Ships & Modules

Ask for help in local. EVE is a social game, having more friends is literally the answer to everything in EVE.

Failing that, you're probably going to have to train better skills. Some good ones to get more bang for your SP fast are:

Drones to IV (or Drone Interfacing to IV if you already have Drones V)
Rapid Firing to IV
Surgical Strike to IV
Small Hybrid Turret to IV
Gallente Frigate (or Destroyer) to IV.

I just fit a full rack of ion blasters, web and orbited at 500m and went afk for 15minutes

Stasis webifiers, Dagan is pretty fast for a battlecruiser.

For a catalyst you want to be training gunnery skills like small hybrid turret and gunnery, rapid firing and surgical strike etc.

As for the market: try unticking "show only available" and have a browse through the ship equipment category and show info on EVERYTHING that you find interesting. It's a great way to learn modules.

a couple of this should do the trick:

[Catalyst, ionlowsp]
Small Automated Carapace Restoration
F85 Peripheral Damage System I
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Experimental 1MN Afterburner I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Antimatter Charge S
Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Antimatter Charge S
Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Antimatter Charge S
Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Antimatter Charge S
Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Antimatter Charge S
Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Antimatter Charge S
Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Antimatter Charge S
Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Antimatter Charge S

Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Nanobot Accelerator I

you can upgrade as many ion blaster as your skill allow to neutron blaster for extra dps, plus a couple of this destroyers can do lv2 mission even with very low skills.
if still you cant break the tank you can use faction ammo like caldari navy antimatter, they are quite expensive but they add a 10% to your dps.

if you can use T2 modules like a T2 reapairer or damage control use that

It's been an age since I did this mission but something like this should work:
High
8x Limited Light Neutron Blaster I [Antimatter Charge S]

Medium
Experimental 1MN Afterburner I
Eutectic Capacitor Charge Array

Low
2x Magnetic Vortex Stabilizer I
Small 'Accomodation' Vestment Reconstructer I

This is a medium meta fit that probably comes in at around 3 million for the fittings (not counting the hull), you can almost certainly go cheaper and still get the job done. It requires hardly any skills to fit/fly.

Get Dagan alone.
Select Orbit Dagan at 500m, with afterburner on.
Pulse your armor repairer as necessary on the approach. This ship is not cap stable and the repairer is hungry so only use it when you have to.
Once you get in close (under 2km), turn on your neutron blasters, you should be under his guns (too close for him to hit you) and hardly taking any damage so you can avoid using the repper (just running the guns and AB should leave you cap stable).

This ship does not have a strong capacitor. If you continually run into cap problems (I don't think you should) then you could add some cap rigs or, more economically, drop one of the mag stabs for a reactor control and the cap recharger for a cap booster. With two of you you should be able to kill him pretty quickly but bring plenty of ammo especially if you try by yourself.

If he continually reps through your damage (I don't think that this will be the case) then try dropping a gun and fitting a small neut. Supposedly being neuted reduces the chance of rats running their repairers.

If he does too much damage to you then you can drop a mag stab for energized plating or maybe a damage control.

5 minutes? more like 1 minute.


Either he was just speaking generally about what skills are good for a new pilot, or he was thinking back to the days when the Catalyst had a 5 m3 drone bay

Anyway, use meta 3 or 4 guns if you can afford them (the "modal" or "anode particle" variants).
Train gunnery lvl 4, to unlock surgical strike, train that to lvl 3 (pretty much any training to lvl 3 is fast), and enjoy another 9% DPS (11% if you include taking gunnery from 3->4)
If you don't have rapid firing trained, train it.

Meta 3 does 15% more damage than meta 0, meta 4 does 20% more, meta 1 and 2 do 5% and 10%.

As you are in catalysts, you can't alter your damage type... which may be nice, although I forget what Dagan's resists are, and they may change depending on which empire's space you choose to do the final mission in.

Also, somebody said the faction ammo added 10% DPS -> that is basically wrong, the navy faction ammo adds 15% to your DPS. the Pirate faction ammo comes in 2 grades, +10 or +20%, the +20% is very rare, and also very expensive.

I suspect that given your skills and fit, your individual DPS can be doubled before even looking at mag stabs.

I did the trial a couple times before subscribing. Firsttime I was in a rail fit catalyst... and I couldn't break his tank...
Subsequent times, I was in a Thorax.
I must ask, why haven't you moved up to a cruiser if you have all that ISK - I couldn't wait to.
Although, a cruiser won't do much more DPS than a destroyer, but it tanks a whole lot better. A blaster fit thorax should do nicely as well.
Last time I did it, I solo'd the whole arc in a taranis.

It's been a long times since I ran the SOE arc, and I've been hearing a lot about how hard Dagan can be for a newbie pilot. I decided to create a new toon to see what the minimum skills and ship requirements might be to finish him off.


I used a Republic Fleet Firetail frigate fit with:
2 200mm light 'scout' auto-cannon I's
1 "arbalist' rocket launcher I
1 Counterbalanced Weapon Mounts I
1 Fourier Transform Tracking Program
1 Internal Force Field Array I
1 Small Shield booster I
1 1mm experimental ab,
1 fleeting propulsion inhibitor
1 Cap recharger II
3 small cap control circuit rigs

I used republic fleet fusion small projectile ammo and caldari navy nova rockets and needed 3 full loads for each. I only had a total of 90.6 DPS available by the time I took Dagon down. I also brought other ammo types because I didn't know what would work best against Dagan.

Some of these skills were already given with the brand new toon and the total training time (according to EveMon, without implants) was only 3 days, 18 hours and 50 seconds. I only had a hair over 210k skill points in total when I killed him.

These are all the skills the new toon has:
Gunnery L3
Rapid Firing L3
Small Projectile Turret L4
Weapons Upgrades L3
Motion Prediction L1
Sharpshooter L1
Missile Launcher Operation L3
Rapid Launch L1
Rockets L2
Target Navigation Prediction L1
Minmatar Frigate L3
Spaceship Command L3
Propulsion Jamming L1
Energy Grid Upgrades L3
Engineering L3
Shield Management L1
Shield OPeration L3
Jury Rigging L1
Mechanics L3
Afterburner L3
Navigation L3.

I also have cybernetics and some +1 implants for skill training, but those don't in any way affect the end result and just shaved off a very small amount of training time.

I killed Dagan's escorts first, then orbited Dagan at 500m using the webbifier. Don't use the AB while orbiting, you lose tracking if you do. Just use it to close in fast, and shut it off at 5k and start firing. It took several minutes (I forgot to start a timer, but it seemed like 4 or 5 minutes) to get him down to zero shields, but once that's done, his armor and hull go fairly fast.

Now I have to admit that my main character already had the ship, fittings and ammo available, but it is possible for 4 day old toon to afford this set up if they do the mining tutorial to get a venture and mine for a few hours each day for 4 days. Depending on how long you play each day, it might take a few more days to run through the arc to get to Dagaon. This means you couild actually have a full week of skill training making you even more powerful than my 4 day old toon! I used this toon to start the SOE arc after only a day of skill traiing. I was only two days old by the time I got to Dagan and at that time I only had 70 DPS and I couldn't take his shield below 50%. So I waited another day or so to get more DPS. I blitzed the missions and didn't stop to loot or salvage, and it took about 15 hours over the weekend to get to him, with breaks.

After all is said and done, I think I've shown that a week old toon can get the skills, ship and fittings to solo kill dagon in a frigate. With the right skills, you don't need a destroyer, you definitely don't need a cruiser and you don't need help. However with that said, I have been playing for years so I have a better idea of what skills are more important to train and how to fight. A new pilot would probably be better off getting a bigger ship or asking for help. If you screw up and wind up dead after getting this ship and fittings after playing for only a few days, you might hate me but I can't be held responsible.

I just wore Dagan down..ie cara and a lot of missile's .. but I must admit I almost asked