Exploration

If you prefer to work alone, then exploration might be your favoured option. Fly solo through system after system, scanning for the abandoned structures that can be looted for valuable materials. It’s a great chance to really hone your solo skills; in low or nullsec, avoiding gate camps and explorer hunters will teach you the importance of the d-scan and how to avoid the bad guys, and the occasional big score will make up for any losses.

Read the Brave Dojo's Guide to Exploration, which contains detailed explanation of the skills you'll need, the types of ships and fits you should use, and how to perform the two key aspects of exploration: scanning and hacking. For another, more personal look at exploration in nullsec, you can read Brick Hunter's guide to exploration.

If you're starting off in High Sec, you will have less to worry about in terms of random encounters with other players, but correspondingly smaller rewards from the exploration sites.

When exploring it is best to use a tool to help you record where you've been and what you've found. In Brave Empire we use Eveeye. It has a little bit of a learning curve, but once you've surfed it, the value of the tool reveals itself. Ensure you select to share data with the "Cloud Service" and "Shared with Alliance" when setting up the tool. Ask leadership or a mentor for help if you get stuck.

Video on how to use Eveeye

When using corp bookmarks for Wormholes in conjunction with Eveeye. Please use the following simple standards.

• * (Star) - Start a BM with this if the WH leads towards Nikh, Oishami or Brah. "Follow the stars home"
• ! - Use this to mark something as end of life, or danger
• NC - "Not Clear" add this to the end of Gas cloud bookmarks, this ensures people know there is likely rats on grid
• CLR - "Clear" The gas cloud has been cleared of rats and is safe to warp to
• C1, C2, C3 …. etc for WHs over the J name, if there are multiple of the same type, then add the sig after it.
• System name or HS/LS/NS for empire/null exits

Examples:

• * Brah (a WH that leads back to our home WH Brah)
• * Nikh (a WH that leads home to Nikh)
• XGC-456 - Barren Reservoir - NC! (Means the gas site has not been cleared, there may be rats on grid, exclamation mark denotes danger)
• ! C3 (The C3 hole is end of life, exclamation mark still used as danger/warning)
• STF C2 (first three letters of the signature before the hole, especially useful when there is multiple holes of the same type)
• LS Abha (LS hole to Abha)
• * C2 (This denotes a C2 hole that forms part of the chain leading back home)

You can also add notes to signatures in Eveeye, also very useful to share information on things.

NOTE: Make sure to Bookmark the actual wormhole and not the Wormhole signature. Bookmarking the wormhole means people can warp to 0 avoiding a lot of danger. Bookmarking the sig leads to deaths as it will bring you ~10km from the wormhole.

Everywhere! Exploration is probably the activity that will see you roam the furthest in EVE, as you search through system after system for elusive data or relic sites to loot. In a small, nimble ship outfitted with a cloak, you can easily dip into low-sec and nullsec with ease, increasing the possibility of finding a big score to bring home.

The materials you obtain from exploration are used in the manufacture of items like rigs, so will fetch a good price on the market (if you don't want to start manufacturing yourself). You can either sell them to one of the alliance's buyback services, or haul them to a market hub system.

Sometimes, one may stumble upon a good farming wormhole system while exploring the w-space.

This section demonstrates steps to safely scan and determine if you have found a farming wormhole, a temporary playground in relative safety.

Remember there is no absolute safety in a wormhole system. Regular use of the direction scanner and a cloaky ship are a must.

1. Once a wormhole signature is scanned down, warp to 0km
2. Check the wormhole code. if the code is K162, it has been opened from the other side by someone.
3. Enter the wormhole and check if there are any structures like citadels, refineries, or engineering complexes. If there are any structure, warp cloaked at 100km to each one to see if they are online and have people in them. If there are people or the structure is online, the system is considered occupied.
4. If all of them are offline, you may be in for a big space firework. The job can be too big for a single toon to carry out, and there may be diplo issues with the aggression. Please consult the leadership before you lite that firework. If you are not interested on lighting things on fire, move to the next step.
5. If there are no structures, the next step will be searching for the control towers. You may need to jump to celestials to scan them down using Directional scanner.
6. Any control towers that are online indicates there are residents in the system.
7. Rarely, you may be able to find offline control towers with hanger arrays or ships floating around. You can comeback with your pod to steal the ships, blow up the hanger to loot them, etc.
8. Now that it is determined that there are no obvious signs of residents, the system needs to be scanned down. Main objects are the number of Wormhole Signatures. once scanned DO NOT INITIATE WARP TO WORMHOLES!!*
9. Open Anoik.is website and search for the current system that you are in. It will explain how many static wormholes the current system has.
10. If the number of Wormholes in the system is exactly one more than the number of static in Anoik.is, the system can be used for a farming ground.
11. Use Anoik.is and zKillboard to check the recent activity. This will not guarantee that there are no threat but it will give more context to determine the potential threat level. Any activities within last 2 days could mean the static wormholes may still be open.

If all of the conditions pass, you can assume that the system is good for farming, whether that is mining, huffing or ratting.

Note that the safety of a wormhole system that is connected to another high traffic system can be compromised very easily. If you can put a scout on the only entry you have searched, you can manage the risk easily.

*There are multiple schools of thoughts on how a wormhole opens up to the other side. Some believe it will have a chance to open to the other side once the wormhole has less than fixed life left, while others think it will not open if it was never interacted by warping to it. This guide is written based on an assumption that the wormhole will not open by itself if it was never interacted with (e.g. initiating a warp to it).

• EVE University Exploration article
• Alpha exploration guide
• Exploration Loot Table