EVE New Citizens Q&A

There is many ways to make ISK in EVE, but you should not think "How can i make the most ISK". That will just turn the game into a grind which will kill your joy in the game.

So here is my advice to you, if you enjoy exploration do it! You can make more then enough ISK to keep your self stocked with ships for PVP and skills when you need it.
And remember, as your skills and experience go up, so will your income

Thank you for input, and seeing it the way I intend to: I am not looking for the biggest amount of ISK in the shortest time frame.

Everybody wants to be rich at some point I can imagine, but for me the route should simply be a ride.
As long as the pay is good/decent, I'm game - I wouldn't shy away from risk vs. reward scenario's either by the way.

I'm happy to hear exploration is a viable path, so I know my time spent in training for it won't be spent badly.

Could you perhaps explain me what the other careerpaths have in store in the long run?
In the sense of what I as a player am actually doing, rather than how fast I will accumulate riches.

That would make me very happy.

That, Nightcrawler, is a very insightful sheet of information.

Thank you.

Eve's kind of an odd game as there is no "the best way yo make isk".

I mean, I've seen month old chars default on a courier contract and make off with billions.
Same as I've seen year old characters spend their entire worth an item they thought was marketed at 1mil but was actually 1bil.

It's not even as simple as "the more boring\easy the task the less isk it'll make you"

What you really need to do is find a good corp, now good is down to perspective. For me, brave newbies is great, it's a really fun and comical alliance and I'm loving it. I'm also a 6 year old char :)

I'm actually in the process of rouding up my 5 career path tutorials and nearly lost my Tristan to the 'Exam' mission.

That was pretty close, luckily I had my Afterburner fitted and managed to tap that on and off to escape both the Warp Disruptor and Webifier range on the Mercenary Leader's ship - oof!
I got out with literally a sliver of hull left.

That would not have been good, considering I failed to insure it before going in.
Only upon redocking I noticed I was given a Catalyst and Destroyer skillbook prior to the mission, rather than after - which is what I thought I read.

Lesson learned, you can't barge in and think you can beat all missions with ease.

That little escapade gave me a near-loss experience and it was quite thrilling to be perfectly honest.
With that said, my interest in some risky endeavours has been sparked, I may pair Exploration with some military activities.

I will definately head to Arnon to pick up the mission-set Sin Pew suggested.

First, a drink, because i'm a little too happy I didn't lose a ship there!

The Eve economy is about people far more than other games' economy. Thus, it resembles the real market a lot more. So making money is often about finding ways to reliably interact with people, often by providing a service(in the loosest definition) that people pay for. For example, all traders fit within this paradigm. I buy items out in Null-sec, and either resell them locally or ship them back to Jita, where the demand is always there. The way I make money is by providing people the convenience of a sell order, wherever they are in my region. They are, after a fashion, willing to sacrifice ISK for this service. And I make tons of money doing it via moving lots of volume, rather than huge ISK per item.

So that's one example of finding a niche within the economy with which to make ISK.

It's also worth considering that few niches are barred to you. If it exists, then someone else is probably in that niche, and all you need to do is GET IN THERE, and consistently compete.

Ooooor you can run missions and let the AI feed you a steady trickle in bounties and loot cans while you sell the salvage and modules to your local profiteers. Whatever floats your boat. ;)

You mention specialization being important. That answer to that is no, it is not important. The skill system in Eve, as well as the technology graduation, gives small gains for massive investment, while also giving a decent fraction of the total bonus for very little investment. In other words, it rewards dabbling, up until the point you're in close competition with someone on something(like mining, or PVP, or challenging anomalies). Don't specialize until you need to. It ends up being a net detriment, compared to the opportunity cost - the ability to be adaptable.

You mention an 'accelerator.' I don't know what this is. But the only way you can 'boost' your training times is by buying and installing via attribute enhancing implants.

Being invited into a corporation at 2 days CAN happen, it depends on your attitude etc. However, never pay ISK or a 'deposit' or anything like that to get in. Those are pretty much all scams.

For cross training, it depends. Since Fidelas is a null sec alliance, they will be looking for frontline grunts, where as long as a pilot can fly a certain ship, they will be pulled into fleets of that type to add their DPS or whatever. On the flipside, small gang pilots tend to have good skills in one ship first and branch out gradually, since it's more about how well you can fly a ship and perform your role, rather than just adding your guns to the primary target.

Being a small gang pilot, I would say, train up for 1-2 shiptypes at the start, try to keep within your race. Start at frigates, learn to fly them decently, most skills such as core skills/fitting etc. at level 4, and move into t2 small weaponry once your core skills are around 3-4. Then you can decide if you like frigates and branch into other races, or try moving up ship classes. Some people prefer frigate combat and specialise their pilots to flying all 4 races of frigates.

Sticking 1-2 levels in other ships/weapons etc is fine, just to try them out, but to be effective in small gang combat, ideally you want to stick to a few shiptypes, get to know them well before moving into new areas.

The above is all subjective to each individual's preference. For example, for myself I trained up to fly Caldari battlecruisers and t2 cruisers, before moving into Minmatar, followed by Gallente and now moving into Amarr ships. Bear in mind that this was when Destroyers and Battlecruisers were 'shared skills' meaning having BC at level 5 meant taking minmatar cruiser to 3 would let me fly minmatar BC at level 5.

tl;dr Try them all if you like, but don't commit too much time until you know what you want. 'Shared skills' are sweet to train, such as core skills and t2 ship skills.

This is not my guide but once again I will say that its really good, if you are even THINKING about joining a corp read this first.

The right corp in eve can make you love this game, and the wrong corp can make you hate it...

Well, the accelerator was handed out in promotional bundles for a while, I think Amazon has an offer but it would require creating a new account and starting over. Besides, the implant only works for 45 days I think, after which it can be trashed. 175mil for that is quite excessive for the benefit it provides IMO, as a starting character most of your training is likely on level 2/3/4 and you wouldn't really save more than a couple hours of training overall.

Now, as for your training plan, it won't be a terrible loss if you train multiple weapon systems or racial hulls to level 3, it doesn't matter much in itself, what matters is that you train your core and support skills high as soon as possible.

Let me explain that in further details.
All races have their weapons of choice and specific hulls, but there's a bunch of "core" skills that benefit all ships, no matter the race.
The basic rule is train all rank 1 skills to 5, you get them to 4 first so you have a comfy setting across the board, you make sure you have small and medium guns to a good level, than you cranck it all up to 5. You end up with maxed out CPU, maxed out energy grid, maxed agility and speed, etc. I'll refer you to this little guide here, it provides a solid base to skill everything else upon. Branching over to another weapons type or racial hull will be easy from there, since you won't be struggling with fitting the ship at the same time as getting used to the characteristics of a new type of guns. The core and fitting skills can sometimes be daunting to train (Advanced Weapon Upgrades to 5 is probably the one I hated the most), but since they benefit all ships it pays in the long run.

Now, regarding the recruiter you met, I can only speak for myself, but I would turn it down, I don't find it thrilling or educational to be canon fodder for large fleets, you just pay attention to the primary, target, F1 and add you 0.01% damage to the killmail, that won't teach you the effect of transversal or signature radius on the tracking of your guns or the explosion velocity of your missiles according to the speed of your target. The major booster in EVE is being in a good corporation, but do not rush into one, you want to find a group where you'll feel cozy and supported as you learn the mechanics and you want to take some time on your own to get familiar with the game itself. Lookup the following guide to get some tips and pointers to find a good corp. I would stay away from corps recruiting in new player starting systems or in Arnon, they obviously take anyone and probably don't give a damn about you, all they care is your added DPS in 100+ welp fleets.

I am going to ramble .. but there is too much to talk about to be concise.

Corps

I would decline the invite. You are too new to be heading out to nullsec. You would be restricted from doing much on your own due to the dangers of NPC and intermitent hostile players. Also i dont like the idea of a deadline. Corps that are fun and good to be in wouldnt bother with a deadline for a new player.. i would counter a good corp would say "take your time, explore the game, hang out in our open chat chanel and ask questions and if and when you are ready we will accept you."

That being said, joining a corp is the best thing you can do in EvE. Whether its for the social aspect, this is an MMO after all, or for the mutual support, or the information that people share, or a helping hand .. or most importantly the player driven nature of the game. The most fun i have in game is from corp or alliance ops .. getting together with a bunch of people and working together to acheive goals. More fun than trying to make 100m more for an item, or mining another belt to build something. Being part of something bigger than yourself is whats great about MMO's like eve.


Skills

My rule of thumb is its cheap then train it to 4.

I recently made a new toon, ceeded it with isk from my main and went down the list and bougght all of the cheap skils (except for one i know i dont need - like trade and corp management etc..)

This set him up with all the basic ones, for electronics and mechanics and engineering .. stuff that allows you to use the basic mods that can be used on all ships and that gives the bonuses to all the ships you fly.

Specialty stuff can come later once you know excatly what you want.

You can use tools like Evemon to generate training plans .. but i dont really .. i enjoy the "flying by the seat of my pants" approach to gaming .. would probably cause some players to go into some sort of fit .. but i pay to play the way i want.

There will come a time when you have been in game long enough that you will know it is time to specialize .. if you dont know then its probably not time.

I would lastely caution both at over specialization and against being a "jack of all trades". Between my main and my alts .. i have elements of both. Main is a jack of all trades and i sometimes wish he wasnt .. conversely my miner alt cant do much other than mine .. which is annoying at times as well. I am sure there is a happy medium in there somewhere .. i would suggest trying to find it; not that i have.


Making isk

Making isk has to be secondary to having fun. I have managed to make it even further down the list somehow .. but thats my own failing / choice.

There are lots of good ways of making isk, but if they make the game feel like a job , you are going about it all wrong. Its an internet spaceship game, and should be actively maintained as such. Do what you are drawn to, and you will find a way to make enough isk to subsidize it. As you get months under your belt you will begin to make more isk as a matter of course, but you should know that no matter how much you make, it will never be enough ... the richest people i know are still out there trying to make more, to buy more stuff, so they can achieve another goal they have set for themselves.

One can not lose sight of the fact that one needs isk in game to do stuff .. but if you make it the be all and end all i would not have high hopes for you sticking around for a long time.

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that page that was linked earlier with all the pvp, pve, industry stuff on a big chart is a great breakdown of the game. the fact you could make an equally large chart for each of the boxes listed there, and then go on to write eassays about each of the topics is a testemant to the complexity of this game .. its a bit ridiculous to be honest. I think many new players brains explode when trying to wrap their noggins around and , and many just cant handle it. The lack of hand holding that one finds in the theme park MMO is strange at first .. but once one does grasp it, it is very empowering.

I would surmise most players will end up with several / many "careers" over their time in eve. One, its a necesity in some ways, you need to do exploration to be able to find some combat sites to then do PVE, or you may want to get into industry to produce the ships you need to use in pvp. Secondly - "variety is the spice of life", its fun to check out new parts of the game.. i have yet to try the new exploration site mechanics .. i dont plan on doing it much, but some night in the next couple of weeks, i am going to have a go .. will get some interlectual help from corp mates who have been doing .. and if im lucky one might chose to come give me hand the first time. Or i might do a mining op with the corp, or we might go a on a pvp roam, or i might scan down a wormhole near where i live and see if it links to high sec, or i might go fiddle with my PI, or troll the belts for NPC rats, or run some anomolees, or move around the region doing some buying and selling.. or or or.

anyhow .. enough rambling..