EVE New Citizens Q&A

So, I wanted to see if anybody can suggest something to do in this game for a relative newcomer if not a rank noob anymore. 

Anyways, like a lot of noobs I've trained up to a Drake and now I'm filling out the T2 tanking skills, the fitting skills and the rest of the competency skills to level 4/5. Done a lot of research in this area and feel that I've got a pretty good grasp on the skills I need before a remap to perception/willpower where I can work on some of the more interesting skills. Have about a 60 day training plan all queued up in EveMon before the remap. 

In the meantime I do missions. Mostly L4 because I like slow, boring and bigger targets better then I like fast, boring and smaller targets. Either way, I make tons of money. Have more then I need. 

So, I made an alt. Some light manufacturing for missiles and my salvage. Also some hauling skills. Made even more money. Decided to train some scanning skills wanting to check out wormholes looking for some more challenging content. Did a TON of research on them. 

Checked a bunch of them out. All of them have bases...sometimes more then one.  Sleeper sites are usually completely unworked however. Systems seem otherwise empty.  Finally got up the nerve to bring in the Drake for a c3 frontier site (read online a Drake should be able to solo this). Got started and things were going OK, a few minutes in a recon ship shows up on D-Scan (I'm skared and really mashing it). I bug out and don't look back. 

Few days later I try again in a C2. Again system is empty other then 2 towers and a ton of player customs stations from a 9 player corp, no NPC kills on Dotlan in 48 hours  Get the whole site down, last about to pop. In warps a Loki soon followed by his HIC flying alt at the very moment I was changing my alignment. Goodbye Drake and pod. No worries, though. I've got more money then I need from running missions and have a nice chat with the guy. 

I get to thinking. How did he find me? No way I wouldn't have seen the combat probes. I check the info of the pilot that popped me. His corp is the owner of all the in system infrastructure. He's got 2 or 3 kills a week...mission runners and recons for the most part.  It dawns on me what's going on here. Folks, and probably an army of alts, have set up shop in these wormholes. They do PI for what's probably gigantic piles of easy, safe cash (billions?). Then they scan down all signatures and bookmark them all. Soon as somebody tries to run a site in "their" system they come to life and rally up the Loki's and just warp to the bookmarks. No scanning required to find the victim. 

I find all this rather demoralizing. Not the losing the ship part. I quite enjoyed the opportunity to fight back instead of getting wtf owned by a noob station undock to a waiting WT in a Machariel from a noob griefing corp or blown up in my blueprint runner by a low sec smartbombing gate camper. I was impressed with how long the Drake held up and I managed to at least get the Loki to 50% armor. The demoralizing part is...where is the content for newish players? Wormholes seem just way too lethal for PVE. If I thought I could make enough money to cover the occasional loss, I'd be game, but from the looks of it you can't even clear a site before the systems occupants come to life. Which is a shame because I quite liked the adrenaline rush. 

So, what should I do? Low sec is mostly empty outside of the gate campers and occasional roving pirate gang. And I'm not even sure why I'd want to be there anyways other then to join them. Join a corp? I've tried several. Basically they mostly mine, get griefed by war decs, and every other weekend fire up the Rifters for the occasional lol null sec pvp roam where I'm sure the occupants of said null sec systems just sit licking their chops. I feel my best bet is to basically not play this game for 6 months, other then to update the skill queue, and give it a try later. 

TLDR: Eve lacks content for experienced gamers who are otherwise lacking in SP. Is there any middle ground or revisit the game half a year from now after skilling up?

What to do in Eve is a great page for looking at all the stuff to do in Eve. And, as Petrus said, having a group of people to hang out with helps a ton (even if you don't do things with people, having a friendly chat channel to hang out in helps a ton).

Start killing people.

Seriously. It doesn't even matter how you do it, but once you start making other people's ships blow up everything will be fine.

Heh that sounds amazing. "Uuugh, I'm so bored, what do I do?" "Start killing people!"

Well, how have you been trying to find corps? I think the main problem here is that you're soloing. Solo PVP in EVE is actually very difficult; not only does it place very high demands on your own personal knowledge and skill (something a newbie isn't likely to have), player SP/ship equipment is more important than in larger groups.

I'd say finding a good group to fly with should be any newbie's highest priority.





If you have the money to replace it repeatedly then flying a Drake isn't an awful idea...But -do- expect to lose a lot of ships when learning PVP.

You are correct that a rifter is not a very powerful ship relative to what other people fly in absolute terms. The benefit of small/cheap ships is that even for a relative newbies, they're basically free. You can get 15 of them for almost nothing and just run around throwing yourself at whatever turns up. You'll die a lot but once in awhile you'll get a hilarious kill that will be worth ten times what you spent. It's exactly for that reason that Petrus and I (playing since 2009 and 2007 respectively) still regularly fly t1-fit t1 frigates and destroyers.




Class 1 wormhole anomalies can be run in a caracal. A drake is capable of running C2 sites, too (though maybe you'd want to stick to C1 if you have low skills). Additionally, there are a lot of wormhole corps which do these in groups.




I've been playing since 2007 and I would be bored off my ass too if I was running around solo. The problem is that you're solo, not that you lack SP.

That is correct. Well, plus I have a personal prejudice against the Drake. Lost too many Rifters to it over the years. It's very hard to tackle a Drake well in a Rifter.

EvE isn't very solo friendly. As I've said before, solo in highsec is boring, solo in lowsec is mostly running away, and solo in nullsec is suicidal unless you're really damn good (then it's still mostly running away).

You need to get into a good corp. This game doesn't start to shine until you have friends to play with, and both of my breaks from EvE were during periods I was between corps.

(also, the whole point of Rifter roams is they're cheap and you don't care so you can be stupid with them and get fights, you've done a lot of missions so you should be able to install a jump clone somewhere so you don't have to sacrifice your implants. The upside is that you're almost guaranteed a free pod-ride to your home station and don't have to travel all the way back, assuming it wasn't explicitly stated that you were going to roam until you died up-front)

Well get some friends to wait by next wh and go ratting, with luck you get some good fights from it.
Barring that since you're new you're likely neutral to NBSI-provi-blop and could try if you like it in null.

Providence has NBSI policy in null and surrounding low sec so you get some sort of help from intel channels but it also makes pirates more common (as in hiding as neutrals).
Providence region map

the people who prey on newbs for easy kills are generally douchebags ... and apparently need to kill rookies in order to keep their KB stats up (i.e. if you guys can get coordinated and kill one or two of their shiny ships ... well, their KB just tanked, and the dec disappears).

The good players (i.e. guys like Petrus, et al who actually try helping you ... and the "pirate" types who convo you after they nuke your ship telling you where the fit was bad) make all the difference. Sure, you might end up in a med clone after meeting them, but the education you get from a convo with them is worth far more than the million or two ISK that you lost in the frigate.



Here's the BEST part about the SP system -- you can only apply a certain subset of your SP to any one ship. For example, I have 60M SP... if I jumped into a Rifter (which I'm very low skilled in), I'd only be able to apply 2-4m of my SP to flying that ship (as the rest is in bigger ships, or non-Minmatar ships, or industry, or mining, or different guns, or shield tanking, or anything else I'm forgetting).

So, my 60m SP just got instantly reduced to 4M SP. Let's say you've spent the last two months perfecting the skills needed for Rifters (you're L4 across the board) -- you're 85-95% as effective as I am (I have a smattering of L5s in there, with the rest L4), so the thing will come to tactics and fittings... For example, if I went with arties/MWD/long point (but no web, because I never thought I'd be that close to you) to control range, and you went with ACs/AB/short point to keep me from using the MWD ... if you get in short point range, I'm likely the one who will be taking the pod-express home.

What is too expensive just depends on how much income you have. Those ships are around 1-2 bil ISK fitted and I believe there are a lot of players who can afford to use them in general PvP.

Also they are nowhere near "most expensive" ships. Titans are around 100 bil fitted I've heard. And limited edition ships, even frigates/cruisers, are tens of billions.


Were you doing research on that BPO? You could've bought already researched BPO to avoid lowsec trip.