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Earning Isk Via Combat |
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Combat and PvP is a vital part of EVE, so it makes sense that people would want to combine it with earning ISK. Fortuntately, it is pretty easy to do so in a way that does not hinder your normal gameplay and is still fun. There are lots of options for earning ISK in combat. First, we will look at earning using NPCs (rats) and then we will look at earning using players (pirates) and last follow up with some special corporation notes.
Rats are all over EVE Online. You can find a listing of the major rat factions on the official EVE player guide, as well as where to find them and what their major goals are. In combat terms, there are not a lot of differences between the factions, except that as a general rule, those that you find in low sec space are going to be a higher "level" than those in higher sec areas. If you are planning on hunting rats, the quickest way to find them is usually to head to the nearest asteriod field.
Rats often appear here to challenge player miners, so besides looting ships and gaining the bounties on the rats (yes, there are usually NPC bounties on anything that shows up as red on your scanner) you may also be saving a gratful miners ship, who may decide to reward you in ISK or trade goods. Or, if they are not so grateful, you are usually far enough away from CONCORD in the belt, even in high sec space, that you can lock them down and demand payment or scrap their ship, if you lean towards the darker side of things.
Just remember to wait about 15 minutes before you venture to a CONCORD area again, otherwise you will be killed on sight. Also, you will still get a security hit from doing this in high sec space, so pick your battles carefully! You can also find rats by checking your scanner in a system and watching for any rat bases that appear. Sometimes these are part of a mission, and somtimes they are simply there for people to kill.
Either way you can head in there for a fairly steady spawn rate of bountied rats, though sometimes these rats do not drop loot as often, or else drop mission specific trash loot. If you get to the base and find another player there, you might want to ask if they are on a mission - they will not appreciate you stealing their kills and loot if they are.
A third method of finding rats is to visit random places in a system - usually planets or moons, not so close to civilisation especially in high sec areas - and watching for either a group of rats (this is often related to a mission, so watch for other players) or a rat base on your scanner. This method is highly inefficient, but it can be useful if you want to explore a particular system fully anyway, or if you can not leave for another system right away for one reason or another and are looking for a way to pass some time.
If you are looking for a little more excitment than just killing rats, plus better loot bounties usually, head to a deadspace complex. (see chapter 11 for deadspace strategies and locations) You can think of these as dungeons or instances in space - an area where warp does not function normally (though you can usually warp to a "safe" planet if you need to once inside) and you need to go through acceleration gates in order to progress from "room" to "room"
These provide a greater challenge than just grinding rats, tend to have at least some story line included with it, may have a mission attached to it providing even greater rewards, and you will find all kinds of bounties and loot inside. It is possible to make more ISK running deadspace complexs than any other rat strategy, though it is a larger time commitment and often a much higher risk to your ship. (Remember, rats will not pod kill you, so you are only risking a ship in these areas, unless you run across a player who does not want the compitition inside.)
Of course, if this all seems to be too much hassle, you can just skip those steps and buy your EVE ISK right away. However, when you do, be sure to check reviews and compare prices in order to make sure you get a good deal.
Another method we just breifly touched on is missions. When you are a new combat player you will probably want to run a lot of these, as they are at level 1 usually pretty short and have a decently high reward, not to mention pointing you in the right direction for hunting rats more often than not. However, the missions do not scale in EVE terribly well, so watch the local and corp channels for people complaining about particularly difficult or not worthwhile missions, and you may save yourself a ship or two.
Story line missions tend to be a lot more fun, plus will earn you large faction increases and generally more ISK. (a mission will be clearly marked as storyline in your journal, as well as tell you how many more story line missions are in that particular line)
Level two and three missions get progressively harder, of course, but the best ones start becoming available at level 4, where you can earn a large amount of ISK and will usually have a lot more fun doing so. If you enjoy doing missions at all, suffer through the 2 and 3 levels to get to 4 and up, it is worth it once you get there.
Should you prefer to earn ISK the traditional way, you will find this EVE Online guide to be a great help. It offers advice on various ISK-making methods and provides a lot of general hints for newbies and veteran EVE players.
There are other good and free resources available as well. There is a blog on buying Eve Online ISK. Additional there is are resources that can refer you to cheap Eve Online ISK or ISK-making guides.
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