EVE New Citizens Q&A

Can game time cards be bought by players without first buying a subscription, and if so, is it possible, if not for a first-time player, over several trials of gaining experience in playing EVE be able to earn enough isk within the trial period? I will likely have at least 4 or 5 hours a day available.

What's a meager fee for you can be two meals missing in a month for someone else, don't be an ass because some people want to play for free but you chose to pay.

OP: it is possible to play for free and pay your subscription with PLEX, but it takes a lot of time to know the game well enough to know how and if your only goal is to grind ISK all the time you're online to maintain your account subbed, you will soon give up the game. If you really find it fun to farm ISK to pay your sub, well, others may point you in the right direction, but EVE is much more fun when you don't need to worry for that and can enjoy your time online shooting people and seeing pretty explosions.

If you don't care for repetitive PVE content, then look for FW complexes, it's the current ISK fountain and there's a thread on this very section of the forum explaining how to make buckets of ISK with a gunless ship.

Somebody once gave me 500m for talking to him. Can be done on trial account. As for the OP's question: it is not possible to gain PLEX in the trial period through solo gameplay, not without major contributions from other players. Ways to obtain PLEX strictly through solo gameplay will open up after a few months, but by then it will be an unfun grind or terribly risky. I found great pleasure in actually coming up with a plan to make that kind of money. I must inform you that this plan is more or less just an online gamble and some months I make PLEX, some months I don't.

With the right connections you can make PLEX every month, but you'd need a character that can actively contribute to the activities that make such ISK, and actually WANT to play for profit. Best of luck though, it gets more fun if you stick around a while longer.

yes you can upgrade to a full account on a trial with a plex.

you can earn a plex, i did in highsec not going to say how but it is possible with good market research and some great websites.

Why dont you want to say? Tell us or it didnt happen.

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: yes, but not realistically.

When you start you dont have access to the high paying activities (or at least you will struggle to do them). Give that a PLEX cost around 470mil atm it means a lot of non stop grinding to get the ISK.

I highly discourage to make 'play to pay' your main focus. It will end up in the following cycle:
1. Grind ISK during this month.
2. Buy a PLEX with ISK
3. Add gametime for next month.
4. Go back to 1. for the next month.

It will also limit your progression as besides the money for the PLEX you need extra for skillbooks, ships and modules.

And in the end most people earn 10$ quicker then they earn 500mil ISK.

Edit: as you are on a trial it further limits you as you also have some trial limitations.

Yes, it is possible, but it's not easy and (as others have said) it runs the risk of burning you out of the game.

Making enough ISK for a PLEX monthly requires you to make 16-17M ISK each day for the entire month (more like 20M if you want to be able to miss a day or two here and there, and it's 24M ISK/d if you want to do it in the space of a 21d trial).

Your best bet would be to get someone who will split a buddy invite reward with you if you use their buddy invite. It'll cost you one month worth of cash, but it'll give you 51d of gametime for one months worth of cash and get your halfway to your first PLEX. That gives you a bit of time to ramp up your ISK production and get the skills to make more ISK.

Edit: the most common ways I've seen people make that much money in the amount of time you have are either exploring or trading. Exploring you're relying on RL skills of being decent at probing and lots of luck in the drops, trading you need to know how to buy low and sell high and do well at that. It's quite possible, but it's not easy.

You wont notice 1/45th of your monthly food missing, I can promise you that, also you can get food much cheaper than £5/meal.

Scamming and aggressive market trading are the only two methods I can think of. The former requires luck, the latter lots more skill than a brand new player on a trial would have.

My suggestion: Bite the bullet and buy the game and a 3 month subscription. At the end of the 3 months + trial time, it is much more reasonable to have enough to buy a PLEX...but even that isn't a guarantee depending on how you spend those 3+ months.

You seem utterly offended by the idea someone might play EVE for free (while someone else pays for him)

are you jealous or something?

As others have pointed out, yes its possible but requiers alot of knowledge about the game, good social connections or simply even artistic talents (some people sell banner, signatures, logos or even video intros for isk)

through normal PVE farming however i dont think its possible.