Pirate Hunting – How to do it

Many people start out in EVE thinking they have to spend days mining ore to make money. This is not the case. Mining is the easiest and cheapest way to make some cash but there’ are many other ways.

In this article, you will learn about pirate hunting as a mean of income. This is a much more exciting path and often filled with danger but it’s also a lot more fun for players that like more action, but mining in deep space is still a very exciting endeavor as you run the risk of being attacked by NPCs.

While the starting ship is no power house of death-dealing, with a small investment in some cheap weapons and by using the Civilian Shield Booster you get from doing the tutorial (you did the tutorial right?) it can be more than adequate to kill some low level pirates.

At the end of the tutorial and the first set of tutorial agent missions, a new player should have around 15,000 ISK. Take some of this cash and buy a cheap weapon. If your ship can handle the CPU and power costs, get 2 of them.

Next buy some good ammunition. Stats can be a bit overwhelming at first, but you will catch on eventually. Try to get ammo that does a good range of damage but also has a low negative range modifier. Antimatter ammo, for instance, does more damage than most other ammunitions but it has a -50% modification to range. It doesn’t matter how much damage you do if you can’t hit a target from a decent range.

Next make sure the guns and the civilian booster are mounted using the in-station, guns loaded, and extra ammo in the cargo hold; time to go hunting. The best place to start out as a new pirate killer is in 0.8 security space. Find a sector with lots of asteroid belts and patrol the belts. Most pirates in 0.8 solar systems are relatively weak and don’t travel in groups.

Make sure you have the autoscanner open and when you see a pirate right mouse click on the entry on the radar and target lock it. You can also spot them in space as small “+” signs, be sure to I. D. before you lock on to it. This can be done from the radar by double clicking on the entry there or by right mouse clicking on the “+” sign in space. Ensure that you do not lock on to innocent NPCs such as CONCORD, Navy, or Tradeships. NPC pirates also have their faction in front of their name for better identification, i.e. “Blood” Raider, “Sansha’s” Beast, “Angel” Impaler, “Serpentis” Smuggler, or “Guristas” Terrorist.

With the target identified as a hostile and locked. You can use the “orbit – X km” command to ensure you stay away from the target and shoot at it while orbiting, the X being the optimal range of your weaponry. To do this, right click on the target or the representing autoscanner line. In most cases, especially in the high security systems, players have longer weapon ranges than NPC pirates. If everything goes well, you should take very few hits and the NPC pirate should explode quickly.

Loot the cargo container. It may have something you can use, sell or recycle. Congrats on your first kill and your first bounty. The lowest level pirates are usually worth 1000 to 1500 ISK, and the loot in it can be worth twice that or even more.