Sometimes while out and about you find a rather interesting situation. I was looking to increase my faction standing with Caldari Navy and I did not want to be too far away from Jita. The result ended up being quite an awesome little spot.

At the time of this, I was playing on an Alpha account. So, running level 3 missions to increase my faction standing was the best option I had. I’d be running them like I did before in a Harbinger.

First off you need to understand in Eve Online there is what many consider to be the right ship for the right job. A Harbinger farming Caldari mission is not one such thing. If I was dealing with say Blood Raiders that be a different story.

That is where sometimes you also must consider things. What you have the skills to fly and already own that you know works. Is better than jumping into the “right” ship with a lack of skills and not having any experience for it. While it was more me being too cheap to get and fly in a Drake. I’ll still take my Harbinger over one of those when I can get away with doing so.

Now the good news is on the Harbinger I tend to run two active armor resistances. So being able to tank the missions I'd be getting was not the issue. My damage however would be a little lack of luster. For what I wanted to do I was fine with that.

It was also hard to pass up the opportunity I found. In the same station, there were not one but two level 3 mission givers. That means more times than not unless I lacked enough tanking ability from the resistance I'd need. I could accept two missions at once and go out and run them both. Then I'd come back turn them in and get another set of missions.

This amazing opportunity ended up being in the Oimmo moon 1 station. As you might have guessed I'm far gone from here. Otherwise, I'd have made it a little harder to find the location if I had not.

There is also another amazing thing. Sometimes you just get a certain type of mission that you need to skip over. You can skip one mission every four hours. The issue is sometimes you get the same mission or another one you just don’t want to run after dropping a mission.

With two mission givers even if when I'd run into the issue of having to burn a mission and then must wait four hours to burn a second bad one. That would mean I'd just be down to running one mission instead of having to wait.

This was for the most part quite an ideal situation. One that I knew I would not always find when it was time to grind different factions. This was perhaps the first time I'd find myself being able to grab two missions at once without having a second person running missions with me who would also grab a mission.

While it might not sound like a big deal. The amount of time I'd save having to dock, get a single mission, undock, and go to that mission. While not massive would add up. Even more so when I'd get two missions in the same system.

That also ended up being the case quite a few times. I’d get a mission that was one or two jumps away. Both missions I'd pick up would be for that same system. Now you might start seeing the time savings.

Since I was able to run missions a bit faster. I was also able to run more of them before having to switch out to running my salvage ship. Now with how close this was to Jit and there is an individual in the system that liked to cause mission runners some issues. I did end up just using a standard destroyer salvaging ship setup.

It’s just a shame the loot for grinding missions in this area was either a decent drop or it might as well be nothing at all. You could get items worth 5 million ISK each. Sometimes with a single mission netting me an extra 20 million in loot. Other times I'd be lucky to pull in 200k in loot and salvage.

There was also a nice little side bonus. I had been wanting to increase my standing with a second major faction for quite some time. While I had some Caldari standings. It was not good enough to the point I could just go get any level of mission I wanted.

So, any time I had one of those high-standing story missions pop up. You bet I went and ran them. I also did not care too much if they were not that rewarding ISK wise. I was even thrilled a few times when I'd get some ore turn-in missions.

As after all. Jita was just a couple of jumps out. The rewards for running those missions in seconds from just having a stockpile of the right kind of ore at the station.

This was however not the real reason I wanted to get some faction standing. You see all of this was to lower how much in tax I end up paying when I sell stuff in Jita at the major trade station that is owned by Caldari Navy. Rather what the game calls a broker’s fee.

I ended up looking into my expenses one night. That is when I realized I had spent over 300 million ISK in taxes just to sell items in Jita. Sadly, increasing my Caldiar Navy standing is not going to reduce the biggest portion of the taxes you end up paying. For that, you need to be an Omega and have trained in a skill called Accounting that reduces Sales tax by 11% per skill level.

The other thing about broker’s fees is you must pay them up front if you are listing an item and are just not selling to a buy order. If that item fails to sell you are not getting it back.

While the base fee is 3%. After about a week of grinding, I managed to bring it even lower than I took a screenshot of. On top of that when I'm an Omega character again I can also train up the broker's skills to reduce this fee down even lower.

Final Thoughts

While saving a little bit over 1% on a broker's fee might not sound like a big deal in the short term at my current scale of things. I have some big plans for developing the other aspects of my play that I've always wanted to do. That I have been lacking in doing for quite some time.

That sole 1% and even a bit better later. Ending up being an economic edge that can and will sometimes be the breaking factor in some long-term plans. Not to mention at some point you have many other things that are giving you a 1% or greater edge. It turns from being a couple hundred million in saves per month into billions. Those billions end up being the profit margin whereas others end up taking losses.

Information

New to Eve Online or a returning player? Use my recruit a friend referral link and get 1 million skill points on signing up or logging into your Eve Online account (can only be claimed once per account). Disclosure: I might receive in-game rewards.

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Online.