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Blueprints are instructions on how to manufacture items. There are ship blueprints, module blueprints, ammunition blueprints and many more. To manufacture an item, you will need a blueprint, and the materials listed in the blueprint. You can also copy blueprints - to make more blueprints - and research blueprints to make them more efficient.

Blueprints are either originals or copies. Originals (BPO) can be found on the market in the Blueprints section, sold by NPC sellers. Copies (BPC) cannot be sold on the market, but can be sold through contracts. Copies are either created by players from BPOs, bought from Loyalty Point stores, or dropped by NPCs in the case of some rare ships & modules.

Take a look at the blueprint. This will build a Rifter, a Minmatar frigate.

It is an original blueprint, as indicated by the text at the top. Original blueprints have infinite runs - you can produce as many Rifters as you have materials for. Copies (BPC) have a lighter blue icon and a limited number of runs.

The next line of icons shows what you can do with it. In order from left to right: Manufacturing - Material Efficiency Research - Time Efficiency Research - Copying - Invention - Reverse Engineering. The last two cannot be done using a BPO; invention requires a BPC and Reverse Engineering is used only by some looted BPCs used in the Tech 3 Production process.

Clicking the icon shows you information related to that activity; in this case we have selected Manufacturing - which shows us the time to build a single item, the outcome of the build process (a Rifter), required skills and required materials.

Blueprint Originals (BPOs) are available from the market for all pure Tech 1 (Meta 0) items. They start with a Material Efficiency of 0% and a Time Efficiency of 0% - these can be researched to greater levels for more efficiency in manufacturing. They are sold by NPC sellers on the market (sell orders with a >300 day duration), but they may be purchased and resold by player characters (sell orders with a <90 day duration), so check prices.

Blueprint originals for T2 items exist, but they are extremely rare and highly sought-after. You can sometimes find them for sale on contracts or on the Sell Orders forum, for vast sums.

Blueprint originals may also be sold on contract between players - this is commonly done for well-researched BPOs, sold as 'BPO packs' for convenience to manufacturers. Make sure that you're buying an original; it's quite common for holders of a well-researched BPO to also sell BPC packs. For expensive items, these may legitimately command prices similar to originals. Make sure you can tell the difference between BPOs and BPCs.

BPOs can be researched to improve their manufacturing efficiency, using both less materials and less time. They can also be copied, which produces a BPC. For more information see the main article.

BPCs are created by copying a BPO. BPCs have a limited number of runs, and once these runs are all used up the BPC will disappear. For instance, the BPC in the screenshot below has 10 runs. You can use it to start a single 10-run manufacturing job, and at the end you will receive the 10 items (in this case 10 x 100 rockets) and the BPC will be used up in the process. Alternatively you can start a 5-run manufacturing job, at the end of which you will receive the BPC back with 5 runs remaining.

BPCs are used similarly in invention - at the end of the invention process, whether or not the invention is successful, your BPC will be returned with one fewer run on it.

If you have researched your BPO for material and/or time efficiency, then when copying it the resulting BPCs will have the same ME and TE level as the BPO.

• Blueprint copies have a lighter shade of blue on the icon than originals,
• Will have a limited number of runs,
• Will clearly say 'Copy' on their information,
• Will not be able to be ME or TE researched, and
• May be able to be used for invention (not all BPCs can be invented from).

All tech 1 items have BPOs sold in NPC stations in empire. Some BPOs are racial and you have to go to that area of space to get them, just like skillbooks. For example, projectile gun BPOs and projectile ammo BPOs are only available in Minmatar space. Sometimes you can get them elsewhere, but those are BPOs that are being resold by players—often at hilarious markups.

Tech 2 BPOs used to be seeded via a laughably rigged lottery system, but now are no longer being introduced into the game. You can still buy them if you have tens or hundreds of billions lying around.

BPO prices cost more as the item in question gets bigger. Small ammo is cheaper than big ammo is cheaper than modules is cheaper than ships. Frigate module BPOs cost less than battleship module BPOs, and frigate BPOs cost less than BPOs for larger ships.

Most T1 BPOs are cheap, and producing from them is easy. The most expensive ammo modules will run to 1m isk, excepting for torpedo and cruise missiles. Frigate ammo BPOs are cheap and quick to produce and research from. The same goes for small and medium drones. Most simple modules are also 100k or so. Guns can be expensive, battleship stuff is usually expensive.

Many blueprints can be found on this website, with the BPO cost in the bottom left corner. Note that this site has not been updated since May 2015, so make sure to double check pricing in game.

BPCs are usually only available for expensive goods, like ships or T2 products, otherwise people just use the BPO. Max-run (1500 runs) BPCs for battleship ammo and drones are often on the market, because lots of people like producing that stuff for themselves or their corps. Ditto with cruisers, frigates, destroyers, battleships, industrials. All the popular ships have fairly common BPCs up on contracts. There is also a blueprints channel that you can sit in and paste in your request every couple of hours until someone comes along who sells BPCs there are still quite a few people out there who make BPCs to order. Most are on contract in Jita.

As of the Ascension expansion, the maximum refining rate you can get is 87.52% (with max skills, a +4% implant, in a citadel with a T2 refining rig). Material efficiency is only really an issue if you're making ships bigger than battlecruisers. So, if you have a bunch of minerals sitting around, you could sell them for, say, 4mil ISK. Or you could add value in the form of creating a Thorax from those minerals and sell that for 8mil. Who cares about inefficiency with the market bolstering your value like that?

Each level of ME research gives you an additional 1% material savings and each level of TE gives you an additional 2% time savings. For most BPOs, such as ammo, drones, and modules, you will want to max research to 10/20 to maximize your ISK/hour. However, for larger ships, you will want to calculate the ME breakpoints for that item. For example, if you look at the blueprint for the Nidhoggur, you will notice that researching ME1 from ME0 does not actually yield you any material savings, while going up to ME2 saves 1 Drone Bay. You should use a spreadsheet to calculate the total savings for researching a blueprint and figure out what the break-even point is for material savings vs research cost and your time. For many ships, this will be around ME7 or ME8, with TE as high as you're willing to pay for it (however, note that TE often does not reflect a large increase in ISK/hour for large ships that are running for multiple days or more).

The equation for calculating material usage can be found at the bottom of the page.

Or, would it be worthwhile to buy a BPO from an NPC, research it, and sell it in a different region?

You can sell researched BPOs, but not on the market. As a relatively new player, you can't possibly fathom how much time other people have spent researching BPOs—all it takes is time. So that's a tough market. Hang out in the Trade > Blueprints channel (channels button, it's one of the existing ones you select from that list) if that interests you. There's a healthy market in researched ship BPOs and generally they're not that expensive. In fact some BPOs are cheaper researched than from NPCs because people are trying to offload them quickly. If you want a researched module BPO you'll have to ask around and hope you get lucky. Research on everything but ships is pretty quick though.