Elite Dangerous Money Making in 2024

[Disemboweled Ego]

If we're including all methods of making credits, high ground CZs should be on there as it's definitely more than the road to riches figures.

That's around 80m/h max.

Another thing that I haven't seen anyone mention is stacking thargoid kill missions from various factions - it does require board flipping but you can get 1 kill to clear 20 missions (from seperate factions across multiple stations/systems) in theory.

This can get up to 1b for a set of 20 2-hydra missions this is also very nice if you want to give out free credits/mats to someone by sharing those wing missions.

In theory a beginner could maybe do the legwork to stack the 20 missions for someone who can actually deal with the hydras easily and share the missions as payment for killing the hydras for a win-win.

 

[Schmack]

Maverick + Executioner + Tormentor for me.

And when doing the relog at ground CZs, I make sure that the ship being used has multiple SRV bays.

Steve

Yeah same loadout, plus NV and jump assist because I love being on low grav planets and hopping from tall point to tall point at night.

 

[Schmack]

That's around 80m/h max.

Another thing that I haven't seen anyone mention is stacking thargoid kill missions from various factions - it does require board flipping but you can get 1 kill to clear 20 missions (from seperate factions across multiple stations/systems) in theory.

This can get up to 1b for a set of 20 2-hydra missions this is also very nice if you want to give out free credits/mats to someone by sharing those wing missions.

In theory a beginner could maybe do the legwork to stack the 20 missions for someone who can actually deal with the hydras easily and share the missions as payment for killing the hydras for a win-win.

Yeah legwork for sure, overcoming interdictions and getting to each station, grabbing missions, making sure they aren't the same factions. I wonder could you go to a completely different side of the bubble and complete the missions, a scout is a scout.

 

[Jmanis]

Made a little guide.

Credit/hour guesstimates are my own. YMMV.

Massacre Mission Stacking is way out. Try 250-500m/h, no wing required... variation depends on a bunch of contextual things.

If someone can't stick 200m/h minimum, they've done something really, really wrong.

EDIT: Just spent a moment to validate and sure enough... a very poor stack[1]... spent 10 minutes stacking, 30 minutes fighting, 5 minutes collecting, ~130m credits over 45 minutes.

[1] I didn't use any of my preferred stack methods for a 2+ hour session, just took what I could for the immediate 1hr. Had 9 mission slots spare which I could've filled for another 45m that i would've landed in the same time period, maybe another 5 minutes, but I was rushing and didn't spend that one or two minutes planning.

This is one of those things that gets significantly better if you can commit to a two hour session. That's when you can tip close to a billion, without even going near wingstacks.

 

[Kayvan]

Well, after last night I can confirm the 1B/h for AXCZs. But only bc I met 3 players that each had a Gibconda and were happy to invite and share missions with me. And they all knew what they were doing. In the end I had about 500m in bonds and again as much in cash for missions. Nice!

--

As for RES massacres, I dunno. I have scouted out a pretty good pair of systems that has it all, many factions giving missions all for one target system, but you still have to be lucky.
For one, every so often 2 or more source factions are at war --> no bounty missions.
Further up Aleks describes how she never has more than 30 seconds between mission target kills. That's amazing, considering how my buddies and me often cruise through the RES for 5 minutes without even finding a mission target. We do kill off the Wanteds too to make space, but sometimes you just don't get good spawns.
Yesterday for instance we ended up with a RES that was full of Friendlies, bc kills were randomly replaced with Clean spawns.
I suppose we should have left and restarted the instance, but that also costs time.

Many other money-making activities also whitewash the payouts by only counting the time of the core activity, not the overhead needed to get there. I.e. travel times, raising reputation with mission-givers, mission board flipping etc. Especially annoying for Robigo as it's so far out in the middle of nowhere.

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Ultimately, comparing how many 100s of millions you can make with a maxed-out CMDR who already has it all is rather pointless. What do you want to do, buy another fleet carrier every week?
Much more interesting to look at possibilities open to new CMDRs, be it new players or Alts. Unless they are shamelessly powerleveled/twinked by vets, they have both more need for credits and way fewer options to make them (in those absurd scales anyway).

 

[Northpin]

but you still have to be lucky.

No, you just have to plan ahead.
Have not one pair of systems, have several.
Make sure the systems are properly picked (single star systems, rather small)
Get allied in all those systems.
Pick and stack missions from the most favorable (bgs wise) system
Profit.

Much more interesting to look at possibilities open to new CMDRs, be it new players or Alts. Unless they are shamelessly powerleveled/twinked by vets, they have both more need for credits and way fewer options to make them (in those absurd scales anyway).

Why?
If a new player just plays the game - credits will flow (sure, they need to settle in a system, get allied, run missions)
If they're focusing on credit or on farming materials or any type grind/burning activity, they will burn out eventually

however, new player can still get a plain DBX, 2 srv and a G1 Artemis and fly in the black salad hunting - assuming they enjoy the activity - by the time they get Elite in Exobio,.they have enough for a carrier and a couple years of upkeep

 

[Jmanis]

As for RES massacres, I dunno. I have scouted out a pretty good pair of systems that has it all, many factions giving missions all for one target system, but you still have to be lucky.

Further up Aleks describes how she never has more than 30 seconds between mission target kills. That's amazing, considering how my buddies and me often cruise through the RES for 5 minutes without even finding a mission target. We do kill off the Wanteds too to make space, but sometimes you just don't get good spawns.

For me, if you're in RES, you're doing it wrong. If Haz works for Aleks, awesome, but not for me[1]. I farm the Threat 3 mission USS, and ensure I use systems where travel time between them is never more than a minute. And when I can get kills this quick or faster, travel time isn't a dealbreaker. The kills might come faster if I had some cargo on board, but that also significantly increases the risk.

Many other money-making activities also whitewash the payouts by only counting the time of the core activity, not the overhead needed to get there. I.e. travel times, raising reputation with mission-givers, mission board flipping etc. Especially annoying for Robigo as it's so far out in the middle of nowhere.

People talk about the overhead of rep like it's something difficult. It's not... I moved to a different system when I moved for Thargoid war stuff, took me two sessions of ~2 hours to max out allied rep. But funnily enough, for my methods, having not everyone at allied helps.

Ultimately, comparing how many 100s of millions you can make with a maxed-out CMDR who already has it all is rather pointless. What do you want to do, buy another fleet carrier every week?
Much more interesting to look at possibilities open to new CMDRs, be it new players or Alts. Unless they are shamelessly powerleveled/twinked by vets, they have both more need for credits and way fewer options to make them (in those absurd scales anyway).

Incidentally, I don't own a carrier, nor can I afford one. Personally, it's challenging and fun to wipe a Threat 3 USS as fast as possible while aggroing the whole room... if only it was as worthwhile credit-wise doing the same for Threat 5/6 Pirate Activity sites.

[1] I suspect this is because spawn mechanics are affected by latency; lots of things suggest this is the case. And my countries tin-can internet means that's not good.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

People talk about the overhead of rep like it's something difficult. It's not... I moved to a different system when I moved for Thargoid war stuff, took me two sessions of ~2 hours to max out allied rep. But funnily enough, for my methods, having not everyone at allied helps.

You can go from almost-hostile to allied with less than 700 units of expensive and profitable trade goods if you sell it in lots of 750k profit at a time. Even a medium ship full of goods can probably do it using that method if large pads aren't available. If you have some expensive mining goods or titan samples to sell even a small ship with a dozen units of cargo could do it.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Many other money-making activities also whitewash the payouts by only counting the time of the core activity, not the overhead needed to get there. I.e. travel times, raising reputation with mission-givers, mission board flipping etc. Especially annoying for Robigo as it's so far out in the middle of nowhere.

I think that's correct to do for one-off costs, because once that setup is done you can do the activity for as many hours as you want, and the setup costs become an ever-decreasing fraction - especially so for faction reputation. Otherwise you start to get into questions of whether "time to acquire ship" should count, and whether that should be measured from a fresh start or for a CMDR who has unlocked the engineers [1].

Travel times needed as part of the activity (flight times to rearm, etc.) should be counted, but travel time to the activity system shouldn't.
If multiple mission boards need scanning to pick up the stack that time should definitely be counted; if that can be mitigated by selecting the best mission board system in advance then that shouldn't be counted on a "best possible" figure.

Ultimately, comparing how many 100s of millions you can make with a maxed-out CMDR who already has it all is rather pointless. What do you want to do, buy another fleet carrier every week?

It's a way of keeping score. There's no point to holding the Sol-Colonia speed record or getting the highest Political score on the squadron leaderboard, but it's just another sort of optimisation problem at that high end.

[1] Fastest achievement of X from a fresh start is of course also an interesting optimisation challenge.

 

[Schmack]

For me, if you're in RES, you're doing it wrong. If Haz works for Aleks, awesome, but not for me[1]. I farm the Threat 3 mission USS, and ensure I use systems where travel time between them is never more than a minute. And when I can get kills this quick or faster, travel time isn't a dealbreaker. The kills might come faster if I had some cargo on board, but that also significantly increases the risk.

I look for pirate activity sites, level 6 or 7. I've never been attacked by them and they rarely even scan these days. I've also never encountered a winged group there. There's one I was working recently that had missions for the that pirate faction one system over. I filled all missions without relogging or jumping out. Again, they never have attacked me unprovoked, yet. I guess they are trying to pick up all the floaty stuff in the area. Either way it seems like a constant source of wanted ships of various abilities, but some do pack a pretty good punch. Don't tag too many at once lest ye must flee.

Look for systems that are in lockdown.

 

[Hellrider]

raising reputation with mission-givers

I did it once in few systems.
I have no need in doing it again, as long as I dont murder civilians/fail missions. So with each mission stack it is smaller and smaller part of time.

 

[Kayvan]

Or when some idiotic braindead player faction takes over a bunch of systems and ruins your happy hunting grounds. Happened to me more than once.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

For me, if you're in RES, you're doing it wrong. If Haz works for Aleks, awesome, but not for me[1]. I farm the Threat 3 mission USS, and ensure I use systems where travel time between them is never more than a minute. And when I can get kills this quick or faster, travel time isn't a dealbreaker. The kills might come faster if I had some cargo on board, but that also significantly increases the risk.

[1] I suspect this is because spawn mechanics are affected by latency; lots of things suggest this is the case. And my countries tin-can internet means that's not good.

You can get hazres enemy spawns like this - installation scenarios are more effective if you just want bounties or are willing to try your luck in getting the enemy faction you need for a quest.

The trick to getting good spawns is to get a good feel for if there's too many miners/powerplay cops around for enough pirates to spawn and to get good at spotting far away fights. If the pirates don't all spawn together and scan each other or some random civilian ship you can get to a situation where they're hopelessly far apart and then it's best to just reset the instance. The big ships are a bit too sluggish to really do this well and in these big brawls you got to know to prioritize the ships that would die to NPC infighting unless you kill them first to keep the combo multiplier going.

 

[Shurimal]

Much more interesting to look at possibilities open to new CMDRs, be it new players or Alts. Unless they are shamelessly powerleveled/twinked by vets, they have both more need for credits and way fewer options to make them (in those absurd scales anyway).

A few months ago I tried something like that--put all my money except 100000 credits to my carrier bank, bought an Adder and just did the easy-mode missions for nostalgia's sake. It took me only a few days of megaship scans, data delivery, on-foot salvage and larceny jobs (things you can do in the starter Sidewinder easily and far from power-leveling) to A-rate the Adder and have a few dozen millions in my account--enough to outfit for eg platinum mining with an Asp X and really kickstart the credit flow. I think it's never been easier for starting players, a single megaship scan mission pays around 2 million credits which is enough to buy a Cobra and start fitting it with better modules.

EDIT:

I farm the Threat 3 mission USS

For me, whenever I drop into a mission signal (doesn't matter if threat 3 or 4) and open up on one ship, every pirate ship in the instance starts attacking me. 8 to 10 NPC Vipers, Pythons and FDL-s even at Master level are quite dangerous, I would say collectively they put out as much damage as a Hydra; and avoiding taking damage is much more difficult than with thargoids. And no, I'm not taking wing massacre missions.

 

[Hellrider]

Or when some idiotic braindead player faction takes over a bunch of systems and ruins your happy hunting grounds. Happened to me more than once.

That's why two of my hunting grounds are literally systems of my faction
One of them is even hillarious loop of massacres from my system to my system, so I can take missions in totally no important system, complete missions, and use bounties to fix damage, if it is too big, or use it in any other system
But I'm stacking missions in one system at once, not 3/4 just to milk 20m per kill.

 

[Kira Goto]

I think it's never been easier for starting players, a single megaship scan mission pays around 2 million credits which is enough to buy a Cobra and start fitting it with better modules.

Mission payout is actually very different at the starting points of the game because it seems to be based off of your rank(s), not just faction rep.

So I’m not sold on your experience being very indicative for the new player. I made an alt not too long ago and found it was not that easy to get to that point. Is it easier than ever? Probably yes. But unless you jump into the grind loops or super high paying stuff right away - not recommended - you’ll be taking your time.

 

[metatheurgist]

Mission payout is actually very different at the starting points of the game because it seems to be based off of your rank(s), not just faction rep.

So I’m not sold on your experience being very indicative for the new player. I made an alt not too long ago and found it was not that easy to get to that point. Is it easier than ever? Probably yes. But unless you jump into the grind loops or super high paying stuff right away - not recommended - you’ll be taking your time.

You can definitely just do some low ground CZs (at 10 minute each) for 6M. You can't even lose bonds if you die. Do you want to start with a cobra or a conda? The will conda take a bit longer and will be a bit crap but you can say you've got the end game ship already.

 

[Kira Goto]

You can definitely just do some low ground CZs (at 10 minute each) for 6M. You can't even lose bonds if you die. Do you want to start with a cobra or a conda? The will conda take a bit longer and will be a bit crap but you can say you've got the end game ship already.

I wasn’t looking to do ground CZs in that alt, but, I kinda forgot about them. Did some mission runs instead, whatever bounties I got from pirate kills, and scanned ‘valuable’ worlds along routes that I was travelling(if I happened to have a surface scanner equipped), that kind of thing.

Didn’t go into mining much because, well, that was the route on my main. Really, it followed the traditional route of Sidewinder to Cobra to Python to an Anaconda… and then was stuck there for the better part of ~2 years when I didn’t have that much investment in Elite to go beyond very basic engineering and stuff.

Went a little different with that alt. Got an Eagle after the Sidewinder, played with a Vulture, and the goal was to get a Krait MKII. Which I now have… and well, due to some coincidences of getting engineers unlocked without needing to complete their basic unlocks following referral(possibly due to having two saves on the same PC), I skipped some of those necessities I would’ve had to go through otherwise.

(I absolutely would have if it weren’t for skipping over them unintentionally. I was even looking forward to doing the stuff… a little bit.)

*Still a little meh’d at the extremely high payouts provided by invasion AXCZs, because it went from ‘Actually had to work for the money’ to ‘You can spend a few hours a day peppering Cyclops with AX multis and get half a billion in funds’. But I like doing those in open rather than being all by myself in solo play.

 

[Jmanis]

For me, whenever I drop into a mission signal (doesn't matter if threat 3 or 4) and open up on one ship, every pirate ship in the instance starts attacking me. 8 to 10 NPC Vipers, Pythons and FDL-s even at Master level are quite dangerous, I would say collectively they put out as much damage as a Hydra; and avoiding taking damage is much more difficult than with thargoids. And no, I'm not taking wing massacre missions.

Did them last night, this is definitely not what happened in 100% of the cases.

Shooting one will flag all as Hostile on scanner, but only the ones you hit will attack you still.
The fact they're "Master" level suggests you're taking a different sort of mission... Threat 3 should be expert or competent and below.

I know what you describe can happen with other templates, so it still sounds like you're not taking the general pirate massacres... maybe a "massacre deserters" or other stateful one?

 

[Jmanis]

Mission payout is actually very different at the starting points of the game because it seems to be based off of your rank(s), not just faction rep.

The exception here is Wing Missions. They pay out the maximum amount regardless of your rank... which is probably why they're the go-to for massacre stacking (like in the OP).

The ideal state is to share wing missions, but stack and clear solo missions. The exception here is if you massacre stack for CZs. Wing is better both as a wing and solo, because the payouts are bugged, and wing CZ massacres pay out more per kill than non-wing CZ massacres, unlike their non-CZ counterparts. Been a bug for a looooong time.