Like many other games, Energy Credits, the major in-game currency is the lifeblood on Star Trek Online, with which players can purchase various things ranging from new ships when the player reaches a new rank to new weapons (Space and ground), deflectors and shields. If you are looking for ways to earn energy credits fast and effectively, below are methods commonly used to farm EC (Energy Credits).

- Foundry Missions
This is a guide to farming EC, originally written by RockyCoon. By playing a Foundry mission once every day, a player can amass a few hundred thousand EC in less than 20 minutes.

- Get a Federation, or Klingon character to Level 50. I imagine you can do this earlier than 50, but being level 50 insures you get the highest mark of loot.

- Get yourself an escort of some sort. (Advanced Mirror Escorts and Patrol Mirror Escorts are cheap on the Exchange, as well as the Mirror Qin for KDF.) Outfit it for DPS. Or really, just outfit a ship for DPS.

- Go to Drozana Station (for all factions.)

- Open the Foundry. (Shortcut Key is 'J' and hitting the Foundry Tab at the top of the window.). Look for the Mission called 'One and Done' via the 'Browse All' Tab on the Sidebar, and pressing the downwards triangle at the top to open the search dialogue. it may have a 'Fed' or 'KDF" Suffix in it depending on what faction you are. Start it by clicking 'Hail' at the bottom right. The start point is a cup of bloodwine near the bar.

This is an easy mission that also qualifies for basic foundry rewards (dilithum).

- Do the mission. An escort/DPS Ship makes it fly by quickly. Complete it to the end, completely. Pick up all the loot the ships drop. Both mission uses a nebula around a portal to make a bunch of battleships coming in one by one easier to kill by stripping their shields... be sure to stay outside the nebula area so you can keep yours!

- You should now have a crapload of commons, uncommons, and rares of various flavors, if you got lucky. Increasing your difficulty to 'Elite' will increase your chances of blues and purples, and possibly higher mark gear.

- The Bartender on Drozana should give you 50% sell rate. Sell your junk there!

- You should make anywhere between 300,000 to 500,000 EC, depending how lucky you were. Shields and deflector dishes are the ones worth the most selling this way. You may want to check the exchange to see if you can't get more.

You can repeat this until you stop getting expertise for killing ships, which also makes loot stop dropping.... as there's a daily/20 hour cap on the amount of foundry loot/drops/expertise. This is a 'Per Toon'/'Per Character' limit, so if you have an alt, you can switch to it and continue to farm loot for EC.

- PVE/PVP Combat
Like foundry mission farming, PVE/PVP combat can be quite lucrative. Play fleet actions like Starbase 24 and Gorn Minefield and you can amass good amounts of EC, Fleet marks, Dilithium, junk loot, and potentially valuable reward loot in the process. Starbase 24 and Gorn Minefield both have a good reward system: first place awards 2 purple mk xi items, second place awards 1 purple mk xi item, and 3rd place awards 1 blue mk xi item.

- Crystalline Catastrophe Elite (CCE) is another mission that awards two purple MK XI items to first place winners. Players with support builds have found it relatively easy to take first place, as healing counts more than damage inflicted in this fleet action.

- Tour the Universe
Tour the Universe is an hour-long, galaxy-wide event in which the player is awarded 50,000 EC for visiting all sectors of a sector block.

- Farming EC with Duty Officer missions (FED)
This section deals with accumulating Energy Credits by:
Acquiring, downgrinding, and selling duty officers via Duty Officer Assignments
Acquiring and selling items via Duty Officer Assignments
Seller beware: this is a guide on acquisition, not selling. Prices can and will fluctuate on the exchange, depending on rarity, availability, and the amount of game-wide Starbase projects currently running. Note that your results will vary from others. 

- Annual Events are generally another best option to earn' EC. During the Anniversary, farm those particles and sell them on the Exchange(either now in high quantities or later when the value increases). During the Summer Event, Favors are a very good source of income once you have a system down/alts kitted out - I've personally obtained around a dozen or so lockbox ships from this source alone.

- If you do want EC really fast,buying keys for zen(real money) and selling them is the fastest method. Alternatively, you can buy Cheap Star Trek Online Energy Credits right from mmoam.com, a professional online in-game currency store.

- Last, save your credits. Don’t spend your EC on junk. Keep them for when you will truly need them. And don’t spend anything until you’re L50.

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