EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi.
I'm trying to get into exploration, but i got trouble finding exploration sites.

I know how it works and all, I've read plenty tutorials about which skills I should be training, what ship I should be using, how to scan (I have no problems getting my scan results to 100%).

I know that exploration is mostly luck based, but with ~2 hours of scanning I usually only find 1-2 sites I'm able to loot at my low level. It's mostly just "unknown" sites. Now I'm not sure if I'm doing it correctly, jumping through random systems, approaching the systems sun and starting to scan.

My actual questions would be:

• Am I doing this correctly or am I missing something?
• Are there locations (regions/constellations) in highsec (which is the only think I'm currently comfortable doing) that I should go to to get better results?
• Is there some kind of market where I can sell waypoints of sites I find, but can't make use of myself (for example ladars)?
• I'm thinking of joining a corp. Does that make sense for me when focusing mostly on highsec scanning? Would this benefit me or the corp in any way?
• Are there any general tipps that the usual tutorial doesn't go into, or any (third party?) tools that could help me scan more efficiently?
• Any insight on where to set up my "homebase"? The starmap is pretty intimidating and apart from "this is highsec - this is lowsec" i feel pretty lost :)

Thanks in advance!

Hi Rose

Glad to hear you're giving exploration a go. Its tough at the start but if you're like me you'll be hooked once you made your first big 100m+ ISK find.
Now to your questions
-your basic approach is correct. Just don't bother scanning 0.9 or 1.0 systems, they'll only have wormholes which I assume you can't exploit yet. Also avoid newbie systems and trade hubs. Anywhere else is fine. Doesn't seem to be any major difference in sig quantity or quality between 0.5 and 0.8.
-there's two main factors in picking an exploration area. One is what kind of items you want to find and what rats you don't mind fighting. IE if you explore in Gallente space you'll be fighting Serpentis and getting a lot of faction Afterburners, resistance plates and reppers. Explore in Caldari space and you'll fight Guristas and get faction shield boosters. Second consideration is how many other explorers are operating in the same area, the fewer the better. Obviously I can't tell you which those might be, you'll just have to experiment. What I ended up doing was exploring every constellation in Gallente highsec, writing down what sites I'd found, and focusing on going back to the best areas.
-I've never had much luck selling bookmarks of wormholes, ladars, grav sites etc. You'd kinda want personal contact with someone to build up trust, since there's no way to prove that the bookmark you give them actually contains what you say it does.
-Main advantage of joining an exploration corp would be co-ordinating your searches so you're not all covering the same ground, passing bookmarks for sites you can't exploit yourself to others who can and vice versa, and just general chitchat to relieve the boredom of going 2 hours without finding anything, which you do get now and then. Also it'd probably help if you had a friend in a combat ship to run the sites while you do the probing, if you don't have two accounts.
-can't help you with scanning tutorial videos, I'm kinda self-taught and probably not as good as the "probe mission runners down in 1 scan cycle" crowd.
-Once you've done your research and picked a home constellation to explore regularly ,just pick any station. Drop off your loot, collect your ammo, reship between frigate/cruiser/BC as needed to fit into the sites. Because of reasons I mentioned above, it shouldn't be too close to a market hub. Also be careful bringing your pricier faction loot finds back to market, people can and will kill you to get shinies in a slow or badly tanked ship. For navigation purposes I used the F11 minimap to the righthand side and just focused on exploring one constellation at a time, felt less intimidating than seeing the wole universe at once.

Just on that, if you'd like some flat 2D maps, try googling 'EvE maps ombey' and 'EvE maps dotlan' and seeing which one you prefer.

Combat sites are where you get your chance for faction loot or deadspace modules, and most of the ones in high sec require very little combat skill and take maybe 5 minutes at most to clear. You can skip grav and ladar sites if you aren't in a mining-friendly corp that can quickly clear them out.

Not all of them. I just started exploration and first radar site I found (hisec) was "Local Guristas Shattered Life-Support Unit" Among other ships there were 3 battleships too.

Well, combat was easy, but I was flying Drake.