EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hey everyone I've just started playing EVE (five days ago to be exact) and I'm loving every minute of it. Before I ask my questions just want to admit that I've already tried searching online for a guide but I'm finding out of date information. Through my search for information I know that the game has gone through a lot of changes, especially in the career I'm talking about.

I'm very interested in the exploration career. I'm currently working through the career tutorials and want to get everything in order before I head out on my "own." I need some guidance on what skills are needed as well as recommended to get the job done efficiently, with focus on going towards a covert ops ship with the covert warp drive used (I'm sure that last bit shows my noob status )

I'm also looking to run mining as a secondary profession and know it will help out when I find mining sites through exploration. If anyone could explain the skills that are best for what I'm doing or even point me to a guide I may have overlooked (and is up to date of course) that would be great. Thanks for the help in advance.

Heyyyy welcome to EVE!

I'm going to be Brief here but I suggest you take a look at your preferred racial Covert ops frigate, and train the recommended certificates for that, as it'll give you a very solid set of skills to run with.

It's a good choice for a starter career, especially if you go to lowsec. (After you've got the basics down, that is.) In lowsec you will learn the vital player skills to observe your surroundings with the Directional Scanner, using Local Chat as intel tool, safe spots, combat probing and so on. Knowing how the cat & mouse game works will improve your chances in getting to a good corporation, but most importantly "solar system awareness" opens up the game in a very interesting way.

Also, lowsec is much less crowded than hisec, which means you will find more sites, and especially the magnetometric and radar sites are more valuable than in hisec. Being able to handle yourself in lowsec prepares you for nullsec exploration, where the biggest treasures and hardest sites are.

The T1 scanning frigates are better for exploration than covert ops frigs, as they have more combat capability and bonuses to the profession modules (Analyzer for magnetometric sites, Codebreaker for radars). Covert ops are better for scanning and scouting, but exploration almost always includes fighting NPCs, and covert ops can't really do that.

Combat sites (except perhaps some of the easiest hisec anoms) require a combat ship. Work your way up from frigates to cruisers, don't rush into bigger ships until you can fit your current class properly- aim for T2 tank first, then T2 weapons. Train Archeology, Hacking and Salvaging so you can use the profession modules. Solid capacitor and navigation skills are good to have early on.

Check out this overview on core skills http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Core_Skills, what you pick from them depends on the race and ships you are planning to fly (don't train armor skills for shield ships, or missile skills for blaster ships etc). That EVE University wiki is a great site for a new player, they have a well-maintained collection of educative material for free, highly recommended reading.

Evemon is very helpful in planning your skill training and familiarizing yourself with skills: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Guide_to_using_EVEMon

You will also need either EFT (EVE Fitting Tool) or pyfa (Python Fitting Assistant). (Google them ;-) ) They are 3rd party apps used to design ship fittings, something that is cumbersome and time+money consuming trial & error in the game itself. They will also help you coming to grips with ships and modules and how they interact.

Good luck and have fun!

Thanks for all the information so far! Good to know that my ship choice was off from what I truly wanted to do although scouting sounds interesting later on.

Once you've trained all those exploration skills, you can also use your scanner probes to find people in space running missions, then warp in and steal all their loot. "Ninja looting" as it is called, uses all the same skills as exploration, but is much more fun and lucrative.

Alright so I'm going to switch my training to get Frigate V asap (was training mining V until I knew what to do). Makes sense since no matter if I'm mining or exploring I'm in a frigate. All of the exploration skills like astrometrics and pinpointing should all be trained to level V then as soon as possible? Thanks again.