Missions & Complexes

Hello and welcome back to Eve.

I think the most profitable PvE in Eve is probably Incursions. Next, depending on the amount of time invested, would probably be Exploration doing Combat sites. Mission running would be very close to Exploration and Belt Ratting last.

I'm sure other players will post more info shortly. I hope you have a long and rewarding career this time around.



DMC

Incursions are probably the best. Followed by various kinds of missions (in the right space, for the right faction). For just sheer amounts of raw ISK, running 0.0 anomalies is very profitable.

Exploration income has been gutted - the market is saturated with Deadspace modules.

Belt ratting is about the least profitable ISK/hour activity, but you can get a big payday if you get the right drop.

The best ISK/hour these days is PLEX. Work an extra shift, drop the money on PLEX. Sell them for just under a billion each. Avoid hours and hours of ratting to make less ISK. Unless you actually like PVE, or are not able to afford to pay a bit for Eve, this is a great way to fund small gang PVP stuff.

As for what ships to fly, that depends on what you want to do. If you go with Incursions, I recommend Logistics ships. It's the lowest amount of ISK invested and there will always be a need for a good Logistics pilot.

I’ve just resubbed, after a shorter period away, and have had a quick look at the same question.

Notwithstanding FT Diomedes’ comment re PLEX and working an extra shift, I have headed to incursions for my hisec PvE efforts … after doing some lvl4 missioning. HQ incursions sites return 31.5M isk plus LPs per ship per site and efficient teams appear to get through the various HQ sites in 5 – 15 minutes. I understand that 300M isk-per-hour is achievable, with the added LP income also, although in my more haphazard couple of days I’ve only managed in 100 – 200 range.

There are other threads here talking about blitzing and burner mission income in a similar range, although like every such claim it is wise to apply liberal quantities of salt … and see how it actually works out for you.

‘Exploration’ appears to be a mixed bag, and hisec exploration does not attract a lot of folk singing its praises (DMC’s comments noted). I’ve not tried hisec exploration for many years so cannot comment first hand.

I believe, income-wise, it’s incursions > missions > exploration > other.

Hassle and effort wise incursions may become less attractive because of their limited accessibility to solo efforts, which is fine for mission running. HQ incursion fleets are aroundabout 40 ships and VG fleets probably still in the 10 – 15 range (I’ve not run VGs for a couple years now). Also, like any elite or specialised activity in eve, incursion running requires some fairly specialised and often expensive equipment. I spent around 7.5b getting the right gear together, including a bowhead freighter, and it seems to me that the prices of a lot of the specialty modules I purchased is less than I remembered them. OFC if you only offer scimi support then your initial investment is a lot less.

Of course, as soon as somebody has an opinion about income etc others will disagree. These are just my views based on my ‘bad at eve’ experiences – recent and past. Good luck out there, and welcome back.

You do this solo or do you need to be in a corp or alliance that has control of the system you're DEDing in?

One of the fastest ways to make ISK is to drive slower on the freeway. You save money on gas, which you can use to buy PLEX. It comes to around 300 million per extra hour you spend driving due to going slower.

In-game, one of the fastest ways to make ISK is station trading.

For a solo person, it's realistically closer to 200-300 mill an hour. That is not counting the time it takes to locate a potential non-active C3/C4 Wh, scouting & bookmarking, scouting again, closing & crit massing unwanted holes, scouting again and then finally being able to farm in semi peace for 30 minutes or so until you spot a hound or manticore on D-scan. At which time you'd want to warp to safe, cloak and log off for a couple hours and maybe be able to continue which greatly cripples your overall isk/hour as compared to some other consistent activity like incursions or hell even Lev 4 missioning in safe-sec may be better CONSISTENT isk/hour than WHs.