EVE New Citizens Q&A

First off, being a miner is a terrible way to start the game.
The income is steady, slow, and boring. Missions, faction warfare, and exploration could all bring you more money, and faster.

My two cents out of the way, if you *really* want to do this here's the steps you should take:

Pick a ship
Pick a fit
Skill for it

Decide if you want to mine ice or asteroids, because the skills and ships differ a bit (though you can feasibly do both).

For both, you'll probably want:
Mining Barge V
Exhumers V
Mining Upgrades V
Refining V
Refinery Efficiency V

You'll of course want Mining V, or Ice harvesting V.
If you go ice, you'll need Hydromagnetic Physics IV, in order to train Ice Processing.
Each ore has its own special skill, such as Veldspar processing and Omber processing.

Some other good support skills to look at:
Jury Rigging
Shield Rigging
Engineering V
Shield upgrades
Shield operation
Tactical Shield manipulation
Drones V
Drone interfacing
Mining drone operation

I gotta admit, when I took the personality test on the main page, it recommended that I be an explorer. With what you just said, I'll have to look into it more. My aforementioned friend recommended the Caldari due to having missiles and shields. What is your take on his claim?

Also, do race/bloodline have any impact on what I choose to do beyond RP considerations? If so, what's the best combo to explore with? Finally, is there a noob-friendly resource I can consult for planning out my skills and such?

- missiles and shields are a little easier to handle for a new player, but turrets and armor tank isn't rocket surgery either.
- if you intend to start out as an explorer, you should look into the heron, as well as the archaeology and hacking skills.
- the sooner you start reading up on what the skills actually do, the sooner you will get a picture. therefore i would advise you to find out for yourself what skills you should train first.

edit: as mentioned above, the differences between the four races are trivial; you can create a char purely based on looks and not lose anything in the long run.

Of course anyone who isn't a miner is going to say that starting off with mining is slow and the worst thing to do. That hasn't been my experience, however I've been playing for a while.

I have several multi-billion isk ships that I use for PVE, PVP and Incursions. Where do I get the isk for all of that? Mining.

Is it 100% safe? No. Nothing in this game is. Some players find it boring, but I don't, especially when mining in a fleet.

Having said that, mining isn't all that I do on this character and other characters that I have, but it is my main source of income.

Starting off you will have to use a Venture, then move up to a Retriever, etc.... all the while training skills and making isk at the same time. If you get bored with mining, take a break and run some missions, run a deadspace complex, scan out some sites, whatever you want to do.

Some people like the non-excitement of mining. Some people like the excitement of mining in dangerous space, as everyone and their brother tries to blow you up.

I suggest you "try" mining, and see if you like it:

To start with, train Mining Frigate and use a Venture to mine. You will also need the Mining skill. Try it out for a while, and see if you like chewing up rocks. Don't bother training either skill to level V unless it is something you enjoy doing.

If it is something you enjoy, train Refining & Refinery Efficiency to maximize the profits you can make. You will also probably need to grind standings with an NPC corp to avoid their Taxes when using the Refinery. You can run mining missions, hauling missions, and/or combat missions to increase corp standings, but it takes a healthy amount of missions before you achieve a 6.67? corp standings to get that perfect refine output.

I also recommend trying combat missions. Run the tutorials, get and try combat missions against NPC's, and see how you like that.

Exploration is very hit or miss in terms of income, and is the "new thing" to attempt at his point in time. Try that too.

Most importantly, if you find that you don't like doing something, then try something else!!! This game has harvesting, manufacturing, marketing, exploration, shooting NPC's (of many different levels, from level 1 missions to level 5 missions to Plexes, to Incursions, to WH's, all with different levels of difficulty & rewards). Most importantly, this game is also about attacking other players, be it straight forward attacking peoples ships, to giant Sov battles with thousands of players, to infiltrating corps and stealing assets, to scams, etc, etc, etc.

Taste until you find something you enjoy!

What other mmo's have you played and in those games what sort of roles have you enjoyed playing within them?

Do you really enjoy building, harvesting, crafting & such kinds of activities?

You might find this helpful: http://www.isktheguide.com/

Mining is definitely a steady source of isk income. It also isn't very intensive in terms of mind and energy expenditure. You can sit there and mine while you do homework, household chores, other work, surfing the web, watching movies, etc...and you still can be making that 4,5,6 mil an hour. All you need to do is leave the game sound on and when the "asteroid has been depleted you alt tab for only a few seconds before going back to doing whatever you are doing.

Now if you plan on trying to get a plex from mining alone, then you are bound to run into some troubles. First of all, on a trial account you cannot fly a barge. The difference between mining in a barge and mining in a venture is huge, (barges mine about 3 times faster than a venture). Mining is also quite a big sp investment especially in the early days. Those 7 days going towards a venture could be spent going towards a new battleship, new weapons etc. It only takes a day to be able to fly like a cruiser.

As for me, I was always fascinated with the eve economy and for some awkward reason I always wanted to be a space industrialist. Mining, Freighting etc. So I absolutely absorbed myself in mining when I started (i'm only about 12 days in). Mining has kind of lost its spectacular feeling but I still do it whenever I want to surf the internet or what not. Simply because it is like passive income. Similar to PI, you need very little investment in it. Unlike station trading where you need to check your prices every so often, and make sure people dont undercut you, mining is a steady stream of isk. You stand by your asteroid and it will pay you isk. In a retriever I just put out my drones, dscan the largest asteroid and go afk for 20 minutes. I come back I unload my loot and repeat.

EASY ISK!

btw dont level mining to V you only need it up to IV
try to get industry V last as that one least affects your mining, nonetheless you still need it to get in a barge.

Exploration is now very newb friendly now, and is perhaps a much more 'interesting' game then mining.

Mining is useful, Max often semi AFK mines in high sec while I am doing my RL chores. Or before I retired, he would sit in the the background on my computer, while I did 'stuff that I was paid for doing'. (Worry about what the boss would say? Nah! I was the boss!!)

But I digress, have a look at exploration. Take it from me, pulling a load of ABC (Sorry Arkinor, Biset, Cronkite) out of a Wh system with a mining frigate can be a lot mor efun, and much more entertaining then mining Veldspar in High Sec

Sure, but that just suggests that a new miner doesn't need Mining V immediately, not that they don't need it at all, which is what your earlier post stated.

Plus, Mining V is roughly a 3 day train, it's a quick skill.