EVE New Citizens Q&A

If you like mining, start off with mining. If you want to go do PvP later on, start training combat skills, you just have to remember that your SP total won't mean jack squat though when you start off. The problem with the "Do ALL the skills" approach would end up meaning that you will just have a problem gaining isk/getting loot/etc since you can only mine in a small ship, scan things with the T1 frig, have mediocre industry skills and stuff.

What I personally did was just start off with combat skills and start doing missions. That gives me a basic ISK capital to start tweaking around with other things like buying a good mining ship or afford more ships for PvP. You don't HAVE to specialize, but it the game would probably be more enjoyable if you specialize for a while before branching out.

That's just my two cents though. I could be wrong. I am a relatively new player as well, with only 3m skill points.

You don't really need to train up to become an absolute expert in one thing before branching out, but it's a good idea to have a decent grounding in at least one profession, to fund your experiments in other careets, and so you'll have something to fall back on if everything else goes to hell. Whether it's mining, trading, missioning, exploration (though exploration's more of a crapshoot), take a couple of weeks to get half-decent at something, build up a little nest egg, and then experiment. Once you find something you feel you can enjoy and dedicate some time to, that is the time to get serious and start specializing.

In my humble opinion.

(I went on hiaitus for several years, came back, and did some small-time mining to build my resources back up. I don't mine these days, but I've still got the skillset and some mining equipment sitting in a backwater hi-sec station, waiting just in case my current career goes into the toilet.)

Are you having fun? Then you are doing it right.

I've been playing over 3 years and I still haven't specialized. However, I accept that it will take me longer to get to the same levels as someone that does specialize.

You can't "gimp yourself" by training skills, so don't worry. The only cost of training skills for profession 'A' now and then deciding to train skills for profession 'B' later is that you'll need a higher grade medical clone to hold all those skillpoints - a pretty trivial expense.

The tutorials are a great way to dabble in multiple areas of the game. Once you've decided on an initial direction, then it does pay to stick with skilling it long enough to reap decent rewards from specialisation. Additionally, it's a fine thing to be able to make you ISK in multiple ways - that kind of versatility is one of the advantages of being a high skilled veteran. Mining suddenly got buffed? Great, those exhumer skills I haven't used since 2007 are suddenly useful again!

New folks usually say: I cant compete with older players.

The idea of specializing is allowing you too shoot up into some role you want to attain. With out to many side routes. Its supposed allow you to contend with vets at least in one area of the game.

If thats not what you want. Hell explore everything. EVE is cool because its layers upon layers of complexity. Feel free to explore everything.

As someone with a couple dots in basically every skill in the game that doesn't involve capital ships of one kind or another, I would also vote "don't specialize if you don't wanna".

(I don't even use most of the science skills or mining skills, just nice to have 'em if someone needs backup with sommat.)

A big thank you for all of the advice, very much appreciated. My trial account comes to an end soon, but i intend to start again with a buddy invite and subscribe for three months initially. I will let fun be my guide, as Tau said, as long as i am having fun then it must be right.

I really like the game, so big, so much to do, no specific spec or path layed out in front of you. I must admit that the last few nights i have gone to sleep thinking about it and dreamt about being in space