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EVE New Citizens Q&A

 
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Best short-medium-long term activity
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Felix Sainchez
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2014-05-07 06:51:28 UTC
Hello everyone,
I'm quite new in EVE so I'm trying to figure out a lot of stuff besides learning as much as I can regarding the gameplay and everything related activities, making money, etc..

I was wondering which one is the best activity to make quick ISK? Or the easiest and quickest?

As a MMORPG player I always find out sooner or later that there's some activities and carreers that are profitable than others. Such as mining, buy & sell (trading), stealing or whatever.

So, basically, which ones are the best activities to perform in EVE that are really profitable and easy to accomplish?


Thank you all.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#2 - 2014-05-07 06:57:26 UTC
If you can pull it off, I figure by far the faster ISK/hr is going to be scamming people for PLEX.

After that come various levels of corp infiltration (and, for example, stealing a couple of Orcas full of exhumers from a mining corporation).

Then come all the mundane grindy things documented in the Making ISK guide. I guess we could update that guide with a general idea of the income levels of the various activities.

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Dreadchain
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2014-05-07 07:03:06 UTC
Well, generally speaking, the easier things are, the less money it's going to make you. I'm leaving out various industry, by the way, as the numbers vary largely and are about to change in the summer expansion.

Here's some approximate numbers as an example:

PVE:
Mining (20m/hr)
Highsec missions (50-150m/hr)
Nullsec relic/data sites (100-200m/hr)
Losec mission, lv5 (200-300m/hr)
Nullsec ratting (50-150m/hr)
Wormholes, c3 solo (100m/hr)
Wormholes, c5 fleet, (200m/hr)
Nullsec combat exploration (50m-1b/hr, highly luck dependant)

PVP:
Minerganking, pop miners, sell off mining mods and the occasional faction fit
Haulerganking, pop bad haulers for their cargo
Awoxing, join a bad corp and shoot your corpmates for ransom, loot and tears
Factional warfare (50m-500m/hr, plexes, fw missions)
Scamming

www.minerbumping.com
Ren Coursa
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2014-05-07 07:04:15 UTC
If you want to have a hint of fun while making isk i suggest faction warfare if you enjoy pvp or exploration if you enjoy pve.

There is no quicker way to kill the enjoyment of the game than by starting to grind missions or mining from day one.

Imho that is.
Ahost Gceo
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2014-05-07 07:10:48 UTC
Have you found anything you enjoy doing or really want to try instead of going straight to "how do I churn out space money"? You have the potential to do something you really enjoy while also making isk doing it, and then efficiency isn't on your mind at all and you are having fun too!

CCP ignore me please, I make too much sense.
Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2014-05-07 08:45:30 UTC
Keep in mind that EVE is different from most other MMOs because:

- it has a massive and complex economy
- people can always destroy your space assets and also try to scam you for your ISK and station assets

That means EVERY ISK-making activity is competitive, meaning the more you make the less other players make. Mission bounties and ISK rewards are the only exception I can think of, even though they do generate inflation.

This means that to make good ISK in any activity you have to be better at it than other players.

Which confirms the good advice from the other posters: find an ISK-making activity you actually enjoy so it will also be natural for you to become really good at it.

Lastly, I'd say the biggest ISK in the game eventually comes from trading and industry, because they are SCALABLE activities, meaning that if you know what you're doing you do not have to put 100x time & effort to make 100x profit.

Make space glamorous! Is EVE dying or not? Ask the EVE-O Death-o-meter!
Luwc
State War Academy
Caldari State
#7 - 2014-05-07 09:15:26 UTC
Masturbation.

http://hugelolcdn.com/i/267520.gif
Osi Anneto
Valiant Variant
#8 - 2014-05-07 13:24:31 UTC
Dreadchain wrote:
Well, generally speaking, the easier things are, the less money it's going to make you. I'm leaving out various industry, by the way, as the numbers vary largely and are about to change in the summer expansion.

Here's some approximate numbers as an example:

PVE:
Mining (20m/hr)
Highsec missions (50-150m/hr)
Nullsec relic/data sites (100-200m/hr)
Losec mission, lv5 (200-300m/hr)
Nullsec ratting (50-150m/hr)
Wormholes, c3 solo (100m/hr)
Wormholes, c5 fleet, (200m/hr)
Nullsec combat exploration (50m-1b/hr, highly luck dependant)

PVP:
Minerganking, pop miners, sell off mining mods and the occasional faction fit
Haulerganking, pop bad haulers for their cargo
Awoxing, join a bad corp and shoot your corpmates for ransom, loot and tears
Factional warfare (50m-500m/hr, plexes, fw missions)
Scamming


You would have a very hard time getting 500m/hour with fw plexes, not sure about missions.
You would need to either get 3 large or medium plexes per hour at t5 and then wait for the prices to be better than 2k isk/lp (for medium) or just under for large. Try closer to 100m
Jur Tissant
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#9 - 2014-05-07 13:26:20 UTC
Mining isn't ridiculously profitable. In low-sec you might pull 20mil/hr but I wouldn't see it going much far beyond that. However, mining is among the most reliable sources of income in the game, because minerals are always in high demand and mining doesn't depend quite so much on luck as other sources of income.

Planetary Interaction can be a bit of a click-fest, but once you get a few colonies going with moderate skills you can earn 300mil+ per month. If you really want to go the extra distance, you can train up your other two character slots and triple that income. It doesn't require very much interaction - my setup requires ~5min/day to restart jobs and ~15min every other day to haul. I pull in about 25mil of resources every two days.

Incursions are a fairly easy source of income but do require some skills. The groups which run them typically have the method down and don't fail very often.

Hauling cargo, big and small, between regions can be very profitable but also highly luck based. I once made 50mil just by hauling some minerals one region over and fulfilling a buy order. Took all of 15 minutes. eve-central has a tool which lets you match sell orders in one region with buy orders in another - just be careful to account for the 2.5% sell tax which will cut into your profit margin. It also has a tool which compares sell prices in two regions. I still try to check most of this information myself to make sure it's up-to-date.
Iria Ahrens
Space Perverts and Forum Pirates
#10 - 2014-05-07 13:46:27 UTC
I'd just experiment in all the different ways to make money until you find something you enjoy. Every profession can support every lifestyle, but there is no point doing anything you don't enjoy in a game.

My choice of pronouns is based on your avatar. Even if I know what is behind the avatar.
Dreadchain
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2014-05-07 14:27:52 UTC
Osi Anneto wrote:
Dreadchain wrote:
Well, generally speaking, the easier things are, the less money it's going to make you. I'm leaving out various industry, by the way, as the numbers vary largely and are about to change in the summer expansion.

Here's some approximate numbers as an example:

PVE:
Mining (20m/hr)
Highsec missions (50-150m/hr)
Nullsec relic/data sites (100-200m/hr)
Losec mission, lv5 (200-300m/hr)
Nullsec ratting (50-150m/hr)
Wormholes, c3 solo (100m/hr)
Wormholes, c5 fleet, (200m/hr)
Nullsec combat exploration (50m-1b/hr, highly luck dependant)

PVP:
Minerganking, pop miners, sell off mining mods and the occasional faction fit
Haulerganking, pop bad haulers for their cargo
Awoxing, join a bad corp and shoot your corpmates for ransom, loot and tears
Factional warfare (50m-500m/hr, plexes, fw missions)
Scamming


You would have a very hard time getting 500m/hour with fw plexes, not sure about missions.
You would need to either get 3 large or medium plexes per hour at t5 and then wait for the prices to be better than 2k isk/lp (for medium) or just under for large. Try closer to 100m


Talking about missions, indeed. You can pick several of them at once and blitz them quickly for ridiculous amounts of LP, reaching the amounts I mentioned.

www.minerbumping.com
Inxentas Ultramar
Ultramar Independent Contracting
#12 - 2014-05-08 07:27:07 UTC
Apart from missioning, don't disregard ratting in lowsec. It's easy, as in you shoot rats for ISK and that's it, no mission agents or LP stores involved. It does come with the risk of player interaction but to be honest... it's not that hard to prevent PVP if you play your cards right. Or even rat in a PVP ship if you want to trade a little ISK/hr for full PVP capability. If you are in a corp that actually lives in lowsec and stay on comms / intel channels, you'll see there's amply oppurtunity to knock out some anomalies or look for Clone Soldier tags. At this stage... cruisers almost become throwaway ships. It also pays off to salvage anomalies ran by others.
Chuck Sanussi
Unexpected Company
#13 - 2014-05-08 11:43:00 UTC
Anything you will be doing, depends if it's 3 figure/hr or 2 figure/hr will be enough for you if you do not choose to PLEX for game time. Just sub yourself and enjoy things listed above.

Grinding for that plex every month will really take most of the pleasure out of it.

short term activity for me is exploration, either in hs or ls as I live between hs/ls atm.
or missions if I feel like, or incursions.

Contrary to the opinions from non-incursion people - you do not need supreme skills to run incursions, being a focused half a year toon will be enough to get into fleets.

Long term activity would be only passive income, as at least for me, repeating stuff over long period of time is a tedious and very boring thing to do.

learn one thing: eve is what you make it, not what we tell you it is.
Vol Arm'OOO
Central Co-Prosperity Union
#14 - 2014-05-08 13:32:36 UTC
The best activity in eve is the one you enjoy. Like most mmos eve has a grindy component - mining, ratting, plexing, mission running all will make you money, but they are very repetitive. My own personal toleration for them is very low. On the other hand, I can sit on a gate cloaked for hours waiting for a tasty hauler to pass through - I like to crack them open and see what's inside. If you want to enjoy eve you have to find an activity that you like (or at least tolerate) that covers your expenses - otherwise eve is just another job.

I don't play, I just fourm warrior.
Bael Malefic
Doomheim
#15 - 2014-05-08 15:39:35 UTC
Dreadchain wrote:


Nullsec relic/data sites (100-200m/hr)



Just a minor note:

Not all nullsec relic/data sites are this lucrative. In Syndicate at least, they are worth maybe a tenth that, often less.

I say this from current, direct experience. Stopped running sites in Syndicate for this reason.

I have been told (on good authority) that other parts of nullsec (notably those owned by the big blocs - surprise surprise) tend to have very lucrative relic and data sites.

Just find some aspect of the game you enjoy, then figure out how to make some ISK doing it :-)