Jump freighters are the most effective, safe means of transporting large volumes of goods outside of high-security space. They are also extremely expensive and difficult to make. This guide covers the invention process whereby one might come by a blueprint for building a Rhea jump freighter.

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Why The Rhea Jump Freighter?

The Rhea is the Caldari model of jump freighter, making it accessible to industry-oriented players that have previously flown the popular Charon freighter vessel. Like all jump freighters, the Rhea is capable of teleporting to other solar systems within range, provided there is a friendly cynosural field open at the destination. It occupies a supreme place in the pantheon of jump freighters, in that has the largest cargo capacity of the lot, meaning more ISK earned per trading run with less possibility of being caught and killed by other players. This larger capacity comes with the trade-off of the Rhea having slightly worse maneuverability and fuel consumption than the other variations, but is certainly worth it.

Inventing and constructing a Rhea requires significant amounts of skill training and ISK investment, and is not recommended for new players. Still, such players may be interested in learning about how to make some of the most difficult-to-build ships in the game.

Furthermore, this first guide will be published just before the scheduled "Burn Jita" player event, which will probably result in the a marked decrease in freighter survivability in that solar system, which as an industrial market mecca surely sees more freighter traffic than any other place in EVE. While also presumably on the target list, I find it unlikely that any suicide gankers will be able to destroy a jump freighter undocking at Jita 4-4, before it jumps out to a cynosural field in nearby low-security space. Consequently, I see the jump freighter market being one that is about to enjoy substantial growth.

Inventing Jump Freighter Blueprints

Jump freighters are currently the largest class of tech II vessel in EVE Online. There are no blueprint originals available for them, and so they must be invented. I'm going to breeze over the invention process because we have covered it in depth with other guides, but it is still the most difficult step of constructing a jump freighter, especially due to the financial risk involved. The process for inventing Rheas is so expensive that it is not recommended with anything less than perfect skills.

The skills one should have trained before attempting to invent the Rhea are as follows:

  • Caldari Encryption Methods 5
  • Caldari Starship Engineering 5
  • Mechanical Engineering 5

Decryptor Choice

As the largest tech II vessels in EVE, the material ingredients needed are fittingly expensive. Because of this, it is financially necessary to use a decryptor to improve the material efficiency of the resulting blueprint. What decryptor is best used can vary significantly depending on the state of the market, but at this current time it is (according to my math) the Tuning Instructions decryptor, which has only a 27.72% chance of success per invention attempt even with maximum skills. This is not as bad as it sounds because any resulting blueprint will have material efficiency -1, which will be good enough to save you hundreds of millions of ISK in ingredients. This should be more than enough to make up for a number of failed attempts.

Invention Ingredients And Cost

As with any industrial project in EVE Online, it is important to get all of your math and shopping done before you start. You never know when things are going to be more expensive or cheaper than you expected, especially with the volatility of the current EVE market and the possibility of having buy orders filled.

In order to attempt any invention job that will result in a tech II Caldari ship, you will need (approximately 24 mil. ISK):

  • x1 Esoteric Ship Data Interface

As with all interfaces, it is completely re-usable, no matter how many invention jobs you attempt.

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As with all invention jobs, the following will be consumed whether your job succeeds or fails (approximately 96.76 mil. ISK):

  • x64 Datacore - Caldari Starship Engineering
  • x64 Datacore - Mechanical Engineering
  • x1 Charon Blueprint Copy (1-run)

Note that if you are using other decryptors, you may need to use freighter blueprints with more than a single run on them. Jove help you if this is the case, as they are often not even available on the market, and require huge lengths of time to produce.

Circumventing Invention

I have no idea why, but there are periodically blueprints for sale on the contract market at prices much less than the cost it would have taken to produce them. I can only attribute this to bad math or desperation on the part of the sellers, but there you have it. This is, of course, an unreliable method of obtaining them, and months can go by without a reasonable priced specimen being for sale. This might be the best course of action if you are looking to make only a single Rhea, but over time the law of averages should make invention a sufficiently profitable endeavor, even with an abundance of frustrating failed attempts.

Using The Rhea Blueprint

However you obtain your blueprint, you are going to want to put it to use. Part two of this guide will focus on how best to do that. See you then!


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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