Epic arcs are Eve’s version of single player storyline missions that lead you through a series of objectives, sometimes even with the option to drive the storyline plot to a certain outcome. There are a total of seven epic arcs available in the game. The easiest one is run for the Sisters of Eve faction and considered level one missions. There is also one epic arc for each of the empire factions, that require the usual standings for level four missions and also have a similar difficulty. Finally, there are two pirate faction epic arcs, one for the Angel Cartel and one for the Guristas Pirates, which have the difficulty of level three missions.
All epic arcs will give you a big boost to the faction standing for who you run the arc without significant derived standing losses to other factions, and reward you with a fancy faction item or BPC after the last mission of the arc. You can even re-run an epic arcs after a three-month cooldown period with any character that has the appropriate standings, which allows to farm these if you have enough characters available. In this post I want to give you some insights into the Guristas Epic Arc, my experience running it and a breakdown of the rewards that you will get from finishing it.
General Tips Running the Arc
The Gurista epic arc missions all take place in Venal, a null sec region that is controlled by the Guristas NPC faction. The mission chain consists of thirteen missions, and you have the option to choose twice between different mission branches in the chain. However, your choice will not affect the final payout or standing gains, so just pick a mission that you like the most at these points. After the last mission of the chain, you will get a significant boost to your Guristas faction standing but also for each mission a good increase to Guristas corp standing, which comes handy if you want to run security missions for the Guristas after finishing the arc.
The Gurista epic arc missions are considered level three security mission and you will need the appropriate standings for level three missions to start it. There are three different agents that will give you access to the first mission and you will only need to qualify for one of them. All following missions will be given to you without any standing requirements.
There is a Guristas agent called Yada Vinjivas, who you can find in Taisy (Lonetrek) low sec. For this agent you will either need Gurista faction or corp standing of three. The second agent is a Caldari agent called Atma Aulato, and is located in Obe (The Forge) low sec and works for the Yitri corporation. To qualify for him, you will need either Caldari faction or Yitri corporation standing of three or greater. The final option is a Gallente agent called Arment Caute working for the Federal Intelligence Office. He requires you to have either Gallente faction or Federal Intelligence Office standings of greater three and is located in Orvole (Placid). All agents also require you to have a faction standing of greater than -2 if you want to access the agent by their corporation standing.
All three agents are located at a beacon in space in their corresponding systems and not at a station. Once you warp to the beacon, you can start a conversation by right clicking the agent in space. Be aware that the agency window will not show you all three possible agents that start the epic arc, but only the closest agent to your current location. If you don’t have the proper standing for this agent, the agency window will not indicate this and it will look like you cannot start the arc. In that case you simply need to fly to the agent you can access and start a conversation.
The most dangerous part of the arc are actually other players living in Venal, who might try to kill you on the way in and out of null sec or while doing the missions. That’s why you need a properly fit ship to avoid getting killed by other players to get you started with the arc.
I don’t want to give you a detailed summary of all the missions or spoiler the plot of the arc because that’s the fun part of doing it. If you need help with the actual missions objectives, I will just point you to this eve survival page, which nicely describes all missions and their objectives.
The Fit
The only way to get deep into null sec without sooner or later getting blown up is to use one an Interceptors with a Interdiction Nullifier module fitted. Whenever you travel for bigger distances through null sec, you need to fit the nullifier to travel safely. Since the arc takes place in NPC space, there are usually stations where you can unfit the Nullifier and fit your combat fit before the next mission. If the next mission is only a jump or two away or there is no station close to refit, you might get away without the Nullifier or can scout your own way with the Nullifier fitted and then travel back and refit to the combat fit.
From the available interceptors, I picked the Crow as my hull of choice but any of the Interceptors can do the job.
This is the Crow combat fit I came up with:
The Crow uses Rocket Launcher IIs as its primary weapon system in the high slots. The rockets can be adjusted to all four damage types. Since you will fight mostly Caldari Navy ships, we will need plenty of rockets that deal kinetic damage (Scourge rockets), which is the weakness of caldari ships. Ideally, you bring enough ammo to complete the entire arc, because there might not be any additional ammunition for sale in Venal, although there are a few public stations that might have a limited selection of goods. With Scourge Rage Rockets loaded, this fit does more than 100 dps, which is plenty to get you through all the missions.
The fit uses a shield buffer tank with some extra kinetic resists in the mid slots to tank against the main Caldari damage type. The Afterburner II combined with the low signature radius of the Crow should give you also enough speed tank to mitigate most of the NPC damage.
The low slots contain a Ballistic Control System II for more damage and a Micro Auxiliary Power Core I to get enough power grid to make everything fit.
The rigs slots increase the shield buffer with a Small Core Defence Field Extender II and patch against the secondary caldari damage type, which is thermal damage by a Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II. Be aware that you have a massive EM resist hole, so you better don’t try to PVP in this fit.
Furthermore, I have a Small Tractor Beam I , some Light Missile Launcher Is and some Scourge Light Missiles in cargo. You will need these to finish the last missions, that requires you to shoot an bunker in space behind a force field that regenerates 150 dps, which you cannot break in this fit. For this mission you need to refit to the single missile launcher and the tractor beam after clearing all hostile NPCs and shoot the mission objective through the forcefield with the long-range missile launcher. The bunker is destroyed easily by that, and you can use the tractor beam to get the wreck of the it which contains the item required to finish the last mission. The eve survival mission reports will mention that too, but I want to list this gear here that you can bring it with you before starting burning deep into null.
Additionally, we need some more modules to refit to in cargo. At first, there are two Inertia Stabilizer II and an Interdiction Nullifier I to switch out in the low and high slots whenever you are travelling longer distances or in and out of Venal. By the Intertial Stabalizers , you align faster and can escape player gate camps on the way in much easier. The fit is not aligning fast enough to be 100% safe passing gate camps, but with the inertia stab the align time goes down to 3.1 seconds, which is not horrible.
The entire fit only cost about 55 million ISK, so it really doesn’t break the bank to get started. The amount of skill points needed to fly this Crow fit is also very reasonably and should be doable for Omega accounts with a couple of million SP.
Running the Missions
I fitted my ship in Jita and went straight to the low sec system of Obe to get to my first mission agent. The first mission just sent me directly to a Gurista agent in Venal. On the way to the agent, I passed two player bubble camps in Tribute that fortunately weren’t able to catch me, thanks to my Interdiction Nullifier fitted. From the second mission on, the mission objectives of the following mission are typical security mission objectives. These mostly involve killing some NPC frigates and destroyers, picking up an item from their wrecks or dropping an item in one of the mission rooms. Rarely you will encounter a cruiser or battlecruiser in a mission, but you can easily speed tank these by orbiting at 2k range.The 100 dps of the Crow is more than enough to break these with a little patience. The missions require you to travel around in Venal quite a bit, and I encountered a couple of other players on gates that again I could dodge by fitting the Inertia stabs, the Nullifier and some luck. The closest to being destroyed happened when an instalocking Tornado took a shot at me undocking from a station. Luckily, my shield buffer was big enough that I survived one shot and could warp away before the Tornado could shoot again. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to run these mission on Saturday night when everybody is looking for action in Venal. The last mission of the mission branch I took, required me to refit into the above mention long range mode to get to the final mission item. I wasn’t smart enough to bring the refit with me, so I had to fly around for a bit to gather the required modules. There are also a lot of NPC ships that are triggered by approaching the final objective in that mission. You should always clear on wave of NPC instead of just charging in, because the dps of the entire pocket is way too big to tank.
Other than that, all missions were pretty straight forward and I finished the mission chain in a bit over 2 hours, but I guess you could do it faster if you really want to.
For completing all 13 mission, I was rewarded with 64 million ISK in cash. There are no loyalty points given out by the agents, so no shopping in the LP store after the arc. After the 8th mission you are rewarded with a Guristas faction ECM module instead of ISK, which currently goes for about 10 million ISK in Jita. After the final mission you will get a single run Gila blueprint copy, which is sold for around 50-60 million ISK in Jita on public contracts. This comes to a total of about 120 million ISK in goods and ISK in rewards for the entire epic arc.
If you manage to finish the arc in around two hours, this results in 60 million ISK/hour. Considering that you only need a 60 million ISK interceptor and very little skill points to run the arc, this is an exceptionally good payout. The payout was much more before the industry changes in 2021, but unfortunately the days when a Gila BPC went for 200 mill in Jita are over.
You cannot run the arc every day, but if you are into mission running or ratting to make your ISK, I think the Guristas Epic Arc should be on your schedule every three months.
As always, if you have any comments about this guide or just want to say hello, please eve mail me in game to my main character Piter Presley.