EVE New Citizens Q&A

Welcome to Eve

Once you finish the career agents, the next step is generally the Sisters of Eve Epic Arc. http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/The_Blood-Stained_Stars which will give you a tour of New Eden, a fair bit of cash and standing with the empire faction of your choice. You will likely need some help with the final combat mission - ask in local.

If you are interested in pursuing a career in exploration talk to https://www.eve-scout.com/signal-cartel/

Good luck

Do Little's advice is good. Your post reads as if you have just done the Exploration Career Agent. Even if exploration is very much what you want to do, it's worth doing the others, just in case something piques your interest. Similarly, the Sisters of Eve arc gets you quite a decent amount of isk, some useful standings and you see more of the cluster.

Your question goes to the heart of what EvE is as a game. It's a sandbox, meaning that there's very little handholding or direction past the first couple of weeks. You make your own story.

What interests you now might become your complete focus for years. More likely however, is that you will experience gameplay and people that inspire you to do many other things. Be open to these experiences - when you get a chance to try something out, give it a go (unless you are immediately sure you won't enjoy it, but it's always good to try at least once).

Read the sticky thread on this forums detailing how many of the veterans here got started and grew their careers. I'm not such an experienced player, but I started out in EvE having done the career agents and thinking I would enjoy industry. I got into mining (as most everyone does at first) and contrary to many, rather enjoyed it as a meditative relaxation from my stress-filled real life. I trained for industrial ships and some industry skills, and learned about the market, earning money by exploiting regional price differences.

The amazing people on this section of the forums gave me great advice after I narrowly escaped a gank attempt. The best advice was to understand your enemy, and so I got into my first PvP using faction warfare. I found that the thrill I'd got from my narrow escape was even better when actively choosing to be the aggressor, and discovered the world of fitting theory. The depth of this game began to reveal itself and I was hooked.

One piece of advice I didn't take initially was to join a corporation. I like to role-play (RP) in the MMOs I play, and I had struggled to find a RP corp. Over six months, I began to struggle with enthusiasm being largely solo. My playing time was stalling when a chance encounter led me to try out one of the biggest new player corps to see what the war (World War Bee) was about. I set aside my aspiration for in-game RP as that was clearly not EvE's strength (or rather, adapted my expectation of others' willingness).

It was a revelation. People wiling to help, voice comms, lots of banter and friendships to be made, a whole host of opportunities to try with no pressure to be good at any of them. I discovered that I really, really enjoy PvP in fleets and small gangs (especially with a strategic or tactical purpose) and particularly as a logistics and EWAR support pilot. It was great to be valued. I reinforced my notion - from doing high-sec missions - that ratting was absolutely not my cup of tea and the true punishment of Satan. But null-sec mining was still relaxing, with an added frisson of threat to keep one awake (killing a hunter who underestimated my Procurer's willingness to fight back was a highlight ) and rather more lucrative than the misery variant in high-sec. I learned scouting and how to be a useful pilot in an interceptor, and interdiction theory and practice. I got used to being killed, and unless flying something seriously expensive nowadays, found myself being a bit disappointed if I returned from a fleet with a ship intact, feeling I might not have stretched myself enough, taken enough risks and so forth.

After six months of making sure I had a bit of a clue, I decided to join a more 'professional' and smaller group to grow my experience (and happily, a bit of RP too).

So here I am, a one time industrialist blowing up Keepstars for money. EvE has so much possibility waiting for you!