Hello. I want to be able to make more isk, and I was told to explore in nullsec for relic sites. I’ve tried a little in nullsec in germinate, but i’ve been hunted to no end by horde and sons of bane. I have nothing against any of them, i just want to make isk. Aside from pinging around gates and watching D-scan and combat probes, whate else should I be aware of? If not a heron, what ship? What other advice can you give me?
Welcome!
Nice to hear you’re looking to explore for relic sites in null sec. I too have done that often to make ISK.
Don’t take it personally, but those people just want to shoot you. I frequently do the same thing when I see other explorers.
For one, the explorer is an invader in a region where another group lives. The explorer may be scouting for easy kills or even be the one to tackle for the rest of the group, so it’s no wonder they want to shoot you.
Also some explorers refuse to complete the entire site and refuse to blow up bad cans, leaving trash behind for others to find and delaying fresh respawns for everyone. As a fellow explorer this has once annoyed me to the point that I went after them and killed such a ‘cherry picker’.
Lastly making explorers explode is just a fun challenge.
In other words, be on your toes and assume everyone is out to get you while you’re roaming the universe to explore!
You already mentioned the most important tricks to stay alive:
- use dscan to check for ships and combat probes
- don’t warp directly from gate to gate if hostile players are in system
Other tricks I can recommend:
- check gates with a 5 degree dscan for bubbles, interdictors or smartbombers before you warp to it
- inform yourself on other players in system with you. Copy paste their name in zkillboard to see if they are for example losing Ishtars and likely not a threat or are an Astero pilot who kills explorers
- pay attention to your overview while hacking - immediately warp away when someone appears!
- improve your ship’s agility to react and get away faster with inertial stabilizers
The Heron is a good starting ship for explorers, but if you’re looking for an upgrade:
- the Astero is very agile and can warp within 2s with the right fit. Also can fight other frigates well with drones. Expensive though
- the Metamorphosis is similar, but also has built-in warp core stabilization. Really nice ship I think, but never used it myself yet.
- the T2 exploration frigates have the massive benefit that they can use interdiction nullifiers so you can get through bubbles safely. My favourite is the Helios. They’re also a fair bit faster at exploring and cheaper than an Astero.
Lastly a nice trick to kill explorers is to scan a site, use a cloaked artillery loki with very high damage per shot, wait for the explorer to arrive and hack, decloak, wait out the 5 second targeting delay after decloaking, lock and then one-shot the explorer. Surprise!
You have about 6 seconds to react and warp away.
Most cloaky ships have that delay, Asteros too. The only ships that can instantly target after decloak are bombers, which can be a threat because of that.
You may see a threat coming on dscan because someone else uses regular probes to find your site, but they may also already have scanned the site before you arrived.
If anything seems suspicious, just go to the next system. 
Or drop a safe bookmark somewhere halfway a warp, warp there, put your loot in a container and give the site a try anyway without risking all your loot. If you do get killed you can come back for your loot at the safe.
Have fun!
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join horde, then eveyone is blue … safest place in eve (even safer than highsec)
because “not blue = shoot it” 
with that being said, those large blocs work because many people are in them, you are somewhat expected to become part of it and do your part. which can be very little, just don;t be a leech and you good 
Get in good with a null alliance & you should be golden. Not 100% safe, you never are but you’ll take care of the NBSI problem.
DScan won’t detect cloaked ships, so if someone is in local, he’s an enemy that will kill you. There is no middle ground.
I know it was a long post, but there are multiple middle grounds that I have shared.
If someone is in local with you but they’re generally flying (and losing) Ishtars you can most of the time safely do your site. Null sec is full of Ishtar alts, skipping every system with an Ishtar in it is not a good idea.
Likewise if they’re on Dscan somewhere else in system doing something else in a non-cloaky ship you’re probably not going to get chased by them either.
That’s why I recommended to look up the people in local with you in zkillboard to get an idea of how much of a threat they are. Not every player is equally likely to be a threat, so you can take bigger risks with some than with others.
As usual use dscan to see what’s happening in system. While you’re right that it doesn’t see invisible ships, invisible ships do often undock or take gates before they can cloak up so if you keep looking you may see them.
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I have applied to several corps in horde, all go unanswered. Corp i’m in recommended i talk to fancypants, as apparently they had some friendly arrangements in the past, but that also went no answer for weeks.
thanks for this. I had a look at the metamorphosis, it’s cheap enough. Just have to skill cloaking to IV to be able to fly it well enough to at least be a little bit better than my heron.
Yea, I wouldn’t fly one of those other ships without a covert ops cloak.