EVE General Discussion

PLEX of course. I can make more ISK/hour making ISK than I can by making $ then buying PLEX.

Station trading - the accountant's way of playing Eve. You'll be internet spaceship trillionaire in no time. Plex for life.

RMT (which includes buying ISK or items for real life cash) and botting are both against Eve's rules, and being associated with them can get you in trouble. Don't do it.

The cheapest way to play while paying out of pocket is to buy game time in bulk. Doing that gets a discount. When you buy a whole year, it comes out to much cheaper (for example, in the US, it ends up costing $11/month instead of $15/month).

Of course, the absolute cheapest way is to PLEX your account, but for that you need plenty of ISK income (1 PLEX is about 570 mil ISK right now). Any sort of high-end PvE (including mining, missioning, nullsec ratting/exploration, wormholes, etc) can earn you the money through some time spent. Without PvE, you could earn it via PvP (ganking people, selling the loot), luck (via lottteries, and other such things) or even via running your own small in-game service of some sort.

That's about as much as I can compress an answer to "how do I earn oodles of ISK?" while still providing some sort of detail. Just don't turn the game into a job by toiling away for the ISK -- find some way to do it so you have fun, too!

Cheapest or best?

Month to month is the best way. That way you aren't financially obligated to the game for more time than it takes CCP to make some bone headed patch or somebody in game gets it in their head they are going to station camp you for 3 weeks.

1 year recurring

i pay yearly but buy 28 plexes if i need instant isk for ships and fittings.

step one: gay bar
step two: find richest looking guy
step three: back to his place
step four: try to block it out
step five: he falls asleep
step six: you pirate his loots
step seven: pawn shop
step eight: buy plex, proceed to have it taken from you in the same manner in which you acquired it (step four)
step nine: last but not least, head to GD to make the necessary shitpost

Level 4 agents, R&D data mining, Pi, I only have 4 planets, LP and storyline mission rewards pay enough.

Think of it this way a plex costs around 600 million ISK.

Now divide that by 4 weeks = 150 mil a week you need to earn to make the ISK to buy a plex.

this means if you play 5 days a week and earn 20 million every hour per mission you only need to play 7.5 hours total to make 150 million.

Bonus if you play on weekends or longer then 7.5 hours per week.

I buymysubs in 12 month blocks. PLEX is fine if you have spare isk tumbling out your arse, but if you have to stretch for it, you're going to have way more fun if you just drop $130 on a years sub and stop worrying.

seriously, $100 is a few hours work a year. how much time do you have to spend a year earning plex?

I stopped using $ after about 6 months into the game. Since then I have been able to fund 2 accounts using plex and still watch my wallet jump by leaps and bounds.