EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi!

well, so I'm at this point when I'm just starting to begin to see what the "cool kids" are playing with. obviously, I started off as a 100% newbie, throwing random skillpoints all over the place, and now I'm just starting to see the nuts and bolts.

So mining with the venture has been a good way to pay for my stuff, doing some pve missions, trying out stuff.

I've started to build skills towards exploration, following the promise of treasures and millions of isks per hour. I've kept at it for a few days, it wasn't really that pleasant at first and the only thing I found, was that wormhole were a lot more easy to find that what I initially thought. (and also that they can easily kick a noob's bottom, but that's another story)

anyway, so I've kept exploring, but between countless systems without anything, spots I couldn't really pinpoint, my ship getting blown in lowsec, I am happy now if I can make 2Mils in a 1 or 2 hours session. it isn't THAT bad, but it's bad enough to realize that for now, I can make much more mining with my venture.

so I'm wondering, what am I doing wrong?

First off, you're not doing anything wrong. You're going out and looking and learning. That's good. Keep it up

Exploration as a career is a very erratic income. Some days you can only find a site in lowsec that's already been half run and only come home with peanuts, other days you find a wormhole that no one has touched in months and it's loaded with nullsec relic sites. It's much more of a "jackpot" style of play.

Better scanning skills help immensely. Getting Astrometrics to IV, and then Astrometric Rangefinding and Astrometric Pinpointing to III is a good place to get to at first. Astrometric Acquisition isn't as important, but it's nice to have down the road. Beyond just scanning skills, training up some travel skills (Spaceship Command, Evasive Manuvering, Warp Drive Operation) will improve quality of life moving between systems. And of course, getting Hacking and Archaeology up to IV (eventually V to use T2 modules) is a good thing.

Ship and modules play into it as well. Everyone loves their T1 scanning frigates (Probe FTW!) and getting the racial frigate skill up to V gives you a nice scanning bonus. Eventually, you'll want to get into a Covert Ops scanning frigate and be able to use a Cov Ops Cloak. The Astero is also a nice ship to consider, but it is considerably more expensive than other scanning frigates and I wouldn't recommend it until you've got your feet under you. Also, the Sisters Probe Launchers and Sisters Scan Probes are notably stronger than even T2 launchers and probes, but again at a considerable cost. Finally, there are scanning upgrade modules and being able to use a mobile depot to refit some of these on the fly has it's benefits.

There are a few implants that help with scanning. The Virtue implants can look attractive, but with skills they're generally unnecessary and those attribute slots can be better used for other things (and again, expensive). Personally, I have the Prospector Rangefinding and Pinpointing 606 implants to make scanning a bit easier, as well as the Enviromental Analysis implant for a little extra virus strength when hacking.

Beyond all that, learning how to spot areas on the map that will likely have more sites is just something that comes with practice. You especially want to look for low traffic areas and low activity (read: low kill) areas. And always be ready to pack up and move to other side of the map if need be. Also, manipulating your probes so that you can get better results than what the standard "pinpoint" formation can give you is also just an experience thing.

If you really want to stick to exploration as a career, I humbly suggest looking into joining Signal Cartel (click the first link in my signature). We are a newbie friendly corp dedicated to exploration and have a very nice set-up to help people enjoy that form of gameplay. We're active in most time zones, and the vets are always willing to answer any question and give any advice they can.
EDIT: Please note, we've currently had the honor of being war decced by Pursuit of Happiness, so if you do join us, know that high sec will become a bit more dangerous. We can help you there as well.

In any event, good luck out there. Keep at it and you'll get there

Well, skills definately help with scanning.

But so does experience (a medium skilled but seasoned scanner will out perform a fully skilled scanner with NO experience on how to effectively scan - me being the latter ).


As for traveling into the depths of EVE where there isn't that much safety (low/null/WH), experience and planning. I can garuantee you, Rancer will NOT be a great place to do the scanning, neither will be Amamake and other low-sec hot spots.

Part of the exploration (nomadic) lifestyle is that you have to learn where to be and definately where not to be (but even then, sometimes accidents happen). Another part of this professsion (unlike mining and missions) is that payout is irregular, you can be extremely lucky and make hundreds of millions in a short amount of time, but you can also be S.o.L. and spent days with nearly no income (or very very low income).



Also, you don't have to mine. There are plenty of things you can do, some will be easier then other. Some will be more effective then others.

Other options (then mining and scanning):

* Missions
* Trading
* Scamming
* Hauling
* Industry

Just to mention a couple of them.

Is good that you try different thing. But my best advice in this game is just do what is fun for you, don't compare if is 10M ISK / hour or 50 M ISK / hour. Just have fun fly your ship and enjoy the ride. All my friends that joined having an ISK per hour goal they quit the game, and those you have the goal to have fun still playing.

And whatever you do, you always going to find better ways to do it. Just explore(or mine or missions) and have fun.

IMHO this is in general bad advice. He makes some good points here but colors it with opinions that make it not good advice for a new player.

First off level 3 combat missions pay well. So good in fact that unless you have pretty high skills for the ship that you are flying you are probably better off doing level 3s than level 4's. Yes the payout on level 3s is much lower but you can do them much much faster.

As far as the max skills comment of course it is going to be easier to scan a site down with max skills but I have over 100 million skill points and I don't have max scanning skills and I do just fine. I don't think that I have ever come across a site that I could not scan down. I've come across sites that I had to go fit some faction launchers and probes for but eventually got them.

If you do the math it would take something like 20 years to get to all level 5 skills. We have enough issues with players coming to eve from games like WoW and thinking that they need to get "level capped" ASAP. This game is not a game about max skills. You don't need max skills for anything and you certainly should never be waiting around for skills to train. Level 3 in any skill is usually pretty good and if you are at level 4 that's great. In most cases you train level 5 when you run out of other stuff to train. There are some exceptions to this, mostly skills that unlock other skills or your base fitting skills but as a rule it's true.

Other than that most of the rest of the stuff he said is spot on.

CCP, why can't I like more then once for such good posts.

You should also consider joining a Corp.

Probably not a top priority for you while you still test the waters, so to speak, and discover what you like, but there is no law that forbids you looking around what different Corps have to offer (and what you can offer them).
If you like exploring and wormholes, there are plenty of wormhole Corps out there.