Science & Industry

Hello all,

Don't know if this is the right forum to post this topic, so i apologize in advance. Maybe i am posting a noob question here, but after reading lots of industrialists posts and guides, i have more doubts now than b4.

The core of my question is: is it possible to make a pure industrialist char and have some decent profit? I read that some toons can just sit on stations making BPCs or invention all day and earn tons of isks. I personally like this approach, because:

1) I really suck at pvp and i don't have any interest in doing this. (i know that a lot of people will disagree with that, but since eve is a sandbox, i believe that we have the freedom to do anything inside the game, even totally forget pvp);

2) My pve training will take some time until i can fly a bs with a decent fit, so it will be great if i can make other activities until i can solo lvl 4 missions.

From what i could learn until now, an industrialist will have 7 different approachs to make money:

a) Gatherer (basically mining and salvaging) - Love both and already do that (i already can see people telling me not to mine; what can i say, i am a miner addict... )

b) Reprocesser - love that but need to wait until i get better skills, right now i am loosing to much materials in the process

c) Trader - basically, buy low and sell high (not my thing, since i dont want to babysit buy and sell orders)

d) Hauler - love it, but after being portal ganked and nuked 2 times with a loss of 40 mi isk (ouch), i will wait until i can fly an freighter.

e) Manufacturer - like it, but need more info about what sells the most (read about ammo, but i am not sure about this approach, since a lot of people make its own ammo)

f) PI - love it and already doing this

g) BPO / BPC - love the concept, the ability of making BPC and sell it, reseach ME and TE.

Basically, Manufacturer, BPO and BPC could be my way, but after doing some math, i noticed that:

1) Buy all the mats and run a BPO / BPC to make something and sell it will not bring me a good profit, since the mats price will be, sometimes, equal or higher than the manufactured product.

2) Gather all the mats to make stuff will make a profit, but i saw a lot of warnings that if i sell the raw mats i can make more isk than sell the finished product.

3) Generally, BPOs and BPCs will flown to the market via contracts, and i saw a lot of complaints about no one buying these contracts, or someone that have hundreds of BPCs only sell 2 or 3, because the market is saturated.

That said, is it possible to an industrialist make serious isk with this approach? Or it is imperative to complement the isk income with other activities (mainly pve)?

Thanks in advance.

ps: sorry about my english, it's not my 1st language.

Hey hey having dabbled in nearly every aspect of the game over the years ill toss my isk in the ring with thoughts on your points

a) Gatherer (basically mining and salvaging) - Love both and already do that (i already can see people telling me not to mine; what can i say, i am a miner addict... Roll)

There is nothing wrong with gathering resources if it is your cup of tea, just make sure you are making enough to enjoy other avenues of gameplay, also note as was said above that with raw materials it maybe in your wallets best interest to sell the base materials instead of building something out of them.

Your basically going up against the crowd that "mines for free so i can sell these things dirt cheap" crowd.


b) Reprocesser - love that but need to wait until i get better skills, right now i am loosing to much materials in the process

Reprocessing goes hand in hand with mining so if you plan on being a miner you should also plan on being able to Reproc with some degree of efficiency. getting your skills to 4 and getting the beancounter implant will help your Reproc value go up. Save training the 5's until you have other skills under your belt as getting this set of skills to 5 is particularly long and only usable in one facet of gameplay.

c) Trader - basically, buy low and sell high (not my thing, since i dont want to babysit buy and sell orders)

Trading can make good isk, the .01 wars are mostly a Jita and the sub market hub war. If you find a place kind of out the way you can sell stuff at a nice profit without having to babysit your orders all day every day.

d) Hauler - love it, but after being portal ganked and nuked 2 times with a loss of 40 mi isk (ouch), i will wait until i can fly an freighter.

If losing 40m in a hauler hurt you need to learn more about freighters and the HS ganking activities that take place against these squishy giants. when you lose 1.1-1.5b plus cargo your gonna poop yourself with anger, if that 40m was a hurting your wallet.

e) Manufacturer - like it, but need more info about what sells the most (read about ammo, but i am not sure about this approach, since a lot of people make its own ammo)

I dabble heavily in production, you have to constantly check market and make sure you are building what is profitable or you are truly better off selling the raw materials. Although some people do build there own ammo if you find a mission hub or a nice under funded market in some region you can make good isk making and selling necessities to lazy people.

f) PI - love it and already doing this

This is good Mostly passive source of income, once you set up its generally only 10-20 mins every 2-3 days and can make good chunks of isk.
Also the lower the security of the system the better the materials yield for PI products.

g) BPO / BPC - love the concept, the ability of making BPC and sell it, reseach ME and TE.

This is a tricky market, i would suggest checking contracts and see how much of what is moving. Alot of BPCs dont sell well or fast while others are nearly in constant demand.
Researching and selling BPOs can be lucrative but will require a ton of start up capital to stay competitive.


Overall your best bet here is working with an established industrialist and learning the ropes, plenty of folks go in blind and get super frustrated as there is truly no easy button for Industrial activities and nothing within this realm of gameplay is contant it is ever changing and evolving.

Feel free to mail me in game and i will answer any questions that i can.


also this all day long https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/
this is a great resource and can help you decide whats good to build or mine or where to sell stuff.

The real margins for producing lots of stuff are in Invention and T2 Production, which requires relatively little ISK to get started but quite some skills to invent the blueprints, OR they are in producing high value goods, such as capital ships, which requires a lot of ISK to get started.

Check out some T2 items on the market, and how well they are going. You can do so by checking their trade volume. The more, the better, as you coming into the market will have a smaller impact on supply.

As a quick note:

Production Efficiency no longer exists (got renamed). And you certainly don't _need_ it at 5. It used to be pretty much required, due to how it reduced material usage, but that changed back in Crius. Was renamed to Advanced Industry, and it just reduces build times. Still a very useful skill, but not a _required_ one.

Be wary of taking advice from people who suggest it, because it's indicative of them not paying attention.




The margins of return in industry tend to be pretty low, however, you can put a lot of isk through it, which leads to a large profit.

You can absolutely make an excellent income as an Eve industrialist. It gets easier once you have the skills to invent and manufacture T2 products but you can operate a successful business making T1 rigs without a lot of character skill. You will need to understand your market and study the cycle of the products you sell - the market history tab in the market tool will help you there.

Eve is a pure commodity market and everything is over produced. Like all commodity markets it is cyclical - competition will drive prices down until they are below cost, this will attract buyers and discourage sellers, eventually the under priced inventory will be gone and the price will snap back - often dramatically. This will attract sellers and discourage buyers - the cycle repeats. You make money by staying in the top half of the cycle!

a. Mining is an activity that scales well if you have multiple accounts. In highsec I fly 2 well tanked Skiffs - one harvesting Scordite and the other Plageoclase. While mining I tend to other tasks like PI, markets, forums, etc... that can be done just as easily sitting in an exhumer as sitting in the station. I don't harvest all the minerals I use but it adds a few hundred million to my bottom line each month and by multi tasking the ISK/hour is actually pretty good.

b. Reprocessing 5, Reprocessing Efficiency 4, a couple of basic ore skills to level 4 - a week or so well invested. Refine at one of the myriad citadels now dotting the landscape for high base yield and low tax.

c: List your product at a secondary hub. For a small industrialist, Jita is a good place to buy but not a good place to sell. I update my market orders twice a day - stuff sells. As mentioned earlier, don't chase the market into the bottom half of the cycle. Set a floor price for each product and respect it - let the market come to you.

d. If you build rigs, you can haul everything you need in a T1 exploration frigate. These are reasonably fast and agile. I do most of my hauling in both highsec and nullsec in a Blockade Runner. For large loads in highsec I contract Red Frog. In null I contract an alliance Jump Freighter.

e. I've had good luck making T2 ammo. Heavy Fury missiles are in a good place right now and I harvest all the rocket fuel I need ...

f. Definitely PI, prices have practically doubled since Citadels and will probably keep going up with industrial arrays arriving in the fall.

g. I sell capital component BPC's on contract and they sell as fast as I can make them. That said, the BPO's cost roughly 1.5 billion each and took over 6 months to research.

There are lots of ways to enjoy yourself and make some ISK doing industry in Eve.

I use IPH in conjunction with my own spreadsheets. Fuzzworks and IPH have been the two tools I use regularly.

I find IPH to be very helpful for T2 production.

My history has been to start off doing a bit of everything, then mining, hauling, and all the while T1 manufacturing. T1 is very tough to find good items to make on a consistent basis. T2 however, has been very good. This does require more skills but I have found it to be very profitable and have found a good niche for my production.

Of course experimenting with the various options in Eve is part of the fun.

Thanks for all the replies. Now i see that the industrialist path in eve looks like RL, "money makes money".

Good advice.I'm a new player to EvE, and it's been tempting to blindly rush into this or that without studying the market first.
I decided to use my Wreathe and find a small trade route, while I build some cash in the wallet first. It might be small, but It will grow :)

You may not like updating the orders for trading, but as an industrialist you need to follow the market and know what's happening as much as full time traders. I started off as the usual HS mission runner/miner, then started selling stuff I looted, got into trading initially to sell my loot via sell orders but later caught on the whole buy low/sell high stuff, to let ISK make more ISK. Then I got skills for production stuff, and produced all sorts of things from T1 ammo/drones to capitals. There will be times when it's better to buy some stuff off market than build yourself, and there will be time when it's better to keep stock than list on market,etc, etc.

You can choose to focus on one aspect of the game if that's your thing, but knowing the whole process and the chain of how things are harvested and how they end up in production and enter the market and get bought by end users (or other traders) - all this helps. Even if you never engage in PvP, it's good to know what the PvPers need/use/etc. Even if you live in high sec and don't join any alliances, it's good to know what's going on in null landscape. Even if you never do market manipulation yourself or don't have enough ISK for such things, it's good to spot someone doing something and get a free ride on it as a small fish. You can do lots of things solo and in a small corp, let the big boys do their thing, spot what's happening and profit from them.

That is the beauty of eve. Everything is somewhat connected to each other, and it is the knowledge of how things are related and what's happening in the universe that helps you make ISK. It is true that money breeds money, but only if you put that money into right things at the right times. You can play solo, but not in isolation from the universe.