EVE New Citizens Q&A

I decided to resub after about a year after trying the game out. Something keeps me wanting to play for some reason hah. Anyway, how should I go about making good isk quickly? I read you can make about 10 mil/hour from mining, but I dunno how that's possible it takes me like an hour to make even a million. At the moment I'm just farming ore in high sec with a frigate (the one with the highest cargo and expansion modules I've got like 900m3 total). I'm getting about 150k per stack that I can carry. I was originally looking for anomalies and killing NPC's in combat zones and also traveling in asteroid fields doing the same in hopes I got lucky and have something high priced drop, but I haven't had much luck getting anything good. Mining and missions seem to be the only effective way to get a continuous flow of isk.

Also if anyone has time to help me with this too:

My only real interest in EVE (or any game really) is PvP. From what I've experienced in the few battles I've been in is you will lose a lot of ships, which is fine, but when you're new and only making like a couple million isk a day you're losing a ship that took you like 2 days to farm for so it's really discouraging y'know. Now because I want to PvP farming forever to get enough isk is like saying I gotta do something extremely boring before I'm able to have fun. Another thing that concerns me is it seems like all the guides I read suggest I have items that I'm not at a high enough skill level to obtain and many of them require to be maxed out which can take anywhere from several days to weeks or even months. I feel like I'm being told I'm not gonna be able to enjoy the game for a long time to come because of this. I recall someone telling me EVE is a social game and I need to find a PvP corp etc, but I don't know where to begin with doing that or how to tell if I'm in a good corp that'll help a newbie out. I'm generally a solo player, but I wouldn't decline an offer to group with some people and do some PvP if I had to (sounds fun actually).

Also, I'm buying everything from the market from my ships to my modules, guns, everything. Am I going about it the wrong way? I was thinking maybe it'd be smarter to buy the blueprints and have the ships continously made because I lose them so quickly/often then I don't gotta worry about having enough isk to buy another ship, but I'd still have to farm materials. Kinda lost.

My above question out of the way you should not be doing things that you don't like to earn isk just so that you can have fun.

You should not be asking what is the best way to make isk.

You should be telling us what you enjoy doing and then figuring out how to maximize isk earning while doing what you already enjoy doing.

Exploration is one way that can be fun and make good isk especially for newer players.

Faction Warfare is a way to make isk and get into PvP.

You should not be building things from blueprints unless you enjoy building stuff. You time would be better spent doing thins that you like and just buying the ships. The profit margins are not there on most stuff to make it worth your time unless you are doing huge runs and have a decent mark up.

As far as isk earning potential goes belt ratting in null sec in an upgraded system should get you around 8 million isk bounty ticks which is every 20 minutes. It also gets you the occasional faction spawn which potentially could be worth hundreds of millions of isk.

Running anoms in a fully upgraded system in null sec you can easily earn more than 20 million bounty ticks and in some cases 35 million.

The belt ratting can be done in cruisers fairly easily and I've heard of newer players even doing it in destroyers. Easier anoms can also be run in a cruiser but the hardest ones need a battleship or T2 cruiser.

I heard someone claim once that high sec level 4 mission running can earn as much as 200 million per hour but that does not sound realistic to me but maybe they know something that I don't. I think that 35 - 40 million per hour sound more reasonable for the average player.

Null sec mission running even on lower level missions can be pretty profitable but it will be rough if you are solo. Get with the right group and it could be good fun, good experience and good isk.

Don't forget that you can always buy a PLEX and sell it for enough isk to fund PvP in cheap frigates for a good long time.

200 mill/hr is well documented but is not achievable by a low SP player with limited ISK for a stable of ships.

The occasional rare person that hits those figures will:

• be blitzing ignoring all loot and salvage aside from cherry picking known big drops
• be running a 0.5 agent for max LP
• be running a high ISK/LP corp like SOE
• decline all missions except burners were possible
• only accept easily blitzable "normal" missions and even then only when your agent status looks like dropping below -2.0
• run all normal missions in a hyper rigged Mach or Barghest
• have a full set of bling burner specific ships, each burner needs a different ship (except teams where a Garmur does all of them)

Is it possible? Yes definitely, but very few mission runners actually do it.

Mining is a waste of time, especially if your primary goal is to pvp. Mining in itself is like working an entry level job. The only way to make decent isk at it is to be in null, multibox with boosts, and be highly skilled in it. None of the mining skills are in any way useful in pvp.

The best way to make isk in game is to buy plex from the eve website and sell them in a trade hub. Even with an entry level job, you will make far far more isk for hour spent than you would grinding away in game to make isk. Lets say you make $8 an hour at a job. One days worth of work minus taxes nets you about $50. That will buy a months subscription and 2 plexes. The plexes are worth 2.5 bil for both right now. So for one day's work at an entry level job you can pay for your account AND have 2.5 billion to blow on whatever you want.

2.5 billion isk will buy you:
- 250-300 T1 frigates setup or
- 125-150 t1 destroyers setup or
- 80-100 t1 cruisers or t2 frigates setup or
- 25-40 t1 battlecruisers setup or
- 10 t2 cruisers setup or
- etc etc.

Short of that the best thing for a noob to do in game to make isk is to get in a covert ops ship and go scanning down relic sites. It doesnt require a lot of skills and if you are scanning in the right null space you can make a few hundred million isk an hour.

If you want to shoot stuff, i would stick to security missions for now. Work up to level 4s and you can make decent ok isk an hour for high sec. You will also be training the same skills for shooting NPCs that you will use to kill players. Rather than training two different skills sets.

The best isk an hour for shooting stuff is in null sec. ( though incursion seem to pay decent as well) however, it requires both a high level of skill and a good ship to kill stuff effectively in null. As a new player ( less than 10 mil sp) you will really struggle to even tank and kill belt rats in 0.0. Not saying you cant do it, but its going to be a slow process and if your going to have to devote a lot of slots to tank rather than dps.Expect about 10-15 mil an hour off belt rats in null as a newbie.

Getting skilled up and in better ships, you can make 10-20 mil a tick( 30-60 mil an hour) with decent skills and a decent set up off null anoms. High skilled and in a really good ship you can make 20-30 mil a tick, maybe a bit more.


Mining is the last thing i would do to make isk. If you insist on mining in high sec you need to go to the anoms that have rare ores( not the normal belts) and mine the higher end ores. Also the venture frigate is the best mining frigate. And its fairly low skill.

the only thing worth mining in this game is gas clouds. You can make a couple hundred million an hour plus on some clouds with the right setup and right location. Ice mining is better than asteroid mining usually, but its still poor income.

I've amassed a significant (but not enormous) amount of wealth - about 0.15 trillion - through trading which is a form of PVP.

I made my first billion via PVE, which I wouldn't recommend doing. Instead I'd look into scamming.

Scamming teaches skills (deception, social engineering, quick thinking) that have a high degree of crossover into larger PVP engagements. Scammers make good spies, good counterintelligence and the skillset overlaps a lot with FCing.

Hello and welcome to eve o/

Best way to earn isk is very broad question. I doubt there will be any pilot who knows all the ways to earn ISK efficiently enough to answer your question. So I will try to answer the question as how I made my first billion in eve.

1) Exploration - Exploration has a learning curve. If you practice how to efficiently scan quickly and safely in high sec for a week, then you will be on your way to earning 30-50million isk an hr in nullsec( Wormhole C1-C3).

As your scanning skills increase, the time it takes to scan down a site decreases( which is a bit time consuming for new players)

2) Gas Harvesting- This method is a very good source of earning almost 50-100 million an hour. I advise any new explorer to be able to successfully gas Harvest. Its a very lucrative option to casually earn some isk.

These are the only two methods that I have tried. They may not be the best way, but for a new player it seems like a good starting point imo. Earning the first billion is much much harder than the second bilion.

Basic tutorial agents teach everyone to use Venture to mine. OP used exploration frigate for that. That tells me, that he is not going to learn this game but rather tryes to get easy money to supply his PvP (?) adventure. PLEX is the only way here, IMHO. Any other activity will require time and efford to skill.

Yea, and mining in WH or someone else's null isn't competitive and aggressive? I'm not a pvper in the sense that I don't run around shooting other players--usually-- I'm a smuggler, so I move goods through hostile space usually successfully, but there is always the risk of failure to make things interesting. It is that thrill of rushing expensive goods through bubble camps that really gets me going, getting in and out of a camped station safely. Yea, that is fun.

I can definitely see miners feeling the same way sneaking through whs or taking back routes to null to mine and then bring their goods back safely. Not all miners mine because they like to sit in a belt and afk, watch tv. Some enjoy the danger of knowing a hostile can decloak off the starboard bow any second, and they have to keep aware and respond quickly.

The main reason I wouldn't suggest mining to the OP, is because
1. It takes a good while to make good isk as a miner.
2. All miners say that mining effectively is a multi-account operation. Either bring friends or multi-box.
3. The OP wants to shoot people, and mining character skills have no crossover.
4. It doesn't sound like the OP enjoys mining. And choosing a career one enjoys is more important than choosing a career that makes "the best isk" Every career makes enough to fund frigate pvp.


Combat anomolies give Bounties + the occasional loot drops is plenty for frigates. The skills of scanning and shooting crossover well to pvp.
Data & Relic sites also pay enough, the scanning techniques translate well to pvp.
Ratting - shooting skills double for pvp..
Trading - skills don't translate well, but there aren't many and they train quickly. Then one can sell loot at the sell price instead of dumping loot at the buy prices. Slower, but increases loot drop income by about 10000%
Hauling - I started out working courier contracts in HS,
Mission running - shooting skills translate to pvp.
suicide ganking - pvp for pvp

Welcome! If PVP is your goal, I suggest that you look for a good newbie-friendly corp to help you learn the ropes. ISK will find it's way to you with minimal grinding if you are actively participating with a good group. Don't let it hold you back from doing the fun stuff (it's why you're playing right??). You can be quite useful in PVP with a dirt cheap ship - just need to find a group you enjoy flying with and the rest will sort itself out.

If your main interest is PvP, this is what I recommend. Take the time and train into an interceptor with basic skills for weapon/mods. join an Alliance with a dedicated newbro training corp, ie Karmafleet, Dreddit, etc, join fleets as tackle.

Instead of training into an interceptor, you may be able to join fleets as a t1 tackle. That's the fastest way to learn pvp, in my opinion.