EVE New Citizens Q&A

This post is aimed at those people who are on their first few days of playing Eve, or may e those who are looking around the forums and feeling a little intimidated by some of the posts, and are considering not trying the game at all.
It would be very easy, especially from the forums, to think that skill points are important and that the veteran players fly around looking for newbies to kill. This could not be further from the truth.

As a new player myself, I've never felt that a lack of skillpoints is that my h of a hinderance, you can certainly get involved in a much more active way with veteran players than you would find in many mmos, where if you aren't level x then you're useless. Certainly, skill points will allow you to fly larger ships, use better weapons, do things faster or more efficiently, but with less than one day of skill training you can make ISK, be a useful functioning part of fleets, or anything else you may wish to try. Ok, you can't fly a battleship, but guess what, if I owned a battleship I wouldn't want some fresh faced graduate commanding it until he's learned how from people with more experience! This is why, in RL, 2nd lieutenants don't have much power at all. They need to learn their trade, and so do you as an eve player. One person in particular seems to advocate logging in to train skills and sit in a station because you can't do anything for a year. If you took this approach you'd find that you didn't have the ISK to buy the ships and modules to go with your shiny skills, and even more importantly, didn't know anything about how to use them. Whilst training skills you should be out there flying around in whatever you have, doing the tutorial missions, all of them, doing the Sisters of Eve epic arc, and spending time PRACTICING the human skills you need to fly your ship. You see, just like game skills, you train your playing skills in real time too, but you can't let them just train in the background, you have to work on them. As for your game skills, there are plenty of usefull skill guides on the net, THIS is the one I use.

Now for the second point. You have to be aware that Eve is not other MMO's, it's a game about internet spaceships, in fact it's more specifically a game about blowing up internet spaceships. Accept early that you will lose your ship many times over, and when it happens, try to learn what you did wrong. Many of Eve's most notorious pirates and bankers are actually friendly people who will offer you advice after they've blown you up! However, getting blown up is not as common as some people seem to make out. If you think about where you're flying, and pay attention to what's happening around you you can avoid areas where such activity is happening. Use the map, it tells you how many ships have been blown up in each system, although it isn't infallible, it will help you survive. When (not if) it does happen, don't rage, don't swear at your attacker, don't act like a male chicken, shrug it off, grab a spare ship, and try it a different way. Convo your attacker(s), they might be willing to help you out. Some newbies have even had their losses reimbursed by their attackers because they were respectful of the players behind the intrnet pilots, and they showed a good attitude. What does it matter if your ship exploded anyway? After all, you're not flying something you can't afford to replace are you? Are you?

To sum up, follow the golden rules of EvE and, just like in any MMO, don't join the first corp that offers to take you, many that list themselves as new player friendly are a waste of time, often run by new players, or even older players, that have no real clue. Some recommended corps are EvEUni, RvB and brave newbies, but they aren't the only ones, look around and see what's available. One thing that has made my first few weeks in eve easier is research. Not the skill, actual real life research. EvEUni's wiki is publicly available, there are great blogs out there with lots of useful information, and places like battleclinic and eve survival guide are regularly recommended by veteran players. If you do these things, I suspect that you'll enjoy your time in eve and stick around, however, one thing I have seen is that eve is not for everyone, but then what game is? If you're the type of person who enjoys learning, is willing to work on things instead of having them given to you on a plate, and doesn't expect the game to hold your hand you'll do well here.

Bugger! Didn't mean to produce such a huge wall of text, now nobody will read it!

I agree 100%.


Shane

Good post, OP! I've been playing for about two weeks now. I'm working the missions, starting on the Sisters of Eve mission arc, mining a LOT for some ISK, salvaging during my missions and keeping the ships I get as a reward for missions in reserve. So far I've lost two ships. One was a Punisher I had fitted out pretty sweetly and it sucked to lose it but I knew it would happen. The other one I lost was my Magnate I was using for scanning/surveying/whatever. I'm having **** poor luck finding data and relic sites but I'm trying. I made the mistake of taking the Magnate into a combat mission and not warping out in time. I limped back to dock in my pod and grabbed another ship. The most ISK I've had so far is maybe 8mil ISK's... chump change! LOL And I deplete it every time I have to refit a ship. So I just grab the Venture and go mine for awhile, and salvage, and mine, until I build some ISK back up. Then I head out and try again.

It's a complicated game at first but I'm learning, and researching, and asking questions in the rookie help chat and so far my experience has been a good one. I will eventually feel confident enough to venture into low-sec for some better ISK but for now I'm content learning the ropes in high-sec and running missions.

Thanks for the post and the link to the Newbie Skill Plan.

Can't like that post enough :)

This man speaks the truth.