Blueprints

Blueprints

Blueprint Orginals (BPOs) are available from the market (Blueprints) for all pure Tech 1 (Meta 0) items. They start with a Material Efficiency of 0 and a Production Efficiency of 0.

Blueprint Originals

Blueprint originals (BPOs) for most T1 items are sold on the market from NPC vendors. They may be purchased and resold by player characters, so check prices. Blueprint originals for T2 items exist, but you'll never see one -- the system changed years ago, and these items are now worth many billions of ISK.

Researched blueprint originals may also be sold on contract between players -- but make sure that you're buying an original; it's quite common for holders of a well-researched BPO to sell copies. For expensive items, these may legitimately command prices similar to unresearched originals. Or you may have stumbled on another contract scam. As usual, caveat emptor.

A BPO can be researched to improve time and materials efficiency, can be copied to produce limited-run blueprint copies which may be sold or used in T2 production; or it can be used as a blueprint to manufacture something.

Research

Only Blueprint Originals can be researched.

Material Efficiency

All Blueprints start will a built in waste of 10%. This can be reduced by researching the Material Efficiency (ME) of the BPO. Since waste drops only by integer units, there is a ME beyond which it is fruitless to research further. This number is often quite low for small items.

Related skills: Metallurgy (Lowers material efficiency research time by 5% per level)

Production Efficiency

Production Efficiency research reduces the production time of the item. This can be less critical to the cost of production than material efficiency, but may still have a significant effect on your cost of production.

Copies

Only Blueprint Originals can be copied. The copies will have the ME and PE of the BPO being copied. In addition, they will be licensed for a set number of runs, the maximum of which is dictated by the BPO. Once the runs are used up, the BPC is consumed.