EVE Evolved: Mission-running top five tips, part 2
Tip #4: Loot and Salvaging
A portion of the income from combat missions comes in the form of salvage and loot from the NPC wrecks. When you get to level 4 missions, this portion becomes quite large due to the battleship NPCs dropping battleship sized loot and plenty of salvage components. Loot has historically been sold or reprocessed into minerals for sale but items that refine into a lot of minerals will take up a lot of cargo space. This makes looting difficult during the mission, a problem which is further compounded by the fact that both tractor beams and salvagers fit in valuable high slots that most mission-running ships need for weapons.
There are three main schools of thought on looting and salvaging in missions and it's up to you to decide which is best for you. The first method is to ignore loot and salvage entirely, instead blitzing through the missions to gain bounties, standings and loyalty points as fast as possible. The second is to use a ship which naturally has high slots free like a marauder or drone ships like the Dominix and Ishtar that don't rely on high slots for the bulk of their damage. You can then fit a few tractors and salvagers to help clean up the mission while running it. The third method is very popular but not always cost-effective on time. Rather than salvaging during the mission, you can set up a specialised salvaging ship and return after the mission is complete to loot and salvage the wrecks. Destroyers and cruisers are perfect for this job, having plenty of high slots and high maximum speeds. If you do this, remember to bookmark at least one wreck in each stage of the mission as once it's handed in, the deadspace complex disappears and the wrecks are left floating in space.
Tip #5: Skills
In addition to the skills required to fly your ship of choice, it's important to train the relevant support skills your ship fitting requires. While level 1 and 2 missions are relatively easy, level 3 and 4 missions will require careful consideration of your ship's tank and your support skills. There's no sense in rushing to get into a battleship to run level 4 missions unless you've got the skills to make good use of it. Armour tanking ships should have Hull Upgrades 4 to use tech II armour hardeners and repairers. Similarly, shield tanking ships should have tactical shield manipulation level 4 to use tech II active shield hardeners and all other shield skills should be trained up well. Gunnery or missile skills to improve damage are also important as they help speed up the mission-running process.
There are also a number of social skills designed specifically for mission-runners. Training Connections increases your effective standings with friendly corporations by 4% per level, Social increases standings gains by 5% per level and Negotiation increases agent pay by 5% per level. There's also a set of specialist agent skills, each of which increases agent loyalty point rewards by a further 5% per level. Each agent is affected by two of these specialist skills, adding up to a significant bonus in mission rewards when trained up. Details of which type of agent uses which specialist skills are available in this handy table on the official EVE wiki.
Summary:
There's a lot more to missions than what I've been able to fit into this guide. While EVE is most often lauded for its PvP and sandbox style gameplay, I recommend that everyone tries missions now and then. Using the information in this three part guide and the plethora of useful online resources available, it won't be long until you've mastered the art of mission-running in EVE Online.
Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at massively.com. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you want to message him, send him an e-mail at brendan.drain AT weblogsinc DOT com.