Salvaging on-line
10th July 2008 – 7.01 amLast night I got my salvager on-line. After training the mechanic skill to level three, buying the skill book for the survey skill and training that to level three, then spending a cool 919,000 ISK for the salvaging skill book itself and training the first level, I was finally ready to rip systems out of ships I blow up. I spend the last while of skill training shifting my items and a couple of ships from Perimeter to Jita, which is made possible by Harvest Moon, my Badger, before finally being able to fit the salvager to a ship. Being comfortable with the missile boat of Autumn Leaf, my Kestrel, I remove one launcher from a high slot and replace it with the salvager, reducing my combat capability for this interesting new unit.
Starting a conversation with my agent in Jita I find that a secret formula has been stolen and he wants it recovered. I accept the mission and undock Autumn Leaf in preparation. A quick warp and jump to the Muvolailen system and I am soon picking through the wrecks of some rookie mercenaries. The salvager isn't always successful in retrieving systems from the burning hulls, but I manage to salvage some items! The items turn out to be burnt-out circuits and other such broken systems. After all this time spent skill training and the hopeful investment of almost a million ISK and my first use of the skill gets me some useless electronics.
I wonder if it is possible that my skill in salvaging increases with use, but that's not how EVE Online works as I understand it. I could train the skill further but this apparently just increases the chances of salvaging being successful on any single wreck. Another thought is that once I start fighting more capable foes the possibility of better salvage increases, and that I am seeing low quality salvage because I am engaging low tech ships. At the least, I hope, I will be able to reprocess these circuits in to useful minerals that I can sell when back at a station, so back I head.
After docking I am a little disappointed to see there being no option to reprocess my salvage, making me think that I really have just picked up some useless junk and wondering what I spent all my money on. My only other option was to sell the units, but I had no idea who would want to buy them. I opened up the market and started seeing if anyone had orders open to buy what I had to offer. I expected little interest or demand, and what I get instead is 400,000 ISK from selling all the broken circuits. Cripes! It seems that these units are useful to someone.
With the burnt-out circuits fetching such high costs I am left wondering what they are used for. But because they are expensive to buy I am also fairly sure whatever skills are needed to make use of them will be unavailable to me for now, so I have no problems selling the units. I am quite curious to find out more about them and how they can be repaired, it's probably just a matter of finding the right skills to learn.
I couldn't resist running another mission to try salvaging more, so speak to my agent again. This time, he asks me to destroy a convoy passing through the system. Unfortunately, 'the system' is Jita and the lag in the system is terrible again. When I warp in to deadspace I find that I have around a ten second delay in activating systems, which makes for a frustrating experience and makes me want to find a system with a half-decent agent that isn't Jita. Nevertheless, I destroy the convoy and its guards and start my salvager working again. The unit recovers more ruined circuits, and I head back to the station, declaring a successful mission to my agent before jumping back in to the market.
My account was sitting at 2,900,000 ISK at the start of the session. I bought the salvaging skill book for 919,000 ISK, taking me just below 2,000,000 ISK. The two missions I ran netted me 350,000 ISK from mission rewards, including time bonuses, and bounties from killing rats. After selling all the 'useless' salvage my account ended up sitting at 3,930,000 ISK! I had made over a million and a half ISK from salvaging after only two missions, and my account was not only finally over the three million ISK mark but pushing four million. I can almost feel the leather of the pilot's seat in a Caldari Cruiser.
4 Responses to “Salvaging on-line”
Salvage parts are used to make "Rigs". Rigs are like implants for your ship, allowing you to take a normal hull and specialize it. Some rigs increase your tank, others make you faster, etc...
There are downsides to rigs though:
Each rig has some kind of drawback, ie: armor rigs make you slower, damage rigs increase the power or CPU use of your weapons, etc. Drawbacks can be mitigated by training the appropriate rigging skill.
Rigs are fairly expensive, ranging anywhere from 5 million to 100's of millions for T2 rigs. This is why salvaging is so profitable.
Finally, unlike modules, you can only use rigs once. If you want to remove them they are destroyed and can't be used on another ship. You also can't insure them, so when your ship goes *pop*, the investment is gone. Because of this, you usually only want to fit rigs on Battleships, Capitals, or T2 ships. (You wouldn't want to fit 40m isk Polycarbon Engine housings on a 250K Rifter for example ;-) )
Ultimately rigs are all about gaining that edge, wether it's keeping your capacitor alive to sustain your tank a few more seconds in combat, going a few m/s faster to evade a gate camp, or adding just that little exta bit of space in your cargo hold to reduce the number of round trips in your hauler. Given where you are in the game right now, I wouldn't worry too much about them, but once you get into more expensive ships, they are certainly worth a look.
Ah, excellent. In that case, I'll continue to profit from selling my salvage to progress in more useful areas and maybe return to rigs later.
Thanks for the information, it is much appreciated.
Keep an eye out for Alloyed Tritanium Bars when salvaging. Even though their price has dropped considerably since I started playing a couple of months ago, they are still the most valuable salvage item by far.
I remember feeling the same way about selling my "junk" when I first started out and the surprising revelation that people wanted to pay for this stuff. I couldn't unload my salvage fast enough and now I'm at the point where I recently outfitted my Drake with 3 rigs made almost wholly from wrecks I had salvaged myself.
I think I found one! I made over one million ISK from a single bar of something, anyway.