It's very easy in the game of Eve Online to find an agent, talk to them, get a mission, do the mission and get a reward. This reward in the beginning is usually ISK and sometimes loot in the form of an implant, a ship module, a blueprint or even a ship. As you move along in Eve Online though, these rewards turn more into ISK, LP (Loyalty Points) and Faction Standing.

Players of Eve Online will recognize LP's for faction ships, faction modules and implants. These are after all some of the most sought after items. For a new player, the most common thing to happen if you are in a good corporation is to run higher level missions with more experienced players. This results in more ISK, an introduction into LP and of course standings – both for a particular faction, as well as individual NPC corporations. This does have one drawback however and that is it only exposes you (usually) to one or two NPC corporations, usually the major ones for a particular faction.

Of the three components of higher-level mission running, this article will only be focusing on the LP rewards. To highlight the other two briefly:

1.  ISK. This is the currency of Eve Online and the universe does not move without it.
2.  Standing. The higher your standing with an NPC corporation and/or Faction, the higher level missions and better quality agents you can work for. Higher quality meaning more ISK, more standings and you guessed it: more LP!

There are a couple of tools outside of Eve Online I would like to introduce you to. The first is an Agent Locator: http://eve-agents.com

This is a simple database site, listing all of the agents in Eve. You put in the filtering criteria.

This information is also available in game through your "people and places" menu on the left hand side of your screen. Open this menu, and from the drop-down at the top, select "solar system" and type in the name of any system – for demonstration type in "Jita". A new window pops up listing all of the systems with "Jita" (or whatever else you type) in it. Highlight "Jita", right click and select "show info". Another window opens called the "Solar System Information" window. There are several tabs here and the one we want at this point is the "Orbital Bodies". When you select that tab you will see a list of planets, moons and stations. The stations are what we're interested in.

You can rinse and repeat this for any system you want – try it for the system your character is in or want to be in. This is vital information. We need to know what NPC corporations are operating in what system. In Jita, for example we see that 13 stations are present, representing 7 NPC corporations. The station name represents the NPC Corporation.

We can now take a look at these NPC corporations and indeed want to do so. For starters, let’s look at the station at Jita IV, Moon 10, Caldari Business Tribunal Law School. You will get a feel of the names of NPC corporations – in this case it's "Caldari Business Tribunal" and the fluff of the corporation's name, usually a division – such as "Law School". If you hit the little blue "info" button from this window you can see what services are available at that station, which may or may not be important to you as you are mission running.

Back on the People and Places menu, change the search type in the drop-down menu to "Corporation". Type in whichever corporation you want info on, but for demonstration purposes I went with "Caldari Business Tribunal". Again a window will pop up with selections matching your requests and you highlight and right click on yours – selecting "show info". The "Corporation Information" window will now be present, and like with the Solar System Information window, will have several tabs. The one we are most concerned with at this time is "Agents" tab.

This window will show you what agent's work for a particular NPC corporation and in what capacity, which determines the type of missions you run for a particular agent. It also shows you which agents are available to you and which are not. Other useful information includes their quality and where they are located and what level of missions they give out.

While it is important to be able to use these tools in game, the tools outside of game are also very important. I mentioned already the Eve-Agents.com site and this can speed your search along, to find and discover agents.

The absolutely BEST tool in my opinion though is the LP database over at:

http://www.ellatha.com/eve/LP_Stores.asp?cmd=reset

We've been looking at the NPC Corporation called "Caldari Business Tribunal". Let's see what type of LP rewards they have. At the LP Database site, select "Caldari State" as a filter, and then in the main portion of the window, select "Caldari Business Tribunal". This window will now show from the most expensive through the cheapest, what LP rewards are offered at Caldari Business Tribunal. As you can see from this example, there are 8 pages of LP rewards and it lists how much LP and ISK and anything else that is required to gain a particular LP reward.

You can play around with various corporations to see what they have and make an informed decision on which NPC Corporation you would like to work for. There is one more step I like to take at this point, once I have found a corporation, and that is to look it up over at:

http://www.eve-online.com/corporations/

This gives you more information about the corporation that again, in my opinion, immerses you more deeply into the universe of Eve Online. This is good information to have for a variety of reasons:

• Role Play value
  • Do you role-play?
• Character Concept value
  • Why would a free trader work for state institution?
• Game knowledge
  •  What does Caldari Business Tribunal do?

At this site, simply work your ways to a particular corporation. For example, we know that Caldari Business Tribunal is Caldari faction, so we select "corporations in Caldari State" and then find our corporation "Caldari Business Tribunal"; these are not in alphabetical order. This shows us the logo for the corporation and a brief introduction to it. Select "details" and we are now given more information about this corporation. In this example only a little information is given, but I've seen corporation details that are ten times the info of this particular corporation. Some of this information will include what this corporation trades and deals in, as well as primary NPC names of prominent people in the corporation. It also lists any corporation news that reflects in game.

With all of this information at your disposal, you can now make educated decisions on which NPC corporations you need to work for, not just LP but other needs as well, such as character development. By using all of the tools presented in this article you will be on your way to be more knowledgeable about the game and the LP system.