While inactive, active hardeners receive a 300 basis point boost to their resistance stat, so at level 1 they will provide 3%, level 2: 6%, level 3: 9%, and so on (it seems like going from 0 to 1 only gives you a 200 bp bonus). The compensation skills do nothing while the module is active (as the skill says).
Passive hardeners (resistance plating) receive a relative 5% boost per skill level, so with T1 plating it will be a total boost of 20% * 5% = 1% per skill level.
The Sisters of Eve Epic Arc: Blood-Stained Stars
After you have completed the Tutorial and Career missions, you will have an opportunity to continue your missioning career.
The career agents will recommend starting the Epic Arc mission series with Sister Alitura in the Arnon system at the Sisters of Eve station. We recommend doing all of the career agent tutorials before heading off to the Epic Arc.
Some of these missions are difficult for rookie pilots. Many new players will lose ships while learning effective tactics to defeat NPC opponents. I recommend you fly cheaply fitted ships and insure with platinum insurance. The final bosses in the Epic Arc, Kristan Parthus and Dagan, can be very challenging for rookie pilots. Many pilots will get help by asking in local, although you risk having your mission objective stolen and ransomed by fleeting with strangers.
Information and tips on how to run some of the missions can be found on Eve Survival: Blood-Stained Stars
Further Missioning
The Evelopedia has a Missions Guide which can help you decide which corp and department you want to run missions for. Pilots who wish to mission close to the Eve University HQ in Aldrat often run missions for the Minmatar Mining Corporation in nearby systems. Other corps to mission for in nearby systems are listed in the Mission Guide to Aldrat.
I recommend declining kill missions against the four main empire factions (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar) to avoid losing access to empire space. Having -5 or below standings with an empire faction can cause problems during war fleets, lowsec patrols, wormhole ops, and many other circumstances. This can also cause problems if you later join a corp that has their HQ in a faction's empire space that is denied to you, or if you join a nullsec alliance whose nearest empire space is denied to you. When you have -2 or below standing with a faction, only the Level 1 Quality 0 agents and below will be available to grind standings, which could be a lengthy process.
You can check mission information before accepting or declining on Eve Survival. If you want to find agents close to a particular system, you can use the Agent Rangefinder web application. There is a database of agents available on the Eve Agents website. Some of the entries are outdated and you should always check in-game to confirm the existence and location of the agent. You can also use the map to see systems where you have agents available to you. Open the map (F10), go to the Star Map tab, go to the Stars sub-tab, go to the My Information section and select My Available Agents. Flattening the map can make it easier to navigate. Hovering your cursor over these star systems will list the available agents along with their respective corporation, level, quality, and division.
Career Choices
Although most players start making ISK in EVE by running missions, there are plenty of other ways to make a fortune. The Tutorial Agents give brief insight into some of the many careers in EVE. You are not restricted to the list below, but here are some popular choices:
- Ratting - Killing NPC pirates("rats") for bounty rewards and loot.
- Exploration - Archaeology, salvaging,
- hacking, as well as running deadspace complexes and wormholes.
- Mining
- Industry and Production
- Trading and Hauling
- Piracy
Best Answer
You should have high virus strength and coherence, you should fly a ship that has bonuses to these stats.
There is no surefire pattern to the nodes, they change depending on the difficulty of the site, and this only effects the density of the spawns.
The one constant is that if there is a bad node, and it is surrounded on all sides by nodes, the system core has to be one of those nodes.
The optimal strategy is to try and find this bad node by sticking to the center of all the nodes, only revealing the nodes that are surrounded on all sides by other nodes.
By following this rule you either find the bad node, and thus the system core, or you find a positive node or nothing at all. There is a fairly high probability that the center nodes don't have a bad node, in this case the system core could be anywhere, but usually spawns near a bad node.
I've had the best luck clearing all the center nodes I can, knowing that they have no bad nodes, then I explore, and destroy any bad nodes I come across, always destroy the buff nodes first, as the system core has a high probability of being behind a bad node.