Hi!
Ive been getting into explo more the last few days, and its been great! Ive gotten to know the neighbouring constellations and how they connect, where the “crossroad” systems are, how WH space works/doesnt work and what 40M for 5mins work feels like.
Although:
Its been very hit and miss. After a few hours exploring (including wormholes) this morning, I totalled about 5m. When I came back this afternoon, 1st system, 1st wormhole I made 70m in about 1-2 hours. Nothing since! Its like fishing new places.
Im thinking next time Im in a WH and I scan down a gas site, its time to go straight to another WH. From what Ive seen today, WH will be either gas-orientated or everything else orientated. I dont know, still learning.
Id be interested to know what others/experienced site-searchers think.
Edit: Comparing the astero to my probe… as an alpha would there be any reason to get one besides knowing I have one?
The trick to doing well with exploration is to not “toy around” and waste time on things that don’t help you get the good loot, meaning you need to learn to optimise all aspects of it.
Scanning where you speed up that process and start to recognise good or bad sigs based on the size of the initial sphere.
Bringing a cargo scanner so you can identify the good and bad cans (this also increases your safety as you’re most vulnerable when doing the hacking, so the less time you spend on crap cans the safer it is).
Hacking itself which is not just a case of skill, but also experience and knowledge as there are quite a few tricks that help (learn abouth the rule of 6 and the rule of 8).
Navigation as in identifying WH’s that are worth your time or not (or actually going into null sec because there you tend to get less gas sites and thus a higher chance of sigs being hacking ones).
It’s the same with combat exploration in high sec (which has income on par with day tripping hacking in WH/null btw), where people waste time on looting and even salvaging the normal npc and then spending so much time someone else (like me) can enter the site, pass them and kill the actual target and loot it. Lots of people are toying about and you can improve things in many ways.
It’ll still be RNG of course but if you can increase your number RNG rolls by speeding up all aspects of the process and then also speeding up the hacking itself that’ll massively increase your average income.
The Astero’s value comes from the fact that it can use a covert cloak (not available to alphas), being very agile so it can be made to align in less than 2 seconds and scaring away other explorers or actually killing them and taking their loot. For actual hacking itself it’s most certainly not worth the cost and most of the other boons aren’t really that important to someone purely going for profit.
Doing Exploration is like going to a gambling casino, you pay your money and take your chance.
Basically the average rewards on most days will keep you in the game. Course some days it won’t and if it seems like you’re stuck in a rut with no sites available where you’re at, then switch things up and go travel to a new area or look during a different time zone, etc.
However it only takes one day to hit the jackpot motherload… That will more than cover for all the lousy poor no reward days you did in the past.
All you need to do is keep the faith, fly smart and stay safe…
In addition to @Aisha_Katalen 's excellent post, check your ship build as well as your skills and process. Get some good modules to boost your scanning and hacking efficiency.
Good but cheap, that is. Unless you’re Omega, the Astero is too expensive given that you can’t use it’s cloak. Same for modules (and possibly skill implants), get useful boosts for cheap, but expect to see them blow up occasionally. You might also consider skilling into a Caldari Heron as a cheap explo ship.
If you’re Omega, you can plan to upgrade to Astero and better gear at some point (Sisters probes etc.), but I’d recommend waiting until you’ve had at least a few cheap ships blow up under you to learn some of the various things to be cautious of.
Lower security space and higher rank WHs increase your payout. Other than that, yes it’s hit and miss. The few high payouts and the many low ones average out to your standard income.
You guys rock! Im inspired, and Im really enjoying this. Im going to keep working on time management and learning to better recognise a good target to explore.
Just knowing I can make descent isk in a few choice jumps has taken any “need to grind missions” or “need to move everything again” out, so all the activities Im doing in eve are more just for fun.
Thank you all for your insights
@Intin_RainForest I don’t know if you have tried it yet, I lived inside a wormhole for several months. The way to do this is using the Discord group for Wormlife. You can find the link in their corp in the game. You don’t need to join Wormlife, just ask for an opening to one of the many wormholes they have built stations inside. Their freeports make an excellent base of operations to deploy your exploration scouts from. I grew a bit tired of not seeing other players so I moved out.
TIP: Park your Heron ( or other scanner boat ) tethered to the station while you scan down all the cosmics 100% safe and protected by the station. I would then proceed to explore other WHs from there. Keep an alt character in the base with you, so you will always have a way back home.
that’s just how it works, you just need better ships and skills to keep the isk coming, it’s all about location, luck, and resources that determines tyhe isk you make
Its been great so far Found a freeport like @John_Rochard suggested and started keeping a diary on sites, wormholes, players etc.
Ive learned a fair bit about how systems and site spawns work, and looking into expanding my op to include gas mining, and probably upgrading to a sunesis.
Found a freeport like