Exploration guideSame hack, thirty times the loot

Four kinds of space, one minigame

Relic and data sites are cosmic signatures: you scan them down with probes, warp in and hack their containers, a Relic Analyzer for relic sites and a Data Analyzer for data sites. Fail a hack twice and the container is destroyed. There are no NPCs in pirate relic and data sites anywhere in known space or in class 1–3 wormholes. The first word of the site's name tells you which kind of space you're in, and with it how many containers of each difficulty the site has.

The first word of a name gives the space (Local, Regional, Central or Unsecured; for relic sites Crumbling, Decayed, Ruined or Forgotten), the second the pirate faction (Sansha in the examples), and the rest the type of site. Sleeper sites in wormholes have a word like Perimeter or Frontier instead of a faction. Container counts come from the EVE University list of sites. Very easy is a Debris or Info Shard, easy a Rubble or Com Tower, medium a Remains or Mainframe, hard a Ruins or Databank. The eight rogue drone regions of nullsec have drone sites instead of pirate ones.

Harder containers hold better loot, so what a site is worth follows its containers. Highsec sites are mostly very easy ones, and only nullsec and wormhole sites have hard ones.

What the containers hold

Pirate relic sites drop salvage from the site's faction, Tech I and Tech II, plus now and then a blueprint copy or skill book. In nullsec each Tech II salvage item has a 25% chance to be in a Ruins container, in a stack of 1 to 15. A Remains has a 12.5% chance of 1 to 5, and a Rubble 5.5% of 1 to 3. Tech I salvage comes mostly from Remains: a 50% chance of 5 to 40 of each item. Ruins hold about 72% of the Tech II salvage in an average nullsec site.

Highsec sites have no Remains and no Ruins. Over 500 highsec relic sites, one dropped about 27 Tech I salvage items and a single Tech II item every second site. A nullsec site averages about 300 Tech I and 35 Tech II items.

What a relic site is worth

The same count of salvage is worth different amounts in each faction's space, because each faction drops its own items and a few Tech II items sell for over a million ISK each.

Values are the expected salvage in one site, sold at the Jita buy price on 30 September. For highsec it is what was looted from 100 sites per faction (Riley Entertainment, 2023). For nullsec it is the container odds above (MacrophageNT, 2019), over the usual mix of the four nullsec relic site types. Neither counts blueprint copies or skill books, and the nullsec figures leave out carbon and spatial attunement units, so both are a floor. CCP's changes to exploration in 2025 touched Ghost Sites and Sleeper Caches, not the pirate relic loot.

The faction is in the site's name, and in nullsec the region decides it: every pirate site in Stain is a Sansha one. A Sansha site is worth about twice an Angel one. Three items make up about three quarters or more of each faction's value, and one of them, Logic Circuit at 1.57M ISK, is 37% of an average nullsec site.

Highsec: practice, not profit

A highsec relic site is worth 0.44M to 0.73M ISK. Most of it is Tech I salvage: Burned Logic Circuit, at 37,530 ISK each, is one of the top three items in every faction. Most sites also have an empty container: over the 500 sites, 595 Debris containers were empty.

Highsec has CONCORD and the most explorers, so the sites near busy routes go fast. A Tech I exploration frigate with a Relic Analyzer, a Data Analyzer, a probe launcher and eight probes costs about 0.6M ISK, so the first site or two pays for it.

Highsec is where you learn the probes and the minigame. On the same number of sites, nullsec pays thirty to forty times as much.

Lowsec: better, and unmeasured

Lowsec relic sites add 1 to 2 Remains but no Ruins. Without Ruins, a site gets at most the Tech II salvage that Rubble and Remains hold, which in nullsec is about 28% of it. This guide has no loot count for lowsec like the two above, so it gives no ISK figure; the EVE University Wiki expects the same items as nullsec at lower drop rates.

There is no CONCORD. Sentry guns sit only at gates and stations, so at a site anyone can shoot you, and gate camps are the main danger for an exploration frigate on the way in and out.

Nullsec and wormholes: where the money is

A relic site in nullsec pays 14M to 30M ISK depending on the faction. Pirate sites in class 1–3 wormholes are the same as nullsec's, but any of the five factions can own them, so an average one is worth about 20.2M. Drone relic sites also spawn in class 1–3 wormholes and in the rogue drone regions; their loot can be any faction's, and they despawn quickly once you're in.

Of the four nullsec relic site types, the Monument Site, 40% of them, is worth 0.77 times the average, and the Crystal Quarry, 10% of them, 1.41 times: a Sansha Crystal Quarry averages 42.4M. Sovereignty hubs with an exploration upgrade also spawn extra "Detected" sites within 5 jumps, harder to scan and with a chance to escalate.

There is no CONCORD and no sentry gun. Gates can be camped with warp disruption bubbles, and in a wormhole Local only shows who speaks, so you never know who else is in the system. You also carry the loot home: two Sansha sites put about 60M in a frigate with 1,200 to 1,600 HP.

Data sites

Data sites drop datacores, decryptors, blueprint copies, invention skill books, High-Tech Manufacturing Tools and Data Chips, Calm Abyssal filaments and storyline materials. At the Jita buy price, most datacores sell for 81k to 93k ISK, with Mechanical Engineering at 24k and Minmatar Starship Engineering at 47k. Decryptors range from 265k (Symmetry) to 4.76M (Optimized Augmentation).

There is no loot count for data sites like the ones for relic sites, so this guide doesn't put an ISK figure on them. Since December 2015 their most common loot drops in half the amount, and what a data site pays depends on the rarer blueprint copies.

Sites that fight back

Ghost Sites, "Covert Research Facility" in the name, are data sites on a hidden timer. When it runs out, NPCs arrive, and 30 seconds later every container explodes. A single failed hack also blows up that container, for about 6,000 explosive damage in highsec, 8,000 in lowsec, 10,000 in nullsec and 12,000 in wormholes, within about 10 km. The exploration frigates below have 800 to 1,740 HP. Ghost Sites drop Covert Research Tools, Shattered Villard Wheels, blueprint copies for mobile depots and tractor units, Ascendancy implant blueprint copies and, outside highsec, capital construction parts.

Sleeper Caches spawn in highsec, lowsec and nullsec, need scan strength for level IV or V signatures, and are gated pockets with traps, sentry guns and hacks that explode. They drop Sleeper loot, Tech II and capital materials, skill books and Polarized weapon blueprint copies. The Forgotten relic and Unsecured data sites of wormholes are guarded by Sleepers and need a combat ship.

What it takes to go there

Every exploration ship gets a bonus to probe strength and to the virus strength of the analyzers, which makes hacks easier. What differs is the cloak.

The Tech I frigates get +7.5% probe strength per level of their racial frigate skill and can fit only a Prototype Cloaking Device, which doesn't let you warp cloaked. Covert Ops frigates need their racial frigate skill at V and Covert Ops I. They fit a Covert Ops Cloaking Device, which warps cloaked, and add 60% warp speed and 10% probe strength per Covert Ops level. They can also fit an Interdiction Nullifier, which gets through bubbles while it runs. A Covert Ops frigate costs about 17M ISK, a little more than half of one Sansha site.

Skill plan

Two blocks, in order. They use Caldari Frigate for the Heron and the Buzzard; for another race, change those lines to Amarr, Gallente or Minmatar Frigate. Copy one, then in game use "import from clipboard" in the Skill Queue window. Each line is one level, and prerequisites always come first.

Spaceship Command 1
Caldari Frigate 1
Science 1
Science 2
Science 3
Astrometrics 1
Astrometrics 2
Astrometrics 3
CPU Management 1
CPU Management 2
Power Grid Management 1
Power Grid Management 2
Electronics Upgrades 1
Electronics Upgrades 2
Electronics Upgrades 3
Hacking 1
Hacking 2
Hacking 3
Survey 1
Survey 2
Survey 3
Archaeology 1
Archaeology 2
Archaeology 3

Spaceship Command 2
Spaceship Command 3
Caldari Frigate 2
Caldari Frigate 3
Caldari Frigate 4
Electronics Upgrades 4
Electronics Upgrades 5
CPU Management 3
CPU Management 4
Caldari Frigate 5
Covert Ops 1
Cloaking 1
Cloaking 2
Cloaking 3
Cloaking 4

Times assume a fresh character with no implants and 20/20 attributes: 1,800 SP an hour on Omega. Plan 1 is what a Tech I frigate needs to scan and hack in highsec and lowsec, and every line of it trains on Alpha. Plan 2 is 1.33M SP: Caldari Frigate V and Electronics Upgrades V take about 280 hours each and Cloaking IV, for the Covert Ops cloak, 150. Only Caldari Frigate V, Covert Ops and Cloaking need Omega, so you can train the rest before you subscribe.