EVE New Citizens Q&A

pirating is a good way to loose isk not gain it. most pirates I know have secondary income sources.
if you commit suspect acts you are now flagged for everyone in system, not just the person your offending.
The location of the mission in high sec has little to do with the quality of the payout. Just use the agent finder for the faction you choose to work for and ensure you are using the highest qualitly of agent available to you. Also there are corportations that recruit new players and let you tag along on lvl 4 missions which helps out alot to get on your feet when your newer.

I would say that missions is one of the best way for a new player to make some fast ISK. Remember to loot and salvage your missions since this can give you items and materials you might find useful, and especially in the lower missions you can find a few implants and similar.
If you have trouble finding agents i would advice you to use this site http://eve-agents.com/ which allows you to sort things very easely.

But also keep in mind you dont need to have overexspensive ships to PVP. Something that many younger players think is that the bigger the ship the better, but in EVE this is not always the case, with all ships having its drawbacks or its field of expertise.

So if your just starting out in PVP, get a frig, go to low sec or whatever with your corp members and have some fun! Dont worry about your KB stats, but consider it a learning exsperiense and it will allow you to get used to the idea of having to think about who you attack and when.

Have fun and good luck!

Station trading.

Anybody who still jet-can mine is a moron.

The recent mining barge changes makes jet-can mining totally obsolete.

A Retriever / Mackinaw can hold more ores internally then you can fit in a jet-can, so why even bother making it.

All of the other posters have failed to mention this, but an excellent way for new players to make isk is ninja looting, especially if you intend to become a pirate. Ninja looting is the practice of probing down people who are running level 4 missions, then warping in with a fast, cheap ship and stealing the loot from their wrecks. It is both fun and profitable. Once you get the hang of it, you can pretty reliably make 15-30 million isk per hour, with minimal skills.

Ninja looting is also a great way to break yourself out of the habit of thinking like a carebear. It is a form of piracy in its own right. You will be on grid with ships much larger than your own who can and sometimes do shoot at you. You will get to enjoy their tears in local chat and begin to accumulate a personal bounty (for pirates the size of your bounty is kind of like a way of keeping score). If you want to know more, there is an article about it in my blog. Just click on my signature.

By far the best ISK/hour for solo, non-PVP activities for a new player seems to be running l2 security missions and salvaging everything. Your profits will be in the top 15% of salvage drops (there's three salvage drops that sell for over 100k ISK and cruiser rats will sometimes drop 3-5 of them)

Once you get to the point that you can handle l4 sec missions, CONCORD bounties from mission rats will be a significant income source, especially if you pick and choose missions.

You will need to group up with, compete with or kill other players to get the more lucrative income sources, however. Manipulating the market, running incursions, wormhole sites, or just good old fashioned killing people and taking their stuff all offer much more ISK/hr. The last is the most fun.

The ISK in missions is not in their agent's ISK reward. It's mainly in bounties, salvage and by selling off what can be bought with LP.

Your level 1 and 2 missions aren't really worth salvaging IMO. Go in, kill and bail. Blitz the missions, grind till you puke and get your lvl 3 mission agents open. Agent qualities are all the same, don't worry about that. BUT, don't run for every agent, pick 1 lvl 1 agent and run him till the L2 you want opens, then run him till the L3 agent you want opens, etc. This is very important for the mission grinder.

Lvl 3 start to drop what will feel like serious isk into your wallet by completion and salvage. Once you open your 4's complete those and salvage as well.

It won't take long to get 100M isk up. From there, consider yourself rich and in time you'll be sitting on billions of isk in gear and liquid isk so long as you play smart. Go blow it all up in PVP if you like then rinse and repeat. Some like to see if they can attain the next billion till they have more isk than the biggest alliances.

It's your game, play it how you like. Best of luck to you, fly safe and enjoy a great game.

If you can't yet afford a ship that can handle level 3 missions (for a new player, that's probably a mostly meta 3-4 fit battlecruiser) then you want to be saving up for one. I remember unlocking l3 missions before I could handle the combat in them.