Exploration Career Agent Rewards

The career agents provide new players with a very good overview of the basic gameplay in EVE. The exploration career agent missions is a solid start for learning how to scan for anomalies or other players, if hunting down players for PVP or ninja salvaging is what you're interested in. Depending on the race of you character, each career agent will be different, but the rewards remain relatively the same.

Ninja Salvaging Character - The Essentials

To get the ball rolling on ninja salvaging, you'll need to bring your skills up to speed in certain areas. Obviously, you'll need to train from scratch if you're a brand new or relative new character. Maximizing the Salvaging skill is a must and you have to have very good Astrometrics-related skills to be able to scan down ships faster. Additionally, to increase your survivability, you need very good navigation (speed, agility) and solid damage-tanking skills.

Ninja Salvaging Character - Starting Out

The next new character venture that I would like to blog about is a salvaging character. Particularly, the ninja salvaging character. For a very new player to EVE Online, salvaging offers one of the best ISK returns. The ninja salvaging path offers a several interesting twists to the otherwise rather tedious profession.

Further Updates

After several months' absence, I finally got around to posting the last update to New Mining Character series. Although it is tough for me to keep daily updates, I will do my best to add more content regarding career paths in EVE other than mining in the near future.

With Inferno expansion rolled out, I can't get enough of the rocket/missile graphics. I am contemplating compiling a video showcasing rockets in fleet battles. Stay tuned!

New Mining Character Day 16 - The Retriever

The time has come to upgrade the mining cruiser to a dedicated mining barge. All of the skills have been trained and more than enough ISK has been earned. From this point forward, the only major step left is to train for the mining end game: The Hulk. The Retriever will provide a solid base whether you want to advance further in mining or just rely on casual mining for passive ISK grinding.

New Mining Character Day 15 - Low Sec Mining

Having some disposable income, I decided to plunge into what some new miners will likely try to do and, also likely, get destroyed while doing it: low sec mining. The allure of higher profits and mining some exotic ore types is rather strong. Even when taking all sorts of precautions, it's still very easy to lose your ship, but it definitely adds a lot of excitement to something that otherwise may be rather tedious. Here's a few tips on making sure you survive for as long as possible.

New Mining Character Day 14 - Refining vs Raw Ore

Today I decided to finally figure out when it becomes more profitable to sell refined minerals rather than raw ore. Having only Refining IV and no standings with the corporation that owns the station (meaning 5.00% tax on refining), I set out to refine Veldspar and Pyroxeres ore as examples and go through the calculations to determine which one gives more profit according to current market conditions.

New Mining Character Day 11 - Salvaging

The basic skills necessary for salvaging were the fastest to train up. Salvaging in a nut-shell is relatively light on skill intensity. It's a good idea to train up the Salvaging skill as much as possible so that it'll take less cycles to salvage a wreck. Having good skills to boost your capacitor capacity and recharge rate is also recommended as salvagers eat up a lot of cap. I did not train any additional skills support skills though.

New Mining Character Day 10 - Optional Skill Training

Now I enter the period in the mining career that is a bit boring when it comes to blog posts - waiting for the skill training to finish. My Industry V skill is slowly being trained and there isn't much to do except mining and earning ISK. That could be good if you don't have much time to devote to playing EVE during this period anyways. I will try to mix things up a bit though so that I will be able to have something interesting to write about!

New Mining Character Day 9 - Better Mining Yield and Ore Prices

With Astrogeology skill trained to level IV, just two mining cycles is now almost enough to fill the Osprey's cargohold (with cargo expanders). The skill training is slowly progressing, now with less than 5 days remaining till being able to fly the Retriever (considering direct training). Seems now the only options are to chill and mine or to try out some other things in EVE.

Selecting The Most Profitable Ore

The process of choosing the ore to mine and sell on the market is a little more complicated than just browsing the market and mining the one that has the highest price. Each type of the ore has specific volume that it takes up in the cargo hold. More importantly, the mining yield of mining lasers and strip miners is based on cubic meters (m3) per time. So while market prices are based on price per unit of ore, your mining yield is based on volume of ore. Therefore, you have to convert the market info into the price per cubic meter of ore, rather than a unit of ore.

New Mining Character Day 8 - Crossroads and Badger Mark II

At this point in the game, if you're new, you may want to consider if you'd like to go forward with mining. You already have rather decent mining skills and ship. It'll be able to provide you with steady income to fall back on, while you explore other aspects of EVE, and you can always come back to training mining skills and continue on down this path later. If you're still very interested in mining, then let's carry on!

New Mining Character Day 7 - Upgrading the Osprey

Wasting no time, I upgraded the Osprey right way. I had enough ISK to get the best equipment for it and enough back-up ISK in case I somehow manage to lose the ship. Judging by the amount of ISK I was getting per haul, I could see that splurging on the best equipment would quickly be recovered.

Mining Osprey Fit

The Osprey (Caldari Cruiser) is considered to be the best mining cruiser out of all of the cruisers available in EVE. The runner up is Minmatar's Scythe, but only because it has 45 m3 less of cargo space. The Osprey gets 20% extra mining yield per each cruiser skill level along with 3 available slots for mining lasers and 3 low slots for possible cargohold expansion.

New Mining Character Day 6 - Flying the Osprey

And here we go. Skill training is complete, and now I am able to fly the Osprey. The income from mining is going to increase quite a bit. The Osprey sports a large cargo hold (plus 3 low slots for Expanded Cargohold modules) and is able to fit 3 mining lasers. With all the skills trained up, the Osprey will easily approach, only slightly falling short of the mining yield of the Retriever.

New Mining Character Day 5 - Mining Missions

There is a special subset of mission agents of various NPC corporation that offer mining missions. I have decided to mix it up and compare mining missions to just plain old mining. Doing missions is useful if you're manufacturing or refining as increased standings with a corporation will decrease the cost of doing those things at the corporation's stations.

Machariel Incursion Fit

The faction battleships are among the most sought-after ships for Incursion fleets. There is no denying the awesome raw power of the Machariel. Optimized to deliver the most out of projectile turrets, this ship is a powerful weapon in the hands of a skilled pilot. The following is the shield-tanked Machariel Incursion fit.

New Mining Character Day 4 - Ore Hauling

Very quickly I hit the wall when it comes to getting more profit from using a Bantam. Warping back and forth between the station and the asteroid belt started getting too repetitive and it felt like all of that time spent in transit was cutting into the bottom line. So I decided to experiment with using an Industrial ship that I got as the reward for the final Industry Career Agent mission.

Hauling Mined Ore - Using Mining Frigate vs. Industrial Ship

A big part of mining is maximizing your income. However, when mining alone, you are very likely to be warping back and forth between the station and the asteroid belt, at least in the beginning stages of your mining career. With that in mind, I decided to calculate just how much income is lost when not using an industrial ship to haul your ore.

New Mining Character Day 3 - Slight Equipment Upgrade and Relocation

Having completed the Industrial Career Agent missions, this day was all about simple and pure mining. To increase the income, I moved away from the Career Agents' system but it was still a 0.7 sec system, meaning the belt rats were still a bother to handle at times. Additionally, the expanded cargohold modules were upgraded in order to increase the cargo space.

New Mining Character Day 2 - Kernite Asteroids in Caldari High-Sec

Continuing on with the Industry Career Agent missions, I stumbled upon a very lucrative find in one of the mission deadspaces. While completing mission 9 of the tutorial (Making Mountains of Molehills), I noticed that there were lots of Kernite asteroids around. Even though you don't ordinarily find Kernite in Caldari high-sec space, this particular mission provided you with some. 

Industry Career Agent Rewards

The Career Agents offer missions and rewards that are quite useful to a new player in EVE. Aside from granting quite generous ISK rewards, these agents also give out equipment and ships that are useful in each particular career that the agent specializes in. You can find the Career Agents by clicking on the Help icon (or pressing F12) and selecting "Show Career Agents" button in the lower half of the window. The following is the list of rewards given out by the Industry Career Agent.

New Mining Character Day 1 - Starting Skills and Earning ISK

Right after setting up the overview and remapping the neural attributes, it was time to queue up the first skills. Additionally, since new characters start off with only 5000ISK in the wallet, I needed to earn some ISK in order to buy skillbooks. I also took advantage of the tutorial missions given by the Industrial Career Agent. The tutorial missions offered by the Career Agents is a great source of revenue and lets you try out different career paths available in EVE.

Setting Up the Overview for High-Sec Mining

At times new characters do not have the overview correctly set up for mining. Certain asteroid types might not be visible or the overview can be cluttered with all of the asteroids, cargo containers, nearby ships, planets, etc. Here's one way that you can set up your overview for more efficient organization of information.

New Mining Character - Neural Remap and Attributes

The first step to a speedy skill training plan is to properly set up your character's attributes. All new characters receive 2 free neural remaps. It may be a good idea to hold off remapping the attributes right away if you're not sure what you would like to specialize at but if you have a general sense of direction, then there's no need to waste time.

New Mining Character

After some consideration, I have decided to create a brand new character dedicated to mining asteroids. The basic goal of this little experiment/tutorial is to go through all of the steps that a new player would ideally encounter in trying to create a mining character. This should provide a guide on what to train and how to maximize income from mining, especially in the initial steps where every little bit of ISK or training time counts.

This will be a very streamlined character, dedicated solely to mining and training the skills required to fly the Retriever. I will be outlining all of the necessary skills and the order in which I have trained them along with any gameplay issues or obstacles I encountered along the way. All of the ISK income will be derived only from mining or mining missions (plus the initial Industry Career Agent missions).

Abaddon Incursion Fit

The following is an Abaddon fit for capsuleers just starting out fighting Incursions. For those who are upgrading to the Incursions from Level 4 missions, this might seem like an odd fit, but keep in mind that Incusions are fought as a fleet and there will be 2-3 logistics ships in the fleet whose job is to keep you alive. The Incursion fits are equipped with buffer and resistance tank. The resistances (EM, kinetic, thermal and explosive whether for armor or shield) should be at least above 70% or very close to it. The resistances and buffer will keep you alive in case logis are having trouble keeping up with incoming dps.

Bantam - Caldari Mining Frigate

Starting off your mining career in EVE, you can't go wrong with using the Bantam as your starter mining ship. This Caldari frigate is second only to the Tormentor in terms or available cargo space, but it sets you on the way to using the Osprey for mining - the best mining cruiser available in EVE.

Tormentor - Amarr Mining Frigate

The Amarr frigate line-up offers what could be considered the best mining frigate available if you value cargo space. The Tormentor is the only mining frigate that offers 3 low slots. The cargo hold on this ship starts off with 235 m3, but installing 3x Expanded Cargohold I rigs can bump up the cargo space way above 510 m3, depending on your skills, rigs used and how much ISK you're willing to spend on those rigs.