EVE Guide General Guide to Agents

General Guide to Agents

I. Your First Agent
II. Finding Agents
III. Standing
IV. Loyalty Points and Offers
V. Important Missions
VI. Agent Levels and Quality
VII. Skills
VIII. Appendix A - Divisions and Mission Types
IX. Appendix B - Links and Resources

I. Your First Agent]

This section of the guide assumes that the you have finished at least the first portion of the in-game tutorial. However, we included detailed instructions in case you forgot.

The first agent of any pilot in EVE is generally the Tutorial Agent, and is part of the In-Game Tutorial. You can find him under the "Agents" tab in the right-hand bar while docked at the station. Your tutorial agent is marked as "Tutorial Agent" under the Advisory division. This lvl 1 agent is suitable for new pilots, as all of the missions he provides are doable in a starter ship.

To receive a mission from your agent, right-click him on the Agent panel, select "Start Conversation", and ask him for work. Your agent, provided you have enough standing with him personally, his corporation or his overall faction (highest value will be displayed as "Effective Standing"), he will offer you a mission. From there, you have three options: accept the mission, decline it, or ask for more detail. Asking for more detail brings up a window displaying the system the mission takes place in, exact objectives of the mission as well as the general description of it, and the rewards for doing the mission.

Your first mission is generally an in-system kill mission. After accepting the mission, jump into your starter ship (if you haven't already), and undock. Once you're out in open space, right click on open space and select the drop menu under "Agent Missions:" header, then select "encounter" and "warp to location within 15km". Your ship will enter warp, and emerge at the mission location. Approach the red cross, lock and fire on it until it dies (note to impressionable readers: red crosses in EVE signify hostile NPC's. Do not replicate this stunt in real life on Red Cross Volunteers. These individuals work hard for the benefit of all mankind and generally have enough problems already).

Warp back to your station, either by using the right-click drop menu to warp to the station, or by selecting it on the overview (see: exhaustingly thorough in-game tutorial). When you're back in the station, open up a conversation with your agent and tell him that you're done. Provided that all your objectives are finished, your agent will generally be pretty pleased and give you some money or other stuff, as agreed upon.

The second mission tends to be a courier mission, i.e. taking item from point A to point B, which at this early stage specifically involves taking a small item from your current station to a station in the next system. Go ahead and accept the mission. Then click the Journal icon on the Neocom to the left (blinking book, fourth icon from the bottom), then right-click the mission you just accepted (under the Agents -> Missions tabs) and select read details. This will bring up the mission detail window. Right-click the orange text next to"Drop-off Location", and select "Set Destination". This selects your drop-off location as the destination for your autopilot.

Make note of the "cargo" you're supposed to be transporting, open your personal hangar and find the cargo item there. Transport it to your ship's cargo (god bless the tutorial), then exit the station. Once outside, activate the autopilot and let the ship take care of the grand journey... to the system next door.

Ok, so there are probably a gazillion stations here (especially if you were unlucky enough to be sent into systems like Jita), and finding the right one can be a bother. First of all, you can open your mission details window and simply take note of what station it's in, then warp and dock with said station. Or you can be smart and right-click that station's name in your mission details and select "dock". Or you can be even smarter, skip all that nonsense and right-click on open space for the drop-down menu, go into your mission drop like when you warped to that hapless pirate in your first mission. There you will find an "objective (drop off)" option. Select "dock" and smirk a little.

Once docked, check the Agents panel on the right bar and open up a conversation with your agent there (note: you can start conversations with your agents from anywhere in EVE, but you can only finish existing missions that way. You have to be in the agent's station to get new missions). Notify the agent of your success. As before, if you have fulfilled all objectives, he will give you money. If he doesn't, you probably forgot to put the item you were supposed to ship into your cargo. Whoops.

Your agent will now refer you to a proper agent! To find him, open up "People & Places" in your Neocom, and select the "Agents" tab. If you wish to meet him right away, right-click the new agent and select "Set Destination" to set your autopilot to his home system.

II. Finding New Agents]

After a while, you'll want to upgrade to a more influential agent. To do this, first begin by opening an info dialogue on the NPC corporation you wish to do missions for. Open up "People & Places" on your neocom, and select "Corporation" as Search Type, then type in the name of the NPC corporation in question. A window will pop up with the search results. Right-click the correct item, and select "show info". Go into the Agents tab, and select a division you'd like to do missions for (check VIII. Appendix A - Divisions and Mission Types for information on different divisions). There, all agents available to you will be listed.

EVE ranks these agents from bottom up, i.e. the most powerful agents sit on the bottom, with the feebler kind sitting on the top. This rank is determined by Level and Quality. A q20 (short for Quality 20) agent will appear under the q15 agent. Many agents also have negative Quality. However, a q20 Level 2 agent is still worse than a q-20 Level 3 agent. For more information about Levels and Quality, see VI. Agent Levels and Quality.

Once you have done a mission for any agent, you can find him again under the Agent tab in "People & Places".

III. Standing]

All NPC factions (Races, Pirates and certain entities such as Syndicate and Khanid), corporations (any sub-entity to a Faction, such as Navies or simply corporations belonging to that race) and agents in EVE that you have interacted with (or attacked) in any way during your course in EVE have standing set towards you. This standing is affected by missions, hostile actions or killing a faction's enemies. All factions in EVE also have allies and enemies that will also be affected by actions made toward said faction. For example, doing a mission for the Caldari Navy also gives a slight standing increase to the Jove and Mordu's Legion, and decreases your standing with the Gallente Federation and Guristas Pirates.

Your access to agents in EVE is dictated by these standings, although in their case the highest counts. For example, you can have a standing of 2 with the Caldari Navy corporation, but still use an Agent that requires a standing of 5 if you have a standing of 5 or more with the Caldari faction.

Your standing can also be affected by skills, see VII. Skills.

IV. Loyalty Points and Offers]

Whenever you finish a mission in EVE, you gain Loyalty Points (abbv. LP) with your agents. The amount of LP gained varies between missions, but is also influenced by the level and quality of the agent, the security status of the system he's in (the lower the security status, the more LP gained), and any specialty skills you might have (Military Connections, etc. See VII. Skills).

These loyalty points accumulate over time with your agent. After a while, your agent will contact you via eve-mail and notify you of a Loyalty Offer. You receive these offers every few days from any active agent you have. An active agent is an agent you are currently doing missions for, and new offers are only given provided you have completed a mission since the last offer.

All offers require LP to be spent on them, in return for a specified item or a cash sum. Often you will also be required to provide an item in return, on top of Loyalty Points. This can be a basic module, certain commodities that can only be gained through other agent offers (and can be bought from other players via the market), ships or even contraband (note that if you are doing missions in secure empire space, transporting said drugs to your agent might be a problem). Turning down an agent offer has no detrimental effects; it does not affect your next offer, your standing or anything of the sort.

A large number of agent offers are global, for examle Implant offers for basic implants. Other offers are faction-specific; only certain Gallente Factions give blueprints for their Navy ships and modules, and only pirate factions give offers for their own pirate ships and modified implants.

V. Important Missions]

Important Missions are special missions from Storyline Agents. For every sixteen (16) completed missions, you receive a message from a storyline agent, and a mission offer. These missions generally have a significant effect on your standing with your faction compared to regular missions, and often reward you with valuable implants.

Turning down missions detracts from your chance of an Important Mission. Specifically, if you have done 8 successful missions, then turn down the next one, you only count as having done 7 successful missions. Also note that this value only resets after having done a storyline; if you do 18 missions, then do a storyline, you'll still have to do 16 more for the next storyline.

VI. Agent Levels and Quality]

There are four current agent levels in EVE, ranging from 1 to 4. There are also forty Quality levels, from -20 to 20. Every regular agent in EVE has both values, with the exception of Tutorial, Event and Storyline agents.

Agent Levels in particular dictate the agent's overall quality, as well as the difficulty of the missions provided. A level 1 agent will give out missions suitable for new pilots in frigates, while level 4 missions are extremely difficult to do alone, with many requiring small groups of people to do. While it is possible to solo level 4 missions, it requires significant amounts of experience and expensive ships and modules.

Many missions are available from multiple levels of agents. However, a level 1 variant is always significantly easier than a level 2 variant, so be careful when trying out higher-level agents and receive a familiar mission. Also, a ship that can easily tackle level 2 missions can still run into trouble with level 3 agents, and as such it's a good idea to test the waters whenever you go up a level. Conversely, the rewards of doing missions for a higher-level agent are that much higher, both in terms of monetary rewards, as well as increased amounts of loyalty points.

Generally, it is recommended that you take either destroyers or cruisers into level 2 missions, battlecruisers into level 3, and either battleships or tech 2 ships into level 4.

The quality of an agent affects the amount of cash and loyalty points you receive per mission, as well as standing increases per finished mission. Quality of an agent rises with increased standing and mission skills, in the form of "effective standing". Good standing and skills can effectively double the quality of a q20 agent.

VII. Skills]

A number of skills affect missions and standing in EVE, and all have Charisma as their primary attribute, and Intelligence as a secondary.

Social
The basic Social skill, and a prerequisite for all other Social skills. Gives a 5% bonus to standing increase with the corporation and agent, as well as the residing faction if you are doing an Important/Storyline mission.

Connections
Instant 4% standing increase to friendly NPC corporations. Note that a "friendly" NPC corporation is any corporation in a faction (i.e. Gallente/Caldari) with which you have positive or neutral standing.

This is subject to diminishing returns however; let's say you have a standing of 0.0 with a corporation. Consider that the maximum standing you can have with them is 10.0. The game applies the 4% to the difference between your current standing with all friendly NPC corporations and 10.0. So at 0.0 standing you will gain an actual increase of 0.4. If you already have a standing of 5.0 with a particular corporation you will gain a 0.2 net standing increase by training up a level of Connections (4% of 5.0 = 0.2).

Criminal Connections
Works like Connections, only with Pirate Factions such as Guristas and Sansha's Nation.

Diplomacy
Works like Connections, only for hostile NPC corporations.

Fast Talk
Works like Connections, only for Concord and therefore your overall Security Status

Negotiation
Provides a flat increase of 5 on agent quality per skill level.

Bureaucratic/Military/High-Tech/Financial/Political/Labor/Trade Connections
These skills give a 5% increase to Loyalty Points received per mission for every level trained. Note that each agent division has two Connections skills assigned to them: for example, Internal Security has Military and Bureaucratic Connections. These skills stack, so if you have both relevant skills trained to level 4, you have a 20% bonus from both, for a total of a 44% bonus on received LP.

These skills are not sold by NPC's, but are given out in agent loyalty offers and can cost up to 100m from players.

DED Connections
Each level increases the bounty received from killing NPC Pirates by 1,500 isk. *This skill is not active, and may change before it becomes live*

VIII. Appendix A - Division and Mission Types]

Administration: 50% Kill, 50% Courier
Advisory: 34% Kill, 66% Courier
Archives: 5% Kill, 90% Courier, 5% Trade
Astrosurveying: 40% Kill, 30% Courier, 25% Mining, 5% Trade
Command: 97% Kill, 3% Courier
Distribution: 5% Kill, 95% Courier
Intelligence: 85% Kill, 15% Courier
Internal Security: 95% Kill, 5% Courier
Legal: 50% Kill, 50% Courier
Manufacturing: 5% Kill, 95% Courier
Marketing: 5% Kill, 95% Courier
Mining: 5% Kill, 85% Courier, 10% Mining
Production: 5% Kill, 95% Courier
Public Relations: 34% Kill, 66% Courier
R&D: 0% Kill, 50% Courier(S), 50% Trade
Security: 90% Kill, 5% Courier, 5% Trade
Storage: 5% Kill, 95% Courier(L)
Surveillance: 95% Kill, 5% Courier

Kill: Kill one or more NPCs
Courier: Move or Deliver cargo (usually less than 2k m3)
Courier(L): Move or Deliver large cargo (upto 20k m3)
Courier(S): Move or Deliver cargo (requires specialized science skills)
Trade: Purchace items on the market and then deliver
Mining: Retrieve ore/minerals

IX. Appendix B - Links and Resources]

EVE Forum Resource Collection
Official EVE Player's Guide - missions
List of Social Skills in EVE
Lists of Factions and Corporations in EVE

Converted from Guides
Created:	2006-09-24 09:34:33
Last Changed:	2006-09-26 06:30:45
Author:	Sham
Category:	General
Last Edited	1102892
Score:	5.00
Note:	None
Guide ID:	796
Last Changed:	Unknown

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Category: EVE Online

This page last modified 2009-05-06 22:15:44.