EVE New Citizens Q&A

Where are you?

Sites respawn when they are completed, but not in the same place. If you are in busy hisec, they're getting tapped out quickly and accumulating in less busy hisec.

Go to less busy hisec and you will find what you desire.

No problem. You can use the starmap to see how populous certain parts of space are.

I'd recommend you head to lowsec, but as a new player you might not have the combat skills to run the lowsec plexes.

I also tend to find a TON of wormholes.

It sucks.

Sites are generated random, so you need some luck finding them.
Also high-sec is heavily populated, means you have to compete with a lot of other exploration pilots for those sites.

And as for WH, C1 and C2 can be done solo I've heard with just a bit of skilling (Battlecruisers)

Question: Do you by any chance come from another MMO?

I ask this as from the looks you seem to think that EVE is a theme park, where every thing is controlled etc.

Exploration = game of luck. You have to be lucky to find the sites you want, skill will only improve your luck. You also have to be lucky that sites contain high priced stuff.

Loot, salvage, etc is randomly created, so you can be lucky and find something really expensive or not and wasted some time.

Also in EVE there is the risk vs reward system, low risk means low reward and high risk means high reward.

I scan in high sec sometimes. My luck is much more random there for what is in cans. Look for lower sec systems (.07-.05). The more you do it the faster it gets. If you can afford better probes get the sisters core scanner probes. If you can afford a better launcher get the sisters core probe launcher.

Because I live in low sec I waited for a covops cloak and frig. High sec is super random. Hit your systems and keep looking. Read/watch some help on efficiently finding sites. Once I could do it properly I really started to enjoy it.

I pulled about 60mil out of 4 sites earlier today from a .07 system. Took me a few minutes to scan them down and about 20 mins to warp/slowboatp/pewpew frigs/crack all the cans across the 4 sites. Its not steady like missions but its not soul crushing like missions. I enjoy finding the stuff.

I find better sites in low but I don't skip the high sec I can access. Sometimes all the cans but one are empty. Sometimes they are bursting with delicious goodies. Because I've never missioned for income or defined my game by ISK per hour, I'm happy with my scanning income.

I haven't explored in hisec in years, but part of the problem is that there's a glut of experienced players who learned that they can farm hisec exploration plexes with pimped-out t3 cruisers for low-end deadspace modules.


However, I suspect that this is not the whole story.

How do you scan a system? Plexes can spawn (assuming mechanics have not changed in years, though I have not noticed anything in my own scanning to indicate this) within 4-5 AU of any celestial object (8 for wormholes). When you scan a system you need to scan at at least 4 AU around every planet.

Also, which area are you exploring in?


Anyway, out where I am (deep lowsec), wormholes are comparatively rare. I get tons of combat, mag/radar and gravimetric sites just by scanning the single system that I base out of.

I'll have to disagree on that and mention minning... But that's just my 2cts-hairsplitting-nitpicking not adding anything useful to the question.

However, I concur with the "brief" part, lowsec visits can end abruptly with a gatecamper smartbombing the hell out of everyone jumping in or out.
Now, about exploration, I agree with most people, there's lots of pilots exploring highsec and it takes a lot of time to finally get a radar site with a few millions inside, I've been doing that for some time and while persistent (me stubborn? nah...) I grew tired of only collecting leftovers of other pilots.
Yes, highsec is farmed, in just about everything.
Yes, there's more chances to get a site that pays out in less populated areas.
Yes, there's more chances of getting rewards in lower security areas, but as with everything else in Eve, greater rewards comes with greater risks.
Back when I was exploring, I could visit 20 systems without anything worth the trip, other times I'd find 2 or 3 radar sites with averages of 20mil in loot in just about an hour, but randomness is the lot of this profession.
Thing is, going to lowsec for exploration is an option, but you'll need to get used to dscan, dotlan, checking local and so on, just to increase your odds of survival, because you might remain somewhat safe *coughs* near gate/station guns, but the moment you warp to a sig or an anom, you not only have the rats to fight, but also some possible visitors who'd rather shoot at you than the rats. So basically what Grikath said, safe spot (and no, custom offices are not safe spots), cloak, etc.
All in all, that's quite a bunch to skill for again, you might benefit from a cruiser to tank the rats instead of a frigate, cloaking, improved salvaging, codebreaking, analyzing skills, gunnery, tanking... well, it's the jungle... but if you get the hang of it, you can always pvp when nothing juicy comes out of exploration and knowing how to use probes can be useful in various other activities, ninja-slavaging, hunting, w-space life, so it may not be top-priority skills for some people, but always useful to have.

Get into low-sec, I have a chain of 0.4-0.1 systems, I explore each day and can find 6-8 radar sites regularly.

Loot is anything from 3M to 30M per site.

But as above posters have stated, if someone's just ran them all, you'll have to wait for the re-spawns.

Have you checked out the exploration / probing tutorials on YouTube? JonnyPew does an excellent one.

wk42

I took about a week break from running L4 missions to try out some hi-sec exploration. Skills are good, went to what appeared to be a fairly remote region of hi-sec where there wasn't a lot of travel and the systems were mostly 0.5 and 0.6. Was mostly hoping to find radar/mag sites and 4/10 DED sites that I could run with a myrm/drake.

I think over the entire week I might have come across and run 3-4 radar/mag sites.. and two 4/10 DED sites where after clearing out the sites for about 20 minutes, some guy in a Tengu came and in just blew past me to take out the battleship in the 2nd room, essentially mooting my entire effort on the site (note to self - just blitz). I came across quite a few 2/10 and 3/10 sites as well. Tons of gravs. Even more wormholes (even jumped into a few and ran around in them while actively dodging people out for my hide)..

All in all, I make about 20x as much running L4 missions as I do running hi-sec exploration in my drake/myrm combo. I'm not fully skilled in them yet (main is about 5m SP and alt is about 4m - with not entirely focused skill training) so maybe once I get both chars maxed out I'll be good to go. The alt is only a month or so away from a Tengu (and already has the support skills to fly it effectively), so once I get the Tengu, I might head back and try exploration again to see if it's worth it if I'm getting the more valuable exploration drops. Lvl 4 mission running is pretty boring for the most part, so at least exploration adds some diversity to my routine.

I'd like to do Low-Sec exploration, but not sure I want to use a Tengu to do it until I have more ISK saved up and can easily replace it..