Datacore farming: Difference between revisions

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There are various other R&D agents scattered between some of the other factions, but only level 4 agents produce datacores in meaningful quantities. Because the good Gallente R&D agents are scattered between three corporations, I don't recommend grinding for them, unless you have already started grinding their missions or are otherwise committed to their faction.

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Not really a hack or a cheat, but something not everyone's aware of... Once you do some skilling and grind some standings you can farm datacores for completely passive income.

I know many of you are like me... You've got an account (at least one) that is just your miner. And once you've got the skill for a hulk and refining maxed out there's not really a lot to do with the training potential of that account. Training for pvp, missioning, or other "active" professions is generally a waste of time for that account; it's pretty much always going to be logged in and in use. I mean, what's the point of stopping your mining bot just so you can mission?

This led me to datacores. Why? It provides a small amount of bonus income, and once the characters are set up and running all you have to do to earn that income is to go visit a few stations once every so often. Other than the trip to gather the datacores and fly them off to a market, the income's completely passive.

So, what are datacores?

Datacores are a consumable item used for invention to create T2 BPC's. Every invention process requires a certain amount of datacores. And, an invention character is capable of inventing more BPC's than they can personally produce datacores for. So, datacores are always in demand.

How do you get datacores?

Datacores are acquired by talking to R&D division agents and starting research. If you meet the prerequisites, once you've done that you will then earn X amount of Research Points (RP) per day. The RP can then be traded in for datacores, which you can then use for invention or sell.

The important thing to remember is once you start the research the RP just accumulate without you doing anything. The only time you have to worry about them again is when you want to go buy the datacores with your RP and sell them (or use them for your own invention), which you can do whenever you like. Currently, RP's will even still continue to accumulate while the account is inactive. Some believe CCP will eventually change this but there's been no official word on the subject.

What skills do you need?

You need:

Research V

Science V

Laboratory Operations V

Those are the base skills, plus the specific research skills (more on that below). But you also want Research Operation IV. Every level of research operation lets you have an extra R&D agent, so level 4 gives you five agents. Level V would be better, but that fifth level takes forever. Level IV is enough to get you started.

You may also want some Social skills, to make the standings grind easier, such as Social IV-V and Connections IV.

In addition to the above, you'll need one or more of the skills below. They're listed under their prerequisite skill, which you'll also need at five. Not every agent deals with every skill, so you'll have to find the specific combination of skills, agents, and corps that work best for you. Each of the following skills corresponds with a specific type of datacore:

Engineering

Graviton Physics

High Energy Physics

Hydromagnetic Physics

Laser Physics

Nuclear Physics

Plasma Physics

Quantum Physics

Electronics

Electromagnetic Physics

Nanite Engineering

Electronic Engineering

Hypernet Science

Mechanic

Amarrian Starship Engineering

Caldari Starship Engineering

Gallente Starship Engineering

Minmatar Starship Engineering

Astronautic Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Molecular Engineering

Rocket Science

How about corps and standings?

Each R&D agent has a specific standing requirement, just like mission agents. You've got to have sufficient standings to do research with them. You'll have to get between 6.0-7.0 standings with the corp in order to use the high level R&D agents.

This will generally mean mission grinding. Usually, I fleet the datacore farmer with a mission toon and grind them out that way. Once the datacore farmer has high enough standings with the mission agent they can get and turn in the missions themselves, thus avoiding the split.

Alternately, if your datacore character can't do combat missions themselves and you can't fleet them with another pve toon, you can have them do courier mission for the necessary standings.

How long it takes to get the standings really depends on you, how you do it, what's your setup, how fast you can complete a mission, ect. Remember that the social and connections skills can speed up the process.

R&D Missions

You have the option of doing R&D missions once per day, per agent. Your agent will evemail you saying the research has hit a snag and offer you a mission. First of all, despite whatever the agent says remember that your research has NOT stopped. You're still accumulating RP's and can still trade them in for datacores whenever.

But, if you like, you can also do the R&D mission. Doing a mission doubles your RP points for that day from that agent. Generally it's not worth it to chase around doing all the missions with each of the agent. After all, this is supposed to be passive.

However, if you can park your datacore farmer in the station with the highest producing agent, it is work checking in once per day. See, about half the time the mission is "bring me X trit." So, you can set up a buy order for trit in that station and check in daily. If the daily mission is for trit, accept and complete it. If it's not, just decline it.

Picking skills and corps

Like I said, not all agents (or even all R&D corps) use the same skills. So you'll have to look around a bit and decide what corp you want to do your standings grind with. Or, if you happen to already have standings with an R&D corp, decide see which skills their agents do research for, and pick a couple of them to train.

http://www.eve-agents.com - This site lets you search for agents. You can search by corp, by R&D skill, or just list the corps with R&D agents. You can also sort the list by number of datacores earned per day.

http://hussars-online.ru/eve/datacore.php - This site lets you input your skills, standings, and such and it'll show you in order which agents/skill combinations are the most profitable. You can use your real skills/standings or just input possible combinations. The market does fluctuate, though. What's the most profitable now may not be so in six months.

So, what's all this worth?

A character with five R&D agents, with decent R&D skill picked and at least at level IV should make between 100-150m per month, depending on specific skills. Get a 6th agent, or raise your R&D skills to V, and that number will go up.

Now, that's not a whole lot of ISK. But, there's some important considerations. First of all, once you get setup that income is passive, you don't really have to do much of anything to earn it. Secondly, that's per character. Multiple characters multiplies the amount. Thirdly, you go and collect the datacores and sell them when you want, there's no set time.

Say you have all three characters on an account farming datacores. they'll produce 300+ million a month. But, maybe you don't feel like bothering every month. You can do it every 3 months and get about a billion each time. Or wait 10 months and get over 3 billion all in one go. It's like a slowly building pile of cash waiting for whenever you need/want it.

@@ Line 179: / Line 179: @@
 There are various other R&D agents scattered between some of the other factions, but only level 4 agents produce datacores in meaningful quantities. Because the good Gallente R&D agents are scattered between three corporations, I don't recommend grinding for them, unless you have already started grinding their missions or are otherwise committed to their faction.
+---------------------
+Not really a hack or a cheat, but something not everyone's aware of... Once you do some skilling and grind some standings you can farm datacores for completely passive income.
+I know many of you are like me... You've got an account (at least one) that is just your miner. And once you've got the skill for a hulk and refining maxed out there's not really a lot to do with the training potential of that account. Training for pvp, missioning, or other "active" professions is generally a waste of time for that account; it's pretty much always going to be logged in and in use. I mean, what's the point of stopping your mining bot just so you can mission?
+This led me to datacores. Why? It provides a small amount of bonus income, and once the characters are set up and running all you have to do to earn that income is to go visit a few stations once every so often. Other than the trip to gather the datacores and fly them off to a market, the income's completely passive.
+So, what are datacores?
+Datacores are a consumable item used for invention to create T2 BPC's. Every invention process requires a certain amount of datacores. And, an invention character is capable of inventing more BPC's than they can personally produce datacores for. So, datacores are always in demand.
+How do you get datacores?
+Datacores are acquired by talking to R&D division agents and starting research. If you meet the prerequisites, once you've done that you will then earn X amount of Research Points (RP) per day. The RP can then be traded in for datacores, which you can then use for invention or sell.
+The important thing to remember is once you start the research the RP just accumulate without you doing anything. The only time you have to worry about them again is when you want to go buy the datacores with your RP and sell them (or use them for your own invention), which you can do whenever you like. Currently, RP's will even still continue to accumulate while the account is inactive. Some believe CCP will eventually change this but there's been no official word on the subject.
+What skills do you need?
+You need:
+Research V
+Science V
+Laboratory Operations V
+Those are the base skills, plus the specific research skills (more on that below). But you also want Research Operation IV. Every level of research operation lets you have an extra R&D agent, so level 4 gives you five agents. Level V would be better, but that fifth level takes forever. Level IV is enough to get you started.
+You may also want some Social skills, to make the standings grind easier, such as Social IV-V and Connections IV.
+In addition to the above, you'll need one or more of the skills below. They're listed under their prerequisite skill, which you'll also need at five. Not every agent deals with every skill, so you'll have to find the specific combination of skills, agents, and corps that work best for you. Each of the following skills corresponds with a specific type of datacore:
+Engineering
+Graviton Physics
+High Energy Physics
+Hydromagnetic Physics
+Laser Physics
+Nuclear Physics
+Plasma Physics
+Quantum Physics
+Electronics
+Electromagnetic Physics
+Nanite Engineering
+Electronic Engineering
+Hypernet Science
+Mechanic
+Amarrian Starship Engineering
+Caldari Starship Engineering
+Gallente Starship Engineering
+Minmatar Starship Engineering
+Astronautic Engineering
+Mechanical Engineering
+Molecular Engineering
+Rocket Science
+How about corps and standings?
+Each R&D agent has a specific standing requirement, just like mission agents. You've got to have sufficient standings to do research with them. You'll have to get between 6.0-7.0 standings with the corp in order to use the high level R&D agents.
+This will generally mean mission grinding. Usually, I fleet the datacore farmer with a mission toon and grind them out that way. Once the datacore farmer has high enough standings with the mission agent they can get and turn in the missions themselves, thus avoiding the split.
+Alternately, if your datacore character can't do combat missions themselves and you can't fleet them with another pve toon, you can have them do courier mission for the necessary standings.
+How long it takes to get the standings really depends on you, how you do it, what's your setup, how fast you can complete a mission, ect. Remember that the social and connections skills can speed up the process.
+R&D Missions
+You have the option of doing R&D missions once per day, per agent. Your agent will evemail you saying the research has hit a snag and offer you a mission. First of all, despite whatever the agent says remember that your research has NOT stopped. You're still accumulating RP's and can still trade them in for datacores whenever.
+But, if you like, you can also do the R&D mission. Doing a mission doubles your RP points for that day from that agent. Generally it's not worth it to chase around doing all the missions with each of the agent. After all, this is supposed to be passive.
+However, if you can park your datacore farmer in the station with the highest producing agent, it is work checking in once per day. See, about half the time the mission is "bring me X trit." So, you can set up a buy order for trit in that station and check in daily. If the daily mission is for trit, accept and complete it. If it's not, just decline it.
+Picking skills and corps
+Like I said, not all agents (or even all R&D corps) use the same skills. So you'll have to look around a bit and decide what corp you want to do your standings grind with. Or, if you happen to already have standings with an R&D corp, decide see which skills their agents do research for, and pick a couple of them to train.
+http://www.eve-agents.com - This site lets you search for agents. You can search by corp, by R&D skill, or just list the corps with R&D agents. You can also sort the list by number of datacores earned per day.
+http://hussars-online.ru/eve/datacore.php - This site lets you input your skills, standings, and such and it'll show you in order which agents/skill combinations are the most profitable. You can use your real skills/standings or just input possible combinations. The market does fluctuate, though. What's the most profitable now may not be so in six months.
+So, what's all this worth?
+A character with five R&D agents, with decent R&D skill picked and at least at level IV should make between 100-150m per month, depending on specific skills. Get a 6th agent, or raise your R&D skills to V, and that number will go up.
+Now, that's not a whole lot of ISK. But, there's some important considerations. First of all, once you get setup that income is passive, you don't really have to do much of anything to earn it. Secondly, that's per character. Multiple characters multiplies the amount. Thirdly, you go and collect the datacores and sell them when you want, there's no set time.
+Say you have all three characters on an account farming datacores. they'll produce 300+ million a month. But, maybe you don't feel like bothering every month. You can do it every 3 months and get about a billion each time. Or wait 10 months and get over 3 billion all in one go. It's like a slowly building pile of cash waiting for whenever you need/want it.