EVE New Citizens Q&A

I wouldnt recommend running lowsec sites in a non covert ship( one that cannot use a covert cloak. While you maybe able to hide stationary the mostly likely place you will get caught is at gates or actually in the site, making a non covert cloak of very limited use. Also one warp core stab is nearly useless. Pvpers often run at least 2 points and many times 3 points of warp scram. So one stab will not save you most of the time.


I would stick to high sec sites until you get better equipped and skilled. Also low sec sites will be slightly harder to scan down than high sec sites( they have a bit weaker signal strength). This is what my newbie uses:

[Astero, New Setup 1]
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste
IFFA Compact Damage Control
Inertial Stabilizers II
Inertial Stabilizers II

Data Analyzer I
Relic Analyzer I
5MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Small Cap Battery II

Sisters Core Probe Launcher, Core Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Small Polycarbon Engine Housing II
Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints II
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I

Its about a 100 mil isk setup, he has 1.5 mil Skill points. It has a 3 second warp and can warp cloaked. The sisters probe launcher and probes are better than the normal ones( though it will set you back about 35-40 mil alone with 16 probes)

Scan wise, its important you get the box centered on the dot ( or X) before each scan. Also train your various scanning skills will help.

Combat sites can pay very well. But they are also hit or miss. Ive made up to 250 million off a single high sec combat site. But most of the time they pay between 3-10 million, maybe a little more if you loot/salvage everything. When running combat sites its important to google them before entering them. and get information on them Eve university usually has good info on sites. You can do some combat sites in a frigate or destroyer that is speed tanked but most you will need a cruiser( and even then it can be struggle. I use a gila( pirate faction cruiser) on my newbie but that probably out of your budget at 500 million isk. A vexor is a decent cruiser( gallante drone boat) but you have to baby sit your drones to make sure the rats dont pop them. I like the gila because my drones have ridiculous HP ( it gets a bonus to drone HP) and can tank sites for me.


As for selling loot if there is no buy orders for the station you are trying to sell it in you will have that problem. I sell everything in jita, you can sell pretty much everything there and because of competition the prices are usually half decent. You can also put things on the market for how much you want to sell them for and wait and see if someone buys them for your price( you already have experience with this as the buyer such as for your ship and modules, you would then become the seller instead of the buyer.)

High sec exploration sites usually pay around 100k-1 mil per site averaging around 500k. Data pays slightly better in high sec than relic, though in low i think relic pays better and in null relic almost always pays better.

You are hust suffering the woes of being new to (and thus being bad at) an overstaffed profession
No offence ment, we all suck at eve , just some of us less so with time and experiance.

With training and a little practice scanning will become trivial for you, i have no doubt you will catch the beats of it.
Learning where the good sigs are though will come with time, there are a lot of other explorers out there you are in direct competition with, figuring out where tjey dont go or when they operate should enable you to compete.

Also , combat sites can drop damn good loot if you can run them.
The con to this is anything capable of running them is also worth hunting so expect the locals to take intrest in you if you do start running them, cloaky ship would be mandatory here.

It should not be that difficult to scan. Where are your skills at?

Early on the pinpointing skill helped reduce the frustration level for me since I would often go down a level in scan range on the probes and loose the signal and have to go back up and start over. The pinpointing skill not only helped stop that but got me to the point where I can often drop multiple levels down in scan range so things go faster by skipping steps. You will need to train Astrometrics to 4 just to train pinpointing.

Rangefinding is also helpful I'd say you want that to level 3 for now.

Your racial frigate skill can be useful for a lot of stuff so you don't want to ignore that but in this case the 7.5% boost to scan strength is very helpful.

Mostly you just need practice and to watch a few videos and maybe do some reading.

As far as having a cloak:

Cloaks can be very handy for exploration however they are in no way mandatory. They do make exploration much simpler and as a newbro that can be helpful however the stuff you need to learn to explore without one are things that you need to learn anyway.

You will need to learn how to make good safe spots and how to use D scan well. Also you can make a few safe spots with long warps and warp around and use your in-warp time to do your scanning. It is very difficult to the point of being near impossible to combat scan down someone that is warping from safe spot to safe spot.

In the end while hacking you are exposed so the cloak does not help much there. Your best defense while hacking is speed. Get in and out fast to reduce exposure time.

Low sec is dangerous to move around but intel is your best friend. Get to know an area in low sec in rookie ships. Fly around and find yourself a chain of systems that are deeper into low sec and not very busy. Then get your scan ship into there and move around staying clear of busy boarder systems and FW systems.

Null sec can be very safe if you are deep in blue territory. To operate safely in null sec requires making friends. You'll have to join a corp that grants you access to blue null sec with good intel channels. Or find a wormhole that leads deep into null sec and go there during a slow time for the owners. You can find null sec systems that are completely empty.

IMHO the only thing worth scanning for in high sec is wormholes to get you out of high sec. Wormholes to unknown space with high sec exits will tend to be busier. Going deeper into UK space can be helpful. Keep in mind that there are players that will sit cloaked on wormholes and let you come in and hack but wait until you are leaving to blow you up and take your loot.

The main thing is to fly cheap and shrug off the losses. You will learn from every encounter so when you do loose ships don't focus so much on the loss as the lessons learned. As you newbro you have a lot to learn and the lessons will be far more valuable than the loot.

Sounds like you just had bad luck, it doesnt usually take that long to find a good signature, as far as taking 10 scans to get it, RL skills and SP will help cut that time down. As far as frigs vs covops, you can do either, for a time I couldnt afford to lose covops, so i just used frigs in lowsec.

Mind you, cloaks are just a last moment defense, not a required module.

Thank you so much for all the replies. I'm going to grit my teeth and stick to Exploration. Replacing my Imicus would cost just under a million including the fittings. My Algos much more and I only have 8 mil to my name atm. Today I explored every system between Dodixie and the Caldari borderlands with no luck. I'll pick another random direction tonight.

@ergherhdfgh After reading your post I discovered I didn't even have the skill Astrometic Pinpointing so I bought the skill book but have to wait for Astrometric lV (2day6hrs), which I will start after I finish with Astrometric Aquisition lll (9hrs 45min to go).

@Ralph King-Griffin , agreed bro. I do find the label Newbro quite expansive though. Some of you calling yourselves Newbies are light years ahead of someone with a few days. I guess a good signature for the forums would be "May you suck less tomorrow than you do today".

@Roenok Baalnorn Thanks for the pointers bro.

@McFly @MalDoran Thanks for the encouragment.

@Solai Interesting career path, never heard of that. Thanks for the suggestions.

DAMMIT! Never noticed before. Gonna go hack some cans now.

put it this way,
you only have to suck less than the other guy (particularly if hes trying to kill you)

Nope, you can't inject the cloaking skill as a trial user.

Meh, I fly around null sec sans cloak and I do just fine. 1 good site will pay for my cheap T1 frigate and all the fittings.

I ran into the same problem when I first started exploration: step 1 is to get the scanning down with the probes efficiently. I stick to data and relics so the moment I see combat or gas pop up, I ignore the result and move on. Then when hacking there's not much more I can add that hasn't been said already; follow the numbers and you don't have to clear all defenses, just enough to get to the core.

And get out of high sec. The competition for those sites is high. I started hitting paydirt once I got into low and null sec.