EVE New Citizens Q&A

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.