I’m still fairly new to the game and recently saw the Noctis and read up on various things about salvaging and that it is apparently high in demand.
Is it possible and would it be sustainable if I trained my skills to offer out services to follow behind and do the tedious salvaging for people as a merc?
um, not really. Newbros can make decent money salvaging, but it just doesn’t have the same potential for growth that other careers have. I would recommend sticking with a salvaging destroyer, and spend your time training up another career.
Also, someone has started/restarted a salvaging service. You might want to check them out. However, you’ll probably be better off just asking around if you can salvage people’s sites (especially if you are in a player corp). A lot of people don’t bother with salvage (and generic mission loot), and will happily let you keep all of it.
Lol if you buy the no it’s you’ve just wasted 100 million use a catalyst
Thanks for the info! I’ll have a look into it.
Is there a resource available that helps me figure out where to find areas where missions might be commonly run so that I can ask around about the salvage? Or is there another way you’d recommend?
Besides its hefty investment, is there any reason you wouldn’t recommend upgrading into the Noctis? (I currently have a catalyst with its high slots filled with salvagers)
Is there a reason why the noctis would be just a money sink?
Does the increase to salvage speed and chance not help out with ‘higher ranked’ salvage from stronger enemies? or is it not enough for the investment you put into it? (And potential loss if someone ganks you)
The noctis is the best salvaging ship, but I question whether the return on investment is worth it.
Look for level 4 combat agents under missions in the agency. Sisters of Eve Agents (such as in Apanake) are popular because of their LP store items. Corps that own major trade hubs (such as Caldari Navy for Jita) are also popular. So, try to look for good candidate systems, and check them out. Less than 10 people in local = bad. More than 20 = good.
You can also follow the incursion community around. No generic loot, but they never salvage wrecks, and leave plenty of drones behind. A flight of faction drones can be a good find for new players. You’ll need d-scan and/or combat scanning skills to help you find wrecks and drones, but that will also help you to develop those abilities. You can also try stealing loot from their losses (which can be a humongous payday for a newbro). Just don’t do that if you ever want to fly incursions with them, as they will blacklist you.
Maybe I’ll see if any incursion fleets will allow me to take the salvage or do it and give them a percentage of the isk. Is there any channels you’d recommend for incursions that I might be able to try contact them?
Salvage is worth like 2-3 mil per site, and then they’d have to split that 40 ways. It’s really not worth their time to mess with it at all. However, you can try asking around to see if anyone is willing to create and share site bookmarks with you. Who knows, someone might be feeling charitable.
But, the good news is that you don’t need anyone’s permission. And do note that you will not get a suspect flag for salvaging other people’s wrecks or scooping their drones. You can only get a suspect flag if you try to loot their wrecks (whether it be ships they lost, or rats they killed).
Anyway, you can join the WTM discord here. Once in, look for the “incursion-status” sub channel. A bot will tell you when and where the highsec incursion spawns, and even give an estimated despawn date.
Also, I recommend incursions as a career. WTM is a newbro friendly community, they allow alphas (as long as you can fly an accepted fit), it’s a social activity, and you can make 125mil an hour. Now, it will require about 2-4 months of dedicated skill training (depending on omega status) just to get into an accepted fit, but the required skills are very useful to have (i.e. shield tanking skills, Weapon Upgrades IV, etcetera). T1 ship prices have also gone up a lot recently, which means that you’ll need about 375 mil to put together a starter battleship. It can be a big mountain for a newbro to climb. But you’ll make that back in about 3 hours of flying.
Yeah, incursions is something I want to get into, but I’m a little hesitant to join a corp yet. It would be cool if I could try it out with some people without needing to be apart of the corp itself.
Saw that scouting might be a good way to try it out without a hefty investment. I already got an astero too, but I can also just use a probe or something?
WTM is an open community. You can come and go as you please. No applications, no activity requirements, or anything of the sort. Just x up on the wait list with an accepted fit.
Eve University is the only group (they are a corp and not a community) that I know of that will tip hackers/scouts/pickets - which they mostly do as charity in order to help newbros afford their first incursion ships. Other groups, such as WTM, just use dual boxed alts (and the alt doesn’t get paid).
I highly recommend joining a corp. If you don’t like it, you can leave. Many corps have various benefits (i.e. free skillbooks and ships, SRP, PvE and PvP fleets), and you gain access to their community knowledge. You can learn a lot just by playing with and talking to older players. And if you’re an introvert, you can easily get lost in the crowds of the bigger corps. I feel confident recommending Eve University, Pandemic Horde, and Brave Newbies. There are, of course, a ton of great newbro friendly corps out there, but I don’t know a lot about them.
The noctis is not the best salvage ship for its price and it’s shops ass align time might as well use a 5 mil catalyst