EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi there!

The 2 other character slots are kind of useless in EVE. You can't train skills of multiple characters simultaniously if they're on the same account. The other characters unfortunately can't be played either if your main is active.

To have that kind of benefit, you have to have a second whole account for that :)


I mostly use these other characters of the same account for price checking and hauling stuff... and doing the lowlife stuff like scamming, ninja salvaging, etc. if I'm bored.

You cannot two play alts on the same account at the same time.

There are however many uses for on chracter alts.

For example.
Remap one alt to mem/int and train up manufacturing skills.
While having another alt specced out for combat.
Whenever you want to build something use the first alt.

Train up an alt for research and have it passively collecting research points.

Leave an alt in Jita or another trade hub and use it to check prices.

Train up an alt in haulers and leave it in an NPC corp, when your corp gets war decced, use this alt to haul your stuff.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

Just like all those other games that allow it......please name one.

Personally, I have two on-account alts which I almost never use. One is sitting in a WH in a probing ship in case I ever want to get back into that WH, the other is sitting in Jita in case I need to check prices or buy something there.

They're not used a ton, but they're handy when I do use them.

There are many uses for on-account alts, pretty much anything that doesn't require constant input from the user is a reasonable thing to do on an alt.

So for those of you who have alts sitting in trade hubs. When you buy goods with them, how do you get them to your main character who can be several regions away. Do you have to sit there and manually pilot the alt to your main char's system, transfer the goods from the alt to the main char and then manually pilot the alt back to the trade hub?

Because, it seems to me that if you have to manually fly your alt there and back to transfer goods from a trade hub to the main char (or vice versa), you might as well do it with your main char. Of what benefit is the alt, other than checking prices?

Or am I totally mistaken and you can do remote transfers of goods from the alt char to the main char via contracts or something? And if so, is this even possible given a single account?

But that has a world of problems, especially if I want to ferry goods:

• The courier that accepts the contract can steal my goods, so I have to set up collateral to be at least my final sell price, discouraging most couriers in the process (because they will have to put up a lot of dough for very little gain).
• The courier will know what is inside the crate and where it's going, making my trade item and route visible to himself and others.

That doesn't sound like a good marketing opportunity, unless I am missing something.

Well, the collateral process is quite well known and reasonable, experienced contract haulers are completely used to it (hint: a courier contract moving from trade-hub-to-trade-hub with 500k+ ISK/jump reward and a non-absurd collateral will probably be picked up by a freighter pilot and delivered within a day or two). Also consider Red Frog Freight, a well-established hauling corp.

And I'm not sure the courier can see what's inside without opening it and forfeiting the collateral.

1.) I'm pretty sure you can hide the items within a courier contract. Put all your items in a can, and then courier contract the can. This is called double wrapping, and cargo scanners cannot see through both layers of packaging (they only see one layer deep). I don't recall if items are listed in the courier contract itself... as I don't run them very often.

2.) Red Frog and Black Frog pilots are used to putting up to 1 billion isk in collateral per contract... it's pretty standard. If you're shipping more than that, I recommend you split your items into mulitple courier contracts.

3.) There are TONS of uses for an alt on the same account. While not as versatile as a second account, having an alt on your main account allows you to perhaps mission run on one when things are slow in your main's area of operation. It allows you to earn extra income using fully passive means like RP farming, or what I call "part-time jobs" like PI, Manufacturing, POS Reactions, Copy/Research stuff, and trade... It's also fairly common to buy a character off there character bazaar, and transfer them to one of your "alt" slots... Characters cost several billion, but you can get a lot of bang for your buck!!

4.) CCP used to allow training on all characters on the account simultaneously. This was before my time, but to my understanding it caused a lot of problems with RMT, character farming, and other issues. This is why we don't have it today. Besides, if they brought it back, it would destroy the character bazaar almost overnight!!!

I don't know why you think the ability to check prices is only a minor benefit. Being able to check prices whenever you choose to is the only way to get the right deal at the right time. Besides, a trading alt isn't necessarily buying items on behalf of your main but could be buying and selling as a means of generating profit.

My way of looking at same-account alts is to regard them as parts of a greater whole. Training one character to fulfil multiple roles takes an awfully long time, but if you start three characters on separate accounts, train two of them separately to any desired level, then transfer them to your main account, you achieve a level of versatility that would take very much longer on just one character.

My main is a Gallente, armour-tanking, drone-using explorer. This character (Oraac) is a Caldari, shield-tanking, missile-using mission runner with a sideline in mining for when I want to be semi-afk or just can't be bothered to do anything more demanding. His shield tanking also makes him a decent hauler. I have a third character training for a purely commercial role as a trader.

When the two alts have reached what I consider to be an acceptable level they'll be transferred to my main account and only receive further training when it's necessary and/or convenient.

I always look at Eve-central before buying anything but have found that their lowest prices are rarely still currently available.