With the Crimson Harvest event winding down, the final rewards and impacts of the event started to really ramp up. Not only did they increase spawns for the combat sites, showing up. They also released the final reward tiers that you could earn in the event.

While I took my time just farming data exploration sites on my main to get all the remaining points, he needed to claim all the rewards. It ended up being far more rewarding than I was expecting.

The final reward for earning 1,350 points in the Crimson Event is a Blood Raider Crate. This crate contains one blueprint copy (BPC) of a blood raider ship. What is interesting about these crates is that they can contain, although highly unlikely, a dreadnought, carrier, or a titan BPC.

My original plans were just to open the Blood Raider Crate. If doing so, I was expected to get a Cruor, and I happened to need one. With such a BPC, I could craft one and save myself like 100 million ISK. I mostly wanted this ship for its web range bonus.

I decided to just check out the price of a Blood Raider Crate just to make sure they were not selling for insane amounts. Turns out they were selling early on at 3 billion ISK for a short while. Before settling in the 2-2.2 billion range for a while.

At that price point, I could more than just buy the ship I wanted outright and a lot of other stuff. In fact, after looking into the prices for all the BPC that were being listed for that you could get (other than the titan). It was more or less for non-capital ships, not a lot. Even for the capital BPCs, they were not going for enough to turn down getting a cool 2 billion for just selling the box.

While there are times to take risks. The fact of the matter is, even if I were one of the lucky few to get a dread, carrier, or the titan blueprint. I can’t craft it. Being able to craft it is where the real value is. The drop chance for those is unknown. The fact that the contract markets of flooded with the smaller ships and very few of the better ones. More or less told me all I needed to know.

It’s also unknown if there is a cap on those big drops or not. So, holding onto the box for six months and then trying to sell it, hoping for a lot higher price, is also a huge risk. I’m also someone who plays this game on and off again. So, getting ISK now when it’s already a lot. Fit my goals. For all I know, interest in these could be next to nothing in six months, another event could drop the boxes if not at next year’s event. Along with more desirable ships could come.

Another interesting thing happened last week. They upped the combat site spawns for the event. I’m not talking a little either. They called it an “invasion.” Before people lost their minds trying to farm as many points as possible right up to the end of the event. Along before I realized how much the box was worth. During the first couple of nights's id sometimes find dozens of combat sites up in a single system without anyone running them.

Once I had acquired all 1,350 points on my main. I started to think to myself. Can my alts get in on this action? While I love running data sites. My alts are nowhere near the skills for it, and that would take an insane amount of time. As there are two different data sites up for the event, and only one of them would count as you have to pick which faction you are working for.

The good news is that the class 1 combat sites could be run in a Punisher. The bad news is my two alts are trained for planetary interaction and Industry. They were about 440k skill points (SP) away from being able to use the fit that could run the sites easily.

Thankfully, I farm dailies for some extra skill points on my alts. One of them had over 440k SP unallocated. While the other one had 198k SP.

I decided to bite the bullet with my first alt. As I could use an alt with some better skills for industry, and who knows what else one day anyway. It also turns out it was not going to be a total 440k SP lost anyway.

The event itself always had a 25k SP at the start. They also added 100k SP as a new reward in the last week. That I felt would put a decent little dent in the SP costs. That is, however, not the end of it.

Both of my alts also had some AIR Career Program progression they would be earning, since I only did some of them. Running these sites would get them combat points for that as well. Yeielding 75k and an extra 75k SP. Netting another 150k SP and moving them along to perhaps earn another 200k SP if I ever found the time to do a bunch of other stuff from the AIR program.

So the around 440k SP I'd end up spending to get them into the fittings to run these sites. I’d be getting back 275k SP. Only costs me about 165k SP, and these skills would have future use for me.

Now, for my second alt, the story is a bit trickier. As he did not have enough unallocated SP to get going. What he could, however, do was buy some Small Skill Injectors and get what he was missing. It would cost me 480 million ISK to do so. By the time I got to him, even if I did not have time to farm all 1,350 points. I just needed to make it to 900 points to break from the Plex that is in the rewards. Even better if I could get him to 1,025 points to get the full 125k SP from the event.

Now that I knew it would be worth going for. Along with opening myself up to future opportunities if something like this came up again. It was time to put in the time. I worked out I needed to run 45 sites. Each site has a 10-minute timer you have to survive. Then, a boss you kill at the end. Along with time to loot and find another site. I assumed I needed about 13 minutes per site run. This put it under 10 hours per alt to earn all the points they needed.

The sites themselves, at least the class 1, were simply easy to run. You just warped to one to see if it was up. Checked D-scan to see if anyone was already running it. If it were empty, I'd jump in on my alt. I’d then orbit the central spire.

Adds would come in waves. Every so often, you would get a chance at some bonus loot if you could shoot down a ship in time. A lot of the time, due to my alts' limited number of skills, they were out of range. Since they could not leave the middle radius of the site.

At the end, the boss would spawn that also had most of the site's worth of loot in it. Just taking him out would yield 2 to 8 million ISK in loot. All the bonus ships I'd at least get 200k from.

Once I was done with my first alt after getting 1,350 points. He had 325 million ISK in spare loot just from the sites. Along with a little bit from the AIR rewards. Another 2.1 billion from his Blood Raider Crate. Along with another 600 million ISK from other event rewards like the Plex and other stuff. So just over 3 billion ISK.

That more than made it enough to spend some ISK on my other alt to repeat the process. Being as tired as I was, I called it for the night after getting him set up and running like 3 sites.

The next day, I log in, and every single site I found already had someone or a group of people in it. The word had gotten out. The event also had only days remaining. So, anyone who had put off getting their points now had no choice if they wanted the rewards.

The good thing is I pushed hard enough on my first alt. That left me a couple of spare days on my second alt to get the 1,350 points he needed. Once the weekend passed, completion slowed down for the sites. I was able to get him all the rewards as well. While not a full 3 billion in profit on him, since he had to buy some skill injectors. It was still crazy.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I feel this highlights why having alts ready to go and finding opportunities to leverage them in a game like Eve Online is just being smart. While my alts already do make me some ISK every month in not-so-involved things like quickly managing their PI or Industry. I never thought just one of them could bring me 3 billion ISK in a single 24-hour window.

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