EVE New Citizens Q&A

I have tried a few times to figure out exploration. I have finally gotten to the point where I can actually locate something (it's kind of fun actually). The problem is all I have been able to locate is unstable wormholes. Frankly, at this stage of the game I'm not sure I would know what to do in WH space. But more to the point ... where the heck are the data and relic sites? Yes, I'm in high sec space, mostly .09 and .08. Do these systems not have data and relic sites? Do I need to acquire more skills? I'm training a scanning frigate. I have found a combat site.

Can anyone give me some hints on where to find data and relic sites? How do they spaw? are they like asteroid belts where once they are discovered they are gone until the next reset (meaning that they hit up pretty early and then you have to wait for more to spawn)? At least that would make sense.

Most of the tutorials I have seen talk about low and nullsec, not really interested in that until I figure out how to actually do it.

I have been at this for hours and hours and no data or Relic sites ... is that normal? It seems like I should have found one by blind dumb luck by now.Any help would be ... helpful :)

Use the abundance of WH sigs to your advantage. You are correct, you can't really do much in a wormhole yet (unless you find a good WH corp willing to teach you as you train). But what you can do is use the wormholes to get from high-sec to null sec and back again in a relatively small amount of jumps compared to going there by normal gate travel. (Just make sure you bookmark your path.)

You did the tutorials right? There are missions that do exactly this, if you didn't retain the "how to" the first time there are 7 other sets of tutorial agents.

But honestly, even if you did find plenty of Data/Relic sites in high, the loot is nothing to write home about and won't make you much more than mining unless you are really lucky. Get out to null sec asap to find the juicy stuff. (Although luck will still be required)

Here's a tip for quick isk.

Buy an expanded probe launcher and combat probes, fit to a cruiser and scan down abandoned drones and mobile tractors.
Scoop drones, shoot mtu's loot the wreck.

Resell what you find.

But if you can figure out how to combat probe quickly you will have just made yourself an asset for a PvP Corp

None of your questions have been stupid.

Also, there is a test server you are welcome to use.

but its exactly the same as any other mmo, a place where resources can be gathered easily will be picked clean by players.

For example popular mining routes in WoW, there's almost never any ores since there's a ton of people already mining.

What do you do? You go to a less popular spot, exactly the same logic in EVE

Yes well I'm not so sure I buy that, I mean you can make ISK right off the bat in a number of activities, (Mining, re-processing, manufacturing, simple arbitrage) in EVE. What I'm getting in this thread is that you need a ship fit with MWD, Cloaking, cargo scanners and the cap to fit it all. And thats fine as far as it goes, I will be taking all the advice I can get, and many of the responses are already bearing fruit.

What I was really trying to say is that it seems as if there are some activities in EVE that you really can't bootstrap yourself up with, and it looks as if exploring is one of them. Cloaking alone will take me another 2 and a half weeks to train and MWD will take some more skills to fit it without draining my cap. So thats what I will do and in the mean time I will continue to learn more. But I still need to make ISK so I will do some of those other things as well. My point was with these other activities you can start making ISK right away ... it's not a lot, you grow out of it pretty fast, but you can earn while bootstrapping your way up. Mining is a great example, but I have also made ISK manufacturing, ratting, and arbitrage to name a few. So far, for all the time I have spent exploring my take has been close to zilch. I'm not asking to get rick, I simply pointing out that, from what you all have told me, you really need to be in low sec to make it worth your time and that is a lot of skill training for someone out of the gate.

Thank you all for some great tips and suggestions.

You seem to be under the misconception that you need everything trained to 5 before doing anything.

Cloaking 1 takes about 30 minutes to train. A t1 exploration frigate at MOST takes 1 day to train for.

You can do combat exploration just fine as a newbie in a destroyer or even frigate, and make (on average) really good isk in high sec space. I'll paste an info mail I made a while back with all kinds of information for starting combat explorers, some of the stuff in that mail are links and it's not possible to copy them over but I'll try my best. because of the size of that mail (it's also causing issues in game) I'll just make two posts:

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First of all you need to realise that there's a lot of misconceptions and boogieman stories in regards to exploration. Most people just aren't that well informed and on top of that some people might actually mislead you on purpose because they don't want competition. This all means that most of the info you'll hear or read will be wrong, so here's what you really need to know when you start Combat exploration.



Lets first to clear up a few of those misconceptions:

- yes, high sec is VERY profitable for exploration, if you do it right

- no, you don't need fancy ships, rigs, implants or sister launcher/probes, you can easily scan for stuff without them

- no, you don't need a special scanning ship and then switch to a special combat ship, as stated it's not needed and it just adds annoyance and the need to somehow travel around with two ships

- yes, you can do it as a newbie as long as you keep to certain sites and pay attention to what you should be doing


: Exploration

So what is combat exploration? Combat sites require you to kill NPCs and possibly structures in the hopes of cool loot, that loot can be silly stuff sometimes worth 500k and other times worth 400 mil. You never really know but generally a good site drop is somewhere between 30-90 mil.

You find a site, make sure you understand what you should be doing, enter it, clear the "trash" till you get to the target that has a chance of dropping awesome loot, you destroy it, you pick up the loot and you leave. Don't bother with looting normal wrecks or salvaging them, that's all just a waste of time.

There's two types of combat sites; signatures and anomalies. I wouldn't bother with anomalies at all (you can disable them in the scanning window) because profit per hour is low compared to the other types.


: Ships & fittings

Ship wise you want to use a Frigate or preferably a Destroyer, those will allow you to do the easier sites just fine (do NOT enter the more difficult sites, you WILL blow up). The destroyers have more dps and range, which generally makes them better to use.

Skill wise I'd say that you need about a week of training to get your weapon damage up, support skills like engineering (capacitor), tanking and navigation skills. It can be done with less if you know what you're doing and/or are very careful.

MAKE SURE TO FIT FOR TANK! Being able to survive and stay in the site is more important than doing a bit more damage. So fit resists for the damage type done to you (this differs per faction), add long range guns or missiles launchers, use a 1mn Afterburner and add the probe launcher.

Here's examples of how that could look, they're just ideas so you can use them but you can also adapt them with cheaper or more expensive quality stufff, as long as you remember to have the basic stuff on board and fit for tank.

Algos - Basic explorer
Catalyst - Explorer T1
Coercer - Exploration low SP
Corax - Corax low sp explorer
Thrasher explorer angels low sp
Talwar - low sp

There isn't necessarily a linear relationship between what type of site it is and the possible pay out. Higher sites will of course on average pay more but lower sites pay just fine and you'll also avoid most of the competition from more experienced explorers with much better ships. So by staying small you might be better off doing 5 easier sites without competition than finding 2 difficult sites and possibly lose one due to competition and the other one might not drop anything at all due to random drop chance. You're FINE staying small for a while.


: Scanning

To learn about how scanning works go check this video of mine, it should help you out (I'd also urge you to check my other vids, they might be very useful to you). Scanning isn't really difficult but it does take some experience to stop it being frustrating, just keep at it and at some point you can do it while you're asleep.

IMPORTANT: some systems and areas are just better than others, so if you can't find anything just roam around, bookmark every valid site you find and after a while you'll start to notice which systems or areas just give you a better chance of combat sites. Because of that it's very well possible that in the first few weeks you'll be running around aimlessly not finding much, just hang in there, try different spots and start to build up your database. Use your map and set course to out of the way systems, clusters of systems and stuff like that.

A few things...

- A prototype cloaking device only requires CPU management IV and Cloaking I. CPU management should be one of your first trains (to 5 even) as it affects every ship in the game (allowing you to fit more/better modules)

- MWD are designed to give you a huge speed boost at the cost of a lot of capacitor. Most MWD fits are NOT cap stable. Cap stable means you won't run out of capacitor if you leave everything running indeterminately. The MWD is only used for one cycle to perform the "MWD cloak trick" (google it) so you don't need to worry about that at all.

- If other fitting skills are a problem (CPU and powergrid) there are some modules and rigs that can help you fit stuff with lower skills. Micro Auxilliary Power Core I (powergrid) and Co-Processor I (CPU) would be good bets for an exploration frig. Keep in mind that if you need a lot of these modules you are probably missing some skills that ought to be trained up soon (CPU and Powergrid Management, among others)

TLDR: Never wait for skills. Do what interests you even if you have suboptimal fits and skills, but keep it cheap. You'll die some, but you should make some money exploring as well and it will be vastly more interesting than staring at your reflection in the Captain's Quarters mirror (unless it's my reflection obv.)

PS: Not sure if it was mentioned, but C1-C3 class wormholes now have null-sec style data/relic sites (without rats) in addition to the sleeper data/relic sites (which do have rats and you should avoid in an exploration frig). Wormholes are pretty complicated but you don't need any extra skills to go try those sites - just some knowledge about wormhole classes and and bookmarks, and a healthy dose of (liquid?) courage.