Collecting Forgotten Data Cores

After playing EVE Online for this long I have left things laying about all over New Eden.  As I mentioned when we were deployed up to Hakonen, that was close to where I was doing a lot of buying and selling back in the day.  I found piles of unsold stock that had been sitting around since probably 2008, so I listed a bunch of it on the market and have watched it slowly sell.  That isn’t going to make me rich, but it will at least remove some stuff from my assets tally and maybe help some capsuleer.

Likewise, when I had my alt running the Warzone Extraction event I noticed he had some possible assets available.  Basically, the Journal button on the Neocom was blinking (which it seems to do for no good reason now and again) so I opened it up.  There wasn’t anything new there, but I did see that I had five research agents still toiling away for him, collecting points I could redeem for data cores.

Back in the day data cores used to be one of the go-to passive income options.  They’re used for the invention aspect of Tech II production and, I gather from the EVE Uni Wiki entry, are primarily obtained via loyalty points earned in Faction Warfare.  Before then however, you had to use research agents.  You would set up with an agent and then just let the research points pile up until it was worthwhile to go redeem them.  It used to be one of those things that wouldn’t stop if you unsubscribed, so you could come back to the game and have a tidy sum waiting for you from research.

Most of the agents were out in Amarr space, where my alt was running the Warzone sites.  So I sent him back to Amarr to grab a ship with some cargo space to haul data cores.  I wasn’t sure the Drake had the space.  However, he only had a Badger handy, which is a flimsy hauler on a good day.

But I remembered my entosis alt was still hanging around near Amarr in his Nereus, in which he did some of the Alpha Strikes event.  So I rolled him over to Amarr and traded the tanky hauler to my main alt.

Flying the Nereus to Amarr

I even bought the exoplanets SKIN because it looks so good on the Nereus.

Then it was off to collect data cores.  Most of the agents were close to Amarr, and level 2, but one was in low sec space, which is what made me think that the Badger might not be ideal.

There was also an optimum order in which to visit each agent, which I had completely forgotten.  I suppose I could have gone to DOTLAN and used the navigation option there to plot a round, but instead I decided to wing it.  There were five agents waiting for me, four in Amarr space and one in Caldari space, just a couple of jumps from Jita.  I saved the Caldari agent for last, since Jita would be the optimum place to sell.

The run itself was without incident, as 99.99% of high sec flights tend to be.  Even the dip into low sec was without incident despite somebody sitting on the gate when I landed and decloaked.  He let me warp off to the station unmolested.  He was probably going somewhere else.

Picking up data cores from a low sec station

Once I wrapped the last pickup… I had left stocks or tritanium in each station, since when you speak to the agents they want to send you on a mission to retrieve some, which is good for another data core’s worth of research points… I headed to Jita to list them all on the market.

So far the run has netted me about 400 million ISK and there are still some left to sell.  That didn’t exactly make me super space rich.  I won’t be buying a titan this week.  But for somebody whose main income is 15 million ISK ticks ratting in Delve and mechanical parts from PI, that will buy me a couple of doctrine ships.

And then it was back to Amarr to hand back the ship.

Heading into Amarr

I figured I would add that last screen shot because it had a moody, atmospheric feel to it, like something out of Blade Runner 2049.

Anyway, data cores remain a minor passive income activity.  I will have to go check to see how many research points Wilhelm has piled up.