Originally by: Lubomir Penev

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Actually be best thing I can recommand is reading the Crime and Punishment forum. The piracy guides and all. Knowing your ennemy is the best thing you can do to avoid/beat him.

Also know the legal system, opening fire first on a flasher (one under -5 sec status) while perfectly legal is depriving you from the station/gate sentry protection for example.

And while pirates may be evil bastards in game some of the most informative posts I've seen on surviving in lowsec have been written by the like of tiller and Deja Thoris.

But I agree a mission running guide in lowsec would be good and I'm certainly not the most qualified one to write it.

Just what I practice...

- Check ships destroyed in the last hour on the map before travelling
- When travelling fit you ship for travelling and refit for the mission once you get at the mission place (travel setup is speed + WCS and damage control, sprinkle with ECM and ECCM if you got enough slots)
- Watch local at all time, read the bio of new people in system
- Don't assume someone with a positive sec status is not out to kill you
- in deadspaces, complexes and belt get away from the warp in point as soon as you can to buy yourself time
- learn to use the scanner
- when in safespot go full speed and aligned to something (preferably a planet with many moons, just don't warp at a moon with a POS that may shoot you) in case you get probbed, or be cloaked
- if you can have many safespots (mission places are often pretty good places far from stellar objects) and don't stay at one too long, not sure exactly but someone in the right ship, the right skills and a bit of luck should be able to probe you under 3 minutes
- if you are in a battleship (I don't fly those), make sure you can kill player frigs/interceptor/assault frigs. T2 light drones are great for the task, preferably warriors as they are the fastest, yes even if this mean that you are packing less mission specific medium/heavy drones
- The ships I fly can't fit WCS and still be able to function but on some ships they may not gimp it too much and thus be a good idea.
- don't have a glaring resist hole in your setup, just because you'll know what rat you'll be facing
- if you can have a reload or two of different damage types, but then I use hybrid guns so it's not for me, for projectile and missiles this is possible.
- if you can spare a mid slot have ECM.
- if evasive measures failed and you end up in a fight it's better to have drilled PvP a bit with corpmates, to be used to getting nossed, ECMed and the like, usually pirates pick fights they should win but you can be his bad surprise for today
- you will lose ships at time, get over it, don't fly it if you can't lose it, losing a ship to a player is not any worse than losing it to NPCs and you don't see as many people crying on forums because they have been ganked by a Mordu's blob (I lost more to mordu's legion than to all my death to players really ;-))
- practice warping your pod quickly after ship destruction
- you will lose some pods too, get over it, on the bright side you get to your home station faster

This won't save you from say a pirate in Pilgrim but will limit the risks greatly.

And surely people can add their tips on how to live in lowsec and not getting killed too much.

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