Faction warfare standings: what you lost, and how to get it back

This question has come up in the comments on the faction warfare video more than once: "How do I fix my standings with the other factions after leaving faction warfare?" This page is the answer.

I have not run a standings repair on camera, so this page is graded B, not V. Every claim below says where it comes from. The rule changes are quoted from the official patch notes. The repair routes come from community sources, and where only one source says something, the page says so.

First, check your guide is from after April 2026

Most of what you will find on standings and faction warfare was written before a run of patches between February and April 2026 changed the rules. If a guide does not mention them, treat it as out of date. The changes, all from the official patch notes:

• 17 Feb 2026. Promotions in your militia no longer cost you standings with other factions.
• 25 Feb 2026. Level 1 faction warfare missions no longer cost faction standings. The final career agent mission no longer costs you standings with the other empires either.
• 10 Mar 2026. Level 4 missions followed. Friendly fire (shooting your own side) now costs double the standings inside faction warfare and insurgency sites, and half outside them.
• 16 Apr 2026. Level 2 and 3 missions had their NPCs replaced. In the patch notes' own words: "Players will no longer lose faction standings for killing them."
• 21 Apr 2026. A one-time amnesty. Anyone enlisted at the time who was below -4.5 with their own faction was set to exactly -4.5.

What that means in practice. Faction warfare missions used to be the big standings hit. Since 16 April 2026 they are not. But the damage from missions run before then did not reverse itself. If you ran a lot of militia missions in 2025 or early 2026, that is almost certainly where your negative standings came from, and they are still there until you repair them.

Plexing itself costs very little. The EVE University wiki's standings table (revised March 2026) shows no faction standing change for capturing a complex or for killing the NPCs inside one. That is a single source, so hold it loosely.

The two thresholds that matter

-5.0 with an empire faction: its navy hunts you in its high security space. Faction navy ships spawn and attack you in that empire's highsec systems. They fight like normal NPCs. They are not CONCORD and they do not delete your ship on arrival, so you can warp or jump out if you keep moving. Community corroborated.

-5.0 with your own faction: you are removed from the militia. Quoted from the official 10 March 2026 update: "Characters with faction standings below -5.0 will be removed from Factional Warfare corporations 24 hours after receiving a warning." You also cannot join a faction warfare corporation or alliance while you are below -5.0 with that faction, corp or alliance. If the character below the line is the CEO, the whole corporation is removed. Some older guides still say the removal line is 0.0. That describes the rule before 2026.

Do not confuse either of these with security status. Security status is your standing with CONCORD, the police. It drops when you commit crimes, and below -5.0 you are an outlaw that anyone can shoot. Faction standing is separate: it is your relationship with one empire, and it only changes how that empire's navy and agents treat you. You can have perfect security status and still be at -6 with the Caldari State.

What else negative standings cost you

• Agents. Agents need positive standing before they will offer higher level missions: 1.0 for level 2, 3.0 for level 3, 5.0 for level 4. At -2.0 or worse with the agent, its corporation or its faction, that agent will not talk to you at all. Community corroborated across three sources.
• Market fees. Worse standing means higher broker fees at that faction's stations. It does not lock you out of the market.
• Jump clones. No effect. The old +8.0 requirement to install a jump clone was removed in July 2015 and never came back. If a guide tells you otherwise, it is more than ten years old.

The routes back

These are the repair routes the sources agree on. None of the sources give a reliable standings per hour figure for any of them, so this page does not rank them by speed. What each one costs you is stated instead.

Train the three social skills first

• Social increases the standing you gain from missions by 5% per level. This one changes the real number you earn, so it makes every other route on this page work faster. Train it before you start.
• Diplomacy improves your effective standing with factions you are negative with, by 4% per level.
• Connections does the same for factions you are already positive with.

Effective standing is what agents and navies react to. It is not your underlying number. Diplomacy can get agents talking to you again and push a navy off your back sooner, but it does not change the standing you actually hold. The militia checks are widely reported to use the underlying number, so Diplomacy will not get you back into a militia on its own. That last point comes from the community wiki, not from the developers.

The Sisters of EVE epic arc

A long story arc run for the Sisters of EVE. At the end it gives you a fixed standing increase with an empire faction of your choice, and it does not cost you standings with anyone else. It can be repeated, commonly cited as every 90 days. The exact figures come from a single source, the EVE University wiki, so check them in game before planning around them.

Missions for the faction you want back

Running security, distribution or mining missions for that faction's corporations raises your standing with the corporation directly. It raises faction standing mainly through storyline missions, which trigger after every 16 missions of the same level for that faction.

The catch is access. At -2.0 or worse with the faction, its agents will not talk to you. That is where Diplomacy earns its training time: it lifts your effective standing back over the line so the agents open up.

Data centres

A data centre lets you hand in tags taken from the pirate faction that opposes an empire, in exchange for standing with that empire. Guristas tags raise Caldari standing, for example. You can buy the tags on the market, so this route converts ISK into standing. Each agent is one-time only. A failed hand-in costs you standing. It will not take you from zero to a high standing on its own. Community corroborated.

A sensible order

This is an assessment from what each route costs, not a measured result:

1. Check the real numbers in your character sheet, and look at the faction as well as the individual corporations.
2. Train Social, then enough Diplomacy to get that faction's agents talking to you.
3. Run the Sisters of EVE arc for the faction you are repairing, because it is the only route here with no downside.
4. Run missions for that faction's corporations and let the storyline missions do the faction level work.
5. Use data centres to close the gap if you have spare ISK.

If you are still enlisted and close to -5.0 with your own faction, stop whatever caused the loss first. The warning gives you 24 hours before the removal, not a week.

What this page does not claim

• No speed ranking. Nobody publishes a measured standings per hour figure for these routes, and a ranking without one would be invented.
• No conversion rate from corporation standing to faction standing. The sources do not agree on one.
• Nothing on pirate faction warfare. Enlisting with the Guristas or the Angel Cartel is a separate track, it does not repair empire standings, and the sources conflict on its entry threshold.

Found something here that is wrong, or tested one of these routes yourself? Tell me in the Discord or the video comments and I will correct the page.

Sources: EVE Online patch notes, version 23.02 (Feb to Apr 2026), and the Standings and Awoxing update (10 Mar 2026), both at eveonline.com. EVE University wiki: Faction warfare standings, NPC standings, Epic arcs, Data centers. Official clarification on jump clones and standings (28 Jul 2015).