Help to pick an agent faction to do missions

Getsu_Rin · January 23, 2018, 10:19am

Hello there. I was thinking in trying to run some missions never did it before not counting the stage when i was starting the game and did simple career missions, I am planing to go all the way to level 5 missions and thinking of getting myself a kronos for level 5s when i get there. so the question i have is what faction is the best to be level up to high end level missions. Another question is, can i run level 4-5 missions in highsec? or do i need to go to low sec for high level missions, anyway any tips are appreciated. thnx

Chocolate_Pickle · January 23, 2018, 10:30am

You look Gallente, so I’d say do missions for the Federal Intelligence Office. You should have good enough standings by virtue of your starter-corp.

You’ll be shooting a lot of Serpentis, and a lot of Caldari. Having a good Kinetic+Thermal tank is a must for those missions. Swarp your resistances around when dealing with other rats in missions. You’ll find agents everywhere, but levels are a bit spread about. You’ll eventually need to travel for better missions.

Getsu_Rin · January 23, 2018, 10:51am

yeah found some answers after cheking the agency window lol. thnx

Chan_aar · January 23, 2018, 11:07am

Don’t use The Agency to try and find agents, it is just terrible.

Use this http://ea.omg-cdn.net/

ExcalibursTemplar · January 23, 2018, 11:16am

L5 missions are lowsec only and the fed intel office agent is controlled by shadow cartel in Aeschee which is their home system. If you’re not a member they will hunt you down and kill you. Especially if you fly a shiny fit Kronos which is what your going to need to tank the none carrier missions. As there’s a crap tonne of neuting towers and anything from 2/3k incoming dps

P.s. The Fed intel office LP store is one of the worst Gallante LP stores.

LP Store - Return on ISK Have a look at that it’s reasonably accurate.

The_Larold · January 23, 2018, 11:23am

So, a few thoughts from someone who has spent practically their whole Eve career running missions.

Level 5 missions are a whole different beast, and I have heard that you are a gank target when running them. Yes, they are only in low-sec (and null?).

Level 4 missions should be your objective for now - once you are more experienced then you can read up on what’s out there and decide if Level 5’s are for you.

If you are willing to invest the time, I can’t stress how useful it can be to run all of the missions for all career agents. Each of the 4 empire factions has three systems (total of 12 stations) where there will be five career agents. Running these (easy) missions is a fantastic way to rack up some standing with all of the empire factions.

I highly recommend running missions for the Sisters of Eve. Based on their standings with the 4 empire factions, it’s the best balance in my opinion. (Positive toward Gallente and Minmatar, and only slightly negative toward Amarr and Caldari.)

No matter what faction you run for, pay careful attention to the faction you will be battling against. (Observe the icon while reading the mission details.) Unless you eventually don’t mind being attacked on-site by NPC navy ships when entering a given faction’s high-sec space, I would advise declining all missions that have you attacking an empire faction’s ships. (Caldari agents will regularly give you missions going after Gallente; I would turn these down.) That’s another nice thing about Sisters of Eve - for the most part, they send you against only Pirate factions. (Occasionally you’ll get the Amarr missions; easy to turn these down.)

Expect a bit of grinind, especially if you choose not to visit all of the career agent systems.

If you’re low on cash, salvaging the missions you run can be an excellent income booster to help you afford more powerful ships as you work your way up through level 2, level 3, and level 4 missions. A catalyst makes an excellent, low-cost starter salvaging ship. Or any nimble, cheap ship with tons of high slots. Don’t invest in a Noctis; instead use your cash to buy a ship capable of handling the next level of mission. (2 -> 3 -> 4).

If your primary motivation is income, I believe you will want to stop at L4 missions and then instead of trying L5’s, look into other profitable PvE activity that rakes in more than L5’s with much less risk.

Just some thoughts - they aren’t right or wrong.

Do_Little · January 23, 2018, 11:46am

Arguably the best choice for missions in highsec is the Sisters of Eve. Their LP store has blueprints for their faction ships (Astero, Stratios and Nestor), Virtue implants and the Sisters probe launchers - all high value items.

You can earn enough standing to run Level 2 missions by completing the SOE Epic Arc, which begins in Arnon, (Essence). Level 1, 2 and 3 security agents are located in Simela (Genesis), Level 4 agents can be found in Apanake (Genesis), Lanngasi (Metropolis) or Osmon (Forge).

Another pirate faction with highsec agents is Thukker with 2 Level 4 security agents in Metropolis -Freatlidur and Altrinur. Their LP store offers Nomad implants and a selection of faction modules.

Getsu_Rin · January 23, 2018, 12:13pm

nice thnx for replys were very helpfull, i guess ill be trying out lvl 4 missions and see how it goes. got good standing with soe and gallente so i guess ill go try soe missions.

Sebs_Pride · January 23, 2018, 2:04pm

Is amnatar and khad, just a strict lp value loss?
They have the same stuff as empire lp, for the same cost but people dont really search those names and it less variety.

Muffinmixer · January 23, 2018, 6:07pm

Get into Sisters of Eve. A good way to do this is to run their Epic Arc, it is easy to do and gives a lot of goodies and standings.

Their missions are the same difficulty as everyone else but their LP store is much more valuable. So you’ll do the same work and get more money out of it with SoE.

Alternatively, Thukker’s Tribe has a few agents in high-sec and their LP store is also very good. You can grind standings with them directly or just run missions/FW for the Minmattar to grind their standings concomitantly (become friends with Minmattar and the Thukker will be your friend too).

Don’t bother with low-sec L5s or null-sec L4s. Those are free PvP environments so you’ll be dealing with both missions and hostile players trying to kill you constantly. It is possible to make a living off of those but you need to just know what you’re doing.

Chainsaw_Plankton · January 23, 2018, 9:10pm

looking at the lp store I’d say no: LP Store - Return on ISK - Federal Intelligence Office - The Forge Sell

Something like Aliastra has much higher isk/lp ratios and has good volume. LP Store - Return on ISK - Aliastra - The Forge Sell

SoE is another great option, slightly lower isk/lp values but long term stability and the best agent in highsec.

Chocolate_Pickle · January 23, 2018, 10:31pm

FIO has Level 5 agents, which is OP’s end goal.

Otherwise, you’re absolutely right.

Chainsaw_Plankton · January 24, 2018, 1:36am

indeed! I’d recommend grinding faction standings using those to access lv5s. Running standard lv4s and doing the storylines should hopefully get you to 7+ faction by the time you are ready for lv5s.

Chocolate_Pickle · January 24, 2018, 4:49am

Don’t listen to this guy!

Doing missions in Aeschee is fiiiine. I’m in there all the time. I can even dock in their Keepstar. They never shoot me.

*cough* Don’t look at my corp history. *cough*

Muffinmixer · January 24, 2018, 1:39pm

If you’re solo and want to go for something a little more dangerous, there’s plenty of quiet L4 hubs in NPC null. Syndicate is probably the most quiet Null-sec place for “Syndicate” and “Thukker Tribe” L4 farming.

And unlike L5s, people won’t even try to probe you if you’re running Burners in null.

Eternal_Montage · January 24, 2018, 5:54pm

Today is your lucky day, listen up. There’s some good and bad advice in here. The factions recommended are good but the way of getting standing is bad. First of all, if you grind level 2s and 3s to get corporate standing it’s going to take a long time and you end up with standing with just that one corp.

What you want to do is get your faction standing up. Do the Gallente/Minmatar data centers and this will get you over 5.0 in both factions and SOE. Then if you want to go for 7.0 (for level 5s) do the Gallente level 2 cosmos, level 3 cosmos and the Minmatar level 2 cosmos and this will put you over 7.0 in Gallente and Minmatar. Getting standing in Minmatar will give you half that standing added to Gallente, so it’s important that you do the Minmatar data centers and cosmos missions. If you’re too poor to buy your standing from a data center, you might be able to get to 5.0 by JUST doing the cosmos missions but I’m not sure. Lastly, you also have the option of doing faction warfare missions but I don’t find this to be necessary. Check here for more information.

It took me 4 days to get 7.09 standing on four characters. If I was grinding for a corp that would have taken weeks. I had some time off and It was still a colossal grind but it was worth it and I’ll explain why.

Having faction standing allows you to mission for any corp in that faction and you can also decline more often. Declining gives a .001 hit to faction and something closer to -.5 to -.6 hit to corporation and agent. You can accept missions from an agent as long as your faction standing is high enough and your corp/agent standings don’t drop below -2. If you have connections and diplomacy you can decline several missions for each mission you complete. Combine this with a multi-agent hub, or even multiple mission pullers, you will end up only doing the best missions, say goodbye to trash drone missions.

Level 5 missions are all given by corporations with very poor isk/LP conversion, so if you’re doing level 4 missions to get standing for a corp that has level 5s so you can later do said level 5s, you’re wasting your time. You could be making 3-4x as much doing missions for a good corporation like SOE as some have mentioned. SOE and other high isk/lp corps can pay 2-4k isk/LP! This is yet another reason why you want faction standing if you plan to do level 5s down the road.

Level 5s have poor isk/lp value but the missions give 60-110k LP per mission, so the LP is valuable in bulk. FIO is NOT the only level 5 agent corporation in gallente. There’s also Fed Navy and Fed Customs, all three have the exact same LP store as far as I know. Also I wanted to mention, doing level 5s in a marauder is not recommended, most can be done in a carrier more quickly and with less fitting cost. I strongly recommend waiting to do level 5s. Wait until you have the skills for a carrier and enough isk to buy a carrier for each mission system your chosen hub sends you to.

Lastly, here are the cosmos agents you will want to work for. BE WARNED: IF YOU TALK TO A COSMOS AGENT YOU ONLY HAVE ONE SHOT TO COMPLETE THE MISSION. FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION:

Gallente:

Mattheu Rochet lvl2, required standing 2.0 | Inder,
Preaux Gallot lvl2, required standing 2.0 | Audaerne
Ystvia Lamuette lvl2, required standing 2.0 | Barmaille
Pandon Ardillan lvl2, required standing 2.0 | Barmaille
Ardoen Dasaner lvl2, required standing 2.0 | Jolia

Astroo Openau lvl3‚ required standing 4.0 | Alsottobier
Onruen Coen lvl3, required standing 4.0 |Fluekele
Nilla Elermare lvl3, required standing 4.0 |Fluekele
Aminn Flosin lvl3, required standing 4.0 |Fluekele
Ѕchabs Xalоt lvl3, requіrеd standing 4.0 |Cоleile

Minny:

Edit: I almost forgot. Before you do the data centers, make sure you have connections to V. You can only do them once so you’re going to want to get the most standing possible for your isk.

DeMichael_Crimson · January 25, 2018, 7:15am

Lot’s of good advice here in this thread.

If you’re going to boost Faction Standings then you should do it equally with the 4 main Empire Factions. For more info about that check out ‘The Plan’.

Eternal_Montage · January 25, 2018, 6:22pm

Solid link, but why would it be necessary to grind standing for all four factions? Seems kind of, well, unnecessary.

The_Larold · January 25, 2018, 11:59pm

One reason I can think off-hand is that, for the most part, when you run L4 missions for any faction, there are at least one or two empire factions that will be lowering their standings to you. You want to keep those boosted up, even if they are not super-high. One of the best ways to do that is to keep them at 5 or higher, so that as the standings start to dip while you run missions for your chosen faction, you can easily hop over and do a few LVL 4’s. Might be more clear with an example:

I don’t run missions for Amarr. I run missions for SoE. But the problem is, as I do faction missions for SoE, my Amarr standings start to drop. Now, if I let that continue indefinitely, eventually I get attacked on-sight when entering Amarr space. So what I’ll do is, every three months, run the Sisters of Eve Epic Arc (level 1 difficulty), and at the end, I get a big standings boost with one empire faction of my choice; so I choose Amarr. I could also, if I wanted, blitz a bunch of L4’s with Amarr until I get storylines, and complete those for faction standing increases with Amarr. But, if my standing isn’t at least 5, then I’m not going to be able to speak to arbitrary LVL4 Amarr agents.

DMC’s ‘The Plan’ is outstanding. I can’t remember if he has a section on the various benefits you get at specific levels of empire faction standing, but if it’s not in there, it would be a great addition.

For me, 5 is the magic number. I try to keep all factions above that, so that, well, I can keep standing above that.

Mo_Skor · January 26, 2018, 2:12pm

Is there a way to find Data Centers with The Agency? Or just using uniwiki? Same with Cosmos missions, can they be found in-game? Are all the tags for Data Centers found while doing the mission? Because I don’t see the tags generally available in contracts.

The Larold says “Observe the icon while reading the mission details.” What icon?