Finding and Taking Hidden Treasure

Edited on 10/10/2008 to add several tips and clarify a few things.

Piracy can be an expensive career choice...at least for me, so far. I've never liked teetering on the edge of an empty wallet. Fortunately, exploration rewards go a long way toward funding that career, and are fairly abundantly available in low sec. This post shares my expertise--such as it is--in finding the hidden treasure that is sitting there for the taking in New Eden's low sec exploration sites. I'll touch on the impact of skills on exploration success, preparation for a low sec explo crawl, how I find and work sites, what kind of payout I tend to get, survival tips, and a list of resources for would-be explorers. With any luck, your eyes won't glaze over before I get to the end of this long post.

Background. My partner (AKA my carebear alt) Sey has been doing exploration for well over a year now--it's her specialty. She has found hundreds of hidden asteroid belts, Radar sites (which yield invention decryptors, datacores, various types of building components, skill books, and the occasional BPC), and Magnetometric sites (these are rare yet almost always yield nothing more than everyday salvage, so I tend to skip them). Until recently, she worked exclusively in high sec, but with my move to Essence, it became viable for us to work together to do the low sec sites. Eventually, I hope Sey can work these sites alone in her Ishtar but she's about a month off from the skills needed to do that well.

Note: High sec Radar sites are comfortably doable with one small T2 drone but have a mediocre-to-crappy payout compared to the often quite lucrative payout from low sec sites.

Skills Are Key. Exploration is a skill-intensive career. Of Sey's nearly 6 million skill points in Science, a lot are exploration-specific:

• Astrometrics 4 (required to use Sift probes, the necessary last step in the scanning process)
• Astrometric Triangulation 4 (reduces scan deviation 10%/level, for more accurate hits)
• Astrometric Pinpointing 4 (increases scan strength 5%/level, for better chances of a hit)
• Signal Acquistion 5 (reduces scan time 10%/level)
• Science 5 (required to train Hacking)
• Hacking 4 (required to use a Codebreaker module; works sort of like a salvager to access cans in Radar sites; chance of access increases 5%/level)
• Archeology 4 (required to access cans in Magnetometric sites)

These skills, plus Cov Ops 5, implants and a cov ops ship fitted with gravity capacitor rigs plus Sisters Scan Probe Launcher, give Sey a great scan time of about 85 seconds as well as a decent chance of getting a good hit on any given analysis cycle. (With a Recon Probe Launcher, her scan time is about 24 seconds...watch out, you mission runners!)

Preparation. I figure we can work two or three Radar sites within four hours. To that end, Sey stocks her cov ops with 25 Multispectral Frequency probes (to scan systems for the presence of a Radar signature), plus Radar probes (30 Quests, 2 Pursuits, 6 Combs, and 15 Sifts). With Sey's skills, she almost never has to use Pursuits. Any hit she gets from analyzing with Quests will usually result in an accuracy that will allow her to go right to Combs and sometimes even straight to Sifts.

Note: If you haven't deduced it aleady, let me clarify: the four different Radar probes have differing scan sensitivities and ranges, from Quests (less sensitivity, 4AU range) down to Sifts (more sensitivity, .5AU range). They are deployed in a process of stepwise refinement to zero in on the precise location of a hidden site.

Meanwhile, I select a route and fit a cruiser for PVE with tank and damage suitable to the flavor of spawns we'll encounter (making sure to leave room for a cloak--don't leave home without it). I have had equally good results using my Rupture, Cynabal, and Muninn. However, I tend to favor the Cynabal simply because I'm loathe to risk it in PVP and like the idea that it has a useful niche. Plus it's just sexy damn fun to fly. Once we're ready, Sey invites me to fleet and we set out.

Tip: Fit an afterburner because microwarpdrives don't work in Radar sites (nor any of the other types of hidden sites, as far as I recall or know).

Finding the Treasure. In each system along our route, I safe up and cloak while Sey drops a Multispectral Frequency probe, selects Cosmic Signature as the scan group (and makes sure Cosmic Anomaly is NOT selected), and analyzes to see if there are any sites to be found.

Tip: Multispecs return a list of the cosmic signatures (Gravimetric, Radar, Magnetometric, Ladar) found in the system, but do not indicate how many of each are there. Generally, there is one hidden site for each type listed. However, sometimes--especially with Unknowns--there will be two.

If the Multi says nothing is found, we move on to the next system. If the Multi returns a Radar sig result, Sey destroys the Multi, sets Radar Quest probes at planets and bookmarks to ensure that all planets are well-covered (exploration sites only ever spawn within 4AU of a planet), and begins analyzing. Eventually, she will get a result at the end of a scan cycle. The result will show a deadspace (all exploration sites are deadspaces), with some value for accuracy. Sey will warp to the hit, bookmark it (so she can go back to it if she happens to get disconnected), destroy the Quest probe covering that location, then deploy the particular Radar probe indicated by the accuracy of the hit. Once the process has refined to Sift probes, a hit with an accuracy of 0 means the site has been found and she can warp right to it and immediately bookmark it. Now we are ready to work the site.

Tip: Only Unknown plexes have acceleration gates; the rest you warp right into.

Getting the Treasure. Once Sey is in the site, she'll wait--if there are no rats, stasis towers or other things threatening her--so I can warp to her at 10K. Usually, she remains cloaked so any rats, etc., don't even see her. But if she gets decloaked and targeted, she'll warp to a safe and drop a bookmark in a can for me. Then I can go to the site and clear the initial threats. Then Sey warps back in and the dance of hack-and-spawn begins. You didn't think there'd only be a single spawn, did you? Oh no, my dears, not a chance! Depending on the site, rats may spawn when you get near certain structures, begin hacking a can, or open a hacked can and attempt to take its contents. I keep Sey at a range of 6K as she approaches each can (there are 5-8 cans to hack in a site, sometimes more than 100km from each other). If anything spawns, she warps out and I deal with it. Spawns are usually varying numbers of frigates and possibly a handful of tough cruisers. Sometimes it's a swarm of 30 or so, sometimes just a few. Sometimes there's a trigger for a secondary spawn, sometimes not. Once the rats are dead, Sey returns, hacks, loots, tags the can to indicate it has been looted (these cans don't self-destruct when emptied, so it can be hard to tell which have been hacked or not if you don't tag them on the overview) and we move to the next can. The trick is, once you begin hacking, a site may despawn if all parties warp out. So I always stay in the site, while Sey leaves as necessary to protect her fragile but very expensively fitted cov ops. In this manner, we work the site until all the cans have been hacked and looted. I haven't been salvaging and looting the wrecks, but that's something I may consider doing in the future for sites close to home.

Tip: Once a site has been completed and you warp out, it will despawn but if you've bookmarked wrecks, you can go back to salvage them--just as with missions.

Tip: Despawned exploration sites respawn randomly in the same region (or perhaps constellation, this is unclear) within a random timeframe (some seem to think two hours), so it's worth it to re-check systems where you've found nothing recently.

Payout Potential. Based on my experience, the payout from low sec Radar sites ranges from about 25M to 200M or more ISK. The average is 50-75M ISK. Spawns (and their bounties) are similar to Level 2 or 3 missions, so given the time it takes to work a site and the difficulty of the spawns, it is a very good payout. If you get a more rare BPC or skillbook, it can be payday that gives you the giggles for the rest of the night! Low sec is risky so it only makes sense that the reward should offset your potential for loss. How frequent are Radar sites? In quieter areas of low sec, I'd estimate I find one Radar signature for every five systems scanned. From time to time, I get really lucky and there are TWO radar sites in a single system.

Survival Tips. Surviving in low sec while working radar sites isn't much different than surviving in a safespot. Here are some tips:

• Fit a cloak. Fit a cloak. Fit a cloak. By the way, gas clouds will prevent you from cloaking once you move into a Radar site past its "warp to 0" edge.
• Watch Local at all times. If I see Local spike, I warp Sey out of the site then back cloaked and let her sit in it (to keep it from despawning) while I warp out to a safe and cloak. We wait until the coast is clear before continuing. If I just see the random newcomer here and there, I keep an eye on them until they either leave or stay long enough to make me paranoid. Then I consider whether I need to safe up.
• Assume pirates will be hunting you (especially if you are a blogger and people have some idea what you're up to in EVE!).
• Keep your scanner open and check it every 30 seconds for ships and recon or exploration probes (yes, exploration probes are quite useful for scanning out ships in safespots or deadspace--if the ship's location can be narrowed to within 4AU of a planet with the directional; your ships in an exploration site will be in exactly such a location and hence susceptible to being probed using exploration probes--especially if you have drones out).
• Put drones away when not actually using them; it makes you harder for others to probe out.
• Maintain your focus! It's easy to get confused and tell the wrong character to warp or take another action if you are--as I am--running two clients on one computer. For this reason, I often minimize all chats but Local to cut down on distractions.
• Set up multiple clients for easy management. I have a 22" monitor. I run my clients windowed at a size that lets me position one against the upper right corner and one against the lower left corner and still see Local, both ship readouts, and the overview all at the same time. This is critical for maintaining situational awareness.

Resources. There are plenty of exploration resources out there, including the in-game tutorial, EVE-O Missions & Explorations forum, and various guides. There is an Exploration Channel, but I cannot personally recommend it because too many times I have seen inexperienced players' questions met with rude, elitist responses. My favorite guide for clear explanations of the use of probes and mechanics for their deployment is the one by Khajit Smitty. It's not the newest, but it's straightforward and remains current, as far as I know. Consider me a resource, too. If you have questions about exploration, I'm always happy to answer them either in-game or by email.