The PC Spotlight 2.12.09: Striking it Rich in EVE Online (Part 1)

Posted by Chris Vicari on 02.12.2009

The self-appointed economist and money maker is back, but this week he's discussing the space-based MMO EVE Online. Here's part one.

Welcome back to the PC Spotlight. Continuing the trend of last week's topic, which was my own market and economics guide for World of Warcraft, I've decided to bridge the idea to another, yet much more complicated MMO, EVE Online. Everything I absorbed about MMO markets, trading, and trends came from here. EVE Online offers the most robust and complicating player-driven market economy in the industry. Standard and even the most underhanded business practices are not only tolerated, but encouraged. Players can make billions running their own manufacturing business, where they produce weapons and ships, complete missions or combat enemy pirates, and even scam fellow players out of items and currency. Just last week, the largest alliance in the game called Band of Brothers (BoB) was dissolved through the acts of a corporate spy. Billions in ISK, the game's currency, and alliance assets were stolen in a matter of minutes. No players were banned or punished for their perpetrations, as this type of hostile takeover is a familiar tactic utilized in the universe that is EVE Online.

Instead of writing a guide primarily focused on making money like last week, I've decided to write a general guide combining last week's ideas with new player information and guidance.

Because EVE is an exceedingly complex game, this guide is separated into two parts because the overall length of the guide is, shall I say, immense? The first part focuses on the basic activities to make money while next week's column contributes with the more advanced and challenging means of obtaining money.

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Welcome to EVE's Market



Disclaimer -This guide assumes you've already created a character and have completed the in-game tutorial.

As you no doubt are experiencing, EVE online is an extremely complicated and time consuming sandbox MMO. It is one which offers few short-term rewards and little direction while expecting players to plot their own course. If your desire is to acquire as much ISK as humanly possible to fund and aid your other endeavors, this guide will help provide you with some direction on how to get a piece of the action. There are a lot of money-making opportunities in EVE Online, and because of this, players often feel lost when first logging in and completing the tutorial. It is a sensation I experienced for some time as well. This guide provides nearly every means of getting money, and all you have to do is pick which ways are more appealing to you. But first, let's give a brief description of EVE's economy and shed a little light on this rather large beast, as well as providing some basic new player information.

The Basics of EVE's Economy

As mentioned before, EVE's market is completely player-driven. Everything on the market is made by other players, save for trade goods, named modules, blueprints, and a couple other things. Forming the base of EVE's economy is the massive mineral market. Here, ores mined from asteroid belts located in nearly every system are broken down and reprocessed into eight different materials: Tritanium, Pyerite, Isogen, Mexallon, Nocxium, Zydrine, Megacyte, and Morphite. These minerals are then used to create the multitude of items found on the market. Players can also reprocess loot into minerals as well if they choose to do so, but more on that later. More information on mining is found later in this guide. There's no way around EVE's mineral market, and without people taking time mining asteroid belts or reprocessing loot, the majority of EVE's playerbase would be up the creek when it comes to manufacturing and keeping the money wheels spinning.

Once you move out of the fairly consistent mineral arena and proceed into the more volatile ship and modules markets, you'll start to see many different things happen. Similar to other in-game economies, supply and demand on particular goods depends on many different variables such as location, popularity, nerfs, usefulness, ease of use, mineral accessibility, manipulation, and even other items. Just like in real life, speculation also plays a big role in price inflation and deflation. Using the previous BoB alliance as an example, when their alliance was dissolved and its fate publicly divulged, many market speculators, both young and old, knew BoB was a huge supplier of high-end moon minerals, which can only be obtained from heavily-contested moons, and in response they swooped in and gouged all the prices, making billions due to player panic.

The market is a challenge to understand and oftentimes it is impossible to predict all the fluctuations of the market because of so many factors, but with enough experience, you'll begin to see some of the bigger signs. Even with the years of experience I have with EVE's market, there are still situations when I am totally baffled.

EVE Online's Market, AKA Excel in Space

Information All New Players Should Know

Even after completing the extensive in-game tutorial and getting into a basic frigate, there are still many pieces of valuable information not being communicated to players. Here's a brief list of EVE's Golden Rules for New Players. Credit goes to Akita T for most of the bullets.

• Never fly something (or with something in the cargo) you can't afford to lose, ever
• High-sec space, which is 0.5+, is safer and not safe
• Research before you jump into something, it can save you a lot of headaches
• Free stuff usually isn't. Not even minerals you mine yourself
• In most cases, the only way to be 100% safe from aggression is to remain in a station
• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Double-check everything
• Scamming and unethical in-game behavior some would consider griefing is not only allowed, it is encouraged and rewarded by game mechanics
• If you lose stuff, it's almost always your fault
• More expensive stuff is not always better stuff
• Get used to right-clicking almost everything as it provides a wealth of information
• There is always lag in trade hubs, especially Jita, but you'll find better prices at these locations
• Total skillpoints count doesn't matter much, it's level of relevant skills to the current situation that does
• Always check your clone before you undock, if you're podded with an out-of-date clone, you lose skillpoints
• Insure your ships
• There is no such thing as "a fair fight" or "an unfair fight." There's only "a fight" as circumstances are irrelevant
• Just because you can fly something doesn't mean you should
• Ships are explosions waiting to happen
• Skills that take less than 1 day to train are short skills. Over one week is long
• Diversify to curb boredom

For a ton more helpful new player information, click here.

Websites Everyone Should Know

Acclimating yourself with the following websites gives you a definitive informational advantage over those who don't peruse these portals.

EVElopedia - EVE Online's official wiki. Contains tons of helpful information.
EVE Grismar - An excellent resource for players of all experience. Pretty the unofficial wiki for the game.
BattleClinic - A good site if you're looking for specific ship builds to fulfill a variety of different roles. Also maintains a killboard and many other resources. Definitely worth checking out.
EVE Mon - A phenomenal tool used by the vast majority of the game's playerbase. It allows you to view your characters skill and financial information offline and allows you to create skill plans. Another great feature is letting the EVE client run in full window mode without those annoying borders.
EVE Geek - A website for the math junkies who need specific tools to calculate weapons damage, tanking capabilities, refining, and much more.
EVE Search - A website created by Chribba, an in-game celebrity. Allows players to efficiently search EVE Online's official forums for older threads rather than using the official site's horrid search capabilities.
EVE Files - Another website created by Chribba which allows users to upload videos, pictures, and other multimedia pertaining to their EVE Online escapades.
EVE Central - Allows players to view cross-region market information and statistics. It's a pretty nifty site if you're looking to do some trading or hunting for the cheapest price on a particular item.

Okay, with all that out of the way and settled, it's time to get to the reason why you're all here; to make money, and lots of it.

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Low Difficulty Methods of Income

Making money in EVE Online is an imperative and time consuming activity for every new player, but once you get the hang of it, and understand your capabilities, it'll come much easier for you. In this section, you'll find methods that just about any player can perform fresh from character creation, requiring only minimal skill training at best. To be honest though, low difficulty is a slight misnomer, as the below sections do have varying degrees of risk and challenge. With enough time and dedication, you may find yourself moving past these methods and trying out more difficult ventures. It's up to you to decide when you're ready.


Relevant skills to achieve this task
Missions require quite a few skills to achieve maximum efficiency, but not all are required
Fitting Skills - Allow you to use more fittings on your ship:

• Electronics
• Engineering
• Energy Grid Upgrades
• Weapons Upgrades
• Advanced Weapons Upgrades

Armor Tanking Skills – To use armor repairers, hardeners, and other upgrades
Shield Tanking Skills – To use hardeners, shield boosters, and rechargers
Cap Efficiency Skills – For cap related fittings and boosting ship's overall capacitor capabilities:

• Energy Management
• Energy Systems Operation

Navigation Skills – For faster flying and ability to use afterburners as most missions disallow the use of micro-warp drives
Drone and Weapon Skills – Depends on what ship you're flying

Down and Dirty
Missioning in EVE Online is a fairly straightforward affair. You're given a mission from a particular agent and your task is to head to the destination and complete it. Money and items are attained from completing said missions, loot, and bounty rewards for killing pirates. Many of the easier missions can be done in a matter of minutes while the more difficult ones, usually given out by level three, four, and five agents, can take longer. If you aren't quite sure what types of ships to use for specific mission levels, use the following guidelines:

• Level 1 – Frigates and Destroyers
• Level 2 – Cruisers
• Level 3 – Battlecruisers
• Level 4 – Battleships
• Level 5 – Bring friends in Battleships and other high-class vessels

Currently, there are four different types of missions in EVE: Kill, Courier, Mining, and Trade. As you no doubt have noticed though, agents don't use these labels, but 22 separate titles such as Archives, Surveillance, and Command. To figure out which mission type these labels typically give, consult this link.



Kill missions are pretty easy to understand and give out the highest rewards because of their difficultly. All you really have to do though is head to the designated location, start blasting, and reap some rewards. If you're unfamiliar with some of the items that are dropping for you, it's always best to view their market details and see how much they're worth. A good policy is refining anything that is worth less than 20k ISK and save precious sell order slots for items that'll fetch more money. Pirates and enemy faction NPCs can also drop dogtags which are purchased by players and NPC stations. Always keep an eye out for these as they can be quite valuable. Once you start running the higher level missions, you may even end up avoid looting almost entirely, just to save time. If you're particularly nervous about losing standings with other factions, only run missions that have you kill pirates, and turn down the rest. Remember though, you can only turn down a mission once every four hours without heavy standing loss.

If you enjoy the role of delivery boy, then courier missions are for you. All you have to do is fly around and deliver goods to various locations or simply pick them up and bring them back to the agent who gave you the mission. That's pretty much it. The destination can be as close as one to two jumps away, but more often than not, they can send you 5-6 jumps away or even further, and sometimes into low-sec. Couriers are good missions for those who like to kick back and read a book or watch TV while they play. They are also a good way to raise faction and corporation standing as they are easier to finish. Mining is fairly self-explanatory, but they can take up the most time if you're mining in anything other than a Barge. I avoid these. Trading is the rarest form of mission type, but if you are given one, all you have to do is buy something off the market and deliver it. Most of the time though, the money you spent on buying the product is more than the reward you're given.

While you do get a hefty sum as you complete missions, the real money comes from the Loyalty Point store and at times, storyline missions. As you complete missions, you're given loyalty points along with the usual ISK compensation. As time goes on and these points add up, you'll be able to purchase a nice selection of expensive toys which you can either use yourself or sell. These can include new ships, blueprints to manufacture modules, ammunition, implants, and a whole slew of other stuff. Also, for every 16 missions you complete for agents of the same level and in the same corporation, you're given a special mission which can boost standings considerably as well as a nice implant that you can use yourself or sell on the market. Depending on the level of the storyline mission, the better and more expensive implant you're given as reward.

A few reminders for the mission runners though, always find the agent with the highest quality level, which means more money in your pocket. Also, mission running may get boring pretty quickly, so it's best to mix things up a little and do a few other things, and then come back for more. If you're looking to run missions for a particular corporation or agent type, click the People & Places icon and do a search for the main faction you wish to work for. In the faction's information tab, it'll list every corporation that is allied with it, allowing you to know which agents are available and where.

That's pretty much it for mission running. It is often considered the grind of the game as it's usually performing the same things over and over again, but it's a good source of income for just about everyone. If you prefer earning your keep through different means though, there are absolute tons of ways to do it.

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Relevant skills to achieve this task

• Mining – To increase yield and fit better mining lasers
• Mining Upgrades – To fit modules which increase yield
• Refining – Less waste when reprocessing ore means more materials for you (good standings with the station you're in also help this by reducing the tax)
• Processing skills – Allows you to reprocess specific ores more efficiently with less waste
• Astrogeology – Another skills which boosts mining yield as well as a pre-requisite for mining barges
• Mining Barge – Skill to pilot dedicated mining vessels
• Exhumers – A high-end piloting skill which lets player fly the high-end mining barges.

As previously mentioned in the beginning of this guide, asteroids and the materials they are reprocessed into are the basis of EVE's entire economy. Without minerals, you've got absolutely nothing. Because of this, there are quite of few players who are allured by this quality because of the constant demand. Regrettably, mining is probably one of the most boring activities any player can perform in this game. Many players who start out mining often end up quitting because it is so dull. If you fancy yourself the mining type though, know that you aren't left out when it comes to making a decent paycheck.

Mining in EVE Online is one of the simplest things a player can do. All you need to do is fit a couple mining lasers on a ship with a decent-sized cargo bay, and then you're off to the nearest belt. While it's easy to do, this really isn't the most efficient method. For those who are dedicated to the profession, setting a goal to eventually pilot mining barges and exhumers after that is a good way to go. Doing anything less is truthfully a waste of time as you'll make more money elsewhere. The best barge to start in is definitely the Retriever. Able to fit two strip mines, the ship will out-mine everything that isn't a dedicated mining vessel. Training your skills is also very important because the more efficiently you can reprocess ore, the more money you stand to make. As of this writing, Veldspar, the most common ore type which can be found everywhere, is the most valuable ore, since Tritanium is currently high in price. With enough skills, you can also tackle ice mining, which is another resource used by many of EVE's pilots.

If you're super serious about mining and the riches of the industry, you're best bet is to take a couple minutes of your time and read through Halada's The Complete Miner's Guide. It is definitely the best mining guide you can ever hope to read.

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Relevant skills to achieve this task

• Race Specific Industrial Skills – Allows you to pilot the Industrial ship lines which have large cargo capacities.

In the mood to piss people off and make some money with little to no effort? Than can flipping is for you! Can flipping is a frowned upon activity in EVE Online, but it's definitely good fun and a healthy supply of minerals. Basically, you hunt through asteroids and look for people jet-can mining. If there's a jettisoned can next to the miner, then you know he's jet-can mining. Many players do this because their mining ships do not have large cargo bays and can't fit much ore. Jettisoned containers can fit 21k worth of items so many people dump everything they mine into the can. Basically, all you do is bookmark it, warp out, warp back in, loot and flee. It can't get any easier than that. If you're quick enough, the target won't have time to react. Your primary targets are usually macro miners, as they do not try to take back the ore you steal. Just look for gibberish names in starting corporations and you've got a macroer.

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Relevant skills to achieve this task

For more in-depth information, consult the Research and Development Agent Guide

If you're looking to make some passive income on the side, doing a little datacore farming is a nice jolt of income. Basically, every faction has several NPC industrial corporations which contain quite a few Research and Development agents. Unlike typical agents seen elsewhere, R&D agent missions are optional and based on their level and quality level, players earn a certain amount of research points everyday. Completing one-day missions simply doubles the amount of RP you gain on that particular day. These RP are then used to purchase datacores which are used during Invention, which allows players to build Tech II modules and ships. Demanded by a huge amount of players and industrialists, datacores are sought after just about anywhere. The only thing which takes time is training the skills necessary to use these agents. When players first start out, they can only hire one R&D agent, but the skill called Research Project Management allows players to hire up to five additional agents, multiplying income astronomically.

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Until next week for part 2, thanks for stopping by!

Thanks for stopping by and reading this week. The rest of the guide, detailing everything else including fixing the market and all the other ways to make serious bank, is coming either next week or the week after. Hopefully this guide proves helpful to you, and if you have more information or if there's something I missed, don't hesitate to comment about it.

Until next week, later guys and play safe!