Distribution missions are probably the easiest type of missions you can do. Distribution agents usually ask you to bring some item from one station to another, most of the times handing you over the item in the current station. Sometimes distribution agents will rarely give out non-distribution missions that require a combat ship or sometimes even some mining gear. However, these missions are very easy and can usually be done in your distribution boat.

I ran distribution mission for the Republic University, a distribution only NPC corp that operates in Minmatar space. My Minmatar faction standing was quite low when I started, so I could only get missions from a level one agent.

Level 1 Missions

I chose an agent close to Hek, quickly fitted my first distribution boat, and off I went to do some serious hauling.  The level one distribution missions are probably the easiest missions in the game and the agent asks you to bring some goods to a station that is a jump or two away from his home station. The rewards for the missions were between 41K and 110K ISK and between 35 and 110 LP. The volume of the transported items was never greater than 320 m3, which allows you to run all missions in a T1 frigate, which also speeds up the warping and jumping process compared to a bigger and slower T1 industrial hauler.  

In average it took me 3 minutes to finish a mission. This allows you complete almost 20 missions per hour.  However, if you look at the pitiful rewards offered by the missions, I hardly made a million ISK in rewards per hour. If you exchange your LP for a rate of 1500 ISK / LP, this came to around 1,5 million ISK / h for me. This very low value even beats high sec exploration as the worst rate of income in the game so far.

My agent also offert one security mission that I finished by just throwing on some T1 drones, some tank and a couple of guns, and one mining mission that I finished with a single Mining Laser I on my frig. So no proper PVE or mining boat was required for these. One mission required a Data Analyser, but that was handed out when I accepted the mission and the hacking was as easy as in the tutorial missions.

Every 16 missions, I got a storyline mission of the same level as my agent by the closest Minmatar storyline agent. The storyline missions were also very easy and sometimes rewarded by a  +1 training implant, which costs about 1 million ISK in Jita. These missions increased my faction standing with the Minmatar Republic and corp standing to Republic University quite a bit.  If you can get and sell a training implant, you can push your income by a few bucks. If every second storyline mission were dropping an implant, this resulted in 600k ISk extra per hour.  

This ended up to be the fit I used for most of my level one missions:

There is little to say about the fit. Small Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer Is in the rig slots to make you warp faster and Inertia Stabilizers Is in the lows to get you into warp faster. The guns in the highs and the active shield tank in the mid slots was needed for the single combat mission. Additionally I used 5 Hobgoblin Is to increase dps. This fit is, with only 1.2 million ISK including the hull, super cheap and does its job. Of course you can also use any other T1 frig instead of the Heron that has sufficient cargo space to hold the maximum of 320 m3 cargo for level one missions. I didn’t put any T2 or expensive meta items on the fit, since these will increase the costs of the fitting quite a bit, with very little return. Any new player can probably fly this within a couple of hours and buy it by the ISK from the tutorial missions.

Level 2 Missions

After a couple of hours grinding level one missions, I finally got a standing of greater one and unlocked a level two distribution agent.  The level two missions were not much different from the level one’s, apart from slightly bigger loads to transport and better payout.

In average I got 100k ISK and 76 LP per mission. The maximum distance you need to travel to deliver a package went up by one jump to a maximum of three jumps, which increased the average completion time to 4 minutes. The maximum volume of the packages was 450 m3, which is a little too big for the cargo bay of my Heron. By fitting a Expanded Cargohold I in one of the low slots, you can however increase it just enough.

With 4 minutes to complete a mission, I could finish 15 missions an hour, which comes to  3,2 million ISK / h.

The level two agents did not offer any other mission types, so I could run all missions in the same Heron fit. Again, every 16 level two missions you will get one storyline mission, which now sometime rewards you with a +2 training implant, which goes for around 5 million ISK in Jita.  If we just assume that every second storyline mission gives one out, this would increase your income to around 5,5 million ISK / h.

Level 3 Missions

The grind up to level three missions and the minimum corporation standing of three took me a couple of afternoons, but finally I unlocked the agent and got my first mission. The package volume for level three mission increases quite a bit to between 1.000 m2 and 4.000 m3. This was way too much for my little Heron and I had to switch to a proper T1 industrial ship to get enough cargo capacity. After looking at each available T1 hauler, I picked the Nereus hull because it has the fastest align time and warp speed of all haulers, which are the key stats to finish your missions fast, which translates in more ISK / h. The cargo capacity of the hull is big enough to finish most missions and if it doesn’t fit, simply use some Expanded Cargo Hold IIs in the low slots to increase cargo space.

This is the fit a used for my level three missions:

This fit is basically the T1 industrial version of my Heron, just with bigger cargo hold and no guns. It aligns in under 5 seconds and has an impressive warp speed of 7 AU, which is almost as fast as an Interceptor. Again, it doesn’t break the bank with about 13 million ISK for the hull and fitting.

The maximum distance to travel increased again by one jump to a maximum of four jumps away from my agent. This also increased the average completion time by one minute to 5 minutes per mission. The average rewards were 166K ISK and 180 LP. With these stats I could finish 12 missions an hour, which comes to 5,2 million ISK / h.

The level three agent only offered distribution missions and the implant rewarded by the corresponding storyline mission increased to a +3 training implant.  Since the number of missions you can do per hour becomes lower with the level of your agent, the amount of storyline mission you can get per hour decreases too. Let’s assume you can get one implant worth 9 million ISK every three hours, this increases your income by 3 million ISK / h to a total of 8,2 million ISK / h.

Level 4 Missions

Finally, after an eternity of hauling dolls, frozen food, homeless (seriously!), weapons and dirt, I unlocked the level 4 distribution agent. The maximum distance for a mission increased to 5, the maximum volume to 9700K m3 and the rewards were in average 280K ISK and 470 LP per mission. With an average completion time of 6 minutes this result in 10 missions per hour and an income of  9,8 million ISK / h.

If you count in the storyline mission, which now provide +4 implants worth 20 mill a piece, this value increases to around 16 million ISK / h.

On thing you should look at before you start to run level 4 missions, is that the agent is at least 5 jumps away from the closest low sec system. This is also the case for the lower level agents, however the higher the maximum distance of the mission, the more of a problem this becomes. If he is not, you will end up with quite some missions that lead into low sec and you must not go there with the above T1 indy fit. Any player with a PVP fitted ship greater than a frigate can and will simply kill you in low sec. If you want to haul into low sec, you will need the T2 industrial version, which can fit a covert ops cloaking device and warp cloaked. You can avoid almost all hostile players  by simply cloaking up once you break your gate cloak and warp away. However, the cost of such a ship (200 million+) is in no relation to the rewards of the missions, so I would simply avoid going into low sec.

Looking at the number, the higher level missions earn some ISK with very little effort and investment. This might be a good activity for brand new players. The distribution missions in general  require only minimum attention, so if you like gaming and watching Netflix at the same time, this might be an activity for you. 😉

It is also very easy to grind towards storyline mission in the lower levels and increase your faction standing relatively fast. If this is what you want and you don’t care about the income, distribution missions might be a good choice too.

One thing Eve always gets criticized on is its notoriously bad PVE experience. Apparently the PVE aspects are pretty boring and only repeat themself over and over again. However, I think most PVE aspects are simply not known well enough and people think Eve’s PVE mainly consist of null sec ratting and running security Lv4 missions. While that might be true for many players, there are actually a lot more things that you can do to spice things up a bit, like running Cosmos missions, Epic Arcs, farming your R&D agents and even mining missions to name just a few.

Because mission running itself in its many forms is such a big topic, I will cover it in a longer series of posts. I will start from the basic mechanics such as the standings system and the various types of agents to the more advanced topics like solo and team burner missions and farming pirate faction epic arcs.

So let’s start to dive into missions with explaining the standing system and how you actually can get a mission from New Edens various agents.

Standings

The standing system defines how popular you are to the NPC entities in the game. A standing is a numerical value which can be between -10 and +10. Positive values indicate that the organization or person likes you, while negative values mean that you are disliked.  You can have standings to three different categories of entities. You can have standings to Agents, Corporations and Factions.

If you have a good standing to a faction, you will automatically gain the same standing to all corporations of this faction. The same is true for corporation standings, which affects all agents of this corporation. By this, the faction standing also indirectly influences the agent standings of that faction.

You can see all your standings on the recently redesigned character sheet (Ctrl+A) under the section Interactions -> Standings.

The new screens list all standing values for factions, corporations and agents on the right-hand side and the standings history details for the selected item on the right. The history shows the last 25 standing changes. In the upper section, you can see different thresholds that are triggered by positive and negative standing values to the selected entity. Just hover over the different symbols to get an explanation what happens when a certain threshold is met.

So how do you increase or decrease your standings? The main way to increase standings is to complete missions for an agent. This will increase the standings to the agent and to the corresponding corporation. Sometimes you will get a storyline mission from an agent. If you finish that one successfully, it will not only boost the corporate and agent standing but also boost the faction standing of the faction of the corporation that issued the mission. A boost in faction standing also influences other faction standings, so called derived standing changes. If another faction is on good or bad terms with the one you just completed a storyline mission for, you will get a derived bonus or malus too. These will be indicated by a little plus or minus sign on the standings list the next time you open it.

Apart from storyline missions, there are also other ways to increase your faction standings. One way is to finish the epic arc mission chains that are available for all four empire factions (Amarr, Gallente, Caldari and Minmatar) and two pirate factions (Guristas and Angel Cartel). The last mission of any epic arc will boost the corresponding faction standing. The Sisters of Eve also offer an epic arc mission chain which will boosts one faction standing of your choice. For an overview of the epic arcs just check the Eve University wiki page.

There are also so called cosmos missions, which are given out by special agents that are located at fixed positions all over New Eden. Some of them give out storyline missions that directly increase standings to their faction.

Finally, the last way is, to hand in tags to certain agents which drop by killing NPC ships of a faction. These agents accept the tags of their enemy factions and increase their own faction standing in return. These can only be used once by ever character in his eve career.

You can decrease your standing by killing ships of a faction or declining missions from an agent. This works for both NPC and player ships, so if you destroy a ship of a player who belongs to a NPC corporation, the standings to that corporation will be lowered too.  You can decline one mission every 4 hours from a certain agent. After that the standing to that agent will be lowered for each declined mission.

Standing Skills

Apart from the base standing value to an entity, you can positively influence your standings by a number of skills.

Connections increases standings by 4% per level to non-pirate NPCs if the standing is positive.

Criminal Connections increases the standings by 4% per level to pirate NPCs if the standing is positive.

Diplomacy increases the standings by 4% per level only if the standing is negative.

Social increases the standings increase gained by missions by 5% per level.

So what does this 4% per level mean? To calculate the actual bonus, you need to calculate the missing amount of standing to the maximum of +10. The bonus is calculated by the percentage of this value. E.g. you standing is 0 right now, so the difference is 10. Let’s say you have a 20% increase by Connections, this results in 2 points bonus.

Finally, there are also two boosters that were introduced recently, that give you additional Social skill bonus to increase standing gains for any mission completed while the booster lasts. The boosters last 24 hours by default, increased by your Biology skill.

Agents

Next, let’s talk about agents. Agents work for NPC corporations and give out mission to players if the standing to that agent is high enough. Remember that corporation and faction standing directly overrides the resulting standing to an agent. So if you have a faction standing of for example 4 to the Minmatar Republic, you will have a standing of 4 to all Minmatar agents regardless for which Minmatar corporation they work.

Every agent has a level, which specifies how hard the missions are given out by that agent. The Level can be between 1 and 5. Level 1 to 4 agents live in all regions of space, while level 5 agents can only be found in low security space.

The required standings values are the same for all agents and can be seen in the upper part of the standings character screen for the selected item:

You can always get mission from level 1 agents, while level 2 need a minimum standing of 1, level 3 a minimum standing of 3, level 4 a minimum standing of 5 and level 5 a standing of 7 or greater. The symbols below the bar indicate available epic arc agents, that are either level 3 or 4 agents depending on the epic arc, but not all factions have these as mentioned above.

Each agent gives out a certain type of mission, which can be either combat missions (Security agents), mining missions (Mining Agents), transport missions (Distribution Agents) or research missions (R&D Agents).  Some agents additionally have the special ability to locate the current location other players and are called locator agents.  Very rarely agents give out missions from other categories, e.g. a distribution agent can give out a security mission.

To find an agent in the game, you can use the agency window (Alt+M) which has nice features to search and filter available agents. You can search by level, availability based on your standing, mission type and distance to your current location. If you select an agent, the details of your relation to that agent are summarized in the detail section of the window. To actually start a mission, fly to that agent’s location and start a conversation.

If you talk to an agent, a summary of the mission objectives and rewards will be presented to you in the agent conversation screen. The right-hand side also usually gives some backstory to the offered mission.  The actual objectives depend on the type of the mission and can be a simple transportation of goods between two stations,defeat some NPCs at a deadspace location or mine some ore. As a reward you will usually be rewarded with a set amount of ISK and some bonus ISK of you finish the mission in a certain timeframe. On top of that, you will get some Loyalty Points that can be redeemed for faction items and implants in the loyalty store of the corporation.

You can open the LP store in the station services overview of any station that belong to the corporation you want to exchange LP for. It lists the various items you can get with the amount of additional ISK, LP or items that you need to have to trade for a faction item. If you are not sure what to buy, there is a neat website that lists all items from all shops with the current market value and how much ISK you will get per LP spent. So check it out if you want to sell your gear later on the market.

Mission Rewards Skills

Of course there are also skill that increase your ISK and LP rewards for a mission.

Negotiations gives a 5% bonus per level to mission ISK rewards

Distribution Connections increases LP rewards by 10% per level for distribution missions

Mining Connections increases LP rewards by 10% per level for mining missions

Security Connections increases LP rewards by 10% per level for security missions

The three mission specific connection skills are a bit pricey since they are only available from LP stores  but definitely worth the ISK if you run higher level agents that can give out a significant amount of LP.

I think that’s all you need to know to get started with running mission for your favourite agent. In the next part of this guide I will cover distribution agents of various levels and what the expected reward from running the missions will be.