L4 Missions: 100m+ ISK/hour Solo

Having gotten back again into EVE after a period of inactivity, I’ve once again started grinding through missions in-between events while catching up on Forums and Netflix.

I was curious as to what (if anything) may have changed with respect to earning potential in high-sec, so I thought I’d set out a goal for myself for the next month and see how realistic and achievable it was.

In short, I wanted to accumulate 12-billion ISK in 30 days time with a maximum commitment of 4 hours/day (or roughly 400m ISK net).

What I’ve found is that going solo (no alts, mission pullers, etc.) and running standard L4s (Storylines but no Burners) for Empire factions (not SoE) I was able to easily pull in 100m ISK/hour between mission rewards, loot, salvage and LP conversion. More than a few times I was able to average around 125m ISK/hour (today I managed to hit 165m ISK/hour).

This included all mission transit and salvage times, including those to redeem LP and transport all loots and redeemed item to market for sale. For expediency I sold primarily to buy orders (except on the odd expensive implant) so I probably lost 5% on most of the bulk loot collected.

This is higher than I remember (or at least that I can recall), despite noticing that most loot tables have been severely nerfed on most missions.

I’m running a mostly T2-fit Marauder which I find is probably the best all around ship for this type of gameplay. I also use a Hecate for some of the minor missions that are worth blitzing. Beyond that, I do have mainly IV-V skills and a good implant selection (no boosters) that help things along.

Feel free to share your own solo experiences.

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That’s pretty impressive tbh, rival’s low and null sec I thought l4’s would be somewhere near 40mil/hour.

With full dedication I do believe that’s a correct assessment. Do you loot and/or salvage every mission? If not, how do you decide which ones are worth it? And what makes a Marauder more suitable in your opinion than a faction battleship?

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My recollection was around the 60m ISK/hour mark, so it kind of surprised me too.

I tried that for a few weeks and got really discouraged with the abysmal loot tables, but it did give me a good updated baseline on what was worth salvaging:

  • Damsel and Zazzmatazz: Zor gives the chance at the 70m ISK implant drop. Otherwise you can pick up another 4-6m ISK in loot from Damsel.
  • Informant and Rogue Drones: These anywhere from 1-5 of the Elite Drone AIs, so you can easily snag another 8-45m ISK.
  • Beserk: You can’t blitz this one anymore, but as you have a lot of battleships to grind through I usually run a MTU in the background and pickup 4-8m in loot.
  • Enemies series: This one has gone up quite a bit (maybe due to Caldari FW?) and now pulls in about 250-260m ISK in loot and tags.

My feeling with Marauders is “less tank more gank”, because you can run a minimal 2-3 slot tank for the vast majority of missions. That and you can get away with almost entirely T2 fits. Marauders also get range and tracking bonuses (in addition to Bastion), so it effectively turns your short-range weapons into long-range ones.

As an example, my Kronos hits out to 75km with blasters and Null, dealing in excess of 1200 DPS (though mind you, I’m probably seeing 800-1000 DPS for a lot of it). I actually removed my MJD after figuring out how to fine-tune my configuration to maximize it for L4 missioning.

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Maybe if you are alpha and running for a corp with bad lp

The nice thing about running outside of SoE Lp is that you can usually (aka not navy corps) get higher isk/LP conversions. And there are a bunch of decent constellations for standard missions, but these are often connected to enough other constellations that they don’t work well for burners. There’s some really nice BPCs for faction damage mods, points/scrams, EANMs, prop mods, and a few other things.

Fed navy web is like 2-4k isk/lp right now depending on buy or sell orders. and there are more things in the 2-5k range. Siyi is a 0.5 with an Allistra agent and max 2 jumps in constellation.

When given a blitzable mission did you take the blitz or stick around for a full clear, looks like you blitzed a few missions with the hecate, but what about something like pirate invasion? And does that include faction kill missions?

Probably a combination. I blitz Recon and Cargo with the Hecate because I find the sensor damps and loot in Cargo to be too much of a hassle to deal with.

I blitz Pirate and Scarlet because I’m running kinetic/thermal damage which doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to either. The bounties in both are ok, but I find I lose a lot of time to not having either EM or Explosive damage and many of the targets being at extreme range. If I wasn’t so inherently lazy I’d probably train into a Paladin for some of these but I hate switching ships…

I run all the drone missions (even the ones without the Elite Drone AIs) because kinetic damage is actually quite effective against some of the larger ones. I also run the full Assault and Guristas because the bounties are fairly decent and you can slow your pace down a bit since you simply have a lot of ships to churn through.

I do run the Enemies faction mission, but I only got one this week (today actually, which is why my ISK/hour went up this morning). I also run all the Storyline missions with my favorite being the Kernite ones, so getting a few of those every week helps as well. The combat variants are rare, but you can usually pickup 40-60m in bounties and tags.

Key has been finding an optimal fit/setup as well as a faction where I can get in excess of 1000 ISK/LP.

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pick your poison : Those are the highest LP-worth agent security L4 in HS at the moment. the two first are ~same, the last is a bit off. For information, Kiljavas(lanngisi) LP worth is 1460 for astero bpc.

Hronjedrik Algat - Agent - DOTLAN :: EveMaps : 2400
LP Store - Return on ISK - Trust Partners - The Forge Buy

Minneliot Allate - Agent - DOTLAN :: EveMaps : 2380
LP Store - Return on ISK - Supreme Court - The Forge Buy

Zeireinn Elfrekur - Agent - DOTLAN :: EveMaps : 2080
LP Store - Return on ISK - Freedom Extension - The Forge Buy

Highest until you post it somewhere then it becomes lowest xD

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highest until it changes, which it will. However you can move along to always be in the best range of isk/lp, while this is very difficult with burners (I tried and the faction standing keeps going down).

Plus when I select the offers, I take 2M LP worth and consider the price at SELL of items to buy and price at BUY of items to sell , which means you have some space.

It took me one double click and three clicks to have this list of agents, sorted by worth, from the market of Jita. Not a big deal to make three clicks every day to be sure I am in the best range.

You have to take the data on Fuzzworks with a grain of salt. Just because you see items with a high LP/ISK return doesn’t mean they actually have any potential to sell for that or in quantities enough to return ISK in a tmely manner.

Case-in-point, I found an item for my faction with a 22,000 ISK/LP return (not a typo). I managed to sell one (1) of those in a 1-week period netting myself a grand total of 7m ISK for a 375 LP investment. Meanwhile, what to do with the other several hundred million LP burning a hole in my wallet…

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That’s why you look at the buy and sell side, then check the volume.

nah, no one actually reads the forums. I’ve been posting about the fed navy webs for years and they still trade at a high isk/lp, not to mention all the other shiny items in that LP store.

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OK I think you don’t understand what I do.

I don’t consider fuzzwork for getting the best agents. There are three things I need and that are not present in fuzzwork

  • system truesec factor
  • minimum quantity of LP to use
  • price of materials in SO @Jita, price of product in BO@Jita, for considered amount of LP.

So I have my own system to generate that list of agents, then I can’t give it to you (for personal reasons) but I can link you some fuzzwork links because when you have a sotck of LP and want to use some it’s a good start.

Of course I also have the current bo/so for items, which gives me the maximum but it’s not useful.

That is reward in tags mostly, and what is the worse is these missions are destructible for standings. You can effectively remove your access to other empires space. :confounded:

See you in 30 days running it. :sunglasses:

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I’ve been running it for years. I can still move freely through most Empire space. I just have to do it quickly.

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This^

People don’t seem to realize how worth it faction-kill missions can be, and how much of a non issue the negative standing thing is when you have cloakies/fast ships.

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Even if you do nuke your standings farming tags it isn’t as much of a ball-ache to fix as people think. As you approach -10 to any particular faction the value between -10 and n gets progressively smaller (where n is your standings value). so x% hit has a smaller detrimental value than if you were, say +10.

Furthermore, the Diplomacy skill substantially mitigates your negative standing to any particular Faction. So if you have Diplomacy 5 and you were, say, -10 to a faction your effective standing would be -6. So in order to achieve a goal of being above -5 i.e. -4.99 (so you don’t get shot at in that Faction’s space), you only need to progress from -6 to -5.

This isn’t hard now that you can use level 1 agents no matter standing. Simply find a corp with two or more level 1 agents in the same station (so you can accept multiple agent missions at once without having to re-dock) and grind out a few storylines. When I last did this (for Amarr) I think it took 32 missions (so 16 re-docks to accept two missions) to boost my faction standing back to above -5; a couple of hours or so. Level 1 missions are a breeze to complete, it took a couple of hours I think in all (it was a couple of years ago so difficult to give you an exact amount). Moreover, because +10 is further away from -6 than, say 0, the real value increase per standings mission is more than you might otherwise expect.

A further way to mitigate this, should you wish to be able run L4’s & L5’s reasonably quickly again for that Faction takes some preparation. In my case, when I started the game I started running missions for Amarr/Caldari, and have several corps with both for whom I have +8 standings too, even though my Faction standing (for Amarr) is presently -5.04 (I switched to Minmatar/Gallente missions). So should I wish to run those agents again, all I need to do is boost my Faction standing from below -5 to above -2. And at that point, those agents/corps that I used to run missions for become available again. Meaning that if I then want to grind my faction standings up again for them, I just need to boost my faction standing to -2 (in say, low-sec* using disposable t1 frigs n destroyers) and then I can go use the highest level agents again to get me the rest of the way.

  • Or alternatively in high sec in a factions space I am not barred from. There are several Caldari agents, especially level 1’s, in Gallente space and the same goes for all other opposing factions. You just need to find them.

Lastly, even if you do go below -5 to a faction, it just means you can’t dally in their space, you can still travel through it. Capsuleers wont be able to shoot you, and the faction police dont scramble, only web (which boosts you into warp faster). Navy tag missions (whether you sell them or use them for BPC LP offers) are well worth the inconvenience, especially if you farm them so they re-spawn at downtime

Hope that helps someone. HMU if anything is unclear.

TL:DR If you go below -5 to an Empire Faction by farming tags it is no big deal. Simply train up Diplomacy a few levels, and have a t1 destroyer handy to grind from -6 to -5 if the worst comes to the worst (which will take about 2h of grinding).

Caveat (before DMC shows up talking about ‘the plan’): The problem with the plan is that the majority (if not all) of the agents on it are one-time use only. My point, is, even if you have already used the one-time agents on ‘the plan’, going below -5 is no big deal. You just need to know how standings work properly.

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Good write up. I don’t really have much to add other than, if one wants to do level 5s, it’s almost impossible to stay nicey nice with rival factions, and it would be silly to try.

Also Diplomacy V is amazing. I’ve beat the ■■■■ out of my standings and I still haven’t gone -5 with the bad guys. From 0 to -2 is like 8 declines (corp standing). To anyone interested in cherry picking missions I’d recommend Diplomacy over Connections because you’re going to want to go right down to the edge, and keep your agents slightly pissed at you all the time.

I think part of the reason for the OPs success is accepting faction kill missions and doing them in a Marauder. That is the ship of choice when you need to loot tags.

(edit: just some comments, not really disagreeing with anyone)

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I see what you are saying there about Diplomacy and it is a good point. I guess, when cherry picking maybe 5 or 6 years ago I locked out my favourite L4 agent by letting him go below -2 when I was spamming for a particular mission. The only way I could think to fix it back then was to use a brand new toon as a mission puller (which I also needed to grind up standings on in order to be able to access the agent - which was a major ball-ache).

I probably didn’t have Diplo 5 back then though, nor did I think of training it up.

Personally I like having both Diplo and Connections to 5 though because you get “the swing” when your true standing goes below or above zero. E.G (for other readers who may not know, not you Eternal) Diplo only works when your true standing is below zero and connections/criminal connections only works when it is above zero. So your effective standing swings from just below zero to +2 when you are going up, and diplo keeps it above -2 (or -5) for longer when you are going down.

Your point is well made though, since if you already have high faction standing then I guess Connections 5 doesn’t matter too much. I guess Connections 5 only helps when you are repairing Faction Standing from neg zero so that you can cherry pick for that faction again. Hadn’t thought of it like that when I originally made this post. :slight_smile:

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I used to be -10 to gallente, running a few SoE storylines fixed it. if you are low to gallente or minmatar getting the derived standings from SoE is probably better than trying to run lv1s. SoE has a bunch of lv1-4 agents in amarr/caldari space.

Anyways I used to be -10 sec status, having low faction standing is easy mode in comparison.

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I used to be -10 to gallente, running a few SoE storylines fixed it. if you are low to gallente or minmatar getting the derived standings from SoE is probably better than trying to run lv1s. SoE has a bunch of lv1-4 agents in amarr/caldari space.

It is a fair comment, although my point still stands - if you were -10 to gallente and had Diplo to 5 then your effective standing would have been -6. If all I wanted to do was boost from -6 to -5 after a period of prolonged tag farming, the idea of moving all my mission ships to another location is quite unappealing, but maybe that is because my mission hub is in low-sec anyway. If, however, I wanted to boost my effective standing from -6 to above -2 to unlock the opposing factions missions, what you are saying about derived standings might be a lot more efficient, and with burners missions I guess it’d be a lot quicker too.

Anyways I used to be -10 sec status, having low faction standing is easy mode in comparison.

Yeah, I have done that a few times too. Much easier since they introduced clone soldier tags, albeit vastly more expensive too!

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