EVE New Citizens Q&A

Something i like in games where much of what you can do is fighting NPCs for loot is the (small) chance you have of having something rare dropped that's either a huge upgrade for you or something's that worth a lot of money.

Does this exists in EVE? If I do missions or anomalies (for example) in high sec, is there a chance for loot to drop that is much more valuable than what I'm seeing on average (especially as a new player)?

Meta 4 modules, while not "OMG JACKPOT" can still sell for a few million isk and are upgrades over anything below.

The really expensive loot like 500m+ you have to actually work for in combat sites.

Module quality from worst to best:
Civilian
Basic
Named Basic
Tech I
Named Tech I
COSMOS (Storyline)
Tech II
Faction
Deadspace/Officer

While most are easily obtainable, the ones of note are:

Faction Modules: have either improved stats or improved fitting over Tech II modules while only requiring the same skills as the equivalent T1 modules. They drop only from faction rat spawns in low truesec systems.

Deadspace modules: are faction modules that drop in Complexes. They generally have stats that exceed that of faction modules. There are 4 types (best to worst): X, A, B, and C. X-Type items are some of the best in the game, comparable with officer.

Officer modules: drop only from very rare officer ship spawns in belts. For some idea of value, Estamel's Modified Invulnerability Field (officer module) can be sold for over 20 billion isk.

Yes. On a more serious note, a 10/10 complex can drop you 2.5B in one go. Officer drops in belts can go even higher.

I saw a faction shield booster drop off a pvp killed mining barge last night that was worth 200 million.

Some interesting stuff to be had when you pop an afk Mack ;)

Most of the "jackpot" loot comes from the exploration system. The biggest example of this are combat complexes. These are in some ways similar to missions, but offer no standard payout or standings gain. Their difficulty is highly variable. At the end, a faction NPC may or may not spawn. If he spawns, he may or may not drop faction modules. These faction modules may be worth ****, or they may be worth a silly amount of ISK. Some plexes may give you jack ****, but to compensate others will give you hundreds of million or even billions of ISK worth of stuff.

a game devs frozen corpse

I've seen this myself over Rens way. Very rare, I'd go null for better chance of good drops.

I have to correct you there for a bit. When I go shopping in Jita, I usually work by moving to the region, buying remotely and moving by contract. On these travels I often jump into Anomaly class sites. Last week, I pulled an implant our of one with an EST of about 50 mil. I believe they are the same ones you can get from lowsec belt rats, but I'm not entirely sure. The point is a Faction rat may or may not spawn at the end of the anomaly even in Hisec, but I am not aware of their spawn ratio's and / or if they drop Faction gear too.

Tip: Fit Sensor Boosters and a high alpha ship, use drones for the last rat of the final wave. As soon as the Faction rat appears, lock it and time your shot well to recieve the final blow and thus, wreck ownership. Blue up intermediary wrecks to appear not this much of an asshat untill the Faction rat actually appears: people may think you are assisting them, but in the end you nab the real goodies.

In null sec, and occasionally in low sec, you can find faction spawns in belts (and in anomolies). These can drop fairly valuable loot. There are faction spawns for most of the pirate npcs. "Shadow" serpentis, "True" Sansha, "Dread Gurista" etc. If you see one of these rats kill it and keep your fingers crossed.

In Null sec there is also a rare chance of finding a named "officer" pirate npc. This will be a faction battleship with a name usually surrounded by 4 or so npc battleship rats. These guys hit hard and are very difficult to solo kill. When they die they can drop faction loot or they can drop officer named loot. These officer named loots can be worth billions. They dont always drop billions of isk worth of loot however. I have only heard of officers spawning in a belt or on a gate.

I personally have killed three since I have been playing eve and I have never gotten a total loot drop worth more than 500 mil. Other guys I have known have gotten that Jackpot drop you were talking about worth 5-6 billion. One guy in my corp got 2 officers in the same system in delve and both dropped about 5 bil worth of loot. One of the ones I killed dropped no officer mods at all and the faction drops were crap. Its all variable.