I've been inspired to write this little guide on salvaging and the rig industry. This activity has very low skill requirements so as a new player you can start doing this almost immediately. It's also quite topical as our first wardec was declared by a Rig trader who didn't appreciate a bit of honest competition - but it's a testament to how important this market is for some people that they will go to those lengths to try and keep others out!
Why Rigs?
The Rig industry is different to mainstream industry in that they are built using salvaged materials instead of minerals. You obtain salvaged materials from NPC wrecks and also Relic anamoly sites, so rather than spending hours mining ore to obtain minerals, you can participate in this industry by doing fun stuff like running combat and mission sites. If you are already running these sites then with very little extra effort you can have a good source of passive income, i.e. earn ISK even when you are not actively playing the game.
An additional advantage is that salvaged material has very little volume (0.1 m3). You can carry 1000 pieces of salvage in a shuttle if you want - no need for slow industrials to transport your materials around!
How to Salvage Efficiently
To collect your salvage as efficiently as possible you will need a specialist salvaging ship and ideally 3 MTU's (Mobile Tractor Units) although you can get by with 2 as they are quite expensive for new players. The system I use is to load up my mission/combat ship with as many MTU's as I can e.g. in a cruiser sized ship you should be able to carry 3 MTU's plus any ammo you need. Don't worry about leaving any room for loot in your combat ship.
Once you have destroyed all the NPC ships in a mission pocket or combat site, drop an MTU and BOOKMARK IT! Always get in the habit of bookmarking your MTU's as soon as you drop them, because if you forget you will lose it*. Then move immediately onto your next mission or combat site while your MTU is quietly collecting all the wrecks and loot into a nice little pile for you to collect later. When you have completed the next site drop another MTU and so on. This is why you have as many MTU's as you can carry so you don't waste time waiting for them to pull in all the wrecks.
Wrecks will last for 4 hours in space, so you can continue running your sites in this way for quite a while. When you have run out of MTU's just go back and pick up your first one and continue, leaving all the wrecks to collect later. When you have finished your session swap into your salvage ship and go back to all your bookmarks to collect the loot and salvage the wrecks. It's not really rocket science, but will make your salvaging experience more enjoyable and a lot quicker.
A word of warning, don't leave an MTU unattended anywhere it can be easily found, such as an asteroid belt - less honourable players like to destroy them, but they will be fairly safe in mission pockets and combat sites as once the site is despawned the only way other players can locate your MTU is through scanning, and as you cycle through them you will be constantly picking them up and moving them elswhere anyway.
* Technically it is possible to scan down a lost MTU, but it is very difficult as they have small signatures.Your Salvaging Ship
The ship you should use is a Catalyst (Gallente Destroyer):
The two tractor beams are optional if price or fitting is an issue, they are really only used for pulling in stragglers if your MTU hasn't quite finished pulling in all the wrecks. Don't bother adding more than six salvagers as the Catalyst has a maximum of 6 targets available. You should train your Targeting skill so you can target 6 wrecks at a time so your salvagers can each target a different wreck and be working constantly. The more levels of Salvaging you train the faster your ship will salvage. At level V this ship salvages so fast that I struggle to actually keep up with the salvagers and assign them new targets.
You may ask why not use a Noctis (Eve's specialist salvaging ship). Well this guide is intended for new players and the Noctis has a high cost. Also a Noctis is a big advertisement for gankers who will come and destroy you and steal the nice loot you have just collected. Take a look at the Noctis killboard... you don't want to be like these unfortunate people!
Your Catalyst will fly under the radar of gankers, they will not know that your ship is a salvager and has no guns. Just PLEASE do not name it something stupid like "Ed's Salvager". It will show up on DScan and everyone will know what the ship is for, and also who is flying it... never use your name or give any clue as to your ship fit when choosing your ship name - this is a basic rule of Eve security.
Building and Selling your Rigs
You don't need a lot of material to build a rig, in fact just one combat site should give you enough savlage to build 1-2 small rigs. Once you've built enough rigs you will then have to decide where to sell them and how much to sell them for. Because the rig market is based purely on player built stock as opposed to a loot-driven market (i.e. rigs are never dropped as loot and can only enter the game when players build them), then the prices remain higher than the value of the materials used to build them.
As to where to sell them, well a market hub is fairly obvious, but I prefer to sell them outside of the hubs. Although the market hub has a high volume of trades, the downside is having to always babysit your orders to keep them at the top and you generally have to accept a lower price for your rigs because of the competition from other sellers. This doesn't suit my strategy as a passive income earner, so I choose alternative locations to sell them where I don't need to worry so much about competition from other sellers. Here are a few ideas for alternative markets... without giving away my exact systems, you have to do some work for yourself!
- Starter "school" systems. New players are fitting ships in these systems, and they often make fitting mistakes meaning more rigs are sold (since they can't be re-used once fitted). Small power grid and CPU rigs are good sellers here.
- Mining systems with ice fields. Look at popular fits for mining barges and sell those particular rigs e.g. Medium harvesting upgrade rigs are big sellers here.
- Popular missioning systems with Level IV security agents. Large rigs are good sellers here, in particular resistance rigs (shield and armour) as some players will adjust there ship resistances depending on which mission they are running.
- The Small Gravity Capacitor rig. This is my best seller anywhere, I cannot manufacture these quickly enough, unfortunately they are fairly low value but the high volume makes these worthwhile.
Hopefully this has been of interest and has inspired some of you to give this industry a go... fly safe!
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