done, dive back into the hole and use Tripwire to look for highsec exits, sell loot somewhere. This is how I did it, and it was some of the most fun I've ever had in this game. Keep your mouth fucking shut in WH space, but do feel free to chat with nullsec locals. My exploration habits let me watch a 40 Titan, 80 dred, subcap fleet roll through a system once while trading warpins withanother explorer I bumped into by mistake.

Proper explo is a lifestyle in eve, and its incredibly rewarding. Here's some tips on how to be the most sexy scanner in your local https: Where is the money in exploration? Normally I just hop into Thera, hit a random part of Null, and just search around in my Helios. Am I doing things wrong?

I usually pull in 20 mil before my ship is blown up and then i need to spend that 20 mil, and then i get more 20 mil and the cycle keeps going. Even if I didn't reply I really appreciate your help.

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PL, you aren't TEST, you're better than this. CCP has forbidden me to fly with the propulsion mode of my Confessor. This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment. Eve submitted 1 year ago by letle Hey everyone, I'll cut the story short. So I'm in doubt about exploration as my main career. Go to drone regions. Selling bpc's on contract works too. May just take a little longer time. Or maybe I will just give up faction standing and jump into FW.

Just trying to explore my options and learn as much as I can. EvE-Scout is a bit of an oddity in EVE, sure, but I've never been happier. Everyone knows this is where the most valuable sites are. Killboards are filled with explo ships, for example: Dank isk running relic sites. I made it, and it was fun, and I'll be back. Its far safer than WH space where someone is always watching. When you get full, find a WH and drop the loot off in highsec. I highly recommend to anyone doing dangerous acts.

My current plan was training for a Legion and running sleepers but I'm not really sure. Just don't go do it in a hellhole like Stain: He thinks he made out like a bandit, but I've been playing him like the shit fiddle he is. Shit water runs up the shit pipe.

EVE Search - Making Money With Exploration?

I typically run a CovOps frigate for exploration. Dear god, the cuts. Posts are automatically archived after 6 months.