It was time to get my main over to the Air station to get some of the starting missions for exploration out of the way. One never forgets no matter how long of a break you take from this game that traveling around can take some time.

I was just thrilled that I only needed to move less than thirty jumps to where a starting NPC was for the Air Career program. While I'm sure there are a few offices for them out there. I’m sure it could have been a lot worse.

While my main has a lot of skills. I don’t have an active sub to the game so my ships and skills are a bit restricted. On top of that, I'm well over the 5 million SP cap to be able to train new skills. So hopefully I already have all the skills I need.

The Air career program itself has a bunch of circles with objectives around it. After completing each objective, you earn career points. Once you earn enough of those along with completing the objective you get some rewards along the way.

I was kind of shocked at how deep the requirements are to finish off the full thing. Not something I'd be doing today. While you can do a fair bit of the objectives in high sec. They do make you go into the wormhole and null sec space to get things done. At one point I'll be going off to do those things.

The outer ring was just doing some basic missions to learn about the different kinds of sites you can find while using probes to go exploring around. There was even a recommended training path which I was not shocked I already met all the requirements for.

For these, I'll be doing everything in the starter explore ship for Amarr called a Magnate. I will also only be using all tier 1 modules and no faction stuff. While it was quite tempting to use the faction Sister probes as that would make things so much easier on me. I decided to only stick with tier 1 probes as well.

Using probes to scan back in the day used to be almost painful to learn and get the hang of. So, I was a little disappointed picking an exploration career that they did not force more in-depth on the player in that aspect. A new player is going to have no idea how to do so.

I also realized they have reworked the system for scanning with probes a few times over. I even recall back when I used to play, they made it easier. Thankfully it’s a lot easier. That is also a downside as people scanning you down with combat probes will also now be quite trivial to do. At least compared to how it used to be quite a long time ago.

The system the Air Career Program is in has a lot of sites to scan down in it. It was almost overwhelming before I quickly relearned the ropes of scanning in general.

They also just made it so easy with dedicated buttons to put your probes into different groupings. While I could adjust those groupings as needed. For this starter stuff that was not needed at all.

All the sites in this system were quite easy to scan down. After finding the general location I quickly took the area of the scans down and started finding the first sites they have you explore.

The game is even nice enough to give the player a starter probe launcher, probes, civilian data, and a relic module for running sites. While they also show an example of a gas site you don’t get to do that activity as it’s a bit more expensive than everything else.

It was then time to start breaking into my first relic and data nodes in quite some time. I do not recall any of my old tricks for running them. I was kind of disappointed by the lack of tricks and detail the tutorial gave towards this aspect of the game as well.

Long story short you need to click on nodes exploring around. Along the way, you can find repair tools or even a firewall to help damage any nodes you need to clear. There are also defense nodes you need to attack that are based on your defense and damage.

In the end, you are looking for something called the system core. While you are clicking around and exploring on the screen. The game gives you hints if you are X amount of distance away from an object. That object could be anything including the system core. If you can take out the system core and survive you get any loot that is being held.

If you fail the darn thing explodes. While they removed damage from these starting sites. Failing later on is going to be quite a higher price to pay with the amount of damage you can end up taking.

Once I had the five starter missions down. I ended up collecting all my rewards. On top of earning some ISK from the missions themselves. I also got some further ISK, skill books, and some exploration items like a prob launcher.

While these rewards are nothing huge to someone like me. If I was a newer player this would have been quite something. You can buy a couple of tier 1 ships and some models with the rewards that were earned here. On top of that getting some skill books to point you in the direction of what to train for next was a nice touch.

There are even some longer-term rewards that give stuff like a small amount of skill points. While nothing massive. It’s a nice little touch to help people progress along and work towards these career programs.

Once I was done with this starting area. I got to move onto an inner ring in the Exploration Air Career Program. These again were simple but quite important and I needed to go out and scan down to 100% 50 sites.

I decided at this point to leave the system they have you start in. While I'm sure there would be new starter sites popping up all the time in this system. I wanted to start getting a little bit of loot and having more of a challenge in sites to scan down.

All I can say is thankfully I have some decent scanning skills already. While they are a little limited since I'm playing as a free-to-play I don’t have full access to all my skills. It was going to be quite needed since I was only using tier 1 mods.

The biggest issue with high sec is there are not huge rewards in most of the relic and data sites you can find. There is high competition for them as well. They are also not the only sites you can run into while scanning.

Since I needed to scan down a certain number of sites. Along with having a feeling I needed to find things like wormholes further down the career path. I ended up fully scanning out any relic, data, or wormhole I found.

As someone who used to live in wormholes for a while. It was quite tempting to start jumping into the ones I found. It however has been so many years I hardly recall the finer details about them. I also would not get very far in them with the current system and mods it has. So, for now, I'd just leave them be.

After exploring a couple of local systems. I just needed to set a route for a system that was more than thirty jumps away. I wanted to grind out a bunch of the requirements to advance along in the career path. I also just needed the particle again.

While some times are a lot more rewarding than others. I just went and cleared everything for the time being. For the most part, the loot I'd be getting was not that great. Sometimes the container would even be empty. Other times I was just happy to see 400k or more ISK worth of loot.

One of the reasons I wanted to run a bunch of sites was to get some loot for another activity I wanted to check out in the game. I was kind of disappointed by the lack of finding it with all the sites I ended up hitting up. For now, I'll be keeping to myself what item I was after. You will just have to find out in a later post.

Some of the shards I'd be breaking into for loot were quite massive. If I had better mods they would not have been much of a challenge since I'm in high sec doing these after all. Thankfully the skills I have trained did most of the heavy lifting.

Along the way, I found some areas that had been cleaned out by other explorers. A couple of systems did not even have so much as a wormhole in them. Other times I'd land on a gate and see a couple of people out probing for sites. I’d just skip that system and move ahead to the next.

Even twice I almost had to give up on scanning down a site. I think it might have been relic sites that were giving me the hardest issue. I had my probes down to .5 AU. I had to change from the standard pin potion formation. Those situations I was glad when I was in an empty system as anyone with a better setup would have had a much easier time not only scanning down those sites but fully clearing them out before I even found them.

Final Thoughts

In total for the run, I ended up looting 15 million ISK worth of loot. Nothing special. My biggest fine ended up being this intact armor plate for over six million. If I had found a bunch more of those it would have been an alright run. It is however high sec and I was not targeting only certain kinds of sites. Such a site like this was also quite hard to scan down with the ship and mods I have on it.

This would be more than enough to get some upgrades and make things a little easier on myself. For a little longer I'll just keep using the same setup. As I get back into the swing of things in Eve Online.

I also had a nice little pile of rewards from the Air Career Program for all the scanning and sites I ended up running. I was now left with a lot of the harder tasks like hacking containers in wormholes or even null. Something I'd not be doing for the time being and would need some massive upgrades to do in the first place.

Information

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