EVE New Citizens Q&A

Sooo.... I've been playing and am hitting a wall.

I am mining to get some money together to get a better ship while paying for skills and stuff.
Then I am getting molested in the belts by some lunatics who want to tell me how to mine and where to mine...
So I start ratting. Ratting in highsec is about as lucrative as sitting outside the station shaking a can with ISK while begging.
I go to lowsec and the income there is fair compared to the highsec pennies. Now I learned the hard way that every single friggin .5 system is infested with player corps who pown that station next to it and the next few jumps into low sec. So.... I as a newb fly in, rat in some .5 belt with my little frig just to be pointed, webbed, tazed, and made fun off in local, while being blown up by anything between 5 and 8 frigs and cruisers. GF my sweet rear....
Going out further and fast and furious yields more peace as the .5 pansies seem to shy away from that area and other large ships seem to smile about that lonely venture in -.9.... But.... now the damn rats are finishing me off... So I am back mining... piling up dough... slowly... so I can loose larger ships...

How do you, or did you overcome that initial hurdle without belting out RL money for plex->ISK>bigger ****...Is it pay to play in the end?

Someone has a SIG which is more than true.... Goes along the line of EVE letting you work hard for a cookie, then hitting you in the head with a baseball bat, taking the cookie, and then laughing at you telling you that you don;t deserve that cookie to begin with. lolz...

Do I have to switch to CovOpMining? ha

Honestly the way you progress is just pick what you want to do and do it.
If you want to mine, go to a system that is not as populated, a little off the beaten trail, and no one will bother you. For extra safety use a tanked procurer, which by the way, is getting a buff soon.
If you want to shoot little red + in HS then just do missions. It take a little effort to progress to lvl 4 but it is not hard and lvl 4 missions are more profitable then mining.
If you want to explore and shoot things in low sec - then just crack open a map. Most of lowsec is empty or near empty. The systems that connect directly to hs tend to have pirates - move away from them and you will be fine. Also learn the cloak warp trick. Also you can make friends with the locals - if you are not an asshat, they might let you join them and they can show you why shooting other players is more fun then shooting little red +s.

Finally, the most important thing that you can do to improve your quality of enjoyment of eve is find a group of like minded players to play with and join them.

Just a small edit:
You are doing something wrong if you are in a frig and being shot by pirates in .5 systems. .5 systems are still HS. Make sure your safety is set right - honestly I forget what the settings are now - if red is for shooting everything or if it is for locking you out of shooting everything. I always keep mine to middle one has it allows me to do suspect acts, but not criminal (since criminal involves concord). if your safety is set right, you will not go aggro and be shootable in hs. And I seriously doubt that pirates would waste their time ganking a frig (unless ofcourse your're being an ass in local chat - then anything is possible).

you were hs ratting? No wonder you think hs sucks so bad.

Finding a good corp that enjoys the same things as you always helps. Especially when it comes to mining where you can have a fleet running and BS with people in comms. That may also help against the so called highsec saviors that harass miners.

In addition to that there is mission running, as mentioned. Building up to level 4s takes a bit, but can be good money. Consider salvaging the wrecks as well for extra money.

Additionally, low/null exploration can be good money with very little time spent training. I did an experiment last year where I made a new character and trained up hacking/archaeology to 3, and a few scanning skills, then eventually covops. Playing part time I made an estimated 400m in 30 days. It will also help teach your survival skills: paying attention to local and knowing who is around, dscan, etc, etc.

When I got started I bought a plex -- having a cushion of isk to buy ships and skillbooks made it a lot easier to get started.

Unless you enjoy mining, its not the best activity to use to to support other more explosive habits. The income for a solo high sec miner is very low compared to missions, exploration, gas mining and faction warfare. As for "Lunatics that tell you how to mine and where to mine" that is completely within their right to do so. Its also within your right to move, pay them off, or blow them up.

As for dying to rats in 0.5, that takes some work. If you post your ship/fit we might be able to help with that.

Finally, MAKE FRIENDS. It helps.

Find a quiet system. There are many but nobody will tell you because chances are high they won't be quiet anymore then. And yes, EVE is Pay to play if we talk about subs, if and only if you don't have really lots of isk. I mean annual sub for a new account is 99 USD compared to 8.4 of isk...at least for me that's ridiculous if I mention how much work in RL this means.



The better it is, the harder you will get into it. I mean if you want to advance you have to take your time...and will be rewarded, believe me. Otherwise, why not fly a shizzy Tengu after a few months? It's easy to get into, a hand full of low rank Level 5 Skills to make a uberPvE boat out of it and all that?

Well you dont "have" to learn V skills, it just makes you more incrementally more efficient. Ofc there are some modules that these skills unlock, and ofc these modules are desirable, but that is the nature of of an MMO - there is always some form of progression. But until you "learn" the V skills you can still be functional and perform reasonably well in most tasks in eve.

Ohh my signature was mentioned.