Celia Therone
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
37
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Posted - 2013.12.07 02:10:00 -
[1] - Quote
Archaeology sites in high sec have essentially no progression. It's conceivable that you might not be able to scan down the very hardest to scan sites with truly lousy skills but I think that training time measured in days, if not hours, should fix that. As far as I have seen they also have no worthwhile loot, you'd literally be better off running level 1 missions or the noob intro missions again. It is conceivable that there might be a very low chance for a faction pos bpc drop, but I haven't witnessed it myself.
Hacking sites are the same as archaeology progression wise however their base loot (decryptors used in invention) is slightly better. However in the exploration re-vamp in Odyssey CCP screwed up the drop rates, as well as making the sites easier to find which has resulted in the value of the loot tanking on the market. You're probably looking at level 2/level 3 mission equivalent return. Which isn't terrible for a real noob but is pretty bad for anyone older than a couple of weeks.
Mining sites. Oh well, they made these anomalies so they aren't even exploration any more. No progression whatsoever.
Gas mining sites. No progression, generally pretty worthless unless you can make the boosters yourself (which you can't in high sec.)
Unknown combat sites. These have some progression, generally up to about level 3 mission equivalent. They tend to be sparse, you may have more luck finding them in pockets of high sec isolated by low sec unless other explorers are farming there already. Loot wise these vary from not very interesting to a billion isk/site if you roll the jackpot in drops. Sometimes you have to kill structures or specific rats to get the drops and as the drops are random you may be unlucky and get almost nothing, just some low value overseer's effects. 4/10 sites may be challenging to a newer player in a cruiser, they might not have the dps to break the serpentis phi overseer for example. Note that drone unknowns are pretty much worthless as they supply parts for the terrible augmented drones that no-one uses.
Expeditions vary wildly in difficulty from roughly level 1 difficulty up to beyond level 4 and come randomly from completing unknown, non-dead, combat sites. There's at least one death room that will kill you unless you read up on it ahead of time and several rooms that are quite dangerous to newer players with webs, warp disruptors and significant DPS to deal with. Rewards are highly random and the escalations are quite sparse so you can spend a lot of time for derisory rewards if you're unlucky. The last stage of an escalation will be in low sec if it runs that far, many will arbitrarily stop part way though due to random number generator. Even if you clear the low sec mission the majority of the time you will get nothing of value, but sometimes you can get a great drop or a quick succession of mediocre drops that adds up to something nice.
Ghost sites - not really exploration. I haven't done enough to be able to give good feedback. They seem lucrative for the time invested at the moment but I think that in the short-medium term the very small demand for the implants will be met and they will become pretty worthless.
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