Exploration 101 - Part 1 by Hohenheim

So you want to explore... you want to search out the illusive wormholes that lead to parts unknown?

Well, to do that you need to know a few things. This post is part one of a series designed to give you a more comprehensive understanding of what is involved in exploration, what skills you need to get started and the best ships.

In this post, I will go through an overview of what exploration is, what are some of the most common skills you will need, and what types of sites you can scan down once you are ready to go.

Exploration Overview
Anyone can begin an exploration career in EVE. All you need is an exploration specific frigate, some very basic modules and, depending on what you want to do, some skills. Once you get your ship fitted and have a basic level of proficiency in the skills that govern exploration (particularly scanning) you'll be set to go.

Scanning, obviously, is the most important skill to the exploration career. If you can't scan down sites, you can't hack them and you can't make your ISK.

Skills
There are several skills that aid in exploration but a few are critical to you:

• Astrometrics
• Science
• Survey

You will need to train these three skills to 3 in order to unlock the more useful Astrometric skills below. Science should, by default, be trained to 3 so you don't even have to worry about that.

• Astrometric Acquisitining
• Astrometric Pinpointing
• Astrometric Rangefinding

The above three skills are the bread and butter of effective scanning. Can you scan down cosmic anomalies and cosmic signatures without them? Yes. But it will take you nearly twice as long to do so. Getting these skills up to 4 as soon as you can will help you immensely.

So, these skills will help you scan down anomalies and signatures more quickly... but what do you sca down?

Combat Sites
You can find combat sites of course, these are fairly self explanatory. There will be enemies there that you an destroy for loot. The level of difficulty will depend on the security level of the system you are in.

Data Sites
You can scan down Cosmic Signatures, which can lead either to a Data Site or a Relic Site. Data Sites are usually derelict vessels or stations that can be hacked in order to loot some sort of item. Items can include modules, circuits, and even blueprints.

Relic Sites
As with Data Sites, you can also scan down Relic Sites. You must also hack Relic Sites in order to access the loot. Relic Sites are, typically, more lucrative than Data Sites.

That brings us to Hacking... which I will discuss in Part 2