EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello new intrepid capsuleers, I am going to write a shoot guide about what you can do in EVE as a new player. EVE Online is the largest open sandbox game ever. That means at an given time there are 20,000 players or more to ruin your day, make you rich, or alternatively, ruin their day (That's my favourite part ). EVE is not your common MMO, patience and quick thinking are generally the kind that fluster within New Eden, unlike many other MMO's which are go here > Level up > Wait for reward.

When you first start EVE Online, I recommend you follow the tutorials from the start, the provide invaluable information for new players, basic understanding of how things such as the Overview and Character Sheet are also taught, these two pages are going to become your best friend and soul mate throughout your long, or short stay in EVE. The character sheet is what makes EVE unique, in EVE you do not have to tediously grind for levels every hour of the day, but, wait patiently for the attractive voice of Aura to tell you that Minmatar Frigate 4 has just completed. EVE's time based training system is what keeps me addicted to EVE, and has done for the last 2 years.

As soon as you have finished with the mind boggling character creation system (Which is new to us older players as well) Aura will tell you to Train a skill related to your races tanking ability, (Amarr Armour, Minmatar Shield/Armour, Gallente Shield/Armour, Caldari Shield). Your race also has a specific weapon system, Amarr is Lasers, Minmatar is Projectiles, Gallente is Hybrids, Caldari are a Hyrbid/Missile mix. It is advised you don't attempt to slap 125mm auto's on a punisher , after all, its not Minmatar and cannot just have things strapped to it.

The tutorials are straight forward and will teach you essential skills about Tanking, Movement and Killing things. The advanced tutorials will teach you about Industry, Advanced Warfare, Exploration and Business. These skills build the core of the EVE economy. After the tutorials you will have 2 frigates and a destroyer, time to work up towards your first cruiser, if you are a combat pilot, Then the Thorax/Vexor for Gallente, Omen/Maller for Amarr, Stabber/Rupture for Minmatar, Caracel/Moa if you are Caldari. However, if you share no interest in blowing up space pixels with your shiny frigate, then you will want to start working towards your first Mining Cruiser, which are Arbitrator for Amarr, Exequror for Gallente, Osprey for Caldari and Scythe for Minmatar. The first stages in your EVE Career will be tedious, however, they will also yield the most fun out of exploration of new fields and space.

That will pretty much cover your first 14-21 days in EVE, don't be afraid to ask questions, talk, converse to the community, just watch out for people that say "Free ammo" and tell you to take from a cargo container. Never fly what you can't afford to lose. Fly safe and have fun. I will post some links that have important tools as soon as I get home. Writing this on a phone is hard

Just a few of cooments:

1) The Vexor is the Gallente Mining Cruiser. It, like the Arbitrator, gets a bonus to mining drones.

2) The Arbitrator, while a good combat ship - sucks as a miner because it has, unlike the Vexor, to few turrets.

3) The Osprey is the best mining cruiser with the Scythe the next - as they both get bonuses to their mining Lasers rather than to their drones.

4) If you plan on dedicating yourself to mining - you can skip cruisers entirely (and frigates as well for that matter) and just train for your mining barges but those mining cruisers are easy to get into and will get you some better money sooner. So your call on that. Most miners go Rookie Ship -> Mining Frigate -> Ming Cruiser -> Retreiver.

5) in your first few minutes of playing EVE, you can do several things to improve yourself.

a) Repackage your rookie ship then reassemble it to get two free weapons and civilian miners. If you keep doing it, you can actually manufacture Civilian Miners and sell them this way but the weapons can't be sold. You won't get much money for them but at this stage of your career every little bit helps. You can also leave station in your pod and fly to another station - where you will receive a free rookie ship. You can accumulate as many rookie ships as you want, selecting them all and then repackaging or assembling them all to make more civilian miners - although I'd not really encourage anyone to spend to much time on this - you can make more money mining. But those first extra miners and weapons can really improve your ship.
b) You can also do mine and return, selling the ore with the one mining laser a rookie ship will fit until you have 20k ISK and then buy a Mining Frigate. Sell the ore directly - don't refine it until you have better skills.
c) Training Drones I and Combat Drones I - lets you carry a combat drone on your rookie ship and mining Frigate (assuming the mining frigate isn't a Burst).
d) The mining Frigate, unlike the rookie ship, can use both of those civilian miners.
e) The Rookie ship can however mount both weapons along with a drone.
f) Open your market and see where Dense Veldspar is selling for the most - then go over there in your mining frigate and do mine and return to that station, mining Dense Veldspar and selling it. This can get you started with a nice little nest egg.
g) When you start your Career Agent Missions - use the Rookie ship with those two weapons and a combat drone (all Rookie ships have a drone) for your combat missions (until you get a better ship) but use the Mining Frigate for your other missions.
h) As you get more skills, money and better ships you can move up in effectiveness.
I) Save the basic combat missions until you have a mining cruiser and you will get more ore in those missions than you could ever mine with one. Mine with the cruiser into a jet can (they last 2 hours) in the mission space then bookmark it and haul it back with the industrial you got from one of the earlier business and industrial mission sets. Things change and there's more ore in some of those missions than most people could mine in a cruiser - but at one time - if you mined all the ore in all the career missions offered - you'd have 35 million ISK or so when you completed your Career Missions.

Now ... some of the above is really aimed at people who want to be miners - as if you are aiming to be a mission runner - most veteran mission runners are going to tell you to just blitz these missions and get to Level IV's as fast as you can.

Advising newbies to mine in a frigate with civilian miners is rather cruel, I think. New players: for the skill point investment and time investment, almost any other activity besides mining in EVE online will give you better isk/hr. Please do not mine unless you mysteriously find fulfillment in shooting virtual space rocks. If you do, the above post has solid advice, but if not...

Do the tutorials. The tutorials are much improved these days, and they give out many of the basic skill books you'll need to fly frigates and destroyers, as well as the support skills to fly them well. They'll teach you about losing your ship, and how this is an acceptable thing which you can move on from, as well as even more advanced subjects, like probing, if you are interested.

If you need money, the OP has solid suggestions about picking the combat suited frigate, then destroyer, then cruiser of your race, with appropriate support skills. With a properly fit frigate, you can handle frigate belt rats and basic (L1) combat missions. Destroyers and Cruisers will be able to handle higher level missions, which make decent starting money, and are not a terrible form of solo income. Killing rats in belts and anomalies also is viable, and with lucky drops, can be worth much more than missions.

Courier missions are also a decent way to make money with low skills. Flying at least a basic industrial if your race is quick to train, inexpensive, and can make rather good money at low risk.

Finally: do not be afraid of losing your ship. This is part of EVE, and something that will happen. If you are undocked, you can be shot, with different consequences in different parts of space. Learning how to be safe is a major part of what keeps EVE dynamic.

You should never have to mine in a Rookie ship. Two of the Career agents (the industrial and business ones) give out the racial mining Frigate at the start of Mission 2 of their tutorial chain, with the first mission being something really simply like courier a report a couple of jumps. A later mission in one of the chains, gives you a 5 run BPC of the same mining frigate with the objective to return just one built Frigate.

In theory, you can do the Career agent tutorials as many as 12 times, each race has 3 sets of them.