Now, with the Crimson Harvest event going on for a couple of days, I've made some great progress. I ended up testing out more of the combat sites. As I expected, I preferred the exploration sites for the drops and just enjoyment of running them.

Class 1 Sites

Just for some fun, I wanted to try out some Class 1 Biocybernel sites. Since you can only fly the basic tier 1 frigates, I went with my favorite, the Punisher. I ended up just using my standard dual repair one I had sitting in Jita.

The downside is that the ship was in Jita. While I could have gone out to my local market and bought everything I needed for it. I felt that I could enjoy a long trip back. I have a jump clone set up in Jita just for these reasons.

What I was not expecting was just how many of the class 1 sites already have someone farming in them, as I started flying back to where I'm based out of after picking up my punisher.

The good news is it’s easy to check if someone is already running the site. Once you land on the gate to enter it. You can just open up D-scan and bring its distance down to the minimum. If anyone appears on it with wrecks of the ships on the site. It’s being run.

There is also some other good news. There was a recent game patch that fixed it, so if someone else enters your site. It won’t just auto fail. This was no shock happening, as there would now be a person outside of the inner ring you need to stay in till the final boss spawn.

After a few jumps, I ended up finding my first class 1 site that was open. You need to sit in these sites, clearing them till the timer hits 600. Assuming you are still alive and have not felt. The final spawn is where most of the ISK you can make from these sites will drop.

The punisher with tier 2 fittings performed amazingly in these. These class 1 sites are meant to be easy, and with my fitting, they were quite overkill. The only time I felt like I needed to turn on both of my armor repairs was when I took out canisters that deal area-of-effect damage. That thing tore up my punisher. I should have made sure I was on the other side of the tiny arena before shooting it.

While I did take out many of the optional Automated Extraction Shuttles that show up and warp off if you don’t kill them in time. They were mostly dropping just 200k-300k ISK worth of loot. If I were ahead of the spawns and kill them. If I were falling behind, I'd just let them escape.

Once you survive long enough, you get the Squall spawn. While this thing did hit hard enough that I turned on both of my armor repairs. It was not needed. I was just being extra safe as its misses were doing a bit of damage per cycle.

Standard loot seemed to be around 3-5 million ISK. That was, unless you got a decent booster to drop as well. I think my best run out of these class 1 sites was around 15 million ISK. Not too bad. I suddenly see why so many are now running class 1.

Crimson Gauntlet

These are the bigger sites you can run in high-security space. Every time I'd check in on one, there was a group of people running them. I was also kind of ignoring them, as there was a lot of ganking in the first couple of days of the event until some changes were made.

Finally, while out running some exploration sites. I found a system loaded not only with the Crimson Gauntlets that I want to run for loot and to get some event points. There were also Tetrimon Bases. While I would not get any points for them, the plan was to run as many of both sites as I could.

This also ended up being close enough where I could get my Paladin. Now, as I was about to learn. This was the wrong ship for this kind of site. There would be far too many frigates that loved to pop drones that also warp scrammed, webbed, and drained capacitor. This would end up being a massive issue.

As far as the damage I'd take and the amount of capacitor draining I'd have to deal with. The Paladin did quite well on that front. This thing tanks like a champ, and I have some protection on the ship from draining.

While my Paladin can deal some massive damage. It first has to hit its target. If it can’t, I'm stuck using some weak drones. Usually, the drones can mop up any issues I have. These sites, however, love to just kill drones.

I kind of knew things might not go great if I jumped into the next room once I cleared the first waves. I, however, wanted to see what these were all about. It also started to make more sense why, when I did check on these sites in my cloak exploration ship, I'd see player wrecks.

While I did bring some key cards I looted while doing exploration that would allow me to jump to the final room. I was saving them for the rest of the sites in the system if I felt they were needed. Otherwise, I wanted to sell them for 5-7 million ISK each.

The next room really starts to give me that feeling that I'm pushing my luck. At this point, many of my drones were into armor damage. I’d even go to lose some as well before the game would unlock, so I could move forward.

I ended up unlocking the gate, which did not require a full clear. Along with killing the frigates that had me scrammed, so I could not warp out. Once they were taken care of, I bailed on my first attempt.

I went back to repair and replace with some extra drones I had laying around. It ended up being a good thing I did. As I'd need almost every single drone, I'd have with me to just survive.

I clear out the next room and make it to the final. At this point, I'm getting low on drones. The ones I have left are almost all dead. I have two ships that have my scrambled, so I can’t warp out. I have no idea how many more waves are remaining.

There are also now enough frigates on me that while they can’t capacitor drain a lot. I know I'm no longer capacitor stable. Thankfully, that was not a big deal. I could turn off my guns if needed, since they could not hit things anyway, and still keep repairs running when needed.

As soon as I noticed a battleship warp in, I switched over and turned back on my armor repair. I ended up killing it rather quickly. Since my Paladin has a tractor beam module on it ends up pulling the battleship's wreck towards me to loot. It only had 7 million in loot.

After the battleship died, a decloaked object showed up. Chances are that is where the real loot from the site is. However, with ten frigates all having me webbed and scrammed. I was going nowhere fast.

I was also more or less out of drones at this point. While I had some hammerheads with me that can take more damage and deal more damage. My ship lacks the drone bandwidth to a group of them. So, they end up being my last resort as I can use one of them at a time.

At this point, I can’t warp out. I’m taking enough damage that I need to cycle my repairs once in a while. Outside of the random, lucky hit once in a blue moon with my lasers. I’m not going to be killing anything.

Making it even worse. Moments after I call my drones out of the drone bays, the frigates start to switch to attacking my drones again. From what little remains of my drones, I'm having to send them out. They are at best getting one hit before I must call them back and hope I don’t lose what I have left.

At this point, I think I'm stuck. There are a couple of ways to try and get out of this situation. It’s not looking good. Downtime was like 10 hours away, and there was no way I wanted to sit here to manage my ship to survive till then.

I tried putting out some calls for help to friends. None of them, however, could get online. I was going to have to get myself out of this situation. It took forever to take out the two frigates that were keeping me from warping out. As soon as they were dead, I warped out, leaving my drones behind to get killed. I was not taking any chances.

Needless to say, I'm not running this type of site again solo on the ship I used. It now makes sense why I see people in groups clearing these out. It’s not so much the damage you deal with. It’s all the webbing, draining, and frigates that make these annoying and an issue.

Exploration Sites

As it should be no shock for most of the event so far, I've just been running the exploration sites. I’ve had some massive and even more disappointing loot. As you really can’t trust any estimated prices shown to be anything close to what you might end up getting. At least for the time being.

During one already crazy trip of loot. I was heading back to drop off and head back out. I spotted one final site I was going to run before I'd be home. I’d just have been happy with another 20 million or so in loot. Then this unlimited Iron Metallic dropped with an estimated value of 1.2 billion ISK. Yes billion.

Without even blinking, I already knew it was not going to be worth 1.2 billion. I’d have rushed all the way to Jita to sell along with a bunch of other loot if it had been. Turns out the lowest priced one was around 60 million the last time I checked. That still is an amazing amount. It’s just nowhere near what it showed.

While a decent chunk of my loot is in pains and skins. Thankfully, some things have a fixed price. That more than makes it worth my time alone to run these sites. I ended up making a little nightly trip to offload to NPCs items they are buying. This time, I even had some sleeper drops as well from running some of their sites.

Final Thoughts

While I've been a little disappointed by what I've gotten from combat sites. Thankfully, the exploration sites have been amazing. While this most recent pile of loot above is nowhere near the 3 billion ISK it shows. I’ve already made trips to Jita to sell a couple of times.

Out of all the events I've done since returning to Eve Online. This one, so far, has been the most rewarding and fun. I’m hoping to give combat sites a better try once I'm able to play with some others. I might even attempt some other sites as well and venture into wormhole space at some point.

Information

New to Eve Online or a returning player? Use my recruit a friend referral link and get 1 million skill points on signing up or logging into your Eve Online account (can only be claimed once per account). Disclosure: I might receive in-game rewards.

Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Online.