Exploration Tips and Tricks

2024-03

Page adopted by Arachnis till 2024-03

The Explorer's Handbook
D-Scan & Overview Exploration Ships Fitting Guide Hacking Making ISK Navigation Quotes Sabbatical Scanning Skills and Implants Sites Tips and Tricks Addendum

A collection of specialized, cross-area, or miscellaneous exploration advice. Or just stuff that bears repeating.

D-Scan & Overview

Main Page: Directional Scanner and Overview

• Using short-range D-Scan in a site can give you a warning if players are warping to your specific site.
• D-Scan gates from a nearby location before warping to them to make sure they're clear. If there are ships or bubbles on dscan, select "Track" on the gate and narrow your dscan angle to see whether they're at that specific gate.

Ships

Main Page: Exploration ships

• Don't fly what you can't afford to lose (and replace). An Astero may be a stronger exploration ship than a Probe, but it's also dozens of times more expensive.
• Know what you're specifically trying to accomplish, and fly the ship best suited for that task. A Stratios or Legion might be a stronger overall ship than a Buzzard, but why not just use the Buzzard if you're just planning to do relic sites? In other words: bigger (or pricier) isn't always better.

Fitting

Main Page: Exploration Ship Fitting Guide

Align Time

• As a rule of thumb for exploration fits, aim for <2s align time for the Astero and Metamorphosis and a <3s align time for all other exploration frigates.
• Align time is rounded up to the next second due to how server ticks work. A 3.01s align time is functionally equivalent to a 3.99s one.

Defense

• Consider whether fitting tank modules makes sense compared to other options. If your covops frigate gets caught, you're probably already dead.
• Burst jammers don't work when fit alongside a nullifier; they cancel each other out. Burst jammers also require red safety to use.

Scanning and Hacking

• Sisters probes are a good investment. RSS probes, on the other hand, are a "kick me" sign that'll probably cost several times more than your ship and not actually help you scan better.
• T2 probe launchers are a far less expensive alternative to sisters launchers for pilots with high skills.
• Rangefinding arrays are most useful at low probe strength, specifically to bump up your probe strength to the 105 needed to scan down every signature in the game. Pinpointing arrays are more useful at higher probe strength given the lack of deviation bonuses on most hulls.
• Emission Scope Sharpeners and Memetic Algorithm Banks only give a tiny coherence bonus and eat up a lot of rig calibration. They're only really useful for starter fits for low-skill pilots.

Subsystems

• Tech III Cruisers are forced to choose between fast align times, and fast warp and nullification. The exception to this is the Proteus, which has its warp bonus duplicated between its hyperspatial (align) and nullification subsystems.
• A T3C can use a nullifier even without its nullification subsystem so long as it's using its covert subsystem; it just won't get bonuses for the nullifier.

Utility

• Overdrive injectors are a good choice for ships with a lot of low slots that can't fit nullifiers, like the Astero and Magnate, due to their velocity bonus helping with burning out of bubbles. The cargo space penalty isn't that important due to the low volume of most valuable exploration loot.
• Related to the above, cargo expanders aren't particularly necessary for most exploration.
• Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers are shockingly useful. Explorers spend a lot of time warping around, after all.
• An afterburner is a good alternative to a microwarpdrive for lowsec exploration due to the lack of bubbles, particularly on instawarp-capable ships like the Astero and Metamorphosis.

Hacking

Main Page: Hacking

• Integrated analyzers gain bonuses from both the Hacking and Archaeology skills. This means that a Zeugma analyzer will be stronger than the T2 data and relic analyzers.
• Running a Zeugma analyzer with a Blackglass implant allows you to effectively brute-force most hacks due to the very high strength and respectable coherence.
• Know the Rule of 6: a space bordered by 6 others (fully surrounded) will never have a subsystem in it, unless it's bordering the system core.
• Know the Rule of 8: the system core will always spawn at least 8 spaces from the starting space, unless no such space exists, in which case the system core will be placed randomly.
• This means that you should use center nodes to travel to the other side of the board from your starting position until you hit a center node subsystem. If your starting node is in the center of the board, you should branch out in all directions.

Making ISK

Main Page: Making ISK as an Explorer

Manufacturing

• Ghost sites and Sleeper caches can contain blueprint copies for rare, expensive items with a very limited supply. Prime examples include 'Magpie' Mobile Tractor Units, High-Grade Ascendancy implants (especially Omega), and Polarized Torpedo Launchers, as well as some storyline modules. It's often worth building these items even with poor industry skills rather than just selling the blueprints. The supply of Magpie MTUs especially is just that limited.
• On the flip side, many blueprints just aren't worth building due to high supply. Always check the industry window to make sure you won't end up producing something at a loss. Integrated analyzers are a good example of this: while their high cost suggests they'll be profitable to build, their blueprints drop pretty frequently from data sites, and the vast majority of their cost is in their input materials. That's why Zeugma blueprints are so cheap on contracts.

NPC Buy Orders

• Not all loot is best sold at a trade hub. The most common example of this is loot that has fixed-price NPC buy orders for it, such as Sleeper blue loot, Overseer's Personal Effects, and Triglavian Survey Databases. These NPC buy orders can be found via the market window by searching for buy orders with round number ISK values and extremely large quantities and expiration times.
• Like other orders, NPC buy orders are displayed in the market window by region. This means that very close NPC buy order stations can simply not display due to being in a different region. An example is Jita, which has nearby CONCORD stations (for selling Overseer's Personal Effects and Triglavian Survey Databases) in Lonetrek, such as Vellaine V - Moon 2 - CONCORD Bureau 3 jumps from Jita, that don't show from Jita due to it being in a different region, The Forge.
• Blue loot can be sold at Hirtamon VII - Moon 6 - Zainou Biotech Production, only 2 jumps from Jita. The Amarr trade hub has blue loot orders right there in station.

Playing the Market

• Outside of some specific cases, it usually isn't worth the time to try playing the market, especially as a new explorer. Differences in buy and sell prices for exploration loot tend to be pretty slim, and time spent updating orders is time not spent exploring. As you become more experienced, a market alt (especially in Jita) can be a good investment for buying as well as selling things.
• Limited events such as Crimson Harvest and Winter Nexus tend to be great opportunities for earning ISK. However, the most lucrative event sites tend to be hotly contested. The Astero and Metamorphosis are good ships for high-end lowsec event sites due to their instawarp capabilities and slot layouts.
• It can be worthwhile to hold event loot such as SKINS or cerebral accelerators until after the event ends and supply dries up.

Navigation

Main Page: Navigating New Eden

Bookmarks

• Sites make for good bookmarks once they expire.
• Bookmark wormholes themselves, not their signatures. After jumping through a wormhole, you can center probes on yourself while at the exit in tight formation to quickly get the signature of the exit.
• Scanner probes can be bookmarked if they're on grid with you. Therefore, it's possible to use your probes to make on-grid perch bookmarks by scanning with the smallest pinpoint formation centered on your ship, and bookmarking the probe that shows up on grid with you.

Cloaking

• Be careful about leaving your ship cloaked in low or null for long stretches. Mobile Observatories aren't used much, but they can still decloak your ship after your stabilization timer runs out if someone does decide to anchor one. They're still easy to deal with by just decloaking and recloaking every now and then if you need to stay in a system for whatever reason and you see one going up.

Filaments

• Noise filaments will drop you in a mostly random nullsec system and are great for bypassing gatecamps and getting right to exploring. Pochven filaments are great for extracting loot, as are wormholes.

Gate Safety

• Don't warp gate to gate in low and null, especially with other players in local! Many players set up smartbomb or bubble camps along gate to gate routes to catch careless travelers. Even a covops cloak isn't guaranteed to protect you, since it's easy to drop a can to decloak anyone warping into a bubble directly from a gate. Taking the extra few seconds to bounce off a celestial can save your ship.
• If there's no celestial or other warpable object within dscan range of a gate, warp to the gate from an odd angle and make a bookmark within dscan range while warping. In lowsec, it can make sense to warp to an out-of-dscan gate at 100km to take a look. In null, there's not much point: if the gate is bubbled, you'll still be caught unless it's a drag bubble. However, warping at a weird angle will protect you from getting decloaked by a can or ship most of the time.
• Seeing a large fleet or bubbles on a gate doesn't mean that route's completely untenable. It's very possible that a fleet will move on after a short time, and crashing gates is often doable with a covops cloak. Just warp to the gate from an odd angle, carefully burn through the bubble if there is one, and burn out of any bubble on the other side. Eve is all about weighing risk, and navigation is no different.
• If a gate's clear, deactivate your cloak before jumping to give yourself a lower recloaking delay on the other side.

Nullifiers

• Interdiction nullifiers work during gate cloak (without breaking it). They don't work under ship cloak (outside of the brief period after activating a cloaking device when you can still use other modules).
• Nullifiers grant immunity to bubbles that were already deployed when the nullifier is activated. They don't grant immunity to bubbles that go up after the nullifier is activated.

Regions

• Some regions are quieter than others. For example, Catch is much safer than Stain and has the same Sansha relic sites.
• Region layout can be surprisingly important for exploration. To use the same example, Catch is fairly interconnected while Stain has long pipes that make it difficult to escape from hunters or avoid competing with other explorers for sites.

Scanning

Main Page: Scanning

Efficient Scanning

• If you get 2 connected dots while scanning, the signature will always be at the far dot. Otherwise, there wouldn't be 2 dots.
• If you get a 2-dimensional circle while scanning, the signature will usually be at the other side of the circle. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a circle.
• Move your probes in 2 dimensions at a time, not 3. Otherwise, you risk accidentally moving your probes far away from the signature.

Probe Formations

• Spread formation isn't really useful. Just use pinpoint for pretty much everything.

Signature Identification

• Pirate data and relic sites in known space will always be levels 1 through 4.
• Pirate data and relic sites in wormhole space will always be levels 1 through 3. Sleeper data and relic sites in wormholes will always be level 3.
• Drone data sites will always be levels 1 through 3.
• A level 5 data site in known space will always be a Superior Sleeper Cache.
• A level 5 data site in shattered wormhole space will be a Silent Battleground. A level 5 data site in a Sansha override shattered wormhole can also be a Superior Sleeper Cache.
• Ghost sites are normally level 3 data sites. Ghost sites in drone regions are level 1 combat sites with 4au spheres instead of 8au ones.
• Small 4au sphere signatures will always be combat sites outside of drone regions. In drone regions, they could be ghost sites.

Signature Location

• Signatures will almost always be within 4au of a celestial. The main exception is Sleeper caches, which tend to be between 5 and 8au. This means that signatures far away from anything else in system, or not on the main system plane, are usually Sleeper caches.

Skills and Implants

Main Page: Skills and Implants

• Eifyr and Co. 'Alchemist' Biology hardwiring implants apply their effects upon booster consumption, so it's possible to consume a booster and switch to a different clone while retaining the increased duration.
• The 2 most valuable attribute implant sets for explorers are Virtues, which increase probe strength, and Nomads, which reduce align time.
• As with ships, don't use implants you can't afford to lose. The exception to this is lowsec, where it's pretty easy to escape with your pod due to the lack of bubbles and pods instawarping.
• The Archaeology skill is generally more useful than Hacking for new players due to relic sites being more valuable than datas for the most part. Training each skill to 5 unlocks their respective T2 analyzers, which offer massive boosts to hacking ability.
• Remapping should be considered carefully due to all the random skills new players find themselves training. That said, Intellegence is the most useful attribute for scanning skills, followed by Memory.
• The AIR program provides a lot of skillpoints, as does using a referral link. Referral links can be retroactively applied by existing accounts. Since the account providing the referral gets rewards, you can use your main account's referral link to create another alpha account, then retroactively use the alpha account's referral link on your main account. That way, both accounts will get rewards for omega or PLEX purchases on either, even if you don't end up using the 2nd account.

Sites

Main Page: Sites

Dronelands

• The 8 drone regions don't have regular pirate relic or data sites. Instead, they have special drone data sites that drop Integrated drone BPCs, which can escalate to more valuable sites that drop Augmented drone BPCs. Drone data sites in Cobalt Edge and Outer Passage have the best potential escalation loot from Augmented Amarr drones. Drone data sites in Malpais and Oasa have the 2nd-best escalation loot from Augmented Caldari drones. Drone data sites in Etherium Reach and Perrigen Falls tend to be the most consistently profitable, as their non-escalation level 1 data sites can drop 10-run Augmented Gallente and Mining/Ice Harvesting drone BPCs. The Kalevala Expanse and The Spire tend to have the worst loot due to Minmatar Augmented drones being low-value.
• It's possible to run the same drone data escalation twice by cargo scanning the cans and looting the 2 with the best value (leaving 1 to keep the site up), then coming back after downtime when the site refreshes and looting it again.

Site Efficiency

• If you create a fleet just for yourself, you can tag cans with numbers and letters to mark high-value cans. This is very useful for Sleeper caches, which tend to have a lot of low-value depot cans in a room.
• Sansha relic sites have the best loot potential, followed by Guristas.
• Nullsec electrical storms spawn relic sites from all pirate factions.
• The most valuable loot tends to also be the most compact. Don't be afraid to jettison or just not loot bulky, inexpensive items.
• Bookmark your mobile depot if running a Sleeper cache. The site despawns in 2 minutes if there isn't an uncloaked ship inside it.

Site Safety

• Don't burn between cans in a site! Instead, make a bookmark at least 150km from the site as you're leaving warp and warp from the bookmark to each can. This reduces the time you're vulnerable for and makes you harder to catch. It also speeds up the site if the cans are far apart.
• Normally, it's dangerous to run sites with players in local. However, it's pretty safe to run sites with players in local if you know where all the players are and what they're doing. You can warp around a system to find players out in space on dscan, and check player structures to see how many players are docked. If you've accounted for all players in system and they're doing something innocuous like ratting or sitting in a citadel, it's usually safe to run sites provided the players don't have extensive killboard histories of killing explorers. If there's a player in local who you can't find, odds are they're sitting cloaked somewhere and it's a good idea for you to move on.
• Player killboard histories can be a good indicator of whether they hunt explorers, but aren't always accurate, especially for alts.
• Cherry-picking sites is bad due to it preventing the site from respawning elsewhere in the region. However, cargo scanners are still useful for completing the best cans first in case a hostile enters system. Cargo scanners are also valuable for ghost sites and Sleeper caches.

Miscellaneous

• To make Triglavian roaming NPCs no longer attack you, just destroy a random weak rogue drone in Pochven. Long-range ships like rail Cormorants work well for this.
• The less well-connected a wormhole is, the safer it tends to be. A wormhole with a hisec static connection 5 jumps from Jita will be more dangerous to run sites in than a C3 with a single connection to a deep nullsec system.
• Bring 16 probes with you. That way, your probe launcher will automatically reload as you're scanning with your first flight of 8 probes.
• Secure Containers have more capacity than volume when assembled. So having an assembled Small Secure Container in your cargohold will take up 100 cubic meters, but give you 110 cubic meters of storage capacity inside it.

Useful Tools

• Allison is an indispensable copilot while exploring, and will notify you of any recent kills in your current system, or of gate-camps in surrounding systems. Allison can also help plan your route through both known space and wormhole space through wormholes traversed by other signaleers.
• zKilloard can be used to see recent kills in a system or by a specific player.
• Dotlan can be used to plan your route or to help find systems or regions to explore. You can specify what information to show below each system, such as recent kills or recent jumps.
• EVE Gatecamp Check provides information about probable gatecamps along routes. Signal Cartel even has premium access to the service!
• EVE Metro is a scanning service for Pochven, similar to our Thera scanning service. Signal Cartel members have access to its features.

Useful Links

• Forcha Alendare's Tips and Tricks: Bookmarks and More by Mynxee
• Tips and Tricks - Useful Anomalies by Jurius Doctor by Katia Sae
• Shado's Exploration Profitability Analysis by Shado Step
• Out foxing the Foxes (How to survive hunters) by Emy Noxx
• Your Exploration Tips and Tricks by Arachnis
• An extensive collection of various exploration advice by K950/3P38 Sleeper Nexus