EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello!

I just started EVE yesterday. I am not new to MMOs, played a lot of UO, Horizon, and LOTRO.

When I made my character, I didn't really think too hard in my race/bloodline choices, but now I see they directly affect how fast you learn certain skills ( http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Willpower#Attributes ). Obviously I should reroll.

My question is, with the ability one character to learn EVERYTHING, is having multiple characters on your account something people really do here?

I love the whole mining > refining > selling process; always love making things for other players, I could see myself getting into the exploration role as well. I don't really have much interest in combat, aside from keeping pirates at bay.

Thanks in advance!

-Helc

if you have a definite need for alts, then yes
I manage just fine without any at all

in eve a lot of things are skill locked, training those skills takes time
that's really the only barrier to any activity in eve

Everyone, thank you for the help! I must have found old information RE: races effecting attributes.

You might find one useful, you might not.
Don't worry about it till you have a use for one.
I have a couple but I have yet to do anything productive or fun with them yet aside from quote William Shatner spoken word performances post constructively and on topicon the forums .

Nothing to do with race, never has as far as I know of. Attributes are adjustable, that link is speaking of attributes alone. So you adjust/map your attributes to best fit your skill training plan. All skills are attribute based, so certain skills will train faster if you have more points in the attribute that that skill is dependent on. All skills will list the primary and secondary attributes that they are dependent on. I consider less important to have a "skill plan" for the first few month that arranges skills to your attributes as skills early on have training time modifiers that make skills quick to train. Later those modifiers slow training based on the skill (e.g x2, x4 etc.)

Good to have a general plan though, in the right direction for your needs. When you get into making six month or one year plans, you would arrange the skills in an order that best fits you attributes. e.g. primary attribute often for combat pilots is perception, secondary willpower, so you would mostly train perception skills for months with your attributes set to train those skills more quickly - for a combat pilot. But early on you have a wide variety of skills to train, so best to leave attributes generally balanced in most cases' don't waste those attribute remaps, they are not unlimited.

Mining and exploration, you will see combat, or more like player ganking. Wasn't always so for exploration, but since a recent change to exploration, explorers have become highly sought after for their now defenseless and overpriced ships and what they drop after being easily ganked (think hunting treasure hunters in UO, but on steroids here). Mining has always been so, just like mining in early UO or later in fel. Highsec isn't tram, there is no real 100% safe place outside of the few starting newbie areas and the sisters of eve epic arc areas (a lvl1 epic arc starting in Amarr). If anyone ganks you there you just report them etc. Outside of there for mining anyway, you'll be extorted and/or ganked. For serious miners, I usually advise moving to Nulsec and joining a controlling corp that you may mine in their area without the shakedowns etc.

Making things for other players, that is more manufacturing and Planetary Interaction (PI). It's far more competitive than UO was, so if you are an early UO vet as myself, you won't be say like standing outside the forge in Brittan repairing gear for players being very sociable. You won't be stocking a house out in Yew as your shop and meeting customers. Here, it's almost a form of pvp, highly competitive, all about the bottom line. Mostly will have no interaction with your customers, apart from if you belong to a corp and build things for corpmates. But even then, most manufacturers often go it alone or in very small corps to avoid taxation etc. because of the competitive nature of the profession so to keep sales pricing low enough to make a profit. But some do, so to have access to player owned stations (POS) for various reasons.

Lots of reasons to make alts, especially low-SP alts. Nothing to really worry about today though, especially since you have no interest in combat. If you were trying to do both, combat pilot and industrialist on the same starting character, splitting into alts could be better, but really depending on what you would want to do as there are many things to do in EVE.

edit: As for rolling a Caldari, the up side is mostly that you are near Jita 4-4 the biggest trade hub in the game. Downside is that you are near Jita 4-4 the biggest trade hub in the game
And no, they don't really double

Don't make an alt until either you need to control two characters at once, or you want to train highly speciailised skills but do not want them on your main, or you want to do things that cannot be (easily) traced to your main.

You will know when the time is right for an alt.

Plan on 2-3 months on the same account as alts.

Hauling alt is huge help during war time.

PI alts can help if you do that kind of thing.

Cyno lighting alts to help people in your corp/alliance.

Science alts for more research slots.

Plan on getting atleast 1 alt that can do some basic hauling on your main account. (( One Plex ))
Everything else is as needed.


2nd account alts are another can of worms all together.

You only would ever need to remake your character if you absolutely hate how it looks visually. There is little point otherwise, unless you care for the color of your noob ships. While alts can be extremely usefull I have been playing the game for about 3 years, run a small corporation, and do not have any alts. Only a peasant lights his own cynos we sometimes say.

Alts are still extremely usefull, but what I do with my character does not require one. This is basicly an all-round PVP character with some tweaks to make PVE and very specific Indy stuff viable as an income source, basicly a mirror of what you want to do with yours. I'd say play for a couple of months, then see if the extra character would be usefull.

"Alts" on another account can log in simultaniously, while characters on the same account cannot. Hence a lot of people find that they are better off supporting a second account, but if you extra character just does station stuff or PI that's fine, and can be paid for with ISK instead of PLEX / $$$.

As someone pointed out - alts come in different flavors. You get up to three toons per account. Having alts on the same account obviously allows you to do things that can be advantageous to you as a player - for instance, lets say you in Null and find that nothing is going on, you can log that toon out and log in your rvb toon and go for some quick low lvl pvp. Having multiple accounts is a different animal altogether. With multiple accounts you can log them in at the same time and multibox which allows you to do all sorts of things such as have a cyno alt, scout for your main, boost, hauling, logi, etc. . . . While you can get by without having alts/multiboxing, you are generally at a disadvantage to folk who do.

I played Eve for over a year before even rolling a second character. I only did that because this toon was a low sec pirate and I wanted to try the new orbital bombardment mechanic at the time- no FW faction would have me.

After four years of playing Eve, I have virtually no need for alts. Certainly never needed more than one account.

Alts are commonly used to avoid the most interesting game mechanics. Having outlaw status and no alts to easily resupply is how Eve was meant to be played, and made being a 'pirate' actually have some meaning for me.
Call it an RP choice of sorts- but actually playing a game as it's intended is too often lost on gamers who just reduce games to calculators. I'd rather find a friend to partner with than just roll an alt for more slots/cynos/scouts.

Now I rarely if ever dust off my one decent alt.