Exploration is the act of scanning signatures, visiting anomalies, and venturing into the unknowns of New Eden. It is also the best area for a new player to start. Seriously.

Why? Because it teaches you core fundamentals for being successful and self-sufficient in EVE Online, while earning you a healthy profit with minimal skills.

But it’s not just for new players. End-game, explorers are a primary source for intel, hunting large targets, and setting up strategic opportunities. If you’re in a large alliance that doesn’t have probers and scouts, they’re doing it wrong.

Motives

Exploration can be boiled down to a few key motives.

• Exploiting moneymaking opportunities by hacking relic and data sites
• Providing combat content by hunting other explorers or weak targets
• Finding opportunities to share with your corporation and friends

A skilled explorer can easily make enough in a single night to pay for their account for the month, and kill hundreds of unsuspecting players. When you finally join a corporation, you’ll be able to find wormhole chains, high value targets, and be an essential asset.

So how do you explore?

To explore, you’ll need a few things.

• Basic understanding of how to travel (guide)
• Basic understanding of how to scan signatures (video, guide)
• An exploration ship (see below)

Luckily, knowledge is free, and the ships are cheap.

After you understand the basics, you’ll want to travel to regions and start scanning sites, looking for interesting things, and overall enjoying the game. Hack relic and data sites for income, and you’ll easily be able to replace your losses and progress your character with skill injectors.

As you travel through systems, talk to the locals! You never know who you might meet, and the friendships you may build.

Improving

Exploration is an art, and no matter how good you get, you can always improve. It will teach you tactics that are crucial to the game, and elevate your play so that you can run circles around the majority of players in this game.

Here are some things you should try out, and use as learning experiences!

• Travel to a popular nullsec region, use combat probes to scan mobile tractor units. Kill them, and maybe even the unsuspecting ratters that own them. Free loot!
• Look for drones, wrecks, and other interesting loot with combat probes. Use directional scanner to verify they exist, first. Sometimes you’ll find a excavator drones that a little Goon left behind, worth billions.
• Travel into wormholes and experience the content they offer. Gas harvesting, combat anomalies, and even harder relic/data sites!
• Find large unsuspecting targets like capitals and supercapitals and provide content for corporations, alliances, and even NPSI groups.

This game is a sandbox, and you get in what you put out. Putting a little bit of effort in with this difficult area of the game will develop you to become a more talented player than the majority of the player-base.

Good luck!