The last time I played EVE for more than a month or 2 at a time was probably 10 years ago… so my knowledge of the game is a bit dated.
What PvE activity makes good use of a solo persons time? I’ve done a few google searches, but majority of results are from years and years ago. It’s hard to find relevant and up-to-date information on this game.
I can fly nearly any sub-capital ship t2 fit. Exception being I can’t use T2 torps or T2 large hybrids. But anything from assault ship to marauders for any of the 4 factions I can fly for the most part. I don’t plan on looking for a corp at the moment unless I decide to stick around this time. But i’m up for doing WH or solo null sec if it’s worth the risk/time. level 4 missions seem like they are painfully outdated these days, but i’ve only done a handful since returning.
Thanks in advance for anyone who takes the time to help point me in the right direction.
Well you could fall back on the old stand-bys of Level 4 mission blitzing and anomic burners.
You could also look into running wormhole combat anomalies.
The current ‘new’ solo activity is Triglavian Emerging Conduits, which you can find several recent videos on and are solo-able, in various ships from Gilas to battleships.
I’ve been doing emerging conduits for the triglavians and it has been pretty good so far. There are three waves, the third one can test a tank but I can handle it fine on a double LAR domi (a fit pretty similar to what I used in 2009 for l4 missions). In about an hour and change I can make ~100mil. You get 4.5mil from finishing (or if you are in a group each gets it up to 3 participants, it declines after that). Then there are surveys you can sell to NPCs for ~100k each.
I will usually just go til I have 1,000 pack up my stuff and sell which takes an hour or so, since a new one opens a few minutes after the prior is cleared.
Also being new back I recommend those mobile tractor unit things, super handy but watch out since some like to take pop shots at them. Oh and dragging drones and throwing them into space and back to the bay is fun…like where have you been all my life fun.
I’m in a similar state as the original poster, however I started a new account this week so my assets are totally on the newbie level. Would missions be the best way to make money for bigger ships as I learn how to fly them? Right now I’m doing a lot of mining (it’s what I did back in the day) but it seems more dangerous now with the roaming trig scouts.
IF IF IF and I smile as I type IF - If you enjoy mining then have a pve toon clear out a Emerging Conduit then mine the “forgot Name” Tig weird roids there’s heaps of them and safe-ish from gankers cause they have to probe you you get some standard pirate NPC show up but so far never had trig come back
If you’re starting an account new without getting a big cash boost from an alt, I’d probably do 2 sets of Career Agents for about 15 mill rewards in ISK, loot and ships, plus some boost with your faction standings.
Then I’d grab either the exploration frigates they give you and do some popping into wormholes to try and scan something decent down, or maybe sell off the ships and put together a combat cruiser and do some combat anomalies looking for escalations.
Missions are certainly an option, but to make decent money you have hunt out an area with a fair number of agents, pull the best paying missions, learn to blitz those, trade in your LP for decent returns, market the stuff etc. It can be a fair bit to juggle when starting out.
Do combat sites in destroyer. If you know what you are doing, even 4/10 aren’t issue. Just take more time. If you get lucky drop, hundreds of millions per site.
Missions give almost no isk until you grind for lvl 3 or 4 missions and you still need at least BC to run them with Omega for lvl 4’s
Normal hacking exploration also can give nice starting isk, but not everyone like it.
Anyway, do what you like to do, not what gives best isk. Otherwise that return to game won’t last long. Enjoy game and isk will come with time.
Edit: There is also market. Trading is also nice isk. But need to like it.
First you’ll find a load of free unallocated skill points, this is from a number of skills that have been deleted in favor of new skills.
So you can allocate some points to get t2 skills.
The other thing will be to get used to the new way combat works. I suggest get in a frigate and do some missions to get used to combat again, before you go out with your Battleships.
Also learn quickly how to use the fitting window and how modules interact with others and the effects on the ship.
Combat exploration in high sec can pay really well, IF you put in the brain effort and understand and agree to the concept of RNG.
It’s done solo but you will run in to others as well, up to you how to deal with that (I personally will try to outdo them).
You can start doing it in a basic destroyer and you can use funky smaller ship for it but that is far from ideal. You’re best to use a souped up cruiser like a HAC or a faction/pirate version. Sentry Ishtar or stratios are pretty much the best, but I’ve also done it with Zealots, Pantasms, Navy Omens, Deimos, Muninns, Cynabals, Eagle and Cerberus. Those are all good in their own way. The Gila isn’t great for this as it mostly relies on slowboating med drones.
If you, or anyone else, wants more info just mail me in-game.
There is also just a lot of balance changes and new moduals I am unaware of. It seems like HAM tengu seems to be a viable lvl 4 mission boat, Back in the day I remember these were terrible for missions because they did hardly any damage to frigs since they can’t use drones.
Are HAM’s better than HM now for Tengu? can a tengu do these emerging conduits things a couple of you have talked about?
I can’t speak to HAM Tengu’s for Lvl 4’s since that’s not my thing, although I have heard of people making good use of them in various ways.
I suspect any change in the utility of those types of builds against frigates has been due to changes in the way people built for application of damage to small fast targets.
As for Tengu on emerging conduits, from what I have heard Strategic Cruisers are not overly used for Conduits because you need a combination of 3 things:
Sustained decent DPS
Sustained strong tank able to deal with 300+ incoming DPS at various points
Ability to apply the damage to extremely fast frigates
I’ve seen a fair number of Gila fits for it as well as mostly battleships.
