EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm on the missioning grind, doing L3's in an Arbitrator in hi-sec. It's boring and tedious. Especially when I do the salvage part.

But then I thought, I wonder if the income would be better if I skipped the salvage phase? Or perhaps just equal.

Right now, I do a mission, destroy all the bad guys, then come back in my destroyer to loot & salvage everything. After a lot of missions, I load up everything into my Bestower and haul it to Amarr to sell everything. Click sell click sell click sell click sell... Tedious.

But I wonder, what if I were to regularly sell the location of my mission after I've cleared it? Let someone else do the salvaging tedium so I can focus on churning out more missions.

Does anyone do that? How likely is that to work? Hows the money per time difference? How much do you charge?

I think it's spread like this:

30% in bounties from killing rats
30% mission reward + bonus reward
30% loot and wrecks

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

You could try to sell the location, but who would trust you? You could sell bookmark to empty site. Also, wrecks don't remain in space forever, you'd have to advertise.

That said, I did see some old threads about a salvaging channel, or paid salvaging service, but you'll have to use your google-fu to find those.

Eve has the same salvage rights as the ocean... whoever gets it gets it

The reason to buy it is because they're unlikely to find it. No one has bust into one of my many, many missions yet, highlighting the low probabilities.
What I'm proposing selling is a location bookmark.

I understand that this is all assuming that others are inclined to trust the suspicious offer. So really, I'm unlikely to bother.

All I will say sol, is that maybe so for you have been lucky. Just on a side note, don't make the mistake of thinking that busting a mission spot is hard. Take it from me, our 'pirate' friends in low sec can bust open a 'safe' mission site damned fast, I know, I have had my 'ass' burnt a couple of times.

OK, now just as a side thought to your base idea. I would also say it's not going to be worth the effort. In the grand scale of things even a level 4 mission is not going to provide a lot of salvage, you are going to have to try and match the prices for buying straight off the market, so your returns are going to be tiny at best.

I would say, as somebody else has suggested, if you are flying an Arbi, carry a couple of salvage drones and let those lil puppies tidy up for you after the fight. That will probably put the most iskies into your wallet then anything and for a lot less effort

Salvage drones operate independently? you dont need to target & specify?


As mentioned, I'm missioning in high sec. I'm willing to take the risk, up here. I'm aware that losec is different.

There's your problem right there. Invest in a Noctis and salvage stops being a chore. After that invest in some rig BPOs (they're cheap) and start making rigs from salvage. The profit margin for selling salvage is low, but the profit margin on rigs is so high it will make you ashamed. You can turn a few level one wrecks into a rig worth a couple of million ISK easily.

Or, if that's still too much work, now that combat drones have been made irrelevant there are still plenty of ships with small 25m3 drone bays that are perfect for loading up with salvage drones for your post-mission looting pleasure. If you can fit a tractor beam into your fitting then so much the better.

For the true mission running gypsy, you'll notice that an Orca has a tractor beam bonus and a drone bay that is also perfect for salvage drones. So you can carry your mission ship in cargo, finish the mission, switch to the Orca itself and use it to salvage with.

Module loots is iffy. The stuff can sell for a lot, but only if you can find a buyer. Generally I keep the Meta 4 stuff and just recycle everything else. But that Meta 4 stuff can fetch a small fortune, especially when you're talking weapons. And officer loot... egads, one officer module is probably worth more than the rest of the mission combined. Even if you aren't looting every wreck you should at least check them first. It's amazing what you can find.

Also... isn't there anyone in your corp with a salvage ship? Have them come along with you. Even if it doesn't go into your own pocket, the company will still benefit. That's got to count for something, right?

Then stop doing it.

There are lots of ways to make money in EVE. If you do not like missions then please, for your own sake, stop doing them.

Some other options: Join a pvp corp, try trading, try explorations, try manufacturing, try going to 0.0 (check out providence) and sneaking around... you could go to wormholes and check those out. There are so many other things you could do.

You could also try mining or you can try social engineering to get ISK. There are loads of options you just need to think creatively.


That depends how quickly you complete the mission combined with the value gained from salvaging the site.

Basically, it's a question of ISK per hour efficiency. What activity will get you more ISK?

For example, if running missions gets you ~5 million ISK in half an hour and going in to salvage the site takes another half hour but only brings 2 million worth of ISK (you have to include travel time, ship swapping time, and any other things that take up time) then it is not worth it to salvage.

If the salvage would bring you 5 million for half an hour. Then you have the option: If you don't like salvaging, don't bother since you aren't losing anything.

If the salvage would bring you more than 5 million then you would be losing ISK by not salvaging.

If the salvage operation (including the swapping of ships) takes 5 minutes for the 5 million ISK then it is totally worthwhile to salvage.

So, there isn't one good answer, it all depends on the situation that you are in. It may be that your best efficiency for ISK is to run 3 missions in a row and then go in and salvage one after another. But, that also depend if your ship has the cargo space for the loots.

Put another way, it's the opportunity cost involved that you need to look at.


I love to salvage. It is one of my most favorite game elements in EVE and I have often 'bought' the rights to sites. But, it has to be worth my time to do.

What I used to do when I first started - I would share the profits (50/50) of the site with the person who ran it. I would pay out based on what the 'sell to market' value was in Jita prices. Then, I'd handle all the logistics of bringing the goods to market and I'd list them on the market directly so I'd actually make more than the sell to market value - this would cover the time it would take to bring the items out to market.

Other people operate differently.

Some salvagers will pay nothing for sites. A lot of players will abandon their sites and not expect anything in return.

Some salvagers will ask for a flat fee per site. I do this in 0.0 when I know what the average value of a site is worth. I'll typically offer a third of what the average value would be - my logic: it takes a lot of effort to bring the salvage and loot to market from 0.0 so that makes it worth my time. It is worth it to the person running the sites because, otherwise, they'd get nothing. And if they are quick with doing their sites it can really boost their ISK per hour. Let's say I pay 5 million per site and they complete those sites every 10 minutes - that's an extra 30 million ISK per hour for them for doing nothing.

Anyway, the short answer to the salvage question: Yes, some people will pay to salvage other people's sites if it is worth it to them. I don't know what the value of a level 3 mission site is so I don't know if it makes sense economically for a salvager to spend the time doing in the first place but another new player who likes to salvage may be interested in partnering up.

I can't think of anybody willing to pay for level 3 mission wrecks.