After some discussions on the forums, the in-game chat channels, and Twitter I thought it would be a good idea to write down the total amount of ISKs you can get from a mission. I went through the mission, looted everything I could find, salvaged everything I could find, and then figured out how much ISKs you could earn from that. Not only that, but I looked at the amount of loyalty points earned (which also results in ISK if you sell items that were bought through Loyalty Points) and the amount of ISK/minerals you get from reprocessing the loot.
Mission Rewards
Mission: Intercept The Saboteurs
Rewards: 181,000 ISK
Loyalty Points: 265
Bonus Reward: 192,000 ISK
Rewards: 181,000 ISK
Loyalty Points: 265
Bonus Reward: 192,000 ISK
Loot
The loot that I grabbed from the wrecks and how much they were listed on the market for (per unit):
- 14x Imperial Navy Midshipman Insignia II - 8,000 ISK
- 1x Small Proton Smartbomb I - 21,000 ISK
- 10x Imperial Navy Midshipman Insignia I - 4,500 ISK
- 2x Small Energy Neutralizer I - 12,500 ISK
- 2x Imperial Navy Sergeant Insignia II - 25,000 ISK
- 40x Vitoc (amarr slave transport) - 7,897 ISK
- 1x 50mm Reinforced Steel Plates I - 6,612 ISK
- 1x Dual Light Beam Laser I - 2,000 ISK
- 1x Passive Targeter I - 24,000 ISK
- 1x Survey Scanner I - 1,700 ISK
- 1x Small Armor Repairer I - 6,000 ISK
- 1x Small EMP Smartbomb I - no buyers
- 2x Imperial Navy Sergeant Insignia I - 20,000 ISK
- 10x Cap Booster 50 - 130 ISK
- 1x Stasis Webifier I - 16,000 ISK
- 1x Medium Afocal Pulse Maser I - 5,201 ISK
- 1x Small Nosferatu I - 19,000 ISK
The loot that I salvaged and how much it was listed on the market for (per unit):
- 3x Armor Plates - 176,030 ISK
- 3x Defective Current Pump - 189 ISK
- 2x Tangled Power Conduit - 225 ISK
- 2x Charred Micro Circuit - 42 ISK
- 6x Fried Interface Circuit - 1,800 ISK
- 6x Contaminated Nanite Compound - 1,601 ISK
- 4x Tripped Power Circuit - 60,000 ISK
Total Loot: 1,480,290 ISK
TOTAL COMBINED: 1,853,290 ISK
Almost 2 million ISK from a level 2 mission which takes less than 30min to do. Not too bad!
TOTAL COMBINED: 1,853,290 ISK
Almost 2 million ISK from a level 2 mission which takes less than 30min to do. Not too bad!
Loyalty Points
In the corporate channel, people were talking about how much money they were making on missions. Someone factored in their Loyalty Points and that's when I realized that they can be traded in for items that are worth a lot of ISKs! Right away I traded in 2000 loyalty points for an item that sold at 1.5 million ISK.
On this level 2 mission, I earned 265 loyalty points with the Federation Navy. Save up those loyalty points! It's better to wait before spending loyalty points because you can get much better items when you have more of them. This obviously means you can sell them for a lot of ISK. To get up to 2000 points you'll need to do eight level 2 missions (I think level 1 missions give around half the amount of loyalty points?). It should be easy to run through 8 missions within a day or two and this extra source of ISK isn't too bad.
Mining Vs. Reprocessing
Someone on the EVE forums said that mining isn't worth much, it's the reprocessing of drones and other loot from missions that supplies a vast amount of minerals in the EVE universe. I wasn't so sure, but I took the time to document how many minerals I would get from reprocessing the loot. Here's the list of minerals you can reprocess from the wreck loot and the salvage loot (note: not every item can be reprocessed).
- 276x isogen - 60 ISK
- 6x megacyte - 2,600 ISK
- 978x mexallon - 45 ISK
- 3x nocxium - 455 ISK
- 10,162x pyerite - 4.79 ISK
- 30,747x tritanium - 3.45 ISK
- 8x zydrine - 753 ISK
Total from Mineral Reprocessing: 238,312.13 ISK
In this case it wouldn't be worth reprocessing to sell the minerals. However, the amount of minerals could be used toward manufacturing some blueprints. For example, you could make a few Navitas ships or some Antimatter Charge M ammo, or an Ogre I drone (which would be handy for me since I lost one on this mission!). The amount of time used to mine all these minerals would have been at least a good half hour. It seems like that random EVE player was right; it's much quicker to just reprocess minerals from loot than to mine it which means that the EVE universe does indeed rely more on reprocessed loot than on miners.