EVE New Citizens Q&A

First of all, you need to be disabused of your preconception regarding "progression" in Eve. Ship size is not an analog for leveling up. Your frigate is not "level 1" and a battleship is not "level 60".

Secondly, regarding the emphasized bit above: Eve is not like most of the other MMOs you have played, and you shouldn't let your baggage from other games dictate what you do here. You don't need to "level up" to battleships before you get to play the "real" game (and, in fact, doing so is very likely to result in an expensive and frustrating explosion that you can't really afford). You're not climbing a ship ladder - ships are just tools.

Things like mining and mission running are what I refer to as "space-chores". They are a mechanism for reliably earning some spacebucks. If you genuinely enjoy them, go nuts, knock yourself out - but it doesn't sound like you enjoy them, and so you should cease running them immediately and find something you DO enjoy.

Abandon the notion that you need to be in a battleship ASAP. You will save yourself a lot of grief and, frankly, a months-old player in a battleship may as well be flying around with a "Kick Me" sign on their back. You will likely just end up getting killed by some guy in a battle venture, which will be hilarious for him and infuriating for you. If you do insist on continuing on that trajectory, though, please drop me an eve-mail as soon as something terrible happens to it so I can bust out some sick moves.

Scope out this list, find something that sounds fun, and take a crack at it:

http://swiftandbitter.com/eve/wtd/

Personally, I recommend PvP and exploration, but that's just how my tastes run.

As mentioned above, there are a number of ways to increase your earnings while doing PVE, and there are options for other types of income.

When I started playing Eve, in 2009, it was my first MMORPG, and I expected a steep learning curve, so I decided that I would give it a year and see what I could learn. I tried a lot of things. Some worked, some didn't, and some I decided I would never do again, no matter how well they paid.

I finally ended up with 5 accounts and a lot of ISK.

Give it some time. It isn't an easy game. The many diverse career paths are one of the things that make it interesting.

In the end, it appears to me that playing another MMORPG isn't a good way to prepare for Eve. Eve is . . . different.

Why do you want to climb the ship ladder?
No, seriously, why do you want it?
Do you use a truck to get to work because it's larger car than your Ford.
First, choose what you want to do. If it's something longterm, you have to plan your steps to achieve your goal. And only THEN you choose proper ship for your (partial or final) goal.

Example, your mileage may vary:
you want to fly capital ships. No problem with it. What does it mean though? First, capital ships cannot fly in highsec, so you need to learn how to survive in lowsec and nullsec. Now, nothing beats the real experience, so you may grab the cheapest ship (rookie ship) and just wander into lowsec. Will you get blown? For sure. Will you get some experience? Definitely yes, especially if you later contact the guy who blown you up and asked him what should you do to protect yourself better. Will you lose something? Hell no. Now, you have plans for next few weeks. As soon as you know how to move in lowsec without being shot on every gate, you can think about PVP - as that's what caps and supercaps are for (debatable, but .. yea). Would you take your most expensive ship to PVP , especially if you know that you'll almost certainly die? Hell no. Grab some cheap frig, load your T2 guns (hopefully) and tadaah, go to die heroically somewhere. 30 ships later you'll either know what to do or leave for a different game, where you don't have to think about the consequences of your actions.

Or is your goal really just to run missions ad nauseam?


EDIT: Dear Amber, it is an awesome idea to read some responses before you add yours... :-/

If you are finding mission running boring by all means stop running them, sooner the better. There are a ton of ways to make isk in this game. Here are some things I do to make isk and enjoy doing.

1. Mining. You don't get much isk/hr from this and can be mind numbingly boring if you always mine solo, but it is a great way to unwind after a stressful day at work. Don't be tempted to mine AFK though, you wallet will thank-you later

2. Exploration. This is among one of my favorite things to do in this game. I love to scan things down. As far as making isk it is hit or miss depending on the spawns in data and relic sites. Also if you like exploration, you would be useful to just about any PVP corp/alliance as a scout. Everyone needs a scout.

3. Plex/belt ratting. Can be very profitable if you find faction/officer spawns, or if the loot ferries are kind to you in the DED plexes.

4. Suicide ganking. Train into a tornado, goto a major trade hub. Park 30km or so from the undock, fit a passive targeter, cargo scan all industrials leaving station, and blap anything with more then double what your ship and fit is worth in its cargo hold. There are also corps you can join that will team up to bring down bigger targets such as freighters, orcas, and mission ships.

While the game can be played solo, if you find yourself being bored I would suggest try joining a corp with like minded folks that enjoy doing what you like doing. Can make all the difference to some people.

Edit: Don't feel you need to get into the biggest ship you can fly as soon as possible. All ships are tools and they all have strengths or weaknesses. Use the best tool you have access to to get the task at hand complete.

Well the eve forums ate my post

All i can say is I hope that you stick with it, the game plays very different to how your traditional MMORPG is scoped out.

This leads to some interesting innovations and creative people learning they can go very far, the more you put in the more you get out

I personally do level 3 missions in an Assault Frigate. The only one I can't do has a energy neutralizing tower and a stasis webyifying tower.

By the time you finish the tutorials, and beginner mission arc, you should have a cruiser and a bunch of ISK. This is not months.

You can train every race's T1 ships to a basic level of competency (level 3) in about 2 months.

You can do level 3 and level 4 missions in a battlecruiser, which uses basically the same skills as a cruiser.

If you find yourself grinding and not having fun, then don't do that. Do something else that you enjoy and that earns ISK. There are many activities to choose from.

I can relate op, and clearly some of the older vets forgot what its like being new and the isk grind that comes with, i feel for any new player that doesn't join up via the buddy link thing

I played my 21 day trial, subbed a month, then quit for 3-4 weeks, as like you, i got sick of running mission after mission for next to nothing, not to mention, once you start repeating the same missions you already done before, it soon gets old, i had the same ideas as you, train for battleship, do lvl4's and make some coin, but in the process, i forgot to play the game and have FUN

so yea, re-subbed two days ago, and haven't done one mission so far, im now skilling into exploration type skills instead of rushing into all the t2 modules i had planned to train up for, i found my first wormhole yesterday and took a condor in for a ganders and got one shotted by some sleeper although i did go back and clear the combat anom in a passive drake (only scored 11 mil in loot \ salvage + it took about a hour) but it was a well needed change of scenery, not to mention a lil bit scary as your constant on the look out for the peeps that own the pos in there, plus the fact i went in with no combat scanners and the door might have closed behind me

Im keen to find more now though, as well take a trip to see the eve gate and some other "sites" and at some point im going to give fw a bash

yeah im rambling now, point is tho, stop doing them missions if they getting you down, go find something else to do and come back to them in a few days \ week

Also, as much as i dont like the idea of paying cash for plex for isk on-top of a sub, the amount of isk you get will go along way for a beginner and its one less thing to worry about. i got 500mil i think from the buddy programme, It got me loads of frigs, couple of destroyers, raven, drake, most with meta 4 and t2 modules and i still have 250mil left over, if you don't loose ships it goes a long way, and when you do loose a ship, its not the end of the world or a stupid grind to recover

Also, if your near lonetrek in caldari space and want someone to mission \ explore with, send us a msg in game

Actually, I remember my first few weeks in the game very well. I, too, started out with missions. Did that for a weekend, decided it wasn't for me, went and flew around to see what else I could find instead of grinding missions that I hated. Figured I would give mining a crack. That lasted a minute or two.

Discovered trade goods, trained Amarr industrials, bought a bestower, and did a few runs buying and selling trade goods between NPCs. Wasn't too shabby, made a note to look into this "long-limb roes" business I heard people talking about, but I really wanted more pewpew.

Bought a cruiser - an omen - and decided to try level 2 missions with it. Was disappointed with its performance. Traded it in for a maller because more expensive = more better, right? No, still pretty disappointed - couldn't believe how hard it was to hit with these medium guns! Threw frigate guns on it and tried that. It worked better, but man this thing was sloooow.

Jumped back in my frigate and started exploring asteroid belts in high sec, with the occasional step into low. Discovered the D-scanner pretty quickly and, back then, NPCs still showed up on it. It wasn't long before I saw a "True Sansha" something-or-other show up on the scanner. Didn't know what it was, but I knew I had never seen one before so it was probably significant. Warped around until I found it, killed it, and got something called a "low-grade slave epsilon". Headed to the forum to find out what it was worth and, whoa, I was suddenly space-rich!. Found out I could sell it on something called "escrow", which was the predecessor to the current contract system. I forget how much I got for it, but it was enough to keep me in shitfit punishers for eternity.

My sudden windfall gave me a lot more flexibility to try some new things, so I decided I would finally investigate these weird beacons with the scary warnings that pop up whenever you warp to them. Struggled to complete a 2/10 drone complex - those things were hard to hit! - and started playing with weird fits. Eventually I put a full rack of smartbombs on my Maller and decided to try it in a 3/10 drone complex, which is the kind of thing I would absolutely facepalm at today, but you know what?

It worked, and I (amazingly) didn't get CONCORDOKKENED AND! I got a Shadow Serpentis Kinetic hardener from the can at the end, so back to the escrow system and another quick, albeit significantly smaller, windfall.

Eventually I started farming the 3/10 Sansha Command Relay Outposts.* The personal effects were decent income, and every now and then I would get a succubus blueprint or meta-level MAPC. Eventually I graduated to the Mul-Zatah Monastery 4/10 in Gammel and, when I was feeling ballsy, the one that was next door in Sosala (low sec). Same story, but with the occasional Ashimmu blueprint. They were HARD in my maller, though - the sentry guns were brutal.

I went back to missions for a little bit, figuring I would get a battlecruiser (lol, prophecy) and try level 3s in Ordion. Nope, still bad.... but while I was there, I set up buy orders for isogen and nocxium. Other mission runners would fill them with their reprocess loot, and I would fly it to Oursulaert (I still hadn't even really heard of Jita :D) and resell it at a markup. This was okay. Not fantastic.

I had accumulated a few hundred million before I decided to really look at the escrow system as anything other than a mechanism for selling my non-market loot. I quickly discovered that the confusing, cumbersome interface made it an amazing money-making tool. The contract scams of today are positively quaint compared to what we had under the escrow system. You didn't even have to scam to make a fortune at it, either - people were screwing up their own escrow offers left and right. My best "get" was a Slave Alpha for, ballpark, something like one million isk. Cha ching.

So, yeah. I don't relate with people complaining about "grinding missions", and it's not because I've "forgotten what it was like being a newb, and the isk grind that comes with it," but because I actually DO remember what it was like being new, and I remember that I chose NOT to grind content that I didn't enjoy just for ISK. I experimented with a variety of systems, discovered ways to make isk that didn't amount to being an internet space ditch-digger, AND learned a lot about an assortment of game mechanics along the way.


*Incidentally, not long ago I was going through my assets and discovered a stack of "basic" modules in one of my 3/10 farming systems that I had accumulated as a newb. They were worthless back then, but today, some of them are worth 50-100m.

I have a solution for you:

Short answer:
If the grind is insane, DON'T GRIND.

Long answer:
Find something you enjoy doing, and then find a way to make a profit from it. Players from other MMOs default to running missions in EVE thinking it's 'progress'. It's not, and don't do it if you don't enjoy it. There are plenty of other ways to make money, and as you have found out, bigger ships does not signify progression.. If you're running missions just to be able to afford a ship to run more missions, you're doing something wrong.

The reason for all of us new players to climb ship ladder is pvp. We need to make enouigh ISK to be able to comfortably welp around 500 mil worth of ships every 2nd day or so. Flying T1s in FW and low sec gets real boring real fast, its kinda pointless beyond the 1st month.

The realization hits that the only things that matter in this game is ships you can fly, mods you can have on them, and your group numbers when going up against other fleets. Sure you can bring countless exceptions to that, but those are just that, exceptions, all of them.

Don't believe me ? go ahead and get together with your corp, make 1-2 month old alts, get them all into T1 frigs and go up against even numbers or larger then your own group numbers (which is more likely) pilots flying T2s and T3s, see the results, repeat a few hundred times, record results, make some graphs. Realize that many of us are very experienced gamers, though not from Eve, and have the capability to extrapolate such graphs (or conclusions if you will) within our minds based on observation of the available game mechanics. And it is that which drives us towards a "ship ladder".

if the game doesn't want players to jump for a ship ladder, then it needs to provide valid alternatives, for example, provide a way for a group of 5-10 2-3 month old pilots in T1 frigates, to be somewhat effective vs a group of 200-500 goons. Until that is in place, then ship ladder it is.