Huh, Sleeper Boredom, now THAT was unexpected…

or, “How We Got Tired of Makin Loads of ISK”…

Our corp has a few goals we are working towards… and, as with all New Eden corps, the route to those goals is fueled by ISK. As a Wormhole Exploration and Restoration Corporation (say it out loud… its FUN!!) we primarily make ISK thru running Sleeper Sites, the sites that spawn in our homehole but especially sites in OTHER WHs, we call this raiding. 

The Honey Hole…

A few weeks ago Strigon pulled the days Scan Op and was probing down the days holes. He got the Stat C2, warped in per S.O.P. to do the initial survey… he reported that, (1) it seemed to be empty (uninhabited) and…. (b) OH DAMN!!! There were too many sites to count (chat logs follow screenshot)! He later gave a rough count at 60+… that’s OVER 60 Sleeper sites on Dscan and he counted 28 sites on probe scan… that’s approximately 90 TOTAL SITES!! It was The GREEN Cloud…  (FYI, in the screenshot below I count 68 sites…)  =]

Oh    My    God…

Chat Log - 90 Site Raid Hole Discovery:  Strigon warps through the D382 Stat C2:

[21:29:22 ] Strigon Leader > Jxxxxxx Solar System

[21:29:45 ] Strigon Leader > I have a Gallente control tower on dscan

[21:29:50 ] Strigon Leader > no force field?

[21:29:53 ] Strigon Leader > hmmmm

[21:30:08 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > EVEEYE report; C2 with a Hisec....

[21:30:21 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > no FF????  Yummmy.....  =]

[21:30:32 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > make sure yer OV is set right....

[21:30:38 ] Strigon Leader > may be out of range of it

[21:30:42 ] Strigon Leader > no ships on scan so far

[21:30:46 ] Strigon Leader > but it’s a big system

[21:30:54 ] Strigon Leader > warping to the other side to check

[21:32:00 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > stat Hisec and a Stat C3, 10 AU, 7 P, 9 Ms....

[21:32:14 ] Strigon Leader > no hostiles

[21:32:27 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > really? tower but no FFs?

[21:32:30 ] Strigon Leader > no mods either besides two mobile medium warp disruptors

[21:32:41 ] Strigon Leader > it must be offline

[21:32:43 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > Hmmm.... It’s a TRAP!  =]

[21:32:50 ] Strigon Leader > beginning a scan for a high sec

[21:34:03 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > JEZUZ.... NO NPC kills in as far as I can see.... do a dscan....

[21:34:42 ] Strigon Leader > holy fuck

[21:35:01 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > yuppers!!!  the MUTHALOAD!!!!  how many sites???

[21:35:21 ] Strigon Leader > too many to f*in count man

[21:35:26 ] Strigon Leader > we are gonna be RICH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sleeper Loot & Salvage 101:

For them as what dunt know, Ima go into a little detail here, so class, come to order… 

The Class 2 Sleeper “Cosmic Anomaly” (combat) sites ISK value is highly variable. But… if you get just 1 MNR (Melted Nanoribbon) dropped, it can be worth, currently, a low of ISK 6M to over 7M (at the time of writing the Jita Quick Buy price is: ISK 6,572,230.00 x1 MNR), and if you hit a fantastic drop rate, let’s say… 5 MNRs dropped in 1 site, plus a good load of the other loot & salvage, a single site “can” be worth upwards of ISK 35M. Yup, ISK 35,000,000.00 for one site… that high is rare, but I’ve seen it. 

So, let us do some math… let’s say you run, ohhh… 15 C2 combat sites, which is only a few hours work for a small 2 or 3 BS fleet with Scan Frig & Noctis support. 15 sites with an average of 0 to 3 MNR’s recovered per site so let’s say you end up with 17 MNRs. With that and the other L&S yer lookin at an approx average of 130 Million ISK…  that’s ISK 130,000,000.00 (here I am being conservative, keep reading and you’ll find out why).   =] 

DISCLAIMER:  The above is a SWAG (Scientific Wild Assed Guess) based on my personal experience and also keep in mind… 

(1) L&S drop rates from Sleeper sites is highly variable and
(2) the drop rate is strongly affected by the WH Class 
And salvage rates… 

(3) are affected by the ship, mods, rigs and 

(4) the skills and implants of the salvager, as follows... 

The amount of MNRs and other L&S recovered is also affected by the guy runnin the salvage ship, what ship he salvages with, and the mods, rigs and skills applied. I have maxed out skills, advanced mechanic skill Salvaging at L5. I use the ORE dedicated Salvager, the Noctis fully rigged with 3x Medium Salvage Tackle Is and, as I am an L5 salvager, I can fit and run 4x Salvager IIs, to speed things up I also run 4x Small Tractor Beams. All of this is done to increase the chance to pull salvage or to reduce the time to complete salvaging. Because with Sleepers, the ONLY way you can make ISK is from the Loot & Salvage, but MAN it can be REALLY GOOD ISK!!!! 

With my skills, ship & fit I have an ‘on-paper’ 120% chance to pull good salvage. The only thing I am not doing is rigging Medium Salvage Tackle IIs, an additional 15% increase in chance of salvage recovery (5% over the T1 rigs but cost prohibitive), and using the Hardwiring Implants (slot 9 & 10), 'Prospector' PPY-1, a 5% increase in chance of salvage recovery and, ‘Prospector’ PPZ-1, a 5% reduction in cycle time of salvagers…  both of which I am considering getting. If I upgrade to the T2 rigs and both ‘plants, I will have an ‘on-paper’ chance of recovery of the game max of 130%. So far I have been very happy with my recovery rates and I can tell a definite difference from the days when I was skillin up to L5. 

There’s the bell, class concluded…. you will be severely tested if you ever get into Salvaging in W-space. 

Back to our story…

So Strigon is sittin inna C2 hole with sumthin over 90 Sleeper Sites… between 60 and 70 combat sites and 28 cosmic signatures. The sigs are the Ladar, Gravimetric, Magnetometric & Radar sites that have minable resources with a minimal Sleeper defense presence that usually spawns after you start mining operations. And he scanned for ‘life’ and found one offline POS… LOL.  It was an EMPTY hole!!! This is the dreamed of strike… a hole with no residents to worry about and a (low) estimate of 2 BILLION in ISK just waiting to be harvested…  Oh Frabjous Day!! 

One of the other things we do is after we ‘reclaim’ a W-space (IE clean up all the Sleeper sites) is, if the Planetary Interaction, from which one makes the majority of the POS fuels from, and Static holes are decent, we offer the hole for sale on the market. This one was a ‘decent’ hole sale wise, not ‘great’ but good, WHs sell on the market from ISK 100M to ISK 500M on average, we hoped to put this one up for around ISK 400M. Decent PI and a Stat Hi and a Stat C3… 

Hmmmm (grin), a C3… I feel we need to up our game and start takin on C3 WHs as they are harder, (IE moar challenging and fun to run) AND substantially moar lucrative too, but to do so we need to have regular access to them. So I am pushin for my corp to find a hole with a Stat C3, or just move to a C3… so on the ‘Pro’ side this one did catch my eye. On the ‘con’ side of the sheet, it has a Stat Hi-sec hole… 

Hmm (frown), Stat Hi-sec… We really prefer a hole with a Stat low as you dunt get nearly as many ‘visitors’ as you do with a Stat Hi. Experience has shown that there are simply a LOT moar people scanning for holes in Hi-sec than in low is all. 

Anyhoo, we were, of course, VERY ready to get busy with the Reclamation Op and start separatin the Sleepers from their very lucrative L&S… I was in hisec and Strigon gave me our Stat low, we fleet up and I was OMW. I pop in, reship to my Mael and we jump in. Strigon had setup a Warp Bubble on the Raid hole’s  Stat Hisec as a precaution then he started on the sites and had 3 done when I joined him and we knocked down 2 moar. As it was a raid hole, after 5 sites I usually reship to my Noctis and start salvaging behind the fleet.

“Tengu on SCAN!!!”...

There is always a risk of either the residents (not in this case) or outside raiders (always) poppin in on you and takin advantage of the fact that your ships are PvE fit AND that you probably have Sleeper L&S in your hold, ESPECIALLY if there is a Noctis in the sky… the Noctis is ALWAYS ‘Primary”… I am always nervous when salvaging Sleepers in my Noc, especially when in a strange hole… 

And tonight was no exception…  After Tsra fleeted up and joined us, they were workin the sites and I was salvaging when over the Neocom we hear, “Tengu on scan!!!” I order “Man Battle Stations!” and the Emergency Klaxons scream throughout the ship… I turn and burn for our homehole, pop through, warp back to the POS safe and reshipped to my ‘Cane. Strigon was in his Rokh and I can’t ‘member what Tsra was in… 

The Tengu was campin out near the Hisec hole and hopin for some pew pew… we tried to oblige. Tsra went in, and once engaged called us in and we all started to dance… The Tengu turned his loving attentions on me and I eventually began to bleed deep armor… we weren’t breakin his tank but he was breakin mine, so I warped through the hole… and right into Amarrgh space!! 

This was BEFORE I had fixed my Amarr standings so I was still tagged as “shoot-on-sight” to the Amarrgh Imperious Navy and all gate and stations guns… oh joy! Talk about bein caught ‘tween a rock and a hard place… I was caught ‘tween a Tengu and the Amarr Navy!!  LOL 

I warped to the closest station, was warned at the door as they tractored me in… Seems ISK talks though, they still did all the repairs I ordered, and paid for, and a first class job of it too. I undock, the station screams it’s dire warning again as the guns try to lock me. I warp back to the hole with the Amarrgh Navy in hot pursuit and call out on TS, “Do I jump in??” 

I land and the Amarr Navy lands a few seconds later while I am waiting for a response… I ‘jump jump’ as they start in on my shields (sliver of red) and Tsra advises me to get back to our hole as we are not gonna kill him and he is not killin us…  Strigon is tankin him in his Rokh he’s not breakin the Tengu’s tank either… finally the Teng pilot pops back through the hisec hole and eventually leaves.   =] 

Salvaging Magic...
We give it a bit and then go back to waffle stompin the ISK outta the Sleepers. A bit later on Sov and a few others joined in and we ended up running 15 sites total that 1^st night… I did all the salvaging and I was very, VERY pleased with the results. 

In order to keep inventory and shares accurate, I store all L&S from each fleet in a Huge Secure Can and name it with the fleet member’s names. If the fleet changes members, I start a new can and so on. So you see below a screeshot with the 2 cans from the 1^st night’s raid. The 1^st is 10 sites: me, Strigon and Tsra, the 2^nd is 5 sites: after Sov and others joined us. 

Now one thing I am when salvaging, is superstitious. I have several rules I try not to break… 
(1) NEVER look into the hold until you are done. (“Done” being of a personally variable definition… sumtimes ‘done’ means done with a whole run of sites and sumtimes it means done with THAT site…) 

(2) ALWAYS run 2 or moar salvagers on the BS wrecks… why? I dunno…   =P 

Now even with that all I can say is that the drop rates I got in this raid were, to me, simply amazing. 
I ran through the 1^st 5 sites and got 4 MNRs… meh. Not what you want, but around what you expect. Then I ran 2 sites and checked the hold… DAMN!!! 15 MNRs for just 2 sites… I’ve never had a drop rate that high before. I picked up 5 moar in the last 3 sites, about what you hope for. So for 10 sites we got 24 MNRs… shiney.  =]   Then Sov and some frens joined us and we ran 5 moar sites… this time I dint check the hold till I was OMW back to the POS, 15 MNRs for 5 sites… YEA!!! That’s an even better drop rate than the 1^st 10 sites, wayyy above expectations.

For those of you not familiar with WHs or Sleepers, in the screencap above of the L&S from what I pulled that 1^st nights raid, I highlighted in yellow the top 4 ISK makers in Sleeper L&S… the value breakdown of the top 4 only is as follows:

Can #1 (Jita prices at time of writing):

ACD -     ea 1,250,009.99                 x4 =        5,000,039.96

MNR -   ea 6,573,230.00                 x24 =     157,757,520.00

NNA -    ea 35,002.00                       x210 =   7,350,420.00

SDL -      ea 486,001.19                     x259  =  125,874,308.21

                                                                        ISK 295,982,288.17

Can #2:

ACD -     ea 1,250,009.99                 x 8 =       10,000,079.92

MNR -   ea 6,573,230.00                 x 15 =    98,598,450.00

NNA -    ea 35,002.00                       x 124 =  4,340,248.00

SDL -      ea 486,001.19                     x 160 =  77,760,190.40

                                                                        ISK 190,698,968.32

Sooo… the gross take, for 15 sites, of just the 4 highest value salvage, was:  ISK 486,681,256.49

Not too shabby for one evenings work huh?  =] 

After Strigon and I logged, Sov, Tsra & Co. kept at it and logged off in the Raid Hole. The next day the Raid Hole had, of course, closed in our C2, and while Sov & Tsra did have a scan frig and scanned down the new Hisec, Strigon and I dint make it back in as we got caught up in other stuff. He and I did run a few sites that had popped in the homehole, so not an unproductive day… 

Sov & Tsra continued to run sites and they also sold the hole (ISK 400M and Strigon got the finder’s fee) to a corp we are Blue with, good good. It was funny though, I heard later that one of em, Tsra or Sov, got simply “tired” of bashin Sleepers… TIRED of making some of the best ISK to be made in EVE…  LOL

Wrecks eye view of my Salvage Thrasher

The day after that though, our little corp did make it back into the Raid Hole… Strigon and I left our C2 and Sov & Tsra gave us the Raid Hole system, brought us in and then left to head back to the home C2. I dint wanna risk a Noctis with no connecting WH to ours so picked up a Salvage Thrasher I had in storage out in Autaris from back when I was in RvB and I refitted her to be a Cloaky Salvage Thrasher and brought her to the Raid hole. I also brought in my Mael and a Cheetah so I had a DPS ship and we had a scan frig inside. Strigon was in his Rokh and AI was in his Hyperion. 

The new owners were settin up their POS, and we hung out there while we were gettin ready. Once all systems had been checked and dubble checked, we ran all the sites we could until we were wore out… and tired of killin Sleepers…  now where have I heard that afore?  LOL 

The next day we basically call it quits, we and our sister corp have nommed something like 40 to 50 Sleeper sites, there are STILL almost 30 left considering that sites were still spawning while we were workin on em, and of course, we needed to leave “some” for the new owners…  =]  So we pack it in and head for our homehole… tired, beat but quite a bit the richer… to put it mildly. I would give figures on how much in total was taken from this hole, but I dunt have, nor will I ask for, the totals for our sister corp and my corps finances are, well, none yo business…   =] 

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=