Being a new pilot in Eve is tough, especially on the wallet. If you’re reading this, the chances are you’re looking at ways of making isk. If you’re doing security missions, or even mining (where you need to kill the belt rats), why not try salvaging?
What Do You Need to Salvage?
First thing’s first. As with everything else in Eve you need to get the salvaging skill. You get a 5% change per level of salvage and as you can see below, Alpha accounts can only go up to level 3.
Next, you need the Salvage I modules for your ship. Then, once you find a wreck you lock it up and press the salvage module!
Understanding How Salvaging Works
As an alpha you’re already limited to salvage 3, which is only 15% bonus.
So you’re efficiency is going to be based on base access chance + any bonuses you have.
Base Access Chance
- small wrecks (frigs and dessies): 30%
- medium wrecks (cruisers and battlecruisers): 20%
- large wrecks (battleships): 10%
- advanced wrecks (wormhole npcs, faction npcs, t2 player wrecks): 0%
- sleeper wrecks: -20%
If you have Salvage 3 and you’re looting basic small npc wrecks in level 1 and 2 missions, you have a 45% chance of salvaging the wreck.
Ways to Get More Bonus as an Alpha
- salvage tackle rig:
- T1 rig = 10%
- T2 rig = 15%
- Poteque ‘Prospector’ Salvaging SV-905 (slot 9 implant): 5%
There is also a ship called the Noctis that gives a bunch of bonuses such as a bonus in tractor beam speed and range as well as a bonus to the salvage cycle time. However, it doesn’t give any extra bonus to your salvage chance percentage.
Ways to Salvage While Doing Missions
When you’re first starting out with security missions, get yourself into a Destroyer. There are several that have 8 high slots.
- Coercer
- Cormorant
- Catalyst
- Thrasher
7 Guns and a Salvage Module
A salvage 1 module on average goes for about 100,000 isk (more or less depending on where in New Eden you buy it) so starting out you might want to go the route of 7 guns and 1 salvager. Alternatively, you can go 8 guns and carry 1 salvager in the hold.
When you get to your mission location, press ctrl + b to bookmark the location. After you’ve killed everything, before returning to the mission agent, go to a star base or player structure and change out 1 or more guns with salvagers.
Only going with 1 salvager does mean you have to spend more time salvaging, but you can buy more salvagers when you earn more isk and then you can change them out so you can salvage faster.
Mobile Depo + Changing Out All Salvagers
Alternatively, you can carry a mobile depo in your cargo hold and set it up after you’ve killed off the NPCs (takes 1 minute) then use the fitting option to change your guns for your salvagers.
Just remember when you set it up and change into your salvagers to scoop your mobile depo. While it is cheaper than an MTU (mobile tractor unit), you probably won’t have an income to continuously buy new ones. So don’t litter and remember to scoop!
A Few Other Basic Salvaging Tips
There’s a few more tips so you can salvage faster and get to making isk.
- save up for a MTU (mobile tractor unit). Drop it when you get into a mission room and let it pull all the wrecks to it while you’re fighting. Now instead of flying from group of wrecks to groups of wrecks, they’re all pulled to 1 place.
- if there’s only 1 or 2 wrecks from a mission, you may make more isk per hour by leaving them and just turning in the mission.
- you can salvage YELLOW wrecks w/o getting in trouble with Concord. In other words, you can go loot other people’s wrecks without any consequence.
