EVE New Citizens Q&A

With the ability of trial accounts to get into BC and BS, I wondered if it was reasonable to attempt to get a PLEX within that first 21 days. So, I created a trial account and gave it a go.

Would I recommend this to new players? No way. I had YEARS of experience in the game, and mission running in general to rely on. I played a LOT of hours. Probably 100-150+ hours over 18 days... but did manage to accumulate about 800 million ISK. More like 1.1 billion ISK after liquidating everything to abandon the account. If I compare those hours to a job to get the $15 to play for a month, that would be somewhere between $0.10 and $0.15 an hour.


How did I do it?
1) Started as Minmatar. Not because it is better, but simply because it is what I'm, by far, most familiar with.

2) 2 days of support skills and flying around in a destroyer. Lots and lots of skills to 1, 2 or 3. Shield skills, capacitor skills, navigation skills, social to 3 to do negotiations and connections to 2. Survey and salvaging. Drones to 3. Weapons upgrades, hull upgrades, jury rigging for shield and proj weapon rigs. Trade to 2 so I could run more sell orders. Corp management to 1 so I could get into a corp of 1 with 0% tax.

Ran the tutorials 6 times (3 sets Minmatar and 3 Gallente) and the Sister's of Eve Epic Arc. Knowing how long those take me, I had to have played at least 12 hours a day those first two days.

3) Battlecruiser
A bit over 48 hours in, I remapped to max Perception and Will Power and focused just on ship and weapons skills for the next week+.

Took most of day 3 off, but did play a few hours doing L1-2 Minmatar COSMOS missions for faction standing, and a couple regular L2s in the Rupture.

Day 4 was solidly in cruiser and able to fly Battle Cruiser. Did more L3 COSMOS missions for the implants. Dumb luck, killed a domination firg in a belt while looking for bits for COSMOS missions. Got 150 million ISK worth of EM ammo. Only half of it had sold by the end of the 18 days.

By end of day 4 I had standing to run missions for any Minmatar L4 agent.

Day 5-10 were spent grinding L3s and some of the easier L4s in BC. After 2 days in hurricane, upgraded to fleet 'cane. 6x650s, 2 light launchers, shield rigs, passive shield tank, perma afterburner for speed tank and lows full of tracking enhancers and gyros.

Could make 3-5 million an hour regularly. Over a week, I ground ISK for about 200 million in the wallet (plus another 200 million ISK worth of ships). Working backwards, that is 30 million a day, so 6-8 hours a day. Yeah, that feels about how much I was playing. Drop an MTU in the mission, then come back after in a salvage thrasher to clean up.

The really long skill here was gunnery to 5 needed for large guns. That one skill was 4 days with optimal remap and +3 implants.

4) Battleship
Almost exactly half-way through the 21 days I was able to get into the Maelstrom. I spent my wallet on the maelstrom, but held the canes in case it went badly. Suddenly instead of 1-2 million ISK, 20 minute ticks, I was hitting 2-4 million every 20 minutes quite regularly. Adding in loot and salvage, which can be quite substantial for a couple of the L4s (blockade and gone beserk) I could pull 25 million in 2 to 2.5 hours.

8x1200s. 2x tracking computers, AB, 2x hardeners specific to the mission, shield booster. 3x gyros and 2 diags.

I was milking the 6 L4 agents within 3 jumps of Lustervick to pick just the best missions (and had to go beyond a couple times to get good missions). Picked the missions I could keep rats at range and avoid missions with lots of small ships (with scram). Know your triggers (thank you Eve Survival!).

I eventually sold off the canes for 200 million, and then 6 days in the battleship, at 10 million an hour, I had my 800 million ISK. Working backwards, 100 million a day, close to 10 hours a day. That actually seems like more than I was playing. Maybe more like 8 hours a day, so I was probably hitting a bit over 10 million an hour. Also liquidated a lot of LP on the last day to push me over the 800 million.


Once I had the 800M, I liquidated everything, unloading a lot of stuff for 1/2 or less "market value". 200 million for the mael and 100 million for everything else, I transferred 1.1 billion off the toon.

5) After having gotten into BS on day 11, on day 12 I remapped to I and M and went back to working support skills. Shield, cap and nav skills to 3. Drones to 4. Each skill increase made the missions much easier. Didn't have to warp out to dock up, then return, nearly as often. Just sooooo, soooo much easier with good support skills. When I quit, I had drones in to 5.

Had I continued, gotten drones to 5, drone interfacing, maybe T2 drones, then started 1 by 1 improving the rest of my skills for T2 fit, maybe added some 3% implants. It would have just kept getting easier and easier.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly why I prefer to spend an hour's wage and buy plex every once in a while

Interesting to know that it can be done though, not that I'd ever, ever want to put myself through that...

Yeah as an experiment its kind of interesting to see its possible. But all new players who ask if they can do it should be sent this one line:

It's much easier to accomplish through station trading. But again, it helps to have game knowledge and it's not a fun experience. Plus after the trial is up you basically have to start from scratch again since you've spent all your ISK on a PLEX.

For what it is worth, when I was doing PI with 3 characters (two extracting to P1 w-space, one running P2 & P3 factory planets in hisec), I was earning ~3.15 billion ISK a month. I had them set for 3 day cycles.

Things have change somewhat since then, but a friend later repeated the results in lowsec.

OR they start doing combat exploration, while income is erratic many week old newbies make some good money with it if they're helped with knowledge and direction.

I do not understand why so many players seem to always be pushing new players toward null and wormhole exploration.

If you do exploration, then you're telling people to take the limited number of sites from you, and flood the market with goods pushing down prices. You are double knee-capping yourself by telling new players to do what you are already doing.

Or are you really just trying to get them out of high sec so you can kill them?

One of those possibilities makes sense. The other does not.

flooding market with t2 salvage, pirate pos modules = cheaper t2 rigs and upgraded POS for me.

I have every reason to get newbros out in null/wh exploration

Update on the "can you do it in only 4 hours a day, without any remaps?" attempt.

Day 2: 2 hours before work, and 1:45 after (giving back 15 minutes I accidentally went over on day 1). I competed the first set of career tutorials, and then ran them through a second time. At that point, I had 11.5 million ISK in the wallet and 3 million ISK sell orders up. Minmatar standing was a bit over 1.5. Enough to do L2 missions, but needs to be higer to jump to L3s. Started 3rd set of career tutorials.

Day 3: 3 hours before work. Ran the tutorials the 3rd time. 19 million ISK in wallet and 3.5 million sell orders, 2.2 Minmatar standing. Relocated to Gallentee space and got maybe 25% into the 4th set of tuts. Will play for 1 more hour after work and will likely get close to completing the 4th set.

Been running the tuts in rifter. 2 or 3 prototype 250s depending on if I need laser for mission. Mids swap a lot for missions, but try to keep AB. Lows are a gyro, tracking enhancer and nano structure. With the better speed and agility of the rifter over the destroyer, I think it is actually going faster. Just not enough targets to justify the higher DPS of the destroyer, offset by its lower speed and agility.

I can sit in the cruiser, but playing only 4 hours a day, I still have 3 sets of tuts plus SoE epic arc to run in order to get standing for L4 missions. There is absolutely no hurry to move up.

The goals for now are: 5+ standings to run L4s, skills for battlecruiser and 50 million ISK to buy and fit the BC.

Skills I have trained in first 2 days:
hull upgrades 1
repair systems 1 (free from tuts)
corporation management 1 (to get out of NPC corp to escape 11% tax)
capacitor management 2
capacitor systems operation 2 (3 in queue)
weapon upgrades 1(free from tuts)
gunnery 3 (needed for medium turrets)
motion prediction 2, rapid firing 2, sharpshooter 2 (all free from tuts)
afterburner 2 (free from tuts)
acceleration control 2, evasive maneuvering 2
cybernetics 1 (free from tuts. For implants, so far, only have the +1P, +1C free from tuts)
industry 1 (free from tuts, needed for tuts)
shield operation 2 (free from tuts, 3 in queue. 3 needed for shield compensation)
shield management 2
Minmatar destroyer 3, Minmatar cruier 1 (2 and 3 in queue)
social 3 (15% extra standing increases) and negotiations 2 (10% higher agent rewards) (Both free from tuts)
target management 2
trade 2 (8 more sell orders. free from tuts)

Still A LOT to learn before being ready for L3s in BC.
medium guns 3, drones 3, shied upgrades, shied rigging, survey to 3 + salvage. I'm sure more once I get close and spend more time looking at fit.

I really should get gunnery 4 and then surgical strike and traj anal (needed for tracking computers). If not for BC, then a MUST before I move up to battleship.

2 to 3 more days of tuts and Soe epic arc. I really do want to spend a day or two doing COSMOS 1-3. That will only leave me 3-4 days in BC before BS.

Sure was a lot easier getting standing and ISK playing 8-10 hours a day, instead of "only" 4 hours a day.



Edit: End of day 3, 5 more missions to finish 4th set of tutorials. About 30 million ISK.

Then I could say that sending them to wormholes or null to get blown up is the way to make them hate the game, and that is what should never be mentioned.

If you hang out in the rookie help channel, you'd see that the question "is it possible/how to do it" regarding PLEXing the first month comes up all the time from true newbs. It is not like "if the vets never mention it, then it will never enter the minds of a newb." They hear it is possible to play for free, and naturally they want to know if they can do it from the first month. The answer is, yes, but I would not recommend it.

AND,
Any assumption that YOU know the "right way" for others to play is arrogance to the extreme. I prefer to trust others to know what they do and do not enjoy.

Boring to one is fun to another; exciting to one is irritating to another.

It's like saying death metal is the "right music" for everyone. That is just ignorant and arrogant, narrow minded and stoopid. I trust people to make their own musical selections, and I trust them to decide how they enjoy playing a game... especially one like Eve where the developers have gone to GREAT LENGTHS to make the game suitable to a wide variety of play styles.