EVE New Citizens Q&A

Start of with Day 0 advice for new players. There are links there which should set you up to travel as far down this rabbit-hole as you're willing to go.

The race, bloodline, etc that you chose during character creation has very little impact on your life as a capsuleer. The ships you choose to fly will very much change your style of play. Amarr and Gallente ships tend to favour Armour Tanking, Caldari favour shield tanking, while Minmatar are known as Winmatar because you can set the ship up how you like it: this provides a competitive advantage in PvP because the opponent won't expect that a particular ship is fitted a particular way. There's a lot more to it than that of course, but that's the elevator pitch for which race does what.

You are relatively safe exploring in hi-sec areas. They have the protection of CONCORD, which more or less fills the role of town guards from fantasy MMOs. That is, you can attack your enemy but CONCORD will arrive in short order to blow your ship up. If you are worried about people attacking you, be aware that CONCORD will take time to arrive: they arrive near instantly in 1.0 sec systems, taking much longer to arrive in 0.5 systems. There is no CONCORD in 0.4 to 0.1 space, and the rules change again for 0.0 space.

If you are interested in PvP, I highly recommend trying out Red Vs Blue.

First of all, Welcome to EVE Online.
EVE is a sandbox. You can do anything you like, but that is really general so let me answer your questions in order a bit more in detail.



Like said anything is possible in EVE, so the list we can give you is almost endless. As even things that aren't explored yet can be done if you want it, but here is a quick list of what you can do:

PvE:
- Missions
- Exploration sites (probing)
- Incursions
- Wormhole sites (technically form of exploration)
- Anomalies / complexes.

PvP:
- Wardecs (only in player corporations / alliances)
- Low-sec PvP
- Null-sec PvP (this includes Wormholes as they are also considered null-sec)

Industry:
- Mining
- Production (can both be done in station or in something called POS [Player Owned Structure])
- Trading

And then there are the more "shady" professions
- Pirating
- Grieving / Suicide ganking
- Scamming



The choice you make on Race and Bloodline only matter in the way that it will change the system you start in, some basic skills (depending on race you get your racial frigate skill and weapon skill ready trained) and for the role players the background story of said race/bloodline.
And that is it. You can train anything you want with any race you want. You choose Caldari but if you want to fly Amarr ships, you can do that. There is no penalty or buff for flying your racial / non-racial ships. Keep in mind though that each type of ship and each race of ship has their own advantages and disadvantages over each other. Also in EVE: Bigger =/= Better, so don't think that a Battleship (or Capital) is an I-win-ship, capitals can be killed by frigates for instance. It's how you fly your ship and how you fit it, etc. etc.



First of all, try not to mention Guilds (or any other known word from any of the other MMO's that are out there, specially WoW), in EVE they are called Corporations. Mentioning WoW stuff on the forum attracts a sh**load of trolls, they kind of have a 6th sense for that stuff.

My advice is to first do all tutorials (The Aura tutorial and all 5 career agents), this will get you to know the basics of EVE. After that I suggest you move to Arnon and do the Sisters of EVE Epic Arc (SoE). These are 50 missions with a common background story behind them and get you a good starting money and some ships/items/skillbooks that could be usefull at the start.

Also I suggest you look at the certificates (Character screen, option just below skills) and train the Core and Defence Certificates to at least standard level. In itself certificates don't do anything but they are a guide to what is usefull for any ship and the Core and Defence certificates make any ship in EVE harder to kill and easier to fit.



On PvP, I will warn you (and this may sound that EVE is very very hostile) that no place in space is 100% safe. If you are in space others CAN kill you, doesn't mean that the whole of EVE is a slugfest where people shoot each other every single day.

Unlike other MMO's there is no arena style PvP and also no consensual PvP agreements. People don't have to ask you to PvP, they can just start shooting you (again, doesn't mean you will be killed on sight every single time you undock).
PvP can be done fairly quickly, and as mentioned before Red vs Blue are good to get to know PvP if you want too, they have easy entry PvP and also are doing PvP for fun, not to annoy others or for the sake of grieving players.

The system security of the system you are in (top left hand of the screen, number from 1.0 to -1.0) defines how 'dangerous' the system is:

1.0 - 0.5 = High security space (aka hi-sec, CONCORD [NPC Police] will punish the offender if he had no right too shoot you [more on that below], keep in mind CONCORD is like the normal police they take time to arrive and could be too late to safe you)
0.4 - 0.1 = Low security space (aka low-sec, No CONCORD though the gates and stations still have guns that shoot people who have no right to shoot you and you will get a criminal flag if you shoot someone without reason).
0.0 and below = Null-sec space (aka 0.0, lawless space, and many other names, In here anything goes, you can shoot who you want, no penalties or what so ever. There is 0.0 space that is controlled by player alliances (SOV space) and they can set their own rules on what is allowed and what not and will repel invaders).

In high-sec there is also the possibility to declare war on each other if you are in a player runned corporation / alliance. What this does is it makes people from the opposite corporation appear as war targets which means you can shoot them without CONCORD intervening

If you have questions, don't be affraid to EVEmail / convo me, will try to answer them.

yes you can play both of them, many do, but unfortunately the forum warriors get to read the posts of a great many wow players coming to eve and rather than trying to play eve they try to turn eve into wow, with posts like "add xp/leveling grind, remove permadeath, add absolute safety areas, add combat arenas" etc. After a while the forum warriors read enough of these and turn into evil and bitter trolls...

Eve and Wow are very different, and are meant to be, they are after all very different worlds that are being made. Coming into Eve with an open mind and trying to "get it" rather than trying to play "eve like wow" will probably keep you safe from the bitter evil trolls.

On a more personal note, comparing wow and eve is more like comparing "snap" with "40k before they simplified it"

I guess some of it is gamers' pride, some is trolling for trolling's sake. But much of it is due to the fact that this game is so different from the usual MMO fare, on such a fundamental level, that concepts from WoW and its clones just don't translate well at all.

Take the previously mentioned corporations, for instance. They can own space in the old fashioned sense - if you can hold it, it's yours. They can set up their own industrial centers, declare war on other corporations, and just generally do stuff that just isn't even possible for guilds in a typical MMO. Not to mention all the other differences, like skills, crafting, research, combat mechanics (try speed tanking with your Pally), ship destruction, etc.

Anyone who comes here from another MMO with blinders on is in for a shock...

I see. I don't want WoW on space. I want WoW on Azeroth, and EvE on New Eden.

BTW can you be killed without respawn? how can you prevent that? any kind of save, or "insurance" like in the X games?

In the tutorials it is said that no PVE character will kill your capsule but PVP can, so when your capsule is killed, and you with it, then you have to begin from a cold start?

No. you won't end up with 90'000 Skillpoint (is this the starting amound atm?).

You are a clone. As a clone you have an implant in your head, that copys your mind milliseconds befor you die and transferes it into a new clone that will wake up in the station you've set it befor.
"Just" your implants are gone.

Btw: as soon, as you get beyond 900'000 skillpoints, you have to upgarde your clone. If you don't do that, you will lose a few skillpoints if you get podded.

The way 'dying' works in this game is essentially same as with any MMO's out there with the exception that you lose all the stuff that you happen to be carrying with you (in the ship); even if you might be able to run without losing the pod (and thus not 'really' dying).
You can pick your stuff later as from the ship wreck but usually any PvP-wreck will be picked clean by the time you're able to salvage anything from it.

Anyway "respawn point" is any station that you happen to have you 'medical clone' stationed which in your case is the station in n00b system where you started the game.
You can change the medical station anytime you like provided that you have proper standings and all for the corp who owns the station.
When you lose your pod you die for real (and also leave a corpse behind to be sold in auction or to be kept as personal troféé ...) and you have to buy (update) a new medical clone which is free of charge until you have 900 000 SP.
The more you get SP the more it costs to keep your clone up to date.
If your clone is not up to date you lose SP's from highest rank skill that you have learned so far, hence keeping your clone updated is always a highest priority for any capsuleer.

You can insure you ship but it only covers your ship and not the fittings or vice versa and often not even that if you happen to have a taste T2 or faction ships.

Thanks, i'm playing the agent careers misions to see what really I want to do here, since the factories and that stuff will come later I think. First I need to know hot everything works.

Concerning skills I suppose learning the basic to level 2 or 3 is paramount (shield operation, guns, manueoverablity, frigate... that stuff) And after that you focus on what you really want to do (exploration, trade, production, killing stuff etc)

I will check the pages you said for the market. I have heard that the EVE market is so real that it has been studied by real brokers. I will do my homework, but first i must learn to crawl...

Thank you all. I have been here around for a single day, and I have find more help than in the regular fantasy MMO forum.

It really depends on what you prefer as basic, i have an alt steadily ticking towards 30mil SP all in science & industry, only guns he can use are those that were needed to pass the epic arch in arnon (destroyers et al.)

So if you plan on staying in high sec or even in null you don't need guns per se but if the push comes to shove it feels good to be able to do at least something about it.

You can make some serious money trading, but if you want to make the big bucks you need to prepared to invest a lot of time into it and you'll need starter capital. Gevlon started playing EvE recently, and he's already up over a billion ISK at a time most people are getting into Drakes and doing lv. 3s. Same with production - tech II and tech III are where the money is but it's all chance based and requires a lot of equipment and production chains.



When I started in 2007 it mattered a little bit since we started with more skillpoints back then (but didn't get the training boost, so it all comes out the same in the end). Now it doesn't matter at all aside from looks and where you start at.



1) Learn to use out-of-game tools. Evemon, Battleclinic, Eve Fitting Tool, Dotlan, EvE-Survival for starters.
2) Join a PC corp that you'll have fun with. Since you're a noob this may take a long time and you may go through a few corps, but playing EvE solo gets boring very quickly and life in low/nullsec is over 9000 times easier when your home systems are populated by friendly players in your timezone and you have access to good intel channels and you can scramble a fleet to deal with any hostiles that show up to play. Both of my breaks from this game where during periods when I was between corps.
3) Don't be afraid to try different things. Take advantage of the fact that you don't really much to lose at this point regardless of what you do.



You have to forget everything you ever learned about MMO pvp before you try it in EvE or you'll fail epically.

1) Since you drop everything when you die, pimp fit pvp ships are very, very rare. Cost effectiveness is the primary consideration - almost all pvp ships have a plain tech 2 / meta 4 fit, and you might see a faction mod if it's cheap relative to overall cost (my Megathrons generally use a c-type ANP) or if it greatly enhances the role of the ship (the Lachesis commonly fits a faction point that costs more than the rest of the fit put together, but with gang links and good skills it can point out over 100kms).

Keep in mind that the more expensive a pvp ship is, the more reluctant the pilot (generally) is to engage with it. I've seen far too many pilots in this game spend a billion+ ISK on some fancy ship, then never leave the station docking radius because they're too scared to lose it.

2) Aside from core fitting skills which affect all your ships, you can train up a new hull to a level equivalent with the majority of the vets in this game in, at most, a couple of months (caps excluded, but cap warfare is terrible and always has been, but we won't go there just yet). For all the whining you may have heard elsewhere on the internet, most people are on fairly even footing when it comes to character skills relevant to hull being flown.

3) Solo pvp doesn't really happen in this game. If you want to have fun in pvp it's really, really important that you get into a corp that does the kind of pvp you like. I think sov warfare is insufferably boring, but other people like to undock their shiny capitals and pew over strategic assets. I like roaming in shield BC and HAC gangs because they're cheap enough to shoot at anything that looks fun, but they'd probably think that's not worth wasting their time over. There's this alliance that camps a system all the logistics to Stain (where I live) runs through, all they do is kill people who can't figure out how to drop a cyno properly or that it's a bad idea to dock your carrier at a kickout station. I'd go insane if I had to sit in one system but that's what they like to do and I respect them for that. There's a guy in my corp who makes all of his ISK by finding and killing officer-fit mission ships in highsec with his 5 buddies in Tornados. Some people like to camp gates that get a lot of traffic. Not to mention RvB which is probably the best place for anyone interested in pvp get started at the moment. There's many, many possibilities for pvp, but for the most part your ability to work as a team and fly your own ship competently (player-skillwise, not character-skillwise) is far, far more important than the character sheet of any individual pilot. Furthermore, the most important person in the fleet is the FC (fleet commander), followed by the scouts and you won't find those skills on your character sheet either.