It was time to further work on some Air Career tasks. Some of these would require flat out mining while others would require manufacturing. A nice little break from grinding out level 3 missions.

While I'm sure I would have been given a Venture at some point to go out and mine in. I already had one for doing the daily mining task. I also loaded it up with some tier 2 modules. Making this quite a sweet little mining machine.

While I can pilot mining barges. Those would have been quite an overkill for the tasks I was about to work on. They are also quite slow and do get ganked a lot in high sec. Sometimes it’s more about using the right tool for the job than spending way too much ISK on something I won’t be doing a lot of.

I thought the hard part was just going to be finding Kernite and Plagioclase to mine. Since I was never big on mining in the first place and nowhere near anywhere, I used to hang out in high sec. Thankfully the game makes it rather easy to find ores nowadays.

Under The agency tab, they have a harvesting section. From there you can filter for the kinds of ores you want and other things like distance and system security. It even further breaks down which belts have what ores in them in a given system as well.

That is just wild how easy they made it to find ores nowadays. There were also a bunch of tasks to process the same type of ores you needed to mine. The amounts ended up being a full venture full of ore. It seems that the ship was a perfect fit for working on these Air Career tasks.

I only had to hit up a couple of different systems to find all the ores I needed to mine and process. Since these were just small amounts of ores and not worth my time getting a hauler and picking them up. I ended up just selling for whatever the local price was. I was kind of expecting the prices to be much worse than they were. It seemed however to only be slightly lower than I would have gotten if I had hauled to a main trade hub anyway.

Since I was just in a tiny little venture with mining drones. Anytime belt rats showed up I would just switch whatever belt I was mining in. If I was in a bigger mining ship there would not have been any kind of issue. I however did not feel like seeing if the venture could AFK tank the stuff that was showing up.

Once that was all warped up, I ended up heading towards where some Air Carrer program agents were. I had quite a few more points I could pick up from doing the Entrepreneur missions.

It was kind of funny being in a venture and putting a gun turret on it. Some of the first couple of missions however required one to be equipped. I was even rewarded a salvager and had to salvage a wreck.

There were then some basic mining missions which I expected. The game walks over the basics of some simple mining things. Along with the process of how to refine ores.

I did find it a little odd they even had me go out on a data analyzer mission. It seems like a few of these starter missions were starting to overlap with what was being showcased in the other Air Career fields.

This was then followed by a transportation mission. I was kind of expecting this line task to have some transportation missions. That is after all going to be a big part of what people end up needing to do.

I did however feel like it was taking forever to get to the point of what I thought they would have you be doing in the entrepreneur career line. At least they reward you with a hauling ship.

What I was not expecting was the number of missions there would end up being. Once I finished the first ten. I opened up the Air Career Program page and realized I was only halfway done. Next up I had a series of producer career missions I had to get from another agent at the same station.

While this mission would end up covering a couple of the same things. They would be more focused on crafting. They first send you out to do some mining. Then you are given limited-run blueprint copies to start crafting with.

It was rather nice the game walked the player through how to make items. While I wish it was a little more in-depth manufacturing can be quite an expensive and confusing profession to get into in Eve Online. At least they were going over the basics.

After a couple of missions, the game was having me now produce slightly more complex items. Items that required minerals I had yet to mine and some even I could not get in high sec by mining.

Since these missions give you a bit of ISK the game even shows the player how to buy only what you need to produce an item. I thought why not just buy from minerals players are selling at the station?

That is when I realized that people are asking three to five times the normal price for minerals. I looked at where the nearest trading hub was and noticed it was just a couple of jumps. Even better I had a ship that could haul for me.

Since people were already taking advantage of the new players or just those running these missions. I thought why not make some profit and undercut the market a bit? While this is not a regular trade route I cover. I ended up making about 20 million ISK in profit over a week by just hauling some resources and a couple of jumps out to the station where everyone was working on these Air Career missions. Not bad for being rather lazy about it.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I was even given a limited blueprint run copy to a shuttle and a tormentor. Since I needed to craft some ships for other Air Career tasks I went ahead and did it anyways. I did however do it at a slight loss as the minerals to make them are worth more than the actual ship itself. That is why I often just don’t bother with production in Eve Online. It is quite competitive and unless the market conditions are right you are just better off selling resources to those who have invested a lot of time, understanding, and resources into producing items.

Overall, this was yet another nice break from grinding level 3 missions. It’s also nice to see what the new player experience is about. While they are mostly just about the basics. This kind of stuff was never just shown to you by the game back in my day. Back then you needed to learn the hard way or end up in a corporation where people were willing to spend far too much time teaching others how the game works. Things have certainly come quite a long way since then.

Information

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