Uncommon Careers

New Citizens Q&A
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Howdy there, I am new and such, but I have been through enough MMO rodeos to realize that I need to plan things. I am at the stage of this game where I can do the various career training missions to discover what I like doing and I feel like I am partial to exploration careers. However, I do not just want a career that is enjoyable, I would also like one that is desirable.

To better clarify, I am sure there are plenty of careers out there where people who work them are a dime a dozen, you know what I mean? I do not want to throw myself into something that everybody is doing. That cuts my opportunities and I am sure it could impact my profitability.

So, I ask, which exploration careers are there that are uncommon or rare? Which parts of exploration is least focused on? Is exploration in general the popular career bubble and, if so, which other career area should I look into?

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your replies.

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Well what do you consider as a core exploration probing or using probes to discover signatures /wormholes/sites?

From what I understand you want a very niche one

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Do you expect us to reveal to you our secret little niches? :wink:

Seriously, you can do basically everything. In general if it takes RL skill and effort of some kind, the less people are doing it. But finding your own niche by exploring (in the broad sense) and being curious is a lot of the fun in EvE. My advice, try everything and see what sticks and what you are good at.

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Well I can think of some fun ones like probing DED sites waiting inside in a curse and killing people
Probing down lost assets like gecko drones abandoned un piloted ships yes some people even found capitals .
Probing for high value gas sites in wormholes

Anyway you’ll need atleast 2 accounts if you want to do something serious.

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Yeah, tried that, but it’s boring to wait and I tend to just do the site then myself. But it’s definitely the right thinking here.

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This was a link I found a few years back, not sure if everything is still valid, but it may be helpful to you.

image
wtd.jpg4531×2509 2.42 MB

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7

I suppose I got the answers I asked for :-p It sounds like exploring alone is too broad of a category. Thank you.

I just do not want my first career focus to be that flavor of the month career. Since I am new, I do not have a web of skills to fall back on. You know how you can be new to an MMO and choose a class you thought sounded cool, but then you learned everybody is playing that class and it suddenly seems no so interesting anymore? I would just like to avoid that.

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Run missions to gain standing with R&D agents and farm datacores for T2 invention. I run a standings service with one of my toons. I have positive standing with every faction and 140 NPC corps. I can help you get your foot in the door with pretty much any faction or corp. That’s kind of a niche service that not many players bother to do.

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Ninja loot/salvage player wrecks in faction warfare zones.

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You have positive standing with every single Faction?

That’s impressive, I thought I was doing good by having positive standings with 13 out of 20 Factions. The 7 Factions I have negative standings with are the 5 Pirate Factions, The Syndicate and Thukker Tribe which is just barely negative.

I can easily gain positive standings with The Syndicate and 3 of the 5 Pirate Factions (Angel, Guristas and Sansha) through the Epic Arcs. Since I barely have negative standings with Thukker Tribe I can use their Cosmos Agents to get positive standings with them.

That leaves Serpentis and Blood Raiders which I don’t think can be made positive without adversely affecting Concord standing. And since Concord Assembly controls some high sec systems, it’s not a good idea to incur negative standings with Concord.

To the OP, exploration is a great career, you just have to plan your work and work your plan. Basically I mean be smart, don’t waste your time scanning in areas where there’s a lot of competition from other players. Check map stats and explore systems with low population, low amount of jumps, low amount of NPC kills, etc.

Search various areas at different time zones to find the best time slot to explore there with the least amount of competition from other players. Set up a station in each area as a ‘Base Of Operation’, keep them fully stocked with munitions and equipment needed to do exploration in that area. That will allow you to quickly go from an area which seems void of exploration sites to another area that hopefully has more sites available.

Having high skill level and using top equipment will help you find and complete the sites quicker than your competition. Also researching the sites with out of game guide write-ups will inform you of the game mechanics pertaining to each site allowing you to quickly complete it, such as which specific cans to hack or which NPC’s trigger the Faction / Deadspace loot drop.

Other than that, every once in a while do something else in game to keep from getting burned out on always doing exploration, such as manufacture items from BPC’s found in Hacking sites, run a few missions to collect loot for reprocessed minerals, collect salvage to manufacture and sell Rigs, etc.

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There is no risk this to happen in EvE, almost none of the skills you can train are ever wasted, just train stuff to lvl3 first (very fast and gives you ~75% efficiency) and try it. If you like it train further. There are no classes, you can switch with your char from being logistic in fleet today, to producing capital components, or exploring relic sites solo, if you have the skills trained.

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Ooh I love this question.

Exploration is not niche. It’s definitely a popular profession but it may have some sort of niche parts to it. Every new player guide and streamer I see says “get into exploration, its the best ISK for a new player” and while this is somewhat true, it’s completely saturated as a “career”. Lets break it down.

Anyone who’s been playing a month or so can dive into hacking and archeology, so that’s not what you’re looking for.

DED sites in highsec are also popular and highly contested. You can “generate” private 5/10s by doing dens and getting escalations in other ways, but again, there’s nothing special about 5/10s, or any of the other unrated sites.

Sleeper Caches are definitely niche and they show up in highsec. They’re sort of rare so they’re less of a “career” and more of a side activity. They require high scanning skills and a mix of tankiness and hacking/archeologying. There’s also Ghost Sites (anomalies, not technically exploration), but again… they’re rare, so it will be hard to carve out an exploration niche in highsec.

In lowsec you have 6/10s, which less people do because they’re afraid to go into lowsec but not quite niche. You’d need a t3 or battleship for these. There are also higher level sleeper caches (rare) and Besieged Covert Research Facilities (anomaly, not technically exploration). Besieged sites aren’t niche but they require a decent amount of sp so I’d say less people do them.

In Null you have your high ranked DEDsites, which are heavily run by folks and not remotely niche.

So basically, there are very few niches within exploration aside from sleeper caches and arguably 6/10s.

Here are some things off the top of my head that are actually niche, most of which require a lot of SP:

-High class wormhole escalations in a dread
-Level 5 missions
-Level 4 pirate burner missions in NPC nullsec
-Level 4 multiboxing mining missions in low/null
-Solo moon mining in low/null
-Solo customs office ownership
-JF ganking
-Hunting officer spawns
-Farming drifters with a death star
-Running Tier 5 abyss’s
-Killing FOBs

Thats all I can think of at the moment.

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Dunno, I’m one year in New Eden, and didn’t start any career :slight_smile:
Career agents told me to do what I want, so I do. My toon is a mess of skillpoints of any different skill group, and if some friends suggest special skills, I learn to handle ships like assault frigates or mining barges. There was a time I thought exploration sucks, but in a WH you have to be good at it and gain rewards, so I even enjoy scanning around :wink:

My notion: Get away from the big hubs if you don’t like crowded areas and always already finished signatures. E.g. there’s no fun around Jita with any pve content.

But that’s the sandbox: You don’t need to pursue a career, only if you want to. And your first toon probably won’t be your last one.

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Sooooooooooooo… I am not sure if this has already been covered yet (I can’t be bothered to read because rum tastes so good)…

Have you considered making a profession by using “out of game” skills?

Hear me out:

I have been around here in EVE.

Like… AROUND.
(I have seen things…)

And there are some players out there who find a niche doing things to support other players in a quasi-in-game sense.

There are people who out there who are skilled as being a diplomat for others (acting as either a 3rd party, or for an organization that they have joined). These people spend so much of their time in administrative ■■■■■■■■ that a GOOD corporation or alliance will literally hand them free stuff so they can go out and break ■■■■ with their peeps (within reason of course)

There are “propagandists” who can make a decent living selling artwork and slogans. Even be hired by a specific group to do their “dirty work” on the forum and have fun in the “mud.”

I have seen corporations and alliances pay a guy in ISK for maintaining a Ventrilo/Discord server.

I have even born witness to people who light cynos for jump freighters, scout, be a spy, gather intel, find the main characters of alt characters… the list goes on.

All of it just takes a bit of time and patience.

Of course… there is also the true underworld. One where players ask you to… do things… for ISK…

.

.

I am ashamed of what I did for a klondike bar.
:frowning:

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Learn exploration then use your sweet situational awareness and survival skills to become a BLOPS hunter. That’s a great career and a bit niche too :slight_smile:

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My advice is to look at the common careers and find a way to do them better than other people, from there you will find some niches that need filling.

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Exploration is a broad field, and always useful and in demand. It also happens to be something that everybody trains somewhat but rarely specializes in.

You can do anything from archaeology to being a stealth scout for a fleet, or a cyno. What’s important is that you learn how to probe things down quickly and quietly. You’ll also (probably) learn how to navigate through low/null sec and wormholes while doing it.

A lot of exploration will eventually take you to areas where people will be hunting you. Being an explorer yourself, you’d also eventually be a damn fine hunter yourself if you wanted to be since you know what explorers are looking for.

So while I wouldn’t say exploration itself is a long term career, it’s absolutely an important skill you can focus on and see big returns in the long run. Almost every squad needs a scout or a probe launcher. That could be you. If you fancy the solo game and enjoy pvp, work towards a loki and hunt down your “fellow” explorers while also doing it yourself.

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Well, there is anything actually.

There is some normal non-mainstream choice like role playing stuff.
or Build a casino by betting ISK.

You could make a space bank and silver tongue people to invest on you.

You could set up a camera and uhm, “sell you activities” through it.

I have reads some people become space grave keeper.

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