EVE New Citizens Q&A

Welcome, new players! I hope your time in New Eden is enjoyable, and that I see you out there some day!

To make your transition to EVE a bit more accomodating, I've given some thought to the three most important things to know about EVE. I may defy your expectations, though, because I'm not going to talk about ore, or missions, or ISK (well, ISK, yes, but only in a peripheral sense).

Rule One is something that every EVE veteran will tell you time and time again:

Never fly what you can't afford to lose. New Eden is a dangerous place, filled with dangerous people. You're going to lose ships -- trust me, you will -- and losing a relatively-inexpensive mining frigate is better than bankrupting yourself to replace a six-billion-ISK subcapital.

Rule Two:

Information is Power, so give your enemy as little as possible. Be careful what you reveal, both here and in the game itself -- many an unwary pilot has lost an expensive cargo (or ship) because he bragged about his 'big find'. Likewise, don't go into too much detail about your weapons and armor.

Rule Three:

Trust no one, until they've earned it. There are individuals and corporations in New Eden that have literally spent years setting their marks up for a big scam, and many of them are very good at it. Trust me, you want to know who you're dealing with before you find yourself floating home in your pod.

See you in the 'verse, pilots, and good luck.

There is a collection of similar wisdom in the New Citizens useful threads page of the EVElopedia.

Hope this helps!

I would argue that the rule should simply be never to fully trust anyone. A thief or a spy will work hard, harder than normal players, to gain your trust and the more you rely on that trust, the worse you'll get hurt by them. It's better to work on the assumption, that you can get screwed over by anyone. That doesn't mean you shouldn't work with others, make friends or give them access to some of your assets when the situation calls for it, but it does mean that whenever possible you should rely on mechanics and procedures, that don't rely on trust and never ever leave yourself or your assets fully vulnerable.

So, trust noone, except you?
Sounds like you need to take your own medicine you quack :P

#4 Have Fun For Gods Sake!!!

Don't pay ransoms unless you like to pay for getting podded anyhow.

There is no consequence for a pirate in dishonoring a ransom so just don't untill CCP finally creates a reputation/bounty system.

You know, I've found this POS in low sec, and its shied is down, there is a freighter/carrier/dreadnought/whatever capital ship you can fly drifting inside it.

I cant fly it, so I want you to come pick it up, we can split the profits 50/50. I want some collateral though, so I know you don't just run off with it. Pay me 100mil and I'll lead you there.

^ This.

With pirates I don't know (and have me camped somewhere "safe" ... like in a station) ... I'll usually negotiate something agreeable ... say half now/half when I get out (or something).

if it's at a gate ... i'll usually go for some other ratio (60/40 or so, whatever's really easy to come up with) so I'm not out quite so much if they do decide to pod me after getting the iskies...

A pretty important rule for people who are in bad highsec corps is this:

Keep your damn mouth shut.

You have no idea how many highsec corps and alliances have found themselves losing billions of isk in assets and a large percentage of their members because a 2 week old character decided to talk smack to the wrong person.

Actually, the non-chatty ones don't even consider themselves pirates. It's true.