It was time to get into a bit of a grind phase and earn some ISK. I’d end up making a new system my home for the time being. With a main focus on running some missions for the time being.

The Harbinger is quite a lethal and powerful ship. From having six high slots for weapons and the use of drones. I could not wait to tear things up with this ship. It’s also got enough lows to fit some damaged heatsinks and two hardeners that I can swap out depending on the mission I'd be running.

While I could have gone out and spent a lot more getting something that could run tier-4 missions. I was more than happy to take things down a notch and just grind out level 3s.

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Sometimes I can get a bit lazy and not use the drones the Harbinger has. One of the reasons I wanted to use one was since the last time I got to fly one I had invested quite a lot of skill points into drone skills. So, it was kind of fun getting back into the ship again and seeing a bit more power out of them.

That for me also has to be an amazing thing about Eve Online. Between taking quite a long break from the game. Along with training quite a few skills since I've flown a Harbinger. It’s going to be more powerful than the last time I used the ship. It also today is more than good enough like when I used to fly it back in the day for level 3 missions.

Sure, I could have also taken out my Zealot and done level 3s. The Zealot however costs a bit more and has a much smaller tank. Since I knew I would not have trouble hitting things most of the time with the Harbinger. I opted for the lower risk and more chill experience.

It also gave me a bit of an excuse to buy yet another ship and load it out. That is perhaps one of the biggest regrets I have about all my years of playing the game. More times than not I'd just sell off ships I was not using. That made sense at the time. However not returning to much of anything to fly since it all got blown up on my last big adventure before I took a long break from the game. Make it a bit harder to rebuild.

Next up I needed to find somewhere to run the level 3 missions. Thankfully the game makes that easy these days. Under the activities tab is The Agency. From there you can just click on Agents & Missions. Then narrow it down further to the type of missions you are looking to get into. I went with Security for the time being since those will be combat PvE missions.

While it was tempting to want to go work for the Sisters of Eve faction the loyalty points you earn from missions usually get you some high-value items to sell. I knew if that was still true those systems, they are in would be loaded with players. I wanted somewhere a bit quieter.

While I wanted to a location where just every mission, I would end up being in high sec. I also want the higher mission bonus you get from being in a 0.5 or .6 system over something higher. So, I did some scouting around to find a place that worked for me.

I also picked a location that was far enough away from two trade hubs that the system could not be insanely busy. It would however be within a reasonable amount of difference I would not mind hauling loot back to sell either.

On top of bringing out my mission running a ship. Along with loads of crystal ammo for my weapons, and things like spare drones. I’d end up going back making a couple of trips to bring in a ship for hauling items, a salvaging ship, a basic mining ship (for quick dailies), and my exploration ship.

For a short while, at least my new mission running area would end up being like a home for me. I did not want to go far when I needed a break from running missions. Along with doing a couple of other activities from time to time.

For the most part, my mission grinding would be rather on the light side. I’d maybe log in for a two-hour window. Go run a bunch of missions. Then salvage and run off to do other activities.

Once I was all set up at my new place it was time to start that first mission. The first was nothing that great. It was however good enough to take. Since I could only decline one mission every four hours without taking a standing penalty. I’d rather save that option if I get a random mission in low sec or one that will cause me to lose a decent chunk of standing with one of the major factions.

The mission itself had about 17 ships and three towers to take out. As far as the main mission itself I needed to destroy a Lesser Drone Hive and loot the container.

I’ll admit being able to pin the mission overview goals to the UI by picking to track the mission is amazing. Sometimes it would tell me the target I needed to take out and I could click on it to lock the target. Other times like this mission I just switched to the overview tab to see the Drone Hive and then I switched back to another.

Before I knew it I had about ten missions under my belt. A lot of them were quick and fast. That is kind of the nice thing about only doing level 3s over running tier 4s. These missions were not going to be much of a challenge for my skill level as a Harbinger. Enough to keep me entertained while still allowing me to earn some ISK along the way.

Every so often my wallet would flash with the bounties I was collecting from clearing out these missions. If I was fighting a pirate faction, they usually had a bounty on them. While nothing massive it all started to add up over time.

While I've more than run enough missions to get an idea of which ones are the best to salvage. Along with the ones that you need to luck on and get a rare drop or are flat and not worth the time. I just have fun salvaging sites once all the killing is done.

One thing I'm not that shocked by is the price of salvage loot. I can recall back in the day you could almost drool over the price that salvage was going for. It was at least good to know a few modules that can drop as well as have some value remaining.

On top of that, you also get a little bit of ISK from each mission for a time bonus and just finishing the mission. While the actual ISK rewards are not usually that great. They again start to add up a little bit.

From there a huge chunk of the reward is from the loyalty points from each mission unless you luck out on some nice drops. While on some missions I might only get 1.4 million worth of loyalty points. I’d have some that would be over 5 million ISK worth.

While these amounts are not huge it all depends on the items you end up buying with them that you need to sell. For the faction I was grinding missions with for now it’s good enough for me. If I wanted to increase how much ISK I could earn I'd go around working out a much better faction to run for.

For a random spot, I found after just exploring for an hour or two. It was not that. Even better I already had the required faction to get a level 3 mission anyway. So, I could go into running the missions I wanted right away.

Final Thoughts

It would not take that long before I covered the cost of my mission running ship. That ended up being great as I had been doing quite a lot of spending burning a large hole in the amount of ISK I had left myself to rebuild with. Over time I'd even dig myself out of the hole of all the ships and other things I ended up spending on.

Information

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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Online.