E:D Black Box
Eight venue types from Nav Beacon to Hazardous RES to high-intensity Conflict Zone, each with its own credit currency, BGS lever, and Powerplay merit flow. Pirate massacre stacking layers on top as a force multiplier. Pick by the currency you need: RES, nav beacons and massacre stacks pay bounties; Conflict Zones pay bonds; and any of them bank Powerplay merits when the system matters to your Power.
Suitability by ship class — Small (Vulture), Medium (Python Mk II), Large (Federal Corvette) — the best combat hull of each class for the venue. Full picks and notes in the dossiers below.
| Venue | Pays | Density | Risk | Authority | PP2 Merits | Small | Medium | Large |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RES (Low / Std) | Bounties | Medium | Low | Present | On kill | Prime | Overkill | Overkill |
| RES (High) | Bounties | High | Medium | Present | On kill | Solid | Prime | Solid |
| RES (Hazardous) | Bounties | High | High | None | On kill | Situational | Prime | Anchor |
| Conflict Zone | Bonds | Very high | Med–High | None | On kill (PP CZ) | Solid (Lo/Mid) | Prime | Flagship |
| Ground CZ | Bonds | High | Medium | N/A | On foot | Ships are taxis only | ||
| Nav Beacon | Bounties | Low | Low | Present | On kill | Prime (casual) | Overkill | Wasted |
| Compromised Nav | Bounties | Med–High | High | None | On kill | Solid | Prime | Prime |
| USS / Threat | Bounties | Variable | Variable | Varies | On kill | Lo-threat | Hi-threat | Hi-threat |
A signal source inside a planetary ring where NPC miners work the rocks and pirates spawn to rob them. You scan ships, find the WANTED ones, and kill them for bounty vouchers. Four intensity tiers escalate target count, ship size, and pirate aggression. System security patrols every tier except Hazardous, where you're alone with the wolves.
Steady, reliable bounty income — no special system state required, any ringed body with a RES works. Bigger tiers spawn bigger ships (Anacondas, Pythons) worth far more. Highly variable session-to-session: sometimes you drop into a pack of fat Condas, sometimes a ghost town. Fit a Kill Warrant Scanner to multiply each bounty across all factions that want the target.
Cash vouchers in at a controlling-faction station to raise reputation and nudge that faction's influence. The same kills feed pirate massacre missions — see Dossier 07.
In a reinforcement or acquisition system for your Power, merits are awarded on the kill, not the cash-in — roughly 1 merit per 1,000 CR of bounty. A Haz RES with a fast-scan KWS is a clean credits-plus-merits loop.
Low-pressure, "park-and-farm" combat. Excellent for warming up, dialling in a new build, or grinding while half-distracted. Hazardous is the adrenaline tier — genuinely dangerous, no police, real bite.
Agile enough to cherry-pick the wanted target before security poaches the kill, and small enough to disengage instantly. In a Haz RES it gets focused fast — manage aggro, sub-target drives, and bug out early rather than tank a four-ship pile-on.
Tanky enough to anchor a High or Hazardous RES and farm Anacondas indefinitely; G5 Overcharged plant plus corrosive multi-cannons shred armour. Slower to swing onto small darting targets, so let it eat the big ones.
The apex farmer: sits in a Hazardous RES and grinds the fattest bounties solo. Overkill in Low/Std, where it just out-ranges the spawns and waits between kills.
Spawn in systems flagged War or Civil War. Pick a side at the zone, and everything wearing the wrong colours is a free target — no scanning. Intensity scales the threat and the special objectives: Captains in big engineered ships (kill the FSD to stop them fleeing, or the powerplant for an instant pop), four-strong Spec Ops wings of elite engineered ships, Correspondents to protect or destroy, and at high intensity a chance of a capital ship.
Combat bonds, redeemed at any station in the system. A low-intensity session runs ~500k; a high-intensity session can clear 5–20M with good gear and skill. Per-ship value is fixed and scales with hull size — prioritise Anacondas, Cutters, Corvettes, Pythons.
The strongest BGS lever in the game. Winning zones swings the conflict, builds faction rep fast (engineer rep-gates), and drives Federal / Imperial rank via aligned minor factions.
Dedicated Power combat zones grant merits on kill. Note they can be buggy (no-spawn relogs) and the ships run tougher than a Haz RES, so merits-per-hour aren't always better — but the combat is denser.
The most intense, densest dogfighting in the game. No admin, no scanning — just sustained combat with friendlies and enemies swirling. Spec Ops wings are a real "oh no" moment. Use Select Highest Threat to inherit a friendly wingman onto your target.
Punches above its weight in low and medium if you fly disciplined — let friendlies soak aggro while you clean up. High intensity is a trap: Spec Ops will delete a small hull that over-commits. Treat it as a skirmisher, not an anchor.
Tank and sustained DPS let it solo Captains and grind Spec Ops at high intensity. SCBs become worth carrying here for the long burns. This is the ship you bring when you want to win a zone, not just farm it.
Owns a high-intensity zone: holds the line against Spec Ops wings and out-trades the toughest Captains. The decisive "win the zone" hull when you want to swing the war, not just bank bonds.
Infantry battles at settlements in War / Civil War systems. Enter through Frontline Solutions, pick a side, and grind down the enemy's reinforcement points — both teams start at 1,000 and bleed 5 per casualty. Threat tiers scale the difficulty. Combat bonds plus the game's best on-foot material drops.
Ground bonds scale with threat — low sessions ~500k, high sessions 5–20M with upgraded suit and weapon grades. Re-deploying via Frontline keeps you in the fight after death, so throughput stays high.
Same BGS / influence swing as space CZs, plus settlement data you can sell for Powerplay merits. The fastest route to high-grade suit and weapon engineering components.
On-foot merits and settlement data deliveries count. A change of pace from ship-side merit farming.
A full FPS pivot — great if you enjoy shooters, and a genuine palette-cleanser from cockpit grinding. Completely separate skill tree from flying.
Not applicable — this is ground combat. Any ship that can land at the settlement is just a taxi to Frontline Solutions; your suit and weapons decide the fight, not your hull. Bring whatever you already fly there.
Transient signal sources flagged as combat or threat encounters — the threat level roughly indicates difficulty. Pirate ambushes, distress calls, and the natural home of most pirate massacre mission targets. One-and-done: you clear it, it's gone.
Bounties on wanted kills, but the real value is as the delivery vehicle for massacre missions (Dossier 07). On their own, returns are streaky.
Mission-driven — the rep comes from the massacre contracts you're completing, not the signal source itself.
On-kill merits apply in relevant systems; pairs well with stacked Power-aligned massacre missions.
Variety and surprise — you don't always know what you're dropping into until the instance loads. The ambush flavour keeps it tense.
Fast clears on low-threat sites. High-threat ambushes can swarm faster than it can disengage — read the threat rating before you drop.
Absorbs the ambush alpha and grinds through the pack — the right tool when a USS turns into a brawl.
Overmatches all but the nastiest threat tiers; brings certainty to a blind drop where you can't scout first.
Not a venue but a force multiplier layered on top of one. Collect a stack of "kill N pirates" massacre missions from multiple minor factions at a hub station, fly to the shared target system, and grind kills at its RES or threat USS. Every qualifying kill ticks multiple missions at once and still pays the raw bounty.
The highest CR-per-kill in PvE: bounty + several mission payouts + (in a Power system) merits, all from one trigger pull. This — not raw RES hunting — is the fast lane.
Each completed contract boosts its issuing faction's rep and influence simultaneously. Stack across factions in one hub to spread the gains.
Run the stack through a system your Power contests and every qualifying kill banks merits alongside the bounty and the mission payouts — bounty, several missions, and merits from one trigger pull.
The satisfying "everything counts" loop — one kill, three progress bars tick, the bounty rolls in. Pure efficiency dopamine.
Fast kills, fast resets — ideal for low/standard RES massacre grinds where target size is small and volume is king.
Best total throughput in a High or Haz RES, where massacre targets are big and a small hull would have to play cautious.
Clears the heaviest massacre spawns fastest; pair it with a Kill Warrant Scanner to multiply every voucher on the same kills.
The single biggest shift from the old system: for bounty hunting, you earn merits the moment a ship dies, not when you redeem the voucher — at roughly 1 merit per 1,000 CR of bounty. That changes which venue is "best" depending on where the system sits relative to your Power.
Net: if you pledge a Power, route your existing RES / nav-beacon / massacre grind through systems your Power is contesting and the same kills that earn credits and rep also bank merits toward module unlocks. Zero extra effort, three currencies.
Figures on this page are verified against the sources below.