EVE New Citizens Q&A

To be exact you can get SOE standings from pretty much any Amarr missions since you also get faction standings and once you get high enough faction standing you have any agent for that faction open for you.
Caveat is that you need to do story lines for every 16th mission and that other faction standings drop accordingly (standings are an equilibrium in principle).

Anyway the point for the L1-L3 is to not grind for standings but to get you doing L4's as soon as possible, since L4 security missions in low/null sec is where the money and LP are.
Not that they don't pay you in high sec L4 as well but do notice that your standings with the agent also affect your amounts of LP and ISK rewards (agents used to have a quality rating but I think they removed that a long time a go), so doing high standing L3 are sometimes worth as much as L4 for the agent that you have low standing with.

How ever if you don't have skills or funds for a BS then lvl 4 distributions are the best way to grind standings, since industrials cost way less then a BS.

Why play an MMO if you don't want help from others? Yes it is harder to progress without being in a corp but again it is an MMO. You have to be social to progress.

I thought he means: Let your science officer die in a radiation filled room

Don't think too hard about it.

Like I said earlier in the thread... some of the support that veteran players can offer will be mere pennies compared to what they actually use.
Plus, it is in THEIR interest to make your "self sufficient" so you do not have to leech on them all the time.

Think of it this way; their efforts and "donations" are investments into you. They want you to eventually be able to stand by them as a relative equal... especially when it comes to PvP... but most recognize that this will take time and experience.


Here are some other benefits with working with others:

- you have a "safety net" in terms of what and how you learn things.
Examples:
------ You may not be able to take on that "l33t PvP veteran" all by yourself... but with a few newbie friends you DO stand a chance at killing, or at the very least driving off, that veteran.
------ That mission you are having difficulty with? Gather up some friends and they can help you blitz through missions, allowing you to gain more standings faster (you have to set your options so you "share" ALL the mission rewards though).
------ If you lose a ship through no fault of your own (or even due to personal fault), the rest of the corporation can chip in a little to get you back on your feet (example; when I lost my first battlecruiser everyone in my corp chipped in a little to buy me another)

- you have access to advice and knowledge that, operating solo, you would have to learn the "hard way" (this is a VERY big deal as there are SO MANY mechanics and nuances in this game... it is impossible to learn "everything" in a timely fashion)
Examples:
------ Fitting a ship is more of an art than a science... so it is VERY easy to get it "wrong." In a group, you can all quickly spot each others' errors or sub-optimal fittings and establish proper fitting styles.
------ Everyone makes mistakes. Working together with more people means you also have access to their mistakes and the lessons they heave learned from them.
NOTE: My current knowledge base has taken almost 5 years to cultivate... and I had the benefit of being in decent corps for most of that time!

- things are just more fun when you are working and talking with others who reflect your values.
NOTE: there are many different types of corporations as they are types of players.
Some will be organized, top-down, hierarchies, others will be glorified private chat channels with a "banner" to differentiate themselves from others.
Some will be very strict, others won't give a ****.
Some will have a primary goal/focus and you perform tasks only serving that goal/focus, others won't have a goal/focus at all, just do what thou whilst.
Some will mandate that you online during certain times (CTA: Call To Arms), others don't care when or how frequently you are online as long as you don't drag down everyone else.
And there are a whole bunch of other corporations and alliances that will be somewhere between these extremes.

Why do you believe that you can only do level 1 and 2 missions in high sec? I've been doing 3 and 4 missions just fine without going to low sec. All you need to do is focus. Do missions with the goal of raising your standings with 1 or 2 npc corps then you will be offered the higher level missions. There really is no need to go to low sec unless you want to go there.

Now you're talking. "This is EVE" ... right?

<3



Ok OP. This isn't advice, this is a slightly (very) rambly retelling of my first 3 months in EVE. I'm still pretty new, 7 or 8 months in at the moment, so what I have to say may be a bit more encouraging to you than if it came from a 10 year vet.

After reading up on EVE basics, and doing the tutorials, I sold all the non shooty shooty bang bang modules and ships they gave me and started warping around lowsec looking for trouble (fully aware that I'd likelydefinitely die in no time flat). My plan was to blow up the 5 frigates I'd bought for myself, then use the Thrasher I got from the tutorials to make enough ISK for 5 more.

My first roam into lowsec was... atypical. I jumped around dozens of systems, exploring and staying alive no problem. I ended up going into null sec and saw how empty it could be out there. Kept that up for an hour and ended up dying to a Mordus Battleship NPC in bumblef*** nowhere.

My second trip was completely different. This time I jumped into 'Amamake', a lowsec system very close to Rens, one of the Minmatar trade hubs (like a mini Jita). At the time one of the most well known (not to me) EVE alliances, Pandemic Legion was staging from there. Jump in, load grid: "WTF 80 people in local!?". No gate camp though. So I start D-Scanning around like a pro (teehee) and see a Helios at the Sun. PVP encounter numero uno. Also, the first trap I fell for. I died in seconds to a Cruiser friend of the Helios. This set up the theme for the next couple weeks. I quickly realized I needed space bros. So I started spamming mail messages to helpful people from this very forum, and spamming my newbie corp chat channel with inspirational speeches detailing how through sheer force of newbie will, we could, and would conquer Amamake; with **** fit Atrons. Basically everyone in the npc corp thought I was a spy or scammer looking to kill in their Level 3 missioning Drakes in low sec. A few people were receptive however, and came along, all of them less than a month old at the time.

We became friends pretty quickly and started flying together and sharing information almost daily. After dying a ton in horrible ways we started getting kills here and there. People that killed me sometimes donated fairly large (for a newby) sums of ISK so I could keep PVPing instead of grind. One of the guys I flew with was jealous, so he started over-acting his newbishness in order to extract ISK from people who killed him. He managed to 'scam' (not really, but he thought he was slick) some ISK that way.

Soon, I started my own PVP corp. None of us could find corps we were interested in, so we just stuck together and kept trying to not suck. We dabbled in Ganking, and got a wardec out of it which was...fun-ish, just pretty uneventful, so we stayed in Lowsec. A Vet who had been playing for about 2 years joined us by that time since he liked our attitude and helped us find a good Lowsec system to move to. Ahhh Sosala, brings a tear of joy to my eye. What followed was the best 2 months in gaming I'd ever had. Nothing flashy, just logging on every day, fitting up a few rust buckets with friends and throwing them at anything that moved.

Slowly but steadily, we started getting a hang this 'PvP' nonsense, and started setting traps, instead of falling for them. We got confident enough to start theorycrafting our own fits and having some success with them; to this day, my favorite kill was a Sentinel (T2 Neut Frigate) I snagged with an Atron I crammed 4 Energy Neutralizers onto (NEUTATRON FTW!). My buddy warped in after I got a scram on him and capped him out (queue evil maniacal laughter) and shot him to bits without mercy.

*Nostalgic sigh*

Story time is over since this is getting a little long and I'm rambling. I need more space whiskey.

---

TL; DR:

You can start PVPing yesterday. Fit up the cheapest, dinkiest frigate you can, and go poke someone in the eye. Drag along some fellow newbies and make friends. The secret truth of EVE is you don't have to wait to do anything, a bit of creativity and some friends can take you a long way.

When you die, talk to the slimy bastard (I'm kidding) that got ya, and ask for advice. Vets that you fight may even become your friends and help you out/invite you to join them. I have some 'pen pals' I swap mails with from time to time who killed me viciously way back when. Good people, all of them. Even if you just want to PVE, making friends and working together is the smartest move you'll ever have.

You're a month in, and have been asking a lot of questions, and have shown a good attitude. Don't give up now. Actually, I'd be surprised if you did; you've already been in it long enough to have caught 'the bug'.

Drop me a mail anytime if you want some advice or help, bit busy lately but I'll do what I can.

o7

There is nothing in this post I do not like. I just wanted to point that out.

To OP: That sense of excitement that you can read in her post? There's a good chance that there is something in Eve that is going to give you that kind of thrill, not necessarily straight up going out and looking for ship to ship combat.

I would also add that 3 months into the game Azda Ja dueled me... his (mostly) ****-fit Tristan vs. my Tech 2-fit Atron.

He got me down into 50% structure before I killed him.


Who had What:

- a Tristan (in general) has an advantage over a brawler-fit Atron (more native tank, more fitting options, more flexible weapon system)
- my frigate skills were better than his
- my fit was way better than his (seriously... his was pretty bad)
- my modules were better than his, but vastly more expensive (2 of them would have paid for his entire ship).

That is 3 factors in MY favor... yet he still came within inches of winning simply because his ship was the "natural predator" of mine.
Had his skills/module/fit been slightly better and/or got a friend to jump in and attack me... he COULD have won.


As I keep saying, and I will hammer it again, a newbie can be quite dangerous if he/she has access to the right knowledge and mentality (which, in this case, was myself and a couple other vets who tutored Azda).

Minning does not make you much isk. Trading is much easier to make isk at when you understand the game better but even then you have to watch the markets and learn the trends and that is something that you just can't do in a month.

As far as PvP goes. I have over 100 million skill points and would be little more than a speed bump to any PvPers if I jumped into low sec with any ship of my choosing. PvP in this game is not about skill points it's about experience and game knowledge. Plenty of experienced PvPers have started new characters and gone out and been very successful with low skill point alts and blogged about it. Get over the skill point thing this is not WoW yes the skill points help a little but a day old character can kill a 10 year old character if that day old toon is being flown by a human being that knows how to PvP in this game. So get over the skill point thing.

I will give you that in your first month maybe 2 it can be a little hard to properly fit a ship but that eary on in the game most new players wouldn't know what to do with the skill points anyway and yes I've seen the tears here in the new player Q&A section from people who have purchased high skill point characters and then came here crying about how unfair the game is when they really just tried to get too far in front of themselves and attempted to short cut experience.

If you go into low sec and try to mission you are going to loose ships. If you are a new player missioning in low sec you are going to loose lots of ships, maybe all of them.

You did not give this game a fair chance. You tried to solo eve and eve is an MMO it is not a solo game. It is intentionally designed around group content and especially player generated content so if you have not gone out and made friends and done stuff with them you have not tried Eve. If you want engaging solo content go play WoW.

You should not be undocking in what you can't afford to loose and what ever you jump into low sec with you should be prepared to loose. If you went missioning in low sec with your "bread and butter" ship that was just dumb.

Low sec is where you go to PvP i.e. loose ships. Null sec is mostly about sov warfare and carving out our corner of space with your buddies. If you are going in there solo as a new player you will get rofl stomped. Yes in WoW you would not send a level 20 character into and end zone. This is not WoW it is Eve there is no end game and therefore no end zones and new players are taken into null all the time. As a matter of fact some of the biggest forces in null sec warfare currently got to where they are by doing just that. Goons are famous for bringing people into eve from out of game and sending new players strait to null sec.

Not sure what you are talking about being exposed to low sec running level 2 and 3 missions. I've run level 4's strictly in high sec for years. There was just a guy posting here a couple days about about teaching 20 day old alts how to make up to 200 million isk per hour high sec missioning. So you can make enough isk in high sec to PvP you just have to learn.

When I started playing this game an RL friend brought me into it and helped me get up and going. Most if not nearly all players that stick with this game have a similar story to tell. If you try and solo Eve you will have a miserable time. This game has a huge learning curve and some very serious consequences for the unaware.

If you want to enjoy eve you need to stop playing it like it's WoW. This is not WoW if you play eve like it's WoW you will have a rough time going. Let go of everything that you know about gaming from WoW and come to this game with an open mind and a fresh perspective. Know that at the end of 6 months you are still going to be a newbie that doesn't know much. I'm more than 6 years into this game and still learn new stuff every day. At the end of a year I could barely fit my own ship without help from a vet. Let go of ideas about "sugar daddies" and being "carried". In Eve you can contribute in a functional way from day 1. You don't need to be level capped or max out dps.

Let me put out a hypothetical situation for you. What if you were offered a place in a Mercenary corp where they would give you fully fit ships for free if you would fly with them on ops and do your best to help out and learn from each experience and do a little better each time. Would that be having a sugar daddy? In that situation the corp is being paid by someone to do a "job" and even you being there in a cheapish ship is more helpful than one less person.

What if you moved to low sec and your Alliance had a ship replacement policy to fully refund the cost of replacing your ship if you lost it on Alliance ops. Would that be having a "sugar daddy"?

You are looking at this game all wrong. You are trying to solo eve and that never works out well. You seem to be trying to play eve like it's WoW and that never works out well. If you are willing to admit that you don't know diddly and are willing to put in the time and take your bumps and bruises to learn how to play this game you might have some fun with the friends that you make.