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The Young Pilot's Guide to C1/C2 Daytrips/Ratting

Author
Miles Parabellum
Core Collapse Inc
#1 - 2012-06-04 11:08:39 UTC  |  Edited by: Miles Parabellum
Gentlemen,

A short guide to get you new pilots started with wormhole PvE

If you choose to try this, you can start out at around 5-7M SP, maybe even less if you decide to try your luck with a
meta 4 fitting.
Starting investment is around... 30-40M depending on the current prices. Again, it's possible to cut corners, if
you're poor and in a hurry.

TL;DR, if you're poor, sell timecodes, because scr*w wormholes, man! :-P

This post was written due to other threads such as this:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=117248&find=unread

.. And my own thread from a while back:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=102249&find=unread

And of course this (The WH Nomad):
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=101419&find=unread

...All of which in some way or another touch on the subject of wormhole daytrips into C1s and C2s.

Whenever you see an asterisk, "*", refer to the "Additional Notes" section in the third post.

Since this is a low-cost, low-commitment approach, I will start by telling you that this can be done without the
three most commonly used means listed on this forum as necessary: Tengus, alts or POSes.
By now I can imagine a lot of wormhole veterans reading this with sceptical expressions on their faces, so let's deal
with the most important question first: Will WH daytripping make you space rich over night?
The answer to that question is: That depends.
What it depends on is what your definition of space rich is. If it is that you suddenly have the means to kamikaze in
faction-fit T3s and shrug it off with a laugh, while spending your weekends in the most luxurious Amarrian pleasure
hubs and Gallentean casinos, then no.
If, on the other hand you come from a life in hi-sec where you make a modest living rolling lvl4s in a meta 4/T2 fitted
standard BS with only moderate skills and can only afford to fly T1 frigs, dessies and cruisers regularly into
combat, then this will probably be a good boost to your economy. Plus, it will allow you quit the mind-numbing
missioning for a while and enjoy the sensation of your sanity slowly rebuilding.

If you find a suitable WH, you'll frequently be able to clear and salvage 2-3 anoms in about 2 hours for a profit of
50-80M.
Provided, of course that the almighty god of WH drops, Bob, is in a favourable mood.

But enough small talk, let's get down to business.



Necessary Skills

Scanning skills. You just need enough to be able to scan down a wormhole using sisters core scanner probes in an
unbonused, unrigged ship. I won't go into details about it, since a lot of good scanning guides have already been
written, so see those. I will, however, suggest that you skill up to be able to handle 6 or 7 probes.
Fortunately, wormholes are easy to scan down. One of the chars on this account has less than 500.000 SP and can
easily scan down WHs.

Assault Frigates lvl 4 as well as the T2 versions of the small weapon type you choose to arm your ship with. As
you'll see below, I will recommend rockets or blasters/drones.
T2 small tank. Again, as you can see below, I recommend armor tanking, because you can then save the mids for cap
boosters, prop mods, webs and so on. That means being able to use T2 small repper, EANM, ANM and DC.

Finally, you'll need to have the skills to use a salvager. Since you'll only need to salvage small and medium wrecks, you won't need to skill higher than 3-4.

And that's it.



The Ship

You'll need an Assault Frigate to do this version of daytripping. While the AFs aren't cloaky, they have several
other advantages to offset that small defect:
1. They have a small signature and quick align time, so if you have good reactions, you should be able to warp out in
time if you see incoming ships on scan or even if something nasty decloaks next to you.
2. They have very strong tanks. Combined with their small size and speed tanking, you can easily manage the incoming
sleeper DPS.
3. It's cheap, so when you do get ganked, you won't cry too much.

I use the Ishkur and the Vengeance.
The first because it has amazing DPS, easily over 200, the drones do long range damage and you can bring a flight of
ECM drones for added GTFO in case of emergency.
The Vengeance has about half the DPS, but a super strong tank, which you can permarun if not neuted. Even if you do get neuted, it can withstand a lot. The rockets are capless, so unlike the Ishkur, they won't turn off when you cap out.
Also, it's about half price and takes a lot less SP to fly well (due to the Ishkur's need to skill for T2 blasters AND drones for max firepower).

The fits:
- Vengeance
Hi:
4 x Rocket Launcher II
1 x Core Probe Launcher

Mid:
1 x Warp Scrambler II (I'm an aggressive optimist)
1 x Small Capacitor Booster
1 x 1MN Afterburner II

Low:
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Damage Control II
Ballistic Control System II

Rigs:
Small Anti-Thermic Pump I
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I

- Ishkur
Hi:
3 x Small Neutron Blaster II
1 x Core Probe Launcher

Mid:
1 x Warp Scrambler II
1 x Small Capacitor Booster
1 x 1MN Afterburner II

Low:
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Damage Control II
Drone Damage Amplifier II (Can be a Magnetic Stabilizer II, which gives about 5 more DPS, but mind the shorter range
and cap dependency of the blasters)

Rigs:
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I

Drone bay: 5 x Hobgoblin II OR 5 x Warrior II AND 5 light ECM-drones. *

In both cases, put one tractor beam and a couple of salvagers in your cargo hold, because once the sites are cleared,
you'll use the same ship to salvage with.
If you run out of CPU while fitting the salvagers and tractor, just offline your damage mod (remember to put it back
on later, though)
Miles Parabellum
Core Collapse Inc
#2 - 2012-06-04 11:09:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Miles Parabellum
Finding A WH

This is a bit of a joker. I usually make sure to go at least a few jumps away from popular systems, and at least 5
jumps from Jita, Dodi, Amarr and Hek.
Personally, I prefer hi sec because the logistics are a little easier and it feels nice for a carebear like me to be able to jump back through the hole and know that I'm back and safe in Mama Concord's bosom. However, this could probably just as easily be done from low sec. Just remember that the locals there might also be wormhole daytrippers, although with a slightly different agenda.
Anyway, drop probes and do your scan thing.
If you have multiple scan signatures, I recommend going for the ones with the highest initial strength, as they're most often the WHs. Other signatures will usually be assorted deadspace sites, grav sites and so on.
Once scanned, warp to the hole.
Sometimes, it will be a K162, which people keep insisting means that it was scanned out from the inside, which implies
people in the hole, which implies the risk of jumping straight into a trap.
In reality, usually there will be POSes on the inside, but no activity, but even if you do jump into a camp (highly unlikely as camping a hi sec exit hole makes no sense), you just wait 10-15 seconds, holding your cloak, to let the session change timer run out**, then re-approach the hole and jump back.
Your small size and good tank should allow you to last the 5 or so seconds it'll take you to get back in jump range if you
spawned outside of it.
If it's not a K162, you can look up on the net, what its name means. If its a C1 or C2, go ahead and jump in. If its
a C3 you may have a look inside, but you can't run the anoms. ***


What To Do On The Inside

While you're still cloaked, you go to:
http://evemaps.dotlan.net/ and search for your hole, to check class and effects. C1s and C2s don't have any effects as far as I know, and I'm not Rain Man enough to research
such irrelevant details, much less memorize them :-P
Then, use d-scan and check for other ships. You'll want to be alone for this..
Remember to set your d-scanner to 360 degrees and max range (tap in all 9s in the range window, and the scanner will auto-adjust). While you're in the hole, do a scan very frequently - Once every few seconds at least ****
D-scan max range used to be a little over 14 AU, but is now apparently 15.5 AU.
Now, bookmark your entrance and warp towards the sun, making a bookmark close to it (but off grid, of course). When you land, warp back to that safe and run a system scan (no probes needed) for anoms *****.
Bookmark each and then start clearing them. Do 2-3 anoms, then warp to the entrance and re-enter hi-sec.
In hi-sec, you dock up, remove your guns/rocket launchers and replace them with the tractor beam and the salvagers,
you brought in your hold.
Put your weapons in your hold - The hole might collapse behind you when you jump in, and you never know where you pop back out.

Jump back in and warp to the bookmarked, cleared anoms. They will have despawned by now, so hunters must have had them in advance or probe you down - Which is why you should update your d-scan as often as possible. Check for incoming ships and probes.
If anyone decloaks or lands near you, warp to a safe, then leave the hole. The agility of the frig should ensure that they won't get a lock.
Of course, this is Eve, so maybe they brought something which can actually lock you fast enough, but there's a risk to everything. Generally, you should be small and agile enough to get out in time if you react fast as previously
stated.
In the mean time, salvage like a Suddenly Ninja on meth.

In fighting the sleepers, make sure to do the following:
1. Keep on the move! Especially the sirius towers can tear you a new one, but only if they can track you, and they
can't if you move.
2. Manage your cap well - Especially for the iskur, since its guns are cap dependent and its tank is much less
resilient than that of the vengeance.
Get rid of neuting sleepers, but make sure to not kill them if they're triggers, as you will have a hard time dealing
with two waves at once.
3. Read up on the anom on Eve-survival.
4. If your tank is about to break, don't be afraid to overheat for a little while.
5. Consider spending on faction or T2 ammo. The time saved might mean your survival. ******
6. Try to keep the rats from scattering too much. Racing back and forth will cost you precious minutes.
7. I forgot the rest, so improvise..

That's pretty much all there is to it.
If you try it yourself, I'm sure you'll find ways to optimize the process and use other AFs.

Afternote: Using a BC

There's an alternative to the AFs, which is the battle cruiser. Personally, I prefer the myrmidon due to its amazing tanking and high drone damage which allows you to fit tractors/salvagers in the high slots and salvage on the go.
The obvious downsides are that they are much more expensive and have a much harder time escaping due to a much bigger signature and longer align times. This cost me my first myrm which just exactly didn't make it away from a dude in a tengu and his drake sidekick, but hey, if wormholes were safe, this wouldn't be as much fun.

- Myrmidon
I'm too lazy to type this in, but in the highs, I have 3 salvagers, a tractor, a cloaking device and a core probe
launcher.
Midslots have an afterburner, two cap rechargers, a drone tracking link and a web.
Lows have some EANMs, an explosive resist mod, damage control and a repper.
Rigs should be repper rigs to capitalize one the myrm's bonuses.
Now I practically listed the fit anyway, didn't I? Silly me.
Oh, and this was pre-Inferno, so you might want to tweak the fit with some drone damage amplification.

If you fly a BC, move away from the warpin. 40-50 at least to afford you a few split seconds more when the bad men
find you. *******
Miles Parabellum
Core Collapse Inc
#3 - 2012-06-04 11:09:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Miles Parabellum
Additional Notes

* When you use drones, make sure to expand the drone window, so you can see if the drones start taking damage. Sleepers may aggress drones, but in C1s and C2s, they rarely do.
You can see it in the overview, if they change target away from you and to your drones, because the brackets around them will change from red (you're being targeted) to yellow (drones are being targeted).
Credit goes to Dreygun for reminding me to add this.

** Session change timer info added. Credit goes to Sin Pew for this addition.

*** You can see what kind of w-space a K162 WH is connected to by looking at the color of the wormhole.
To put it simple here: if it is blue it is a cl1 or cl2. If it is dark yellow - brown, it is a cl3.
Tip quoted from Sola Mercury.

**** Reminder to set the d-scanner to the right coverage and range as well as remembering to use it very frequently added. Credit goes to Bernie Nator for this.
I highly recommend you set up your overview as described in Longinius Spear's excellent guide about how to gank and PvP in W-Space:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=105018&find=unread
While you're at it, read the rest of his guide as well. You'll eventually need that knowledge if you have any spine.

***** Warping to the sun... The idea of warping to the sun is not to sit and scan on the sun-grid, but to make a bookmark near it, so your scan will cover the greatest possible part of the center of the system, where the greatest concentration of anoms can be expected to be.
However, as Sin Pew points out, everybody seems to want to warp to the sun, which means that clever and bloodthirsty locals might have set up bubbles somewhere between the entry hole and the sun.
To reduce the risk of falling into such a trap, consider warping to one of the inner planets instead or to bounce off another celestial before warping to the sun.

****** Bring lots of ammo and boosters. You can always jettison a few boosters later, if you need the space for salvage.

******* If your exit hole is being camped, or you just run out of play time and don't feel like leaving a particularly profitable hole, you can make a safe spot and simply log off there. Then your ship will warp off 1000000 km in a random direction and despawn when you log off. When you log back on, it will auto-warp back to the safe, you logged off at.
Don't do this if you have an aggro timer. If you do have one, stay online and warp around until it runs out, because otherwise your ship won't despawn until the timer runs out, giving your hunters ample time to probe down your ship and destroy it.

Finally, since Mr Bigwinky rightfully called me out, I changed the name of the thread, so people can see that it's meant to be a guide.
As a bonus, enjoy this fine piece of related art:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okqEVeNqBhc
Zor'katar
Matari Recreation
#4 - 2012-06-04 14:20:03 UTC
Good to see I'm not the only one who prefers to fly one character at a time. Nice post.
Mr Bigwinky
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2012-06-04 14:22:00 UTC
>> 2-3 anoms in 2 hours
>> for 50-80M.
My incredibly basic math skills are telling me that this is between 25 and 40m/h.
gg, OP. You have truly opened the treasure trove that is WH space.

"The three most commonly used means listed on this forum as necessary: Tengus, alts or POSes"
"daytrips into C1s and C2s"

Who told you Tengus alts and POSes were required for C1 and C2s?
Was it this guy?
Miles Parabellum wrote:
"This is not a guide."
Lies.

Guide: n.
1. a book, pamphlet, etc., giving information, instructions, or advice.
Welcome to EVE online, here's your rubix cube, go F*** yourself ♥
Miles Parabellum
Core Collapse Inc
#6 - 2012-06-04 14:25:59 UTC
Thanks, Zor'Katar :)

@Bigwinky:
As I wrote, space rich is relative. For a 5-7M SP char, 80M in two hours is a lot of ISK. Not everybody is a 1337 as you.
The second statement was ironic. Jeez.

Mr Bigwinky
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2012-06-04 14:40:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Mr Bigwinky
Miles Parabellum wrote:
The second statement was ironic. Jeez.

You didn't think it a touch high-brow? xD
Miles Parabellum wrote:
Not everybody is a 1337 as you

I'm pretty far from "1337" as far as PvE is concerned! Even I can tell you that anyone who things Tengus are the norm for C1s & C2s has some pretty ill-conceived ideas.
Welcome to EVE online, here's your rubix cube, go F*** yourself ♥
Miles Parabellum
Core Collapse Inc
#8 - 2012-06-04 14:50:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Miles Parabellum
If anything, it was more like bitter envy, since I possess neither :-P
But also, I just wanted to stress that it is possible to do solo, non-commital operations in WH-space, although small in scale.

You settled wormholers should be happy - You might get more targets :)

Edit to your edit: I agree to that, but I just think it's rather common for people to blindly respond "Tengu, tengu, TENGUUU" to the question of what ship to bring.
Bibosikus
Air
#9 - 2012-06-04 15:10:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Bibosikus
Power to the OP. This (new) channel needs some "basics" posts since we don't seem to have any stickies yet Roll

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Sin Pew
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#10 - 2012-06-04 15:18:57 UTC
Couple things caught my attention in your "guide that isn't a guide":
If you jump through the wh and find it camped, always wait out the 30 sec session change timer. Can't jump back before that time, so crashing back right after you notice the bubbles would expose you far longer than expected.
Another thing bothering me, bubbles near the sun aren't so uncommon, are they? why's everyone insisting on warping to the sun?

[i]"haiku are easy, But sometimes they don't make sense, Refrigerator."[/i]

Hamster Too
Golden Fowl
#11 - 2012-06-04 15:43:38 UTC
Sin Pew wrote:
Couple things caught my attention in your "guide that isn't a guide":
If you jump through the wh and find it camped, always wait out the 30 sec session change timer. Can't jump back before that time, so crashing back right after you notice the bubbles would expose you far longer than expected.
Another thing bothering me, bubbles near the sun aren't so uncommon, are they? why's everyone insisting on warping to the sun?


EVE to Sin Pew: session change timer is 10 seconds and has been like that for a while now... Lol
Godfrey Silvarna
Arctic Light Inc.
Arctic Light
#12 - 2012-06-04 15:45:28 UTC
Sin Pew wrote:
If you jump through the wh and find it camped, always wait out the 30 sec session change timer. Can't jump back before that time

The session change timer was recently reduced to something around 10 seconds, so you can safely uncloak and go back after waiting for just a short moment.
Sin Pew
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#13 - 2012-06-04 15:49:42 UTC
Oops
Outdated litterature... caught with my pants down here...

[i]"haiku are easy, But sometimes they don't make sense, Refrigerator."[/i]

Bernie Nator
Seal Club Six
Plug N Play
#14 - 2012-06-04 16:03:20 UTC
Allow me to add a piece of info.

When using dscan, there are two things you need to do with it to make it effective. First, change the range to as far as possible, by smashing the crap out of 9 until it wont go higher. Then change the radius from whatever default is to 360. This gives you full circle coverage for 15.5 AU, aka enough time to bugout. Second, be liberal with actually dscanning. Hit that sucker every 5-10 seconds.
George Mahyisti
The Concilium Enterprises
#15 - 2012-06-04 23:42:34 UTC
[If you find a suitable WH, you'll frequently be able to clear and salvage 2-3 anoms in about 2 hours for a profit of
50-80M.
Provided, of course that the almighty god of WH drops, Bob, is in a favourable mood.]

You can really make that much in 2hrs in a high sec WH? makes me wonder why anyone just does missions at all. also whats the chance of dieing from the sleepers in that veagence fit?

Dreygun
Alexylva Paradox
#16 - 2012-06-05 01:39:57 UTC
yikes, so as an avid day trip WH pilot I feel that a lot of really VITAL info was left out here. its possible things are a bit different for assault frigs but as a myrm pilot the biggest worry is drone survival. if you are not using T2 drones then a setup with no high slot guns can take a while to clear the anoms, but if u are then loseing several drones each run can turn ur stomach espeacially since great god bob is sometimes VERY stingy on those nano drops. The best way to keep ur drones alive is to cycle them back to drone bay as soon as they take any damage at all. second wormholes are full of people who love to ruin ur day. Even if the WH seems empty when go in amost every WH has a POS or two hidden around one of the moons where WH corps are based out of and will dive out to kill u with little to no notice at all. staying active on the D scan is vital, but one thing I have noticed will happen is hole camping. They will find the exit hole and sit on it like a gate camp. there are two ways to deal with this. The best way is to fit combat scan probes I always fit an expanded launcher on my WH ships even if I have to offline it during combat. the other option is to make sure u bookmark a spot close to the wormhole. Then using DScan u can aim/decrease distance to effectively scan the area of the wormhole, I do this any time my Dscan doesnt cover the whole or if I scan and there are other signatures that I may think are inactive. aside from that, I would say its worthwhile even for a player without a lot of money to use an alt to salvage. U can do this by just opening up a 14 day trial account in the area ur runnning in training to be able to run a dedicated salvage destroyer isnt that long, and if u open a new trial account before this one closes and start the training u can have a dedicated salvage alt availabe at all times for no extra money, and after
Mina Hiragi
Perkone
Caldari State
#17 - 2012-06-05 06:48:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Mina Hiragi
I got bored(tm) tonight and decided to give this a go. Threw my alt into the proposed Vengeance fitting, with one major alteration: four OE-5200 Rocket Launchers as opposed to RL II's. My alt can't be considered a young pilot, at 28M SP - but 11M of those SP are in gunnery (completely useless in a Vengeance), 3.5M in drones, and the Amarr Battleship V that helped make up 7M of Spaceship Command certainly wasn't doing anything for me in an Assault Frigate. Between other useless-in-a-rocket-AF skills, I figure I was working with around 5M SP; most of it in engineering, mechanics and electronics. Support skills FTW! My missile skills, by the way, weighed in at a whopping 136*K*.

Took me forever to probe down an appropriate wormhole - go figure, when I'm finally not looking for mag/radar sites, I find them out the freakin' wazoo. Finally found what appeared to be a C1 or a C2 in some backwater system. A quick Google later and yep, C2.

Welp. Enter Wormhole.

Scanned about; saw nothing; made a few safes; scanned more; saw nothing. Woo? Woo. Selected a site after some brief research, and away I went. Unfortunately, at this point, I only had about an hour left to play with - but said hour later, and I'm sitting on top of 6.5M ISK profit. I curse the Random Number Gods and my alt's crappy salvage skills, which made salvaging take nearly as long as running the bloody site.

Hideous ISKage compared to Level 4s, but - my god! I haven't had this much fun since the first time I entered 0.0, back when the only Tech 2 ships in the game were Interceptors. Absolutely nothing whatsoever exciting happened, but I'm still freaking excited. Anything could have happened!

Protip, though: Carry tons of ammo, especially if you're running in a rocket-based AF. I had to hop out of the hole mid-battle to go grab more rockets, which certainly didn't help my lolisk/hr ratio. Oops

In conclusion, I submit that Miles Parabellum be awarded an appropriate number of props, of the mad variety.
Sola Mercury
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#18 - 2012-06-05 07:11:59 UTC
Also note that you can see what kind of w-space a K162 WH is connected to by looking at the color of the wormhole.
To put it simple here: if it is blue it is a cl1 or cl2. If it is dark yellow - brown, it is a cl3.
Vjorn Angannon
Lazerhawks
L A Z E R H A W K S
#19 - 2012-06-05 07:29:58 UTC
Dreygun wrote:
Yikes, so as an avid day trip WH pilot I feel that a lot of really VITAL info was left out here.

It's possible things are a bit different for assault frigs, but as a myrm pilot the biggest worry is drone survival. If you are not using T2 drones then a setup with no high slot guns can take a while to clear the anoms; but if u are then losing several drones each run can turn ur stomach, especially since great god bob is sometimes VERY stingy on those nano drops. The best way to keep ur drones alive is to cycle them back to drone bay as soon as they take any damage at all.

Second, wormholes are full of people who love to ruin ur day. Even if the WH seems empty when you go in almost every WH has a POS or two hidden around one of the moons where WH corps are based out of, and will dive out to kill u with little to no notice at all. Staying active on the D scan is vital, but one thing I have noticed will happen is hole camping. They will find the exit hole and sit on it like a gate camp.

There are two ways to deal with this.
a) The best way is to fit combat scan probes; I always fit an expanded launcher on my WH ships even if I have to offline it during combat.
b) The other option is to make sure u bookmark a spot close to the wormhole. Then using DScan u can aim/decrease distance to effectively scan the area of the wormhole. I do this any time my Dscan doesn't cover the hole or if I scan and there are other signatures that I may think are inactive.

Aside from that, I would say its worthwhile even for a player without a lot of money to use an alt to salvage. U can do this by just opening up a 14 day trial account in the area ur running in training to be able to run a dedicated salvage destroyer. It isn't that long, and if u open a new trial account before this one closes and start the training u can have a dedicated salvage alt available at all times for no extra money, and after


By hitting the "enter" key a few extra times, along with some use of capital letters, you're comments are much more readable. Big smile
Daniel Plain
Doomheim
#20 - 2012-06-05 11:02:58 UTC
i was farming c2s in a meta fit drake long before i had 5mil sp. just sayin'

I should buy an Ishtar.

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