EVE General Discussion

Is it worth doing level 4s anymore to try to pay for PLEXs, with incursions out. I know very little about incursions, as I had taken quite a long break from the game and haven't messed with the new mechanic yet. Basically, I've been hearing that PLEX prices are shooting up due to incursions flooding the market with isk.

A) Is this true?
B) If A is true, then where does that leave level 4 mission runners when making money to purchase a PLEX? If you bring in an average 15-20 mil an hour or so, is that still competitive enough with incursions to make it worthwhile to continue doing?

To me, incursions would be no more or less fun, I believe, than level 4s. So I'm not looking for "Do whatever you want", but more for a financial competitiveness opinion between the two. Would the amount I bring in with incursions be so much greater that level 4s, which I only do for the money... not because I particularly enjoy them, would be a waste of time?

Less time I spend PvEing, the more time I can spend getting back out there and trying to get back into PvP. So any help would be great!

A) If you have no preference either way and don't mind working in a fleet with others incursions seem the way to go so far as isk/hour goes. Especially at 15-20m/hour. Individual vanguard sites, the most popular ones run, are 10.5m each in highsec and are done in less than 10min by any competent fleet.
B) Can't answer this. Despite the fact that I still mission I don't plex so can't answer.

There is no evidence that incursions are significantly driving up PLEX prices. Also the numbers show that loot drops were worth far more more than incursions. Add to that that Incursion runners are/were mission runners as well.

For a single account incursions in a decent ship are slightly better isk/hr than missions wildly depending on many variables. The advantage here is group play which is very good in an MMO.

For a player with one or more viable alts mission running is better. This is due to FCs usually discouraging/banning use of alts in fleets. They want you focused on a single client. Also mission running is nearly constant with little downtime due to 2x bad missions in a row (4x with 2 accounts) And that is easily mitigated by having standings with multiple LVL4 agents or corps.


As you can see the current system is pretty good for PVE content in hisec. There are advantages and disadvantages.

280M an hour? In what EVE are you talking about?

#1 90M an hour assumes close to perfect conditions. There are many times that does not happen.

#2 FCs don't want you to use alts and there are a few that I know of that will find out if you are using an alt. They have lost too many ships and too many contests to those distracted trying to manage two clients.

Free isk? Wrong. big group risk good reward.

The isk is absurd? The numbers themselves show that bounties are pouring MUCH MUCH more isk into the economy than incursions. They are fine.

280 mill an hr doing incursions?

What a bunch of BS. Also if you're gonna try to rag on Incursions, then post with your main character.

Pre incursions a plex was around 350 to 380 mill or so and doing missions would make you up to around 40 mill an hour reasonably. After incursions, 100 mill an hour is easy, the game is flooded with alot of isk and plex are around 500 mill or so.

So basically no, Incursions have made plex more expensive, so doing incursions is the way to go. This in turn will flood Eve with even more isk, probably making plex more expensive.. Ad infinitum.

What numbers?
Funnily enough, haven and sanctum farming has not increased the amount of ISK coming into the game. In fact, the rewards for those kinds of activities lag behind the rest of the economy by ~25%.

As for missions vs. incursions, the average incursion-runner makes some 30× more raw ISK than the average mission-runner (but that's for all missions, not just L4s).

Pre-Incursions I would not have though of you to be a complete moron. Now, one year after incursion release I am convinced otherwise. Help! Incursions made you an idiot!

Your logic is very badly flawed. And if you are doing 40 million isk per hour while doing missions, you are not easily making 100 million isk an hour in incursions, because in this case either you constantly wasting your time when doing missions instead of actually doing missions or you are still in a t1 ship or without t2 guns.
Both flaws will significantly reduce your incursion income. T1 ships, even faction ships without t2 guns will not get fast into good fleets. And if you are a slacker, not only you will hurt your own income, you will waste the time of your whole fleet. Legendary are those, whose whiny voices raises after the second site and telling the commander that they need to pee. ;-)

And btw, 380 mil was a price you could buy plex in incarna as well, plex prices raised after crucible was announced and exploded with the power of 2 offer last year.



I actually never understood this. The biggest isk lose you can have while blitzing l4s is not to shoot for 90 seconds. How do you manage to pick and chose only the good missions from multiple level 4 agents and not waste time on this? The only way this is gonna work I can imagine is when agents are on the same station AND their corps actually offer a decent LP conversion rate. Is this actually worth some research, did I miss some interesting honeypot mission hub? I currently can make 60 million isk / hour with missions, and I do not need to pick for this only the good missions, I just have to decline about once per hour on average a bad one, which keeps my standing way above 5.0 and does not kill my empire standing.

If there is a mission hub which gives me the option to only do the good ones, I could double my income easily...

Interestingly, pcu numbers are below last years all time high so maybe not unless we have had a huge inflation (CSM minutes said no, stable at about 1%/month) or a dramatic general increase in wealth (not likely).

My bet is this is a selective economic growth isolated to the incursion farming gold diggers of EvE.

wait incursions have loot?