EVE New Citizens Q&A

I've had the sudden urge to get back into EVE and don't know where to go right now. I played very casually back then and don't have a lot of SP invested yet (~900k I believe).

However, I have ~1.8m unallocated skillpoints and can barely fly Minmatar battleships. Where do I go from here? What would be a good direction to take to be useful?

The last time I played I was mostly running missions, but I feel that there is much more to the game than that and I'd like to be able to hold my own in PvP as well. I was thinking of going for the necessary skills to semi-competently use a Maelstrom for missions and then go from there.

What would you recommend?

I suppose the Rifter is still a very good frigate? What skills exactly should I train to be competent with it?

As other's have stated already with that few skill points you should not be planning on sitting in a Battleship any time soon. Large ships and their weapon systems take a long time to train for so avoid them for now.

You don't need to be in a hurry to use the unallocated skill points. I would save them for a time when you know what you want. You are almost like a brand new toon so I'd just focus on core / generic skills and do the tutorials and as you figure out things you want to try or specialize in then go from there.

In the mean time you should have no issue filling up your queue. You have targetting skills, basic drone skills gunnery and / or missiles. Engineering skills etc.... Being able to fit T2 tanks mods is helpful beyond that skilling up in tank is not that usefull early on. Also very important to have friends in game to ask questions as you go.

You could if you wanted to train generic gunnery skills like: motion prediction, sharpshooter, rapid firing, trajectory Analysis and then only basic racial gun skills for small and medium turrets in a short amount of time. Could also get all 4 races up to curiser in a short amount of time. That would let you try out a lot of different ships and options. Once you find a playstyle that you like you can specialize.

Staying with Minmatar for now is not a bad option either for what ever you wind up doing. There is this newbis skill plan that has been linked here before that might be helpful as well.

A lot of players rush into battleships and level 4s and there is no reason for it. With lower skill points you are better off isk wise running level 3's and after you are well skilled in small and medium ship then train up for battleship.

The key is to just jump back into the game. Do the tutorials. try some stuff out and then you'll have some more specific questions. Most importantly make friends. You won't be back here on the new player Q&A section of the forums if you get in an active player corp or make friends on in game public channels.

Not like you remember. The Rifter used to be THE frigate, but we've had several balance passes since then and it was basically used as the standard for the other hulls. They all received buffs and most are on-par if not better than the Rifter now. It's still a good ship, just not the BEST ship. Personally I prefer both the Breacher and the Slasher to the Rifter because they are a little more focused whereas the Rifter is a kind of jack of all trades, master of none. However, the Breacher is a missile ship and starting with turrets gives you more options to branch out in to.

It's also worth noting that you don't need to stick with Minmatar ships if another race appeals to you more. You haven't invested much SP and it doesn't hurt to poke around a bit and try out different types of ships/weapons/tanking to see what you enjoy before you start to specialize.

I highly recommend you look for an active PVP corporation to teach you the ropes. Faction warfare would be a good place to look because they tend to fly a lot of frigates there (either an official FW corp or local pirates). There's plenty of other options available if you do some research.

This is for your PVP education.

This is for motivation. (has sound)

And don't wait. Find someone to shoot immediately. You will die, but you will also learn something valuable. Rinse and repeat.

I belive it's already been mentioned but, if you are looking to get into PvP, there are a couple of great groups that I'd recommend too if you want to go that route:

Eve Uni, RvB, and Brave Newbies - all of which have great resources and tools for new players, or getting into PvP.

Personally, I went to Brave when I started my PvP character and went strait for a hurricane (Probably not the best plan, but I went strait there to because I wanted to fly one without stopping Erika's queue, lol). She can also fly a nice Rifter which I still think is a great little ship to get into. I just recently joined a pirate corp and I have already gotten a few kills with her Rifter inside FW Plex's since going there.

So my recommendation, start small and get yourself into a tough little frigate and get out there :)

So there is that route to get yourself started.

Also, welcome back to the game! :)

Use those skillpoints to train the must have core skills.

Hull Upgrades V
Weapons Upgrades V
Tactical Shield IV
Shield Upgrades IV

A few examples of skills you will never regret training.

Welcome back to Eve.

May you have a long and rewarding career here.



DMC

Thank you for your posts. This is a lot of information to process. I've done some reading and it does seem as if Battleships aren't what they once were. For now, I am trying to get some support skills up. I ran some L3 missions with an arty fitted hurricane yesterday and still found them easy to do.

I'll follow your advice and train for support skills as well as frigates / cruisers first and try all the new content. I'm a little hesistant to join a corp for now since I don't really know what I really want to do. I've just decided that highsec is only the surface, and I want to see more than that this time around.

Just wanted to point out you don't need to make a new character to do the tutorial. You can reset the main tutorial in the escape menu and anyone can go to a career agent to do the career missions (extended tutorial).

1. Micro jump drive is a very usefull feature in BC or BS missioning activity. Your Get the FO button aka safety belts, so to say. NPC do not scramble - only disrupt and MJD is immune to disruptors
2. Mobile tractor unit saves you from tracing each and every single wreck to your ship. You jump into mission pocket, drop MTU and do you business. When you are back - your MTU has all loot inside.
3. There is a mastery tab in every ship info. Choose your favorite PVP tool and check what skills you need to get mastery to level 4 or even 5.
4. Minmatar FW is vey good place to go now, since amarr were so nice to bring all kind of plexes right to the doorstep of Rens. You can shop in rens and do even offensive PLEXing few jumps away. An PLEXing now means 5-6 pirats come to visit you in PLEX in just about 3-4 minutes after you enter it. Reason of this is that few well populated MInmatar FW corps drop FW but stay in systems as pirates. So you will have many many targets out there.