EVE Explorer

How to find...

Again and again, people ask "how do I find X". They ask on help channel; they ask on the forums; they ask me. In many cases I can answer "use my site", but that doesn't make things obvious. So, on this page I've listed short guides on how to find stuff using my pages.

• Finding npc trades
  If I wanted to get into the Wheat trade, I'd need a seller and a buyer of the stuff, probably in different regions. So, to get started, I'd be interested to find the nearest seller of wheat and the nearest buyer to that. I'm in Berta at the moment, so I start by selecting 'show systems' - 'with npc selling ..' - "wheat". I run the query and then sort it by distance (). Since I'm already in Berta, the distance to Berta is given by default, but you can set it if you want to try this.
  Turns out Gelfiven is the closest seller of Wheat, which is in Molden Heath region. So, I now change the query to 'Show systems' - 'with npc buying ..' - "wheat" - 'NOT' - 'in region with name containing ..' - "Molden Heath". I set the distance to jumps from Gelfiven (with the box aboven the distance column) and sort by distance. The closest npc buyer appears to be in Perimeter, The Forge region, at 13 jumps from Gelfiven.
  Did you spot the mistake I made? I searched for 'selling ..' - "wheat". But "Ammarian Wheat" also contains the word wheat, so it could be that is what I found. This problem is something you will have to live with for now. You could check if Gelfiven sells Amarrian Wheat (or Perimeter buys it), ofcourse. I'll add additional controls to prevent problems like this later.
• Finding a decent agent
  Now that it matters wether an agent is in low or high security space (for rewards and mission difficulty), it is worthwhile to do some research before picking one. Also, with LP being in the game, you don't want to have to switch too often. I'll start out by selecting all the level 4 agents with a QL of 15 or better. 'show agents' - 'with level ..' - ">=4" - 'with QL ..' - ">=15".