In one of the recent updates, CCP added a new cosmic anomaly to the game which is available in all regions of New Eden: The Emerging Conduit
Lore wise, this anomaly is caused by an triglavian attack of the system, which in this case consists of a bunch of frigates, destroyers and cruisers which enter the system by a small gate located within the site, which directly leads into triglavian dead space and will last until a player defeats all hostiles in the site. The artwork of the anomaly looks very similar to an abyssal deadspace pocket, but allows the player to zoom out the overview as usually in k-space.
These sites were designed to be run by small groups of player, but can also be handled solo by an extremely tanky ship or by warping off field
a couple of times to repair at a station if the damage gets to high.
The difficulty is a bit harder than that of level 4 security missions, so you will need at least a battleship or T2/T3 cruiser to run these sites solo effectively.
The triglavian NPC don’t act like regular NPC in security mission, but use the new NPC AI and feel more like they were player run ships. They are also much harder to kill than normal NPCs – again more comparable to player ships. So even a bunch of frigates and destroyers can be a serious threat to a single player. Furthermore, the Triglavians will use lots of ewar modules like energy neutralizers, stasis webifiers and tracking disruptors on you. However, the NPCs in these Conduits very rarely use warp scramblers or disruptors on you, so there is almost always the possibility to warp off if needed.
The Ship
The most cost effective ship you can run these site in within a timely fashion is the good old Praxis battleship that any pilot can fly with the default skills. Of course you could use an expensive pirate battleship like the Rattlesnake or Machariel to run the sites, but this would require a significant amount of ISK invested in the hull and fittings.
The praxis however is a very cheap alternative and performs still reasonably well. It also does not require a lot of skill points to be piloted, since the damage bonus of the hull does not depend on any skills. So max damage bonus without training battleship V!
The following is the pretty standard passive shield regeneration fit I used to run the sites:
In the high slots I use ‘Arbalest‘ Rapid Heavy Missile Launchers Is which apply a fair amount of damage against destroyer and cruisers sized ships. Since there are no battleships in the conduit sites, a battleship seized weapon does not apply damage well compared to a medium sized weapon system. The utility high slot is filled with a Salvager I to salvage some wrecks while fighting the Triglavians.
In the mid slots we have a couple of Large Shield Extenders II to give a nice buffer tank and a explosive and thermal shield buff to increase the resists against the triglavian main damage types. There is no need to adjust your tank like in level 4 missions, since the triglavians always do the same damage types. Finally, I use a Parallel Enduring Target Painter I to increase the damage application of the missile launchers and drones, since some of the targets in the site are very small.
In the low slots I have 5 Shield Power Relay IIs to increase the shield regeneration of the buffer tank and 2 Ballistic Control System IIs to increase missile damage.
In the rig slots I fitted 3 Large Core Defence Field Purger Is to further increase the shield regeneration rate. These increase the shield regeneration rate to 330 EHP/s, which is quite a bit combined with a 50k EHP buffer tank.
In the drone bay I have Republic Fleet Berserkers to deal thermal damage as my main drone system. If there are only frigates left, you might want to switch to Warrior IIs to better apply damage to smaller targets. Lastly, I bring 5 Salvage Drones to salvage the site after completion. Additionally I use a Mobile Tractor Unit in the cargo hold to tractor in drones and wrecks while I run the site.
The Site
You can simply warp to the site from the Probe Scanner window and there is no acceleration gate that guards the site. The Triglavian ships will show up after a couple of seconds and you can actually watch the entry gate spawn in space in a small animation.
The Traglavians will come in three waves, each one triggered by killing the last ship of the previous wave. The first one consists of 4 to 6 ships, with up to 2 destroyers and the rest in frigates. The second one will be slightly bigger with 4 to 7 ships and up to 3 destroyers. The final wave will be even again bigger with a single cruiser and 6 to 11 other ships. Especially the final wave can be a big problem in the above fit, if you get a big spawn. On the final wave, try to kill the destroyers first to decrease the dps of the wave. If the triglavians are down to 8 ships, you should be able to tank the rest fine.
Each ship can have ewar modules equipped, with the naming of the NPC in the overview indicating the type of ewar.
Usually its a good idea to kill the Remote Repair and Neutralizing ships first before killing the rest of the wave, if you are able to tank the room. Some of the ships will drop expensive loot, so drop a Mobile Tractor Unit when you enter the site to scoop the loot. While working on each wave, you can also start to salvage the wrecks with your single Salvager in the high slot to make some extra isk. There is no point in moving your ship within the site, since the triglavians will quickly approach your ship from the spawn point, which is about 80 km away from the warp-in.
When the last NPC is killed, the site will despawn from the probe scanner window and a new one will appear about one minute later. It never happened to me that I ran out of sites in my system, so you will never have to move to different systems to search for sites.
What’s the Profit?
The profit from the site consists of several components. Firstly, you will get 4,5 mill ISK when the last NPC of the third wave is destroyed. You only need to be in the site when the last NPC dies to get the payout. If there are up to three players in the site, everyone will get the full amount. After that the 13,5 million will get divided by the number of players.
You will also get 300 Concord Loyalty Points each, for up to three players. For more players, they the amount will be again split by the number of players. The Concord LP are actually worth quite a penny, with many items selling for 3K ISK per LP from the Concord Store.
Finally, you can salvage the wrecks and scoop the loot. Of course the payout can vary quite a lot from site to site, since the loot drops are very random. I ran sites that dropped only 2 million in loot and salvage but also one that dropped 32 million ISK. In average I made 11,5 million ISK in loot and salvage from each site, with most ISK coming from Triglavian Surveys and a little bit from the salvage and other loot. In general the salvage is not really worth the time salvaging it, but as long as you wait for a new site to spawn, this is some extra ISK.
So in total, a single site makes about 17 million isk if you run it solo ( 4,5 million payout + 0,9 million ISK from LP + 11,5 million ISK from loot), 22,5 mill if run by two players ( 2 *4,5 + 2 * 0,9 + 11,5) and 27,7 million if run by three players ( 3 *4,5 + 3 * 0,8 + 11,5). From that point on, the payout will decrease again, since LP and ISK bonus will be split between players.
In my solo Praxis, I was able to finish about 3 sites an hour which comes roughly to 50 million ISK / hour, which is really good isk considering an investment of only 180 million ISK and almost no risk since if you run the sites in high sec. The exact number of sites per hour highly depends on the size of the last spawn and how many times you need to warp off.
With two Praxis running the sites, I got the completion time per site down to about 15 minutes, which will pay out around 45 million ISK / hour per player ( 4 * 22,5 / 2).
Finally, with three Praxis the completion time went down even further to about 9 minutes, which will pay out about 60 millions ISK / hour ( 6,6 * 27,7 / 3) , which seems to be the sweet spot for best ISK per hour payout.
As always, these numbers are only my personal experience and might be different for you, if you use ships with higher dps or better tank.
I think at the moment these sites are one of the best easy PVE options in the game. There is little risk to run them and they payout of the sites is comparable to null sec ratting. The skill points needed to run them are very little and the investment in the hull quite cheap compared to Level 4 security missions, which require a 500 million+ ISK investment. A big plus is also that is is worth to run them in a team, which might make them not as boring as solo mission running. I think all new players should consider to run these sites instead of grinding standings for mission agents in high sec.