Cosmic Anomalies
Cosmic Anomalies (as well as Cosmic Signatures) are both part of Exploration in EVE. Unlike signatures, Cosmic Anomalies require no special skills trained to find or complete them and they do not appear in Deadspace zones. Cosmic Anomalies are generally regarded as the easier form of Exploration and suitable for even the newest player to try their hand at.
Cosmic Anomalies are either Combat Sites or Ore Sites. Ore Sites can contain asteroids or ice belts (see Ice Mining). Combat Sites contain NPC rats or Drones, they are not as difficult as their cosmic signature counterparts, but can have rich rewards as well. They have different difficulty ratings, getting increasingly harder the lower the security status of a system.
How to Find Cosmic Anomalies
Cosmic Anomalies can be found by probing them or by using your onboard scanner.
To find these sites, you simply jump into a system, check the onboard scanner and warp to any results. Cosmic Anomalies appear within a 4 AU range around planets. Open your onboard scanner by pressing ALT+D, select the "System Scanner", results will update automatically*. When you have found an anomaly, warp there or create a bookmark of its position. Once an Anomaly has been completed, it will disappear after some time.
- On occasion you may need to 'jiggle the wires' of your onboard scanner by de-selecting and re-selecting the show all check box to encourage them to appear.
Difficulty and Classification
Combat site anomalies are ranked in difficulty by 10 levels, these are:
- (Faction) Burrow / Drone Collection (easiest)
- (Faction) Hideaway / Drone Cluster
- (Faction) Refuge / Drone Assembly
- (Faction) Den / Drone Gathering
- (Faction) Yard / Drone Surveillance
- (Faction) Rally Point / Drone Menagerie
- (Faction) Port / Drone Herd
- (Faction) Hub / Drone Squad
- (Faction) Haven / Drone Patrol
- (Faction) Sanctum / Drone Horde (hardest)
The rank of the Anomaly you could find depends on the security status of the system you are searching in. Within HighSec (Security Status 1.0 to 0.5) the lowest third will be found. LowSec (Security Status of 0.4 to 0.1) contains the mid third of them and the highest third will be found within NullSec.
An anomaly may be further sub-divided into 3 more categories:
- (Faction) Hidden (anomaly) [easiest]
- (Faction) Forsaken (anomaly) [normal]
- (Faction) Forlorn (anomaly) [hardest]
