EVE New Citizens Q&A

It depends what you want. Jita has the most volume and movement while places like Dodixie, Rens and Hek are slower moving. People usually will pay a little more outside of Jita to get what they need but the lack of movement means you'll be waiting longer for your sales to go through. Also, you might find there's a lack of movement but also a lot of undercutting in these hubs outside of Jita, which defeats the purpose of being in them if you ask me.

In Jita stuff moves fast but there is a lot more competition than in the other trade hubs. I usually get my orders undercut by 0.01ISK within a minute, sometimes even seconds.
Personally I prefer Amarr. It's still quite big, but there is less competition, which means less babysitting your orders and often better margins.

personally i favour amarr ,
high(ish) volume, excellent prices on imperial navy stuff, somewhat more forgiving market (still ruthless though)
less likley to get ganked than jita and it smell less than the others.

general advice:

don't fly anywhere with plex in your cargo.

don't put all of your belongings in one ship.

don't autopilot with a hauling ship with anything in the cargo.

don't autopilot.<----------emphasis on the "."


also , general advice for getting in and out of a trade hub in one piece :

do not believe a word you read in local unless its an insult , then its probably true.
(yes that "deal" is a scam , no he/she will not double your isk , its a scam , yes thats a scam too, and that also)

don't take anything from the undock , just don't , you will explode immediately i promise.

don't use the "trade window" with anyone you cant physically punch within the next 6 hours.

and this is the only circumstance under which i will say this ,

don't shoot at the russians.

I wouldn't worry about Jita unless you are carrying more than 100M in cargo, in which case you should take defensive precautions.

The volume on Jita is 10x the next biggest hub which is probably Amarr and Dodixie is half of that for uncommon items.

I put about 20 items up for sale in Dodixie a month ago at the best price at the time, very standard items, and more than half of them still are unsold. All of the items would sold in 48 hours in Jita.

For really common items, like minerals, the regional hubs are not too bad. For example, as of right now there are 711 million units of mexallon for sale in Jita and 530 million units for sale in Amarr.

Different regions have specific commodities that may move well due to market oddities. For example, construction blocks can be bought in Rens. In general, however, unless you are buying something very standard like minerals, the regional hubs are much, much smaller volume.

Whoever told you Jita was the "best" was not giving you good advice. "Best" is probably the most subjective word in the english language and therefore nearly useless when asking objective questions.

The only thing that Jita can claim to be is the highest volume. What is best for you can only be determined by you and even then only within the specific context that you set as parameters for judging "bestness".

Amarr is a close second to Jita in that pretty much everything in game can be found there and there are a **** ton of people in local. Dodixie is also pretty decent as far as having everthing that you are looking for. The other Market hubs are also pretty decent and only on rare occasions will you have to make substitutions or travel to find stuff.

The only thing that I can say Jita is good for is if you have a fleet of jump freighters that you need to fill up with supplies and jump down to null and you are in a hurry and want to know that several large orders can be filled with current market volume. Out side of that Jita is just scammers and what seems like trade bots. I would not recommend that you avoid Jita but I certainly would not recommend that you specifically make a point to go there either much less set up shop there.

However my goals and ideas of what a "good" trade hub might be different from yours.

It is a little nerve wracking sometimes to undock and hear the sounds of combat.

^^ follow Tau's lead and bookmark insta-docks and insta-undocks for all the trade hubs.

Works great for most of us but those with poor machines can have some trouble loading grid there with all the ships on the undock. Just something to keep in mind if you are one of those people.

I used to trade in Dodixie but I switched over to Jita a while back. I think most "serious" traders have at least some presence in Jita, even if it's just in addition to their preferred hub. The availability and volume open up a lot of options for advanced trading like speculation and inter-regional sales. Jita sort of dictates the "global price" of things. It's good to know what's going on there even if it isn't your main focus, because that's what people are comparing with.

I recommend starting in Amarr since the trade environment is slightly more forgiving. Not so many aggressive .01'ers compared to Jita. Ren/Hek would be a better alternative; mind you, order could take slightly longer to fill. (or sell)

Bookmarks:- the insta-out one has already been mentioned, but you also need to set up a docking bookmark.

Twice someone has attempted to pop my Crane as it landed with a cargohold of loot, both times I simply selected the station after jumping into the system and clicked warp/dock. If you simply warp to the station you will land within 2500m of the edge of the docking ring. But that could be inside or outside the ring and if the latter the ship then needs to burn in the last bit. In that time a fast locking high alpha ship can get a shot off at you, usually a Tornado.

A docking bookmark is one set up at least 2.5 Km inside the docking ring. You warp to this bookmark instead of the station and while you still randomly land up to 2.5 Km from that point, it's always 0 from the station. You then click dock the moment you come out of warp with the station already selected. Although it does require an additional mouse click and for you to stay at the screen until you actually dock, that is a good habit to get into. I've known loads of people who clicked warp/dock, then went /afk after going to warp and thinking they were then safe. Only for the ship to decide "I'm not going to bother docking this time" and leave them floating outside the station and the gank happening sometimes hours later.

On trade hubs I like to set my docking bookmark right on the undock, so that you land among the mass of ships milling around and are that bit more difficult to single out (both on screen and on the overview). Although it shouldn't matter if you click dock immediately, sometimes you can be distracted and this may give you another second or so to react.