EVE New Citizens Q&A

Honestly the meta on lvl 4s has changed a lot recently due to CCP's various upgrades etc. . . In particular the MJD has trivialized many missions. Go to eve survival and research the missions. Frequently, you will find these days that you simply dont need a whole lot of anything to complete the missions. Of course there are some that require decent tank and dps, but for someone just starting out in lvl 4s - just decline those missions until your training brings you to the point where you feel comfortable doing them.

a lot of people talking about needing T2 sentry. Faction sentry are awesome (don't lose them though.)
i did all the 4's in a drake was easy but slow.
I have a few chars and many of them need rep for various reasons. I run missions in various ships for variety. It is kinda fun having a ship that won't run a mission and then refitting until it will. Yesterday my market alt had to refit from shield to armour and arty to autocannons and add a afterburner to survive and kill a mission in a hurricane. (had to inject and train repair systems to manage this lol.
It might not be a good use of my time from an isk/hr point of view but it does help my pvp to know about how different ships fit and fly.
Fit an extra repper on your prophecy and a cap booster and give them a whirl.

Yeah, if I had to do it again, I would definitely have gone straight for Sentry IIs, and their supporting modules first. Hull upgrades 5 in order to get T2 tank modules was....I won't say a waste of time, but definitely something that could have been put off until later. I fell like I could have easily gotten away with meta 4 tank mods due to the MJD.

You absolutely don't need T2 weapons, that's ridiculous. Meta 4 are fine. I do recommend a T2 tank, not that you absolutely *need* it, but because it will provide a larger margin of error for a newer player. The rewards for level 4s are so much greater than level 3s that it's worth taking a little risk. Insure your ship and be careful, make sure you read the eve-survival page for each mission before you do it so you know which type of hardener to fit and what the triggers are.

I started soloing lvl 4 missions with 2m skill points back in the days before decent mission reports were avaiable.

Kill the frigs first and ever be afraid to warp out if you need to.

Lvl 4's can be done using T1 weapons. Ensure your tank is up to the job. Once you become more familiar with the missions you ca strt to reduce yor tank and up the damage application.

Good luck

Just wanted to make a new post here because I've been getting a lot of in-game emails from people. Everyone keeps telling me to slow down and to not risk running a BS until my skills build up more.

I'm currently sitting on just over 3m SP(a lot of which has nothing to do with combat). I'm running level 4 missions more or less constantly. I've cleared even the 'difficult' level 4 missions such as Dread Pirate Scarlet with very little difficulty. The combination of extra long-range sentry drones and rails with a MJD almost feels like cheating to me. Yes, in some cases I've had to warp out then back in again as I was learning how much punishment a BS can take, but never was I in a position where I felt in danger of losing my ship.

I honestly believe that everyone who told me to wait until my skills reached T2 modules is being overly cautious. Maybe that's a good caution for most people. And T2 almost certainly would speed mission clearing times up. But by paying attention and reading the EVE survival guides and intelligently using the MJD, I could have been doing level 4 missions with all meta 4 equipment and a set of faction sentry drones.

I'm not saying that they're wrong, but between the extreme range of sentry drones and the ability to use a MJD to stay at that range indefinitely, and the foreknowledge granted by EVE survival, the danger of even the most difficult level 4 missions is almost nullified.

If I had to do it again, I'd have made sure my supporting skills are all at level 3-4, practiced a bit in level 3s to get used to how a BS flies, then did a few level 4s VERY slowly to grow accustomed to what I could handle. Read EVE survival, make liberal use of the MJD, kill frigates first, and let my skills catch up as I continued clearing more lvl 4s. It didn't take me that long to recoup the cost of the BS, so even if it pops at this point, I can jump right back in.

So to me, the 'risk' is well worth the added time spent doing level 4s instead of mucking around in level 3s. I wish I'd known better, coulda saved me some time. Oh well.