The Rewards Of Reaching Level 500 In Project Discovery

On Saturday I finally reached level 500 in Project Discovery, EVE Online’s mini-game involving searching for exoplanets in the real universe. I have not used any of the blueprint copies given out as rewards for taking part in the citizen science project, but now is a good time to review if the journey was worth the rewards.

First, how much effort did I put into reaching level 500? I didn’t keep close track of time but looking at my wallet transactions shows I spent approximately 115 hours over the course of 156 days, or an average of 45 minutes a day. Overall, I managed to do over 4 levels an hour. I guess I should add that for at least the last 400 levels I received the maximum reward for each pattern evaluated due to my accuracy rate. When I reached level 500, my accuracy rating was 99%. I would expect the effort to take longer with lower ratings.

The rewards for playing Project Discovery fall in three principal areas. The first type is the ISK reward received for evaluating a pattern. These rewards are based on the player’s accuracy rating, with a maximum payout of 99,000 ISK for a player with a rating a little over 98%. The reward is deposited into the player’s wallet every 5 minutes. At level 500, I had collected a total just over 1.5 billion ISK in Project Discovery rewards.

The second type of reward occurs with the completion of each level. For the first 24 levels, players receive an Exoplanets SKIN, with the reward increasing to 2 SKINs per level at level 26. Exoplanet SKINs exist for each ship built by the four main NPC factions (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, Minmatar). Overall, I received 975 SKINs (227 unique) worth 560 million ISK at the time I completed level 500 according to the price evaluator in my hanger.

Project Discovery also grants rewards for reaching certain levels. These rewards range from clothing (including a hat) to CONCORD ship skins to 1-run BPCs for the Pacifier, Enforcer, and Marshal. The clothing only was valued at 44 million ISK. The Pacifier and Enforcer SKINs rewarded for reaching levels 75 and 150 only were worth 9 million ISK. The blueprint copies of the Pacifier (125 million ISK) and Enforcer (275 million ISK) brought in more, but weren't amazing. The big money is the Marshal BPC. Looking on the contract market, the blueprint copy brings in a little over 7 billion ISK.

I don't plan on liquidating everything I acquired from playing the Project Discovery mini-game. My next steps are to inject the SKINs into my two main characters and then work on building the CONCORD ships. But I figured that people solely interested in ISK might want to know the possible rewards for reaching level 500.