Missions & Complexes

Hi all,

I spent the last week doing some exploration and learned a few important lessons I wanted to share in case anyone was interested; I also have a few questions below as well. I have only been exploring in High Sec and try to stay in .5 to .7 systems.

(1) I started off by using my Gnosis because it has a bonus to probes. However, I soon realized that I wasn't able to use it for many of the DED sites I found. In two hours, I found three DED site all of which were 3/10s. Therefore, I decided to switch to my Navy Omen instead.

I believe, and please correct me if I am wrong, but a BC can only enter 4/10 or higher. Do both 4/10s and 5/10s appear in High Sec?

(2) In certain systems, there is a lot of competition for DED sites. I was about half way through one and this Merlin pops in runs to the final room and clears it before I get there...kind of sucked, but, hey, I was having fun so I didn't really care. I moved to an entirely different region this week and found the number of explorers is significantly less.

Although I gave up hunting down Sansha scum for Blood Raiders, I wonder if that has something to do with it...quality of loot?

(3) I found a Data Site, warped in, found four vaults, looted one and four Mallers appeared. I guess, I had a bit of a brain freeze or something and forgot to turn on my Armor Repairer so I warped out when my armor was at about 10%. I thought, I would repair my armor come back and finish them off. Well, I guess once you loot one vault, the site disappears. I lost 5 Navy Acolytes as well, because I warped out before they could dock up. Going forward, I will bookmark the sites and not remove them until I have finished looting everything I want.

In all of the DED sites I have found, about ten total now, only a few of them appear on the DED Complex List website. I cleared a few called Blood Hideout or something like that (it wasn't a Hideaway that would appear for everyone with or without probes) and Drone Gathering, Wreckage? I think (it was just frigates no cruisers or BCs). Is there are better website for a complete list of DED sites? I don't think they were Ghost Sites as I found a few of those as well, but, may be I am wrong.

Very interesting...that would make sense. I pretty much went from full shields and armor to about 25% armor almost instantaneously, I thought it was the damage I was taking from the Mallers and my own failure to activate my Armor Repairer.

Ghost sides appear as data sites since this Tuesday (December patch). They give you about 10-30s hidden timer upon arrival on grid (worse now with the bigger grids ...) to hack, loot, gtfo. Then a quite potent NPC force will come after the cans and you, first explode the cans then you. If you interrupt or fail a hack the can will explode and kill you, if you are not tanky enough.

One trick is to warp in, figure the can with the different name than the others, MWD, hack, loot, gtfo. Usually this can has the best loot. But don't fail the hack, even when NPCs arrive, complete the hack, you will die otherwise.

If you want to fit something tanking enough, trail and error on SiSi test server first (never tried myself, was always going cheap and hacked the one can).

... else keep going with exploration, it's fun and rewarding, once you step up to nullsec sites.

Excellent advice. Thanks so much! I'll try it out this evening.

Clearly, I did not have the right strategy for this site; I thought it was like the other Data Sites I had encountered.

As a follow up question, I noticed that some sites are really hard to lock onto and others are very easy...I presume this has to do with the quality of the site? I would also guess that skills help with that? I have astrometrics to five, but don't have any of the supporting skills (e.g. pinpointing).

Agreed, relic/data in high is training ground only. Combat (4/10, 5/10) can be decent, but I tend to say, stealing other's loot is more fun than doing them yourself.

However relic exploration in nullsec is at least on par with optimized lvl4 mission running, better if lucky. Recently I completed a 6h run in Sansha space with my trusty "relic ceptor" and about 750m ISK, never returned with less than 500m, once hit the 1B in 4h.

Honestly, I decided to try out exploration because I was getting bored with running missions. I have pretty much exclusively done missions and ratting in High Sec and Null. I've never really spent time in Low Sec, frankly, I'm kind of nervous about trying...

Exploration is more unpredictable than running missions and thus I find it more fun!

Due to large amount of competition in high security, it's best to have both scanning and ship support skills trained up and also use top level equipment. That will help find and complete the sites asap.

To help minimize the chance of other explorers entering the sites and getting the final loot drop while you're engaged with NPC's, look for sites in systems that are far from Mission and Trade hubs, systems that are off the beaten track with low amount of jumps, low amount of population, low amount of ship and NPC kills, etc. Use the Starmap to view those system stats.

As for Exploration Combat sites, there's 2 main categories - Cosmic Anomaly and Cosmic Signature.

Cosmic Anomaly combat sites are good to run when there's no other sites available. These sites have a small chance to spawn Commander NPC's that might drop Faction loot and the sites themselves have an even lower chance to escalate to expedition. If they do escalate, it will be one time to a DED Rated Complex.

Cosmic Signature combat sites have 2 categories available - DED Rated Complexes and Unrated Complexes.

DED Rated Complexes won't escalate to expedition but they have a good chance to drop Faction loot. Unrated Complexes have a good chance to escalate to expedition, up to 4 times with a small chance to drop Faction loot each time.

The lists linked above are actually close to being accurate and up to date.


DMC

Can 2 Passive Lokis do 10/10s in NPC null space?

And this is why i have to waste so much time scanning down and hacking cherrypicked sites. If you cherrypick in less than dire danger situation, you are hurting your income and everyones elses income, since the sites only re spawn somewhere else if they are completed.

Just gross, its like eating a beef from hamburger, then moving on...to next one

Yeah, I lost a combat site and some T1 warriors that way because I screwed up agro and had to warp out.