EVE New Citizens Q&A

My suggestion is to not think in such strict terms as base for now at all. Anyone who has been playing eve for any length of time might have a base, and so many items strewn about the universe it's not even funny.

Think of yourself as a nomad and your ship and station as disposable assets. You simply go where your work takes you, or go where your corp takes you if you choose to join a corp, it's highly recommended.

In general if you aren't in a corp, then you want to be at least several jumps from a major hub, so that you are close enough to sell loot, but not so close that the competition and interference isn't manageable. If you do missions, I recommend choosing a system that is at least 2 jumps from LS that way your agent won't give you many LS missions.

If you are trying to do a lot of missions quickly, it helps when there are multiple agents of your target corp in the same station, or at least nearby. That makes it easier to decline empire missions. For deciding which corp you want to work for, you will want to check out their LP store, since that is where the money in missioning really comes from, and the locations of their level 4 systems.


If you explore then you choose your area based on the loot you wish to get. Sansha, Guristas etc all are in specific areas of space. Search for ombey's maps. The index page shows all of the regions and they are color coded by NPC faction and how the different regions relate to each other.

What you want to mission will also be determined by what ships you want to fly, so compare your goal ships to the factions you'll be fighting. Gallante ships like the ishtar will tank better against guristas but Amarr ships will tank better against Sansas.

So basically, in other words, to decide what you want to do now, you can just go with the flow, or you can look at your end goal and then pick a path that is most compatible with that goal.

In the end, it doesn't matter where you go. So you can just pick the region with the prettiest background nebula and fly there.

Humorously enough, this is actually something I had been considering. I'm quite fond of the blue and yellow of Caldari and Amarr space myself.

Thank you for your advice. As for considering myself as being more of a nomad, I suspected as much that I would most likely be moving around pretty often early on, especially while missioning. However would this make planetary interaction difficult? Would it be wise to set up a colony on planets that I may not be particularly near very often or is PI something a new player should hold off on? I must admit the idea of beginning PI early seemed like an interesting way of generating ISK rather passively while I tried other things.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Infomorph psychology skill lets you install jump clones (standings are no longer required), and you can teleport between these clones once per day (approx.). So you just need to set up a cache of ships at each location, so once you teleport / arrive, you have some ready-to-use ships waiting for you.

2. Traffic and activity happen around the trade hubs, on the pipelines connecting the trade hubs (there are two routes each: set the autopilot to avoid lowsec or accept lowsec paths, to see both of them), and on the pipelines going from Empire space to the home bases of the various 0.0 alliances. You can play with autopilot routes to see these pipelines.

3. You can also color the map to show you statistical information, instead of the true color of the stars: you can see the number of pilots in any particular system, the number of ships killed, pods killed, etc. This will show you which systems are busy, and which systems are empty. Which systems have stations, medical services, refineries, repair shops, etc.

4. Alts, even untrained, can be helpful. You can park one in Jita, for example, to keep an eye on prices, so that even if you're operating at the other end of the map, you still have an idea of what's a good price or not. Or you can activate the dual training feature and spend a month training the alt to have some market skills and be able to fly an industrial hauler ship, to move your junk around for sale, or to act as a scout in a frigate, or w/e.

EDIT: Regarding corps: EVE is a real-time strategy (RTS) game that's played from the point of view of a single unit. You are a unit, and the point of the game is for these large alliances with thousands of "units" like you to conquer the map. So, activities like PVE, industry, trading, getting rich, and even some of the PVP, they're ok to do solo, and it's ok to learn the details of the game while playing solo, but once you've figured out how the pawns, bishops, knights, and rooks work individually, you may want to play the actual game of chess, rather than "hero's journey" with a single piece. When that time comes, join a corp, so you can participate in the RTS gameplay.

Planetary interaction, like everything else in eve is a disposable income stream. The setup costs not much and moving just requires you to destroy your old outposts so you can construct new ones.

i'm spoiled to Nullsec and WH to the point where I don't feel HS PI is worth the effort. The time I spend doing PI is usually more productively spent elsewhere.

Personally, I see PI as another newbie trap, like AFK Mining. Far better spend your newbie experience doing active skills with immediate positive or negative feedback, you'll make plenty unless you're constantly getting blown up. And even then, you should be able to save up for a good frigate pretty quick. People who spend their early game experience specializing in passive gameplay, get bored first and leave first.

I didn't join a corp for a month or 2 after I first started. Joining one really improved my eve experience even tho I'm normally a solo type of guy. Anyways back to where to want to base yourself. Pick a place kinda close to trade hubs but not on the beaten path. So trade hubs in order of the largest to smallest. Jita, Amarr, Doxide and rens and or Hek. So the less traffic that goes threw your system the better. Pick one with agents you can use and a lower sec status system the better. Then move depending on what you want to do. Missions, scanning, markets, industry or pvp later once you got the skills. Game really opens up once you move to null or worm holes. So good luck and fly safe. Remember joining a good active corp opens up the game.

Bhizheba is nice. It's next door to the Amarr region trade hub second biggest after jita. It's got mining, P.I., 2 npc stations, and a lvl 1 and a lvl 2 security mission agents.
That's where I started.

As said before, base wherever it is convenient for what you are doing currently. Don't create a big stock of stuff, just the minimum you need for your current activity. If you lose a ship, buy a new one at the nearest trade hub. You will change your mind, activity and location often in the beginning.

I understand what you are suggesting. EVE is not the only game out there that is a sandbox, or with a large emphasis on social interaction. I have played many over the years, although EVE is likely to be the largest of them.

However I think it is wrong to suggest that simply because I am not joining a corp immediately, I am opting to play the game "alone". The one thing I know about good sandbox games and open world mmos in general is that you are never, ever, truly alone. I haven't even played EVE for that long and already I have been gate camped, traded on the market, run the epic story arc missions with a friend, asked for help and have even given help to others, been chased in my terrible mining ship, and even flown around looking for people in low sec to disastrous results for giggles. You are never really alone in EVE, even if you want to be.

Tao was right on here. There is a difference between not being alone and having a group of friends who have your back.

I came from WoW to this game and there are many differences but within this context I'd like to focus on a couple:

First unlike WoW and most other MMOs for that matter Eve is much more focused on player knowledge rather than character level. In Eve you can be productive in a group on day one. There is no level cap and no need to get any specific number of skill points before you are helpful in the group.

In WoW you need to pick a role and then level the appropriate class up to level cap and then get geared up just so that you can do 40 man BGs with your buddies. In Eve if 7 of your buddies are going out on a roam typically they would be more than happy to take on an 8th person. In short most other MMOs wind up being about your "gear" and in Eve it is more about if you are fun to have on Teamspeak. Eve is much more like a playground and we are all just grown kids looking for friends to play with. If you have ever watched kids of various ages and skills get together on a playground and come up with games that everyone can play then you will understand Eve.

Second the learning curve in Eve is rather steep. All of us vets know it as we all went through it and all of us have vets older than ourselves to thank for us being here. Therefore nearly all of us are more than happy to pay that help forward and help new players get familiar with the game. So again unlike most other MMOs where you have to prove yourself valuable to the group in structured gameplay with controlled numbers and levels of players, in Eve you just need to be eager to learn and vets will fall all over themselves to help you.

TLDR;
you don't need to bring "value" to the group you just need to be fun to hang out with.

Home base, for me, is the region where you hang your clones at. . Wait... That came out wrong...

But seriously, talking as a recent WoW refugee; its like it has been said already, you don't have to confine yourself to just a single port. I like be this game just because it's so huge and player driven. When people go to war in WoW, things reset and you might get a buff. People go to war here and systems changes hands and if it's big enough it makes headlines in newspapers. Take the recent World War Bee, for example. That's what got me back into the game.