Money, money, money: tell us about your favourite ISK-making activity!

There are many ways to earn ISK in EVE Online, but the thrill of collecting loot is incomparable for me. Since I started, this part of the wreckage has been an important source of income, and a very satisfying way to make money. I know it's not the most efficient or lucrative, but it's a lot of fun looting wrecked ships and searching for valuable items, it always leaves me wanting more haha.

Looting is simple, but I've learned a few strategies over time that have helped me increase my earnings and reduce the risks. I think it's essential to know where to look, as well as when to act and how to escape if things don't go according to plan. It's important to choose the right place, as low-sec and null-sec are excellent places to find valuable goods after battles. To do this, it's always a good idea to keep an eye on the wars, they'll show you where the most debris will be. Some tools are also very useful, such as having an agile ship (I like Astero, for example); monitoring the presence of enemies with D-Scan and Local Chat; as well as using MTU, which helps you to be faster and expose yourself less. And as I've already said, you need to have a strategy to monitor the battle sites, know when to act, wait for the site to be empty, have already thought about how to escape... You never know exactly what you're going to find, it's very unpredictable, it's always an adventure.

If you like adrenaline and tension, I highly recommend it! Go and experience EVE as the unique game that it is.

When I saw the title of the bounty, I admit it immediately came to mind: exploration. Hunting relic sites in nullsec or wormhole space is certainly what I enjoy most when I think about it, perhaps because I don't know what will happen on my journey, there's always something unpredictable, the tension of hacking containers, discovering new places and finding valuable loots.

How I do it: I always choose an exploration ship, it depends on the level of risk and benefit you want to take haha. I equip the ship with a cloaking device and a relic analyzer, try to scan signatures and prioritize relic sites. I find the hacking minigame very intuitive and it has elements of strategy as well as possible hostilities nearby, adding another dynamic to the minigame.

Big money! Big prizes! I love it!

Almost all of my income comes from Incursion-running. I got started in 2013, and I’ve pretty much never stopped. It’s been my one go-to activity (aside from running Agency events) for the last decade, and it continues to this day. No matter what I do in EVE Online, I always come back to Incursions. I even gave up null-sec to go back to incursions, and I’ve loved it since day one. Truth be told, I’ve made more money running high-sec Incursions than I did flying a supercarrier in a null-sec alliance.

Incursions are high-end player-versus-environment sites wherein fleets engage Sansha’s Nation forces across different types of scenarios. Some call for dropping special ore in a refinery to trigger an explosive chain reaction. Others call for evacuating civilians caught in the crossfire. The toughest sites pit you against notorious “battle towers” which must be removed for CONCORD to retake control of the region. Once the site is complete, each fleet member is paid a fixed amount across the fleet. Loyalty Points are awarded after the mothership is taken out. Good fleets and communities will find ways to efficiently maximize their execution to increase their payouts. The best fleets can rake in $200,000,000-$300,000,000 per hour. In a single afternoon, a given pilot can make enough money to fund their PLEX investments. Incursions have the advantage of relative consistency and interest from largely stable communities that fly regularly. Fleets consist of anywhere between 10 and 40 pilots, with leadership boosts, logistical support, and specific roles.

I’ve flown with a myriad of groups over the years, but the one commonality between all of them is that everyone is out for the same thing: money, killing targets, completing sites, and having fun while doing it. I can’t ever recall a time when a fleet has been compromised by an insider threat. If someone were to undermine the fleet, everyone (including the perpetrator) would not be paid. The communities do a great job of policing themselves as well. Anyone caught slacking off is typically removed from the fleet, and with high demand to get into the fleets, members are ready to step up usually at a moment’s notice. Waitlists can sometimes keep a pilot waiting for a few hours.

Every community has a different doctrine and standards, but most require a battleship, Nestor, or T2 Logistics cruiser with well-developed skills. EVE Rookies, Three Letter Acronym, and Warp To Me are just a few of a number of communities which fly Incursions and have their doors open to newcomers.

The best way to get involved with the incursion communities is to check out the Content – Incursions default channel, as well as the “Incursion Public” channel which provides a list of all active communities across all time zones.

Incursions require some refined and developed skills, and the startup costs can be steep, but a pilot will make all of the investment back in due time, especially if they volunteer for various fleet roles and pursue multiple ship types (i.e., logistics and combat ships).

Personally, I’ve been flying Incursions since Summer 2013. I was once a fleet commander for the Ditanian Fleet, and I have flown as both Shields and Armor, along with Logistics, Drone Control, and Combat. Flying Incursions and interacting with the communities have helped me earn my special callsign “Steak Sauce,” saw me sing Pavarotti’s “Ave Maria” and Kung Fury’s “True Survivor,” and even led me to get accepted into TEST Alliance. Through Incursions, I help fund my corporation’s operations. The joke amongst my corporation is that the tax revenue I bring in from Incursions is enough to find several corporate-level operations alone! It even got to the point that when the alliance executor realized just how much money my corporation was making off my Incursion taxes, he exempted me from null-sec call-to-arms fleets so I could keep the revenue stream flowing!

I feel like Incursions fit my role as protector of high-sec space, resisting Sansha’s invasion, keeping people safe, and making a lot of money while doing so. Incursions keep me flying with friends. They help me make a lot of ISK, and they keep me logging into the game and helping to protect this great universe we all call home.

My personal favourite is DED farming, this essentially means hitting every high-sec anomaly in a quiet area, in search of Escalations, which is where a site will spawn an Escalation which is normally a DED (Concord) complex such as a 3/10 or 4/10 and in these sites, you can loot Deadspace Items which are often worth hundreds of millions of ISK.

You of course can also get Faction rats (npcs) which spawn at the end of the anomaly and will drop ammo/faction tags and sometimes faction modules, if you run the drone sites you can get Sentient Drones which spawn at the end and drop drone components or AI chips.

Below is a 4/10 Scout outpost video we did, which dropped 300+ Million ISK in loot.

Mission Running and lots of Loot hahaha.

To give you some context, since I know that my alternative is not one of the most popular: I've been an MMORPG player all my life, and the activities I most enjoy doing in this style of game are quests. I can't see an exclamation mark on the map and I'm off to fulfill the NPC's request hahaha, and this is no different in EVE. When I finished my career missions, Mission Running was released, and you can be sure that I started doing a lot of them for various NPC agents to earn ISKs. Most of them involved combat missions (since that's another thing I really like about the game), so it ended up being a great pastime at this stage of the game. It's not my focus, but carrying out these missions also gives me loyalty points for the NPC corporation, which helps me earn some special items, so knowing this might be a style for other players!

Plus, as an extra, I love looting hahaha. They're often items of little value, but I'm always filling my inventory with loot from enemies in battle. Every now and then some valuable things come along that are worth it, so it's my 2nd most fun ISK profit option that I end up doing even during NPC quests, it's practically a combo!