Industrialist (Entrepreneur)
The Business Career Agent is one of the five career agents in the game, which show new players different types of PvE activities in EVE. The Business career agent missions teach you about hauling, salvaging, mining, hacking, and manufacturing. In total these missions pay about 1.1M ISK in rewards.
Balancing the Books (1 of 10)
Objective: Move a small item from one station to another.
Don't forget to put the item into your ship's cargo hold (you can use any ship you like) before you undock. You can click the "set a destination" button (from the Info Panel drop-down menu) to plot a course to the station where you have to drop off the item; the next stargate/station on your route will be highlighted in yellow on your overview. Once you get to the destination station, you can start a conversation with your agent remotely (either through the Station Services panel or through the Info Panel drop-down) to complete the mission, but you must return to him/her to start the next mission. If you're not sure where to return to, you can look up any agents you have previously interacted with in your address book (accessible through the "People & Places" button on the NeoCom).
Balancing the Books (2 of 10)
Objective: Use a salvager module to salvage useful components from a wreck.
You are given a Civilian Salvager module; fit it to your ship (depending on what ship you're using, you may have to remove another high-slot module to make room for the Salvager. Make sure to keep at least one weapon fitted to your ship). The objective wreck is located in a deadspace area, warp to the deadspace location (right-click in space or on the drop-down menu from the Info Panel) and activate the acceleration gate. There will be some very weak rats in the deadspace pocket; destroy them, then target the wreck, approach to within your Salvager's range (5000 m) and activate the Salvager. After a few cycles the Salvager will be successful, and you can open the wreck in space and retrieve the item. Return to your agent's station and deposit the item into your Item Hangar on the station to complete the mission. Please note that salvage drones will not be able to salvage the wreck.
Note that normal salvaging in EVE (outside the Career Agent missions) works slightly differently - you still target wrecks and activate your Salvager module, but any salvaged components are automatically deposited in your ship's cargo bay (no need to manually open a container in space). If you want, you can try this out on the wreck of the rat in the deadspace pocket.
Reward: A Venture mining frigate, which you can find (along with all your other ships) in the Ship Hangar in the station.
Balancing the Books (3 of 10)
Objective: Mine some Veldspar ore and reprocess it into at least 333 Tritanium minerals. While you're mining, a weak rat will spawn and you'll get a message from the mission giver after you've killed it.
The actual objective is to turn in 333 units of Tritanium to the agent - therefore, if you want, you could just mine ore until the rat spawns and you kill it and then buy the Tritanium off the market (or, if you did the Tutorial, use some of the Tritanium you received as a reward). The price of Tritanium on the local market will fluctuate based on supply and demand, but will usually be around 5-6 ISK per unit (so 333 units will cost you around 2000 ISK, which is a negligible amount of money).
Fit a mining module (e.g. a Miner I from the Tutorial, or the Civilian Miner you received when you accepted the mission) to a ship (the Venture you received from the last mission is ideal, as it's a mining frigate, but you could also use most any other ship). You can go to any asteroid belt in the system and find an asteroid with an ore which can be reprocessed into Tritanium (which, in high security space, is virtually any kind of asteroid) - alternatively, the mission has created a beacon with a single large "private" Veldspar asteroid. Given the competition for asteroids in newbie star systems, the beacon is probably the safer bet.
100 units of Veldspar ore reprocess into 415 units of Tritanium (you can find this out by either looking at the reprocessing table on the wiki, or by right-clicking on the Veldspar in-game, selecting "Show Info", and looking at the "Industry" tab) under ideal conditions (100% reprocessing yield). Particularly as a beginner character you will typically have around 50% reprocessing yield (which can be improved by training skills), so you will need at mine at least 200 units of Veldspar in order to get the required 333 Tritanium. Return to the station, move the ore from your ship into your Item Hangar on the station (note that, if you were using your Venture, the ore is in the Venture's special Ore Hold as opposed to the normal Cargo Hold), right-click on the ore and select "Reprocess". Note that you pay a small fee for reprocessing.
Reward: A Reprocessing skillbook. Training this skill will improve your reprocessing yield.
Balancing the Books (4 of 10)
Objective: Hack a structure with a Data Analyser module.
Fit the Civilian Data Analyser module to a ship (with at least a modicum of combat ability, e.g. your Corvette). Warp to the mission's deadspace pocket and activate the acceleration gate. Inside the deadspace pocket there is a Data Storage Device with a weak rat guarding it. Destroy the rat, then approach the Data Storage Device, target it, and activate your Data Analyzer module. This will start the hacking minigame: explore the board by clicking on the green circles until you find the System Core. Once you've disabled the System Core, you can open the container and loot its contents.
Return to your agent and hand in the Encoded Data Chip. You will also have looted a Datacore - but it's not used for anything, you can leave it in your Item Hangar in the station.
Balancing the Books (5 of 10)
Objective: Move a small item from one station to another.
The agent gives you an Overdrive Injector System module, which increases your ship's speed - if you want, you can fit it on your ship (although it won't make much of a difference for this mission). To use an Overdrive Injector System module you need to have trained the Hull Upgrades skill, which is the case for every new pilot. As usual for hauling missions, don't forget to put the item you're meant to transport into your ship's cargo hold and undock. This journey is a bit longer than the one from the first Business mission, so you will want to use the Autopilot to plot the shortest course to your destination (click on "Set Destination" in the Info Panel). As usual, don't get into the habit of using the Autopilot to actually fly your ship - the trip will be much faster if you manually warp from gate to gate.
When you have arrived at your destination, talk to your agent to complete the mission, then return to them.
Reward: An Expanded Cargohold module (increases the size of your ship's cargo bay). You receive this module at your agent's station.
Balancing the Books (6 of 10)
Objective: Acquire a Tracking Computer module.
How you acquire the Tracking Computer module is up to you. The fastest way is to buy it from another player through the market (the module usually costs around 60-70k ISK), although make sure you either buy it in the current station (in the Market window, sort by the "Jumps" column, and see if there is a module being sold in your station at a reasonable price), or else buy it somewhere else (it may be cheaper?) and fly to the station where you bought it to pick it up.
Alternatively, you can use this mission to learn about basic manufacturing. When you accepted the mission you received a Mass Production skillbook, which, when trained, allows to manufacture multiple items at once. It's not necessary to train the skill to complete the mission (as you'll only be manufacturing one thing at a time), but training the skill is vital if you want to go deeper into manufacturing.
- First, you need to buy a blueprint for the Tracking Computer module. Blueprint Originals (BPOs) are sold on the market (by NPCs, so the prices are fixed - this particular blueprint costs around 100k ISK). It's likely that the closest seller is in another star system, so you will need to fly to their station in order to pick up the blueprint you bought.
- Once you have the blueprint, return it to your station (or, for that matter, to any nearby station with an Industry facility) and open the Industry window (right-click on the Blueprint, select "Use Blueprint"). This will tell you what materials you need to manufacture the Tracking Computer (Tritanium and Megacyte minerals).
- You then need to acquire these minerals. Right-click on the minerals and open the "Show Info" window, which will tell you what ores can be reprocessed to obtain these minerals. Tritanium is extremely common, while Megacyte can only be obtained from rare nullsec ores. While you could fly to nullsec and mine the ores yourself, it's probably easier to buy the minerals directly from the market.
- Once you have the minerals, you can start the manufacturing job, which takes about half an hour for this particular module. Once it's done, open the Industry window (from the Station Services window), open the "Jobs" tab at the bottom, and click on "Deliver".
Reward: A Mining module.
Balancing the Books (7 of 10)
Objective: Hack a structure with a Relic Analyser module.
This mission is very similar to mission 4, except that you need to fit the Civilian Relic Analyser module (instead of the Data Analyser you used earlier). Also, after the first acceleration gate, there will be two rats that you can destroy or skip by flying to and activating the second acceleration gate, which will take you to a second deadspace pocket. Kill the two rats in the second pocket, approach, lock, and hack the container (called an "Ancient Ship Structure") using your Relic Analyser and loot the contents.
Reward: An Afterburner module.
Balancing the Books (8 of 10)
Objective: Move a small item from one station to another.
Another very simple hauling mission, just like mission 1.
Reward: A Limited Social Adaptation Chip implant, which you can "plug in" to your character's head to increase their Charisma attribute by 1 point, which slighly increases your training speed for skills which use the Charisma attribute. You should plug the implant into your head (right-click on it and select "Plug in"). Note that should your pod be destroyed, any implants you have plugged in will be destroyed too. You can view your plugged-in implants in your Character Sheet (click on your portrait in the upper left-hand corner), on the Character --> Augmentations tab.
Balancing the Books (9 of 10)
Objective: Acquire 2 Afterburner modules.
When you accept the mission your agent gives you an Expanded Cargohold module (although it's not really relevant to completing the mission).
Similar to mission 6, now you need to acquire two 1MN Afterburner I modules. Again, the easiest way is to buy them from the market (keeping in mind that you received one as a reward from mission 7); a 1MN Afterburner costs about 30k ISK. Alternatively you can manufacture one - even though it requires a larger variety of minerals (all of which can be reprocessed from ores mined in high-security space) to manufacture than the Tracking Computer from mission 6. The agent also mentions that you could loot a module from a destroyed ship: player ships in EVE drop about half of their cargo and modules when they are destroyed (the other half is lost). So while you could, in theory, fit a combat ship, go into low- or null-security space, and fight other players until you destroy one who happened to use a 1MN Afterburner module, it's probably not a reasonable path for a new player.
Reward: An Advanced Industry skillbook, which, when trained, speeds up your manufacturing speed. Note that only Omega characters can use this skill - you can tell by the orange border around the icon, and by the letter Ω which appears when you mouse over the icon.
Balancing the Books (10 of 10)
Objective: Manufacture ammunition.
Your agent gives you a Blueprint Copy (BPC) for some race-specific ammunition (e.g. hybrid rounds, laser crystals), and even though the mission text says that you must manufacture them, there (yet again) nothing stopping you from buying them from other players on the market.
If you do decide to manufacture them yourself, follow the same steps as for any other kind of basic manufacturing (see also mission 6). Keep in mind that you need to produce a moderate quantity of ammunition (e.g. 5000 rounds of hybrid ammunition, or 50 laser crystals), increase the value of the "job runs" field in the Industry window until you get the desired outcome. As manufacturing jobs run sequentially the total manufacturing time can take several hours - but you can do other things (including other missions) during this time if you want. Once the manufacturing job is complete, open the Industry window again, select the "Jobs" tab, and click on "Deliver".
Reward: Your race's Fast Industrial ship. These ships are very weak in combat, but can carry large amounts of cargo.
