EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi, my name is Arg and I'm a Carebear.

I have a long history of single-player games and non-PvP play in MMOs. This is at least my third try at making a go of EVE and I'm ready to say "Heck it, shoot me in the face, bro."

I've read all the stickies here and watched some videos on YouTube and followed a hundred broken links and watched some more videos and looked at a bunch of blogs and watched even more videos and...OMG, there's SO much information my brain hurts!!!

I'm figuring that I'll run all the agent missions for the first set of agents to get a feel for some of the different aspects of the game and then start looking for a newb friendly mentor or corp.

I understand that EVE is complex and that there's no cookie-cutter answer for most questions, I can't count how many times I've read the "It depends on what you want to do" kind of answer on these forums and I know that it's repeated so frequently because it's true.

But I'm thinking that there has to be a baseline set of skills that most newbs like me can use. It's going to take me a few days, maybe a week to run all the missions that I'm aiming to run and I'll probably earn enough ISK to buy a (very) small pile of skill books.

Since I'm looking to get into PvP, I'll probably be flying a frigate. Am I better off using my first few days to get my Frigate skill as high as I can or would I be better off with things like Targeting or Electronic Systems?

I feel like I'm so lost that I don't even know what I don't know.

Help give this carebear some teeth and claws.

Hey Arg.

There's a hell of a lot of info out there as you have seen.
Have a look also at the magic 14 - http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?t=81073&p=706004
and alpha guide here at https://www.thealphasguide.com/

The eve community is second to none too, ask away

absolute best thing you can do is find a corp to fly with.
these days newbro pilots come useful "out of the box" so to speak so look about, someone will take you in.

find a corp to fly with , get on comms and learn from vets as you do.
not all corps will be suitable, i very much doubt we would be but some lowsec lads, maby one of the faction warfare or null groups could provide a fun and engaging environment for you to derp about and learn in.

as you found, theres an overwhelming amount of stuf that can be said about eve
the way i found to digest it was to go out and do things, and learn about relevant information as it became relevant to what i was doing or trying to do.
having vets on comms you can poke in this sort of environment will accelerate your learning by several orders of magnitude
and will save you having to trawl through the metric ****tonn of blogs, wikis , guides and videos you have already found.

a good attitude and an open mind will take you much much farther in eve than anything els will , believe me on that.

I suggest starting off with combat PvE. Those ships and skills will translate most directly to the PvP you want to do eventually.

First-- core skills. Always useful to train. Engineering and Navigation trees are always worth maxing, even when you balk at the time between IV and V on them.

Mission running is a bit boring but good place to start. You will be moving up in difficulty level and ship size much faster than your skills will keep up with, so don't be in a huge rush to move up in ship class. There comes a point of diminishing returns flying larger or more advanced ships with poor skills. You are better off taking some time flying a frigate well, then a destroyer well, and so on. For PvE, it's okay to fly on sub-par skills, but don't let flying big ships poorly slow down your training to fly small ships well.

Also, in Eve PvE is considered almost obsessively solo. Don't. Go on chat channels and local and find people doing whatever it is you are doing and try to work together. For too many players, the first time they do any real fleet activity is in PvP where the stakes are high and people are afraid to screw up. The same for roles like Logi...the first time I ever actually remote repped someone was during a 200 man fleet over an Ihub in null sec. I should have practiced that some in PvE. Use PvE as a zero risk way to learn some of Eve's mechanics that the tutorial doesn't touch. Fleet warps, broadcasting, logi, boosting, calling targets, etc.

Then just throw together a few cheap ships and expect to lose them. A few L4 missions will make enough isk for several T1 frigs. Look at your map and find a nearby low sec system. Sort by kills and find somewhere with a little activity. Go there (most likely you will have no trouble with gate camps) and set up a safe spot. Ask any pirates in system for a 1v1 duel at the sun. Let them know you wish to ask questions after so not to pod you- still bounce to your safe spot, but most of the time you won't get podded even if caught.
Pirates are PvP nerds. They LOVE to talk fittings and tactics. Just be cool and you will probably be invited to join a fleet some time. It's old school, but it's a great way to experience the game.
It's exactly what I did when I finally quit making excuses for why I was playing alone in high sec when I really wanted to be typing YAARRR in local and shooting people in the face.

There are new player friendly corporations for most play styles. Don't try to figure it out by yourself.

Most will want you to complete the career missions so you have a basic understanding of the game mechanics but, beyond that, will provide everything you need to get established - including ships and skillbooks.

Nullsec sovereign warfare: Karma Fleet, Pandemic Horde, Brave Newbies a Google search will lead you to their recruitment page.

Faction warfare: a recent guide: https://wiki.braveineve.com/public/dojo/wiki/faction_warfare

Exploration: https://www.eve-scout.com/

Last but definitely not least: http://www.eveuniversity.org/

There are also industrial career paths for those who prefer to build stuff rather than blow it up. Eve need both.

Remember to keep training time in mind.

Suppose you could train skill Racial Frigate for +5% damage per level for your chosen hull, or Small Racial Turret for +5% damage per level for your chosen weapon. Basically the same, right?

Until you realize that your next level of Racial Frigate is a two week train and your next level of Small Racial Turret is a 4 hour train.

That probably seems obvious, but in many cases it won't be. It's often more effective to train a multitude of skills to III or IV rather than to focus on maxing out a smaller set of skills over that same time period. You'll want to get those final skill levels at some point, but pick the low hanging fruit first!

Au contraire ... figuring out how things work and to expierience the full sandbox is a big part of the fun. The journey is more than the destination.