EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi-sec exploration is not very profitable. Since it's so safe and you can use pretty much any ship, lots of people are all competing for the sites. Even to the point where you will be clearing a site and someone else will warp in and steal all the good loot while you're busy shooting/tanking rats.

Also, exploration is much more simple with two pilots.

Cov-ops frigates (not stealth bombers, but the other ones) are the best for scanning down sites and can easily survive in low/null. Combat ships depend on the difficulty of the site, but a well fit battlecruiser can run pretty much anything as well as dip into c1/c2 wormholes.


Solo exploration is a bit trickier as you have to fit everything or at least carry everything on one ship. Tengus are generally the top choice but the pilgrim and ishtar are also up there. Pilgrims kill slowly but can run any site + warp cloaked. Ishtars can only fit prototype cloaks (no warping) but they can do combat sites more easily.

The T3 ships were built almost entirely for the purpose of exploration. It's not the only thing they're good for, but it's one of the things they're best for. Train (race) cruiser to 5, train all the subsystems to 4 or 5, burn a few hundred million isk on assembling the thing, go. Tengu is the most popular, but any are more than sufficient to flatten any high-sec site you can find (that allows cruisers, anyhow).

Two ships is better for low-sec, 0.0, or w-space exploration, because you'll find something within a few jumps so keeping track of the second boat and moving it around isn't a big deal. For high sec you may have to run through 40 or 50 systems before you see a site on a bad day, so you either need an alt account or an all-in-one ship. Of the two options, dropping a couple plex on a T3 is cheaper than maintaining an alt scanner account (in real money, at least) given that no one's going to blow your **** up in high.

As for skills, anything with "astrometrics" in the name helps. You also need salvaging, hacking, and analysis to at least 1 to open exploration containers. Anything else depends on whether you want to use your exploration loot (look up invention) or just sell it (no additional skills).

(Note, you _can_ build an all-in-one ship that's not a T3, scanning sites down unbonused will take long enough that you'll be at the "**** this, I quit" point within a couple weeks, though.)

Tell that to my mate who makes around 8-10bil per month doing hisec exploration

@OP
If you do your exploration in Caldari/Angel hisec then yes it will be very profitable ( depends on luck of course ). Other spaces ( Blood/Sansha/Serpentis) are much less profitable but at the same time less crowded and that means much lesser competition. If you are one of those people, who rage when someone warps to their site and competes for the loot then better stick to those spaces. If you don't mind this kind of competition then you can do your exploration runs in Caldari/Angel space.

You might also consider lowsec exploration if you get some decent exploration ship (Ishtar, Tengu, Proteus). Getting around 3bil from one tiny container in Guristas DED6 is priceless.

Disclaimer:
All exploration drops are totally random. Don't rage when you do 10 sites in a row and get nothing
It all evens out in the end.

High sec exploration can be VERY worthwhile, anyone telling you differently is either a liar or an idiot. You don't need fancy ships for it, a BC with a core probe launcher works fine.

Use this site to guide you, set it to your faction and click the different sites (you mostly want to do DED and "unrated" sites, together with radars), click on them to learn what to shoot for profit. Also, enter your probe strength in that website and you'll be able to almost cherry pick the right sites without having to scan them to 100%.

Note that that last option really only works with using deep space probes, it can work with normal core ones but it's not as reliable.

Not needed at all!

In high sec you can find all normal sites (some grav sites you can't but those are even difficult with proper gear and skills) with a normal ship without probe bonuses, no grav rigs or faction launcher/probes, on astrometrics 1.

The whole "you need massive sp, ships and faction probes" is a myth and as usual a very persistent one. Probing is about experience, SP and mods/rigs/ships just make it a tad easier but aren't needed for high sec.

yeah, they are not needed at all.
Just i found when i tried a newbie, after a few days I was consistently getting to 90% 95% on site and couldn't get to 100% until I trained up a few levels of astrometrics - but they were in 0.5-0.3 systems..

Some grav sites in .8 and .9 systems, couldn't get them above 95%.

Found a Radar site in a .8 that I couldn't get above 25%.

That was at astrometrics 3, with no extra bonuses.

Doing L4s in an AFK Domi is about as slow an ISK making tactic as any. Fly something that does L4s fast. If you expect to watch TV and get rich it won't happen.

This. For every good hour I've had, I've had a number of hours where I got squat.



Also, I've noticed that some individual sites can be b*tch*s some time and won't go above a certain level even if you've got an imicus with 2 grav rigs and okay (not great) skills.

Does PI make a decent amount of ISK? I have actually been curios about that.