EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi all,

I've been trying out EVE Online and I very much like the variety of ships and so on and the sandbox aspect of the game; sadly, the latter is making me see there is a huge learning curve ahead of me on the path to glory. I've started out doing the tutorials and a friend graciously donated a good amount of ISK as a cushion.

At the moment my favourite ship is the Catalyst, it can hold lots of guns and some shield and cargo augments and has been breezing through most level 1 missions. I needed help on Sister Alitura's arc for the Dagan encounter, but then the troubles started. Level 2 Security missions have a lot of clumped enemies and I've learned quickly from this game that you can't "pull" one mob apart from the others, so the Catalyst (Started calling it Blind Eagle, then Sight-Challenged Eagle, then Quite Myopic Eagle....) has been doing a lot of strike and fades until the missions are done, which is quite time-consuming. I tried outfitting a drone ship and am pretty lost as to pet controls, as I've never really been a fan of pet classes (Gallente is the pet race so...I guess my choice of starter race was off :) ) but I'm learning there too. :)

Here's my biggest issue: I'm at a point where it costs me around 1.5 million ISK to fit my Catalyst or re-buy it from scratch.
Drops from mobs generally don't sell for much. Selling the implants (I've got a few slotted so spares get sold) has helped a bit, but mining hasn't seemed great either as Veldspar seems too plenitiful to be valuable. My long-term goals are to get the Covert Ops ships, they look cool, and maybe a few Cruisers to tank some of the tougher missions.

TLDR: I'm new, I've done the tutorials, I got donated some ISK from a pal but now I'm kinda stalled out due to a low return from missions (I get between 35,000 to 400,000 ISK per mission) and the Market seems kinda confusing. I'm used to buying a bunch of items at a low price, re-listing them at a slightly higher price and getting more money as I go along, but the EVE market is...quite different.

My skills trained? Most Gunner skills are at level 3-4. I have decent Navigation skills as well, and Shield management skills. I went into the Spec Ops Certicates, which is getting me Armor Tanking (seems useful on the crusiers) and some other good skills.

I'm just kinda...overwhelmed. I tried to buy a Vexor on the market and they're listed at 12,000,000 or so at the station where I was (Clellanion VI I think, the starting area) so there's a disconnect happening on how to get income at a decent pace. Missioning seems decent at level 2, but I'm not sure how to fit ships properly, as my heart seems to be saying "MOAR GUNS" while my mind is saying "Go for a combo of guns and drones, train up drone skills and go from there."

Loving the game but really over my head. My previous MMO experiences...City of Heroes (RIP), Champions Online and SWTOR...and to borrow a line from a classic, I ain't in Kansas anymore.

Any ideas? I'm looking for storyline and lore-based progression, ideally, but I'll try mining, marketing, anything really if it can get me those sweet, sweet Covert Ops ships. :D

You have a goal which is good. Cruisers are your next progression if you want to mission thorax for guns vexor for drones. The catalist is a glass cannon a lot of dps and no tank. Cruisers have a better tank and larger guns. Note I said larger not more dps. As I said cruiser is logical step not mandatory. Also if you are unsure of fittings and game mechanics your best bet is a player corp.

Sometimes it's more worthwhile to reprocess the junky loot/drops and sell them as their base alloys on the market than it is to sell them as you found them. If you're going to continue to do security missions and the like for the time being consider putting a large container in the item hangar of your home station. This way, you can separate your junky stuff, pile it in there, and reprocess the whole lot in bulk so as to not be doing it every time you re-dock from a series of missions.

As well, train jury rigging if you haven't already. Having the ability to equip rigs makes doing the level II missions considerably easier and allows you to bolster your shield or armor tanking capabilities depending on how you decide to rig your ship.

Best of luck and have fun.

One note:
"...at 12,000,000 or so at the station where I was..." you dont need to buy at the station you are, you can go to the big trade hubs (Jita, Dodixie, Amarr, Rens) or can buy anywhere in a region (protip: set your market setting to not show null and low-sec orders)
ie: Vexor and Thorax in Jita sell about 10.3 million/unit.

You don't need to concentrate on drones if you're flying Gallente; as you've seen, they've also got some nice gunships, but their drone boats are generally acknowledged as being more versatile. It's easy enough to use them if you remember a couple of hotkeys: "F" will send your drones after whichever locked target you currently have selected, and "Shift-R" will recall them to your drone bay.

And I second the suggestions to look for a corp of some sort; you'll probably find some decent, laid-back, newbie-friendly corps out there, and flying with a wingman can more than double your own effectiveness.

Oh, and the mission progression generally goes: Level 2's, tough in destroyers, balanced for cruisers; Level 3's, tough in cruisers, balanced for battlecruisers; Level 4's, tough in battlecruisers, balanced for battleships.

1) as soon as you are done with career agents you may want to run away from newbie systems, some people use to cash on newbie's lack of knowledge and sell stuff for a bit more expensive price. Kind of a tourist trap :)
2) I havent checked your EVE age, but you may want to wait with a cruiser until you are like 1-2 weeks old, training mostly support skills, like those in gunnery, those related to armour tanking etc.


As someone already mentioned, you seem to neglect tanking and fitting part, that is armour related skills (go market -> ship equipment -> armour and hull -> look at those modules and their requirements) and skilsl like engineering, electronics, weapon upgrades etc which either increases your CPU and PG, or decreases the weapons needs for CPU and PG. High fitting skills mean you can better fit your ship.


I realised one thing. Most of the players who came from themepark games like the ones you've mentioned are used to soemthing that has nothing to do with real life. You don't really follow yellow marks above someone's heads in real life, do you? But EVE is more similar to RL - you finish a university (career agents), and then you are on your own, what would you do? Some people go to work for McD or become cleaners (EVE equivalent is mining, lol), some people do some mundane job like being a clerk or whatever (that's probably missions?), some become thugs (which admittedly has a bit more grave consequences in real life than in EVE), some become mighty leaders, and so on. Same thing is with market, in real life it's more complex than selling grey stuff to vendor for set prices (unless you live in communism), and so it is in EVE.
This is also a reason why people don't roleplay much in EVE - because roleplay here is actually your whole EVE life. If we sit in a pub and I ask you for some stories, I bet you can tell me something about your dog, or what happened to that guy in supermarket few days ago, and so on, you don't need to create your background story in real life. Same in EVE, you don't need to stage something or pretend something. Battle of Asakai happened, massive war in Fountain happens, and your own little (or big) stories will happen sooner or later.

(also, everything I put down is massive simplification, and I feel bad for it)

Eve can be overwhelming and cruel. I've quit twice over the years and both times it was more to do with not knowing what I wanted from the game, not understanding how the Eve universe works, rather than how others interacted with me.

So what I found is simple: play the game how you want to play.

Stats and numbers are very important but don't be drawn into them too much at first and just go out and play how you want to play. As others have said, you can train to fly anything so you don't need to worry about choosing the wrong race to begin with.

If you fancy the mining route, at least in the short term, contact me in game. But missions (including the tutorial and Sisters of Eve arc) are a great way to get ships, isk and skills early on. They should also give you a taste of the different career paths and should help you find a focus in game that you are happy to pursue.

And yes, covert ops ships are fun

The TLDR was as long as the original.

My advice? If you want to play solo pve then you need a lot of patience to get your skills up and probably buy plex to fund it all. If you think you can jump in to EVE and within a week be flying level 4 missions in your Machariel then I'm sorry you can't.

The alternative is to find a corp willing to subsidise your development and teach you the game at the same time.

Bottom line, solo pve is a very slow grind. (Which many people are attracted to incidentally)

On the money wrt joining a player corp. You can learn more in a single conversation with an experienced player than you can in weeks of fumbling around. Knowing what's important and what is not, and even more so, knowing where to look is the key to progress AND direction. So by all means join a new player friendly corp. That's what I did and there are plenty more out there.

With no levels, no endgame and with nearly endless possibilities, EVE is like no other MMO game in existence. You get to write your own story and make your own content. And then you get to defend it form those who want to take it from you.

EVE is, in the end, a thinking individual's game. Nothing else you've ever played will prepare you for it.

join a corp, ask loads of annoying questions, learn.