You scan the ships down with combat probes and warp to their mission sites. You might find salvage in belts in lowsec and nul, but better off salvaging peoples mission sites instead

You won't get flagged for salvaging anywhere. There's no penalty for it. People used to rage cry and send hate mail over it but you won't get any of that either, because the most you're stealing from them these days is like 500k-2mil.. at the most you'll make about 1-2mil for every hour you invest in ninja salvaging which is why it's an obsolete profession. The guides for ninja salvaging were all written before the noctis reared its ugly head in 2011 smashing the price of salvage into the ground. If you're wanting to make isk your best bet is to not waste your time/sp on salvaging as it has become an obsolete profession producing very little tears or isk.

and you need combat probes to scan a player, you might get lucky and loot their objective, and sell it as a contract... still a huge time sink for the 5 or mil so u will sell the objective for if your lucky, and maybe get a hate mail but the time you'll invest theres much more lucrative things u could be doing..

Wow, Im glad you said this as I could have wasted valuable time. I still have to believe there is something still lucrative about it. Are the salvage components only used for rigs? What about going to places where there are huge battles taking place/or have taken place?

I agree with the above posters that the risk/reward for ninja-salvaging in low isn't there, stick to high.

If you ARE going to salvage in low, make sure you fly fast and cheap.

Atron fits the same number of slavagers has smaller sig, faster top speed and more agile. Same cost.

Only difference is the the navitas can pack more cargo, but most valuable salvage is pretty small.

Dont rule low sec out if your smart you can drop your risk in those areas huge amounts and get great pay out.

Just got to keep an eye on local and dscan. Youll be all right.

But Im thinking I can fit my ship with certain mods to keep me relatively safe in pvp space. (maybe anti warp scramblers, cloaking devices, mwdrives?)

There are definitely things you can do to avoid getting caught in low-sec. However, it has been the experience of many (myself included) that simply filling up your ship's precious slots with resource-hogging modules designed to counteract jamming/scramming/pewpew can be counterproductive, and actually can mean more trouble for you from hardened PvPers. You have to generally learn the skills to operate these modules, and they tend to gobble up resources (usually CPU, which can be tight, especially for frigates using Salvager I or Tractor Beam mods).

The best words of advice for Eve:

1.) You're going to lose ships.
2.) Don't fly ships you can't afford to lose.

In the end of the day, it's better to lose a cheap ship you can easily replace and say "oh well!" to and walk away from, than to pimp out your awesomest ride imaginable with all sorts of shinies and then watch as it goes kablooey anyway.

Keep an eye on D-scan and Local. Learn to align to nearest safe-spot/bookmark/jump-gate.

Granted, I'm not the most experienced pilot, and I'm sure others know more, but that's my 0.02 isk. Common sense works better than most (if not all) of the fancy mods you can cram onto your ship.

Fly safe! o/

Then you've got it right and you should have a blast playing.

I won't tell you all the stuff I did wrong...but there is one story that sticks in my mind. Confidence is one thing--but I got more than confident once...

Suffice it to say, I thought I was all smart and ready for lowsec ratting since I read up all these forums and helpful suggestions before even getting into the game. (Little did I know at the time, it's usually more lucrative to do missions than ratting lowsec).

Granted, it helped, but then I got a little too sure of myself one night (after single-handedly taking down an NPC battleship spawn in my Maller and thinking it was some amazing feat on my part). Now, taking down that BS was probably one of the funnest experiences I had in Eve up until that point, but it really made me overconfident. Couple of days later, in an 0.4 system while I was ratting, I stopped looking at Local and didn't bother aligning. Hurricane popped in, webbed, scrammed and blew me to bits. Then he podded me. I was flabbergasted. Learned the lesson well and stayed in highsec for a bit more to get my bearings better. I still have that player on my watch-list. It reminds me to be more careful every time I see his toon log on.

As a side point, believe it or not, nullsec evidently tends to actually be more forgiving than lowsec a lot of the time, though I have never ventured out into it. Been to a couple of wormholes though. That was more uneventful and less stressful than lowsec, in my experience, though if you spend enough time anywhere, you're bound to run into someone along the way who's intent on ruining your day and sending you back to highsec via the Podder Express, probably hoping and praying that you didn't update your clone while he's pushing the "Fire" button.

Keep your clone updated!

Enjoy--that's the whole point!

Indeed. I built a Navitas to use in low sec that can get out of dodge quickly if needed. But Im going to stick to hi sec for a moment

You fitted a navitas for ninja? I would love to see that fit.

I wouldn't bother trying to ninja salvage in either low or null sec. You will find it very difficult to scan down mission sites as most people will notice you come into system and get safe especially if you put out combat probes. That only leaves the belt rats but they aren't worth the effort for different reasons.

In low sec you will spend forever wandering from belt to belt looking in vein for salvage and only occassionally finding a few wreaks. Never worth the time.

In null sec you will find the rats respawning in the belts before you can salvage and you will not be able to tank the damage. You will also be actively hunted by the residences.

As one of the other posters above said Ninja Salvaging is effectively a dead profession due to the low returns nowadays. But if you are going to do it, unlike most other professions, the most profitable place to do it is high sec. Salvage is worth the same where ever you get it. There is no risk/reward penalty, it is all about quantity.

The best way to go about scanning down a mission site is to scan for drones. Look for clusters of 5 drones which indicates a larger ship and the Drones V skill which a L4 mission runner will have. You will often land on a group of 5 lost drones that you can scope. If they are T2 you're looking at 2-4M Isk in total. If you land on an acceleration gate you know the mission runner is still inside and then you can jump into the first room and go to town. If you only salvage, you are pretty safe, but few people will shoot at a ninja looter nowadays.

Note that scooping drone will not get you flagged as a looter. I've had some hilarious times with stealing peoples abandoned drones.