EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm 19 days old and running level 2 Caldari Navy missions in a Cormorant with little difficulty.

I'm a newbie as well, and had a similar reaction at first to trading in EVE. But I realized my problem was that I was approaching it like I had learned in other MMOs.

The problem is that you can't approach the market in EVE like you might in other MMOs. In other MMOs, "playing the market" is usually finding something that somebody is selling for a low price, buying it, and selling it yourself for a higher price. EVE doesn't work that way. So initially I looked at it the wrong way. I was looking for items that I could buy from a sell order (the top pane) and sell to a buy order (the bottom pane). But since the buy orders are always lower than the sell orders, there was no way to make money like this.

In EVE, when you want to buy goods that you are going to turn around and sell, you don't go and buy stuff directly from the market (in the sell order pane). You place a buy order saying you would like to buy an item for X price and then you wait until it is fulfilled. Once it is fulfilled, then you turn around and sell it.

Moreso, it is always the highest-priced buy order that gets fulfilled, and it is always the lowest-priced sell order that is purchased from (hence the "$0.01 ISK PvP market game" where people are always becoming the top or bottom order).

Here's a good post that explains the two-tier market system in EVE. Quote from the article:



Once you grasp that, it becomes much more clear how to make profit from trading. You can find many good resources on trading at the EVE University Wiki as well.

EDIT: Oh, and while I'm at it. If you are new to trading, you probably don't want to start at the Jita trade hub. The margins there are very small, the market is _very_ competitive, and there are LOTS of traders stationed there. It is better to find a smaller trade hub, or even a mission hub, and get started building up your bank-roll there.

Don't want to dissuade you from just jumping in, but it's also good to research and understand what items may sell and what items may not. Here's a good link on the EVE University Wiki on how to identify potential items to trade.

And if you are going to do any cross-station hauling, here's a link on using EVE-Central to haul profitably.

One of the keys is being able to interpret the market history of an item on how that item is used. For instance, if you try to offload skill books in the beginner areas that beginners themselves get for free, they are not going to sell very well. Mission hubs, on the other, are great to have low buy orders for those items that players get when they are running missions and want to simply offload really quick before running more missions. Buy those, haul to a trade hub, sell, profit :).

Just like many other things in EVE (ever heard the phrase "Excel spreadsheet in space?"), doing research and spending time learning will help you out in the long-run.

With your current experiences as far as losec goes, I would just hate to see you rush in to trading, be unsuccessful, get frustrated, and give up. For all I know, trading will not really be your thing (a lot of looking at charts/tables and lots of research to be pretty successful). So if you don't enjoy, don't force yourself to do it :).

I am a newbie too, just a week+ old only, subscribed for a whole year though LOL
if i eventually to have enough money to buy plex, i will gift them to one of my real life friends who can't afford to pay to play eve online (He is a real lover of sandbox)
In this week, i have gained 36M, which is not much because i seldom invest in buying ships and equipments, i just save isk.
I kept running level one mission with a destroyer, because i want the corp standing so i can have a clone in JITA, but it was so boring! Those NPC is like one hit by me and with enough salvaging, i can have 1M back each hour

About PVP, i tried to join FW, but don't laugh at me, I don't even know what DSCAN and star map can help in PVP.....
so i just bumped in a system with 30+ enemy player camping and got blasted LOL
and after some reading about what FW really is, i then find i don't know how to fit a ship for PVP, not even PVE

The poster record that he read alot before start, and i wonder where are those articles. Searching the internet for information about a game is difficult without any lead

Some suggestions on what i should read, or what you already read before you start the game?

You, sir, are on a path to greatness in EVE.

If you want more startup capital, I highly, highly recommend you find a corp that will accept you that does highsec mission running and highsec mining ops. Then fit out a battlecruiser with multiple warp disruptors (the long range ones, not the short range scramblers) and show up to a corp op that has lots of expensive ships, blow one or two up, and ransom the rest.

You can get a damn nice amount of ISK this way, which you can then put to work for you in various ways that you are certainly intelligent enough to figure out.

Start here: http://www.isktheguide.com/

Luck tends to happen to people who make the effort to put themselves in a position to be lucky.

I'm a new player, a *very* new player, and I have found mining to be both enjoyable and profitable. Though I think the enjoyment comes from having played minecraft as long as I have. Just because it isn't the most profitable doesn't mean it can't be fun to some, I understand that many, if not most, of the veterans dislike miners for various reasons, the one that I see most often is the whole staying in high-sec so they don't get blown to hell as often. I agree with them to an extent, my case as an example: I chose to be a miner because I enjoy the monotony to an extent (there's that word again) though I actually find losing in PvP to be the best way to learn things... I'm just not ready to dive in head first. I keep seeing the acronym HTFU... Which I believe stands for Harden The **** Up yes? and I agree completely with the sentiment.

I actually didn't know a bloody thing about the orders, both buy and sell. I mine as much as I can, stockpile about half for personal use at later stages in my time as a pilot, and the rest gets sold. I haven't risked going anywhere lower than a security rating of 0.8. I'm not exactly sold on the trading thing but, I do find this to be helpful in the extreme. (so have a free bump so others can see this)

I'm new to and loved reading your post, you have inspired me, when i play tomorrow I'm going get into faction warfare and give it a go. I brought plex and i would not say i am lazy or self entitled in fact the hard nature of the game drew me in, i just did not want to mine high sec, everyone said it makes you wana quit playing, and knowing nothing at the time did not think i would of lasted 3 seconds in FW.

knowing what i know now i won't ever buy plex again, there is no need too, but when i signed up i figured it would take months to get the skills to earn that sort of cash, how wrong i was. got more balls then me, if it was not for your post god knows how long before i gave fw a go.

Most likely, you wont. Did anyone mention to you that you will be outclassed in the support skills something horribly. Just an FYI as you have no clue how FW works, they may be waiting on you at zero on the other end of the acceloration gate and have you taclked and dead in an assault frig before you even have time to go "Oh @#$!".

Make sure you get with some experienced players so you don't make the mistake of believing that pvp in this game is like the wild west where you pull out the pistols and let lead fly. It can work that way, but you can find that if you don't know the game mechanics it may work against you.