EVE New Citizens Q&A

Exactly, PLEX are for bad players. You can explodify somebodies ship, sell the stuff that drops and then buy your game time from the very same bad player. Fairly unlikely to happen, but very well possible.

Plex can speed things up. With the 450ish million ISK, you can buy a few different battleships to try out different ways of doing level 4's, and fit them up with decent modules and rigs. Trying to rake in that much money in level 2's and 3's would be painful and take a rather long time.

It all depends on how valuable your time is. Working one hour of overtime to pay for the plex saved me maybe 40 hours of in-game grinding with level 2's and 3's, that's a good value in my book and it made the game more fun rather than seeming like a second job.

So from what I'm generally seeing, it looks like it might be best to leave the PLEX be, unless I start having issues earning money legitimately.

Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely try getting good at what I do :)

The advice you are being given about "developing your profession" is probably meant with good intentions, but as the saying goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

If you follow the Making ISK guide, you'll see that the first option listed is trading PLEX. This is done for a very good reason: every other method involves setting yourself up as an industrialist, mission runner or explorer. These professions take time and ISK to develop. You don't make 20M ISK/hr running missions in a Caracal. It takes money to make money, as the saying goes.

The training books for Planetary Interaction cost around 9M ISK, setting up a planetary infrastructure costs around 6M ISK, then there's more ISK for export fees and so forth. So before you even start in PI, you're going to need around 15M ISK. Obtaining researched BPOs costs ISK. Obtaining BPCs costs ISK. So getting started in manufacturing is going to cost ISK. Every activity in EVE which makes money, costs money. Starting off with a lot of money means you can pick and choose which activities to be involved in: you can head straight for the most profitable activity rather than going through the pain of bootstrapping your industry.

I recommend you trade 1 PLEX for a bucket load of ISK. You will not need to worry about where to get the money for your skills, or the ships you will inevitably lose while learning the hard lessons that new EVE players need to learn. Most importantly, by starting with that large infusion of ISK you can experiment with PVP without having to grind for three hours to fund five minutes of pew-pew.

Once you have traded that PLEX for ISK you can focus on the aspects of the game that interest you, and you can avoid turning yourself into an ISK farmer. As your skills develop, you'll find it easier to make ISK. Experiment with the extensive list of things to do in EVE Online. You'll find at least one ISK-making option that interests you (even if that is suicide ganking mission boats to loot their 500M ISK modules).

Starting the game with 400-500M ISK under your belt will basically "set you up for life". If you just station trade and manage to make 1% per day, you're going to pull in 5M ISK/day. As opposed to the other guy starting the game with 5M ISK from tutorial mission. Who's in the better position financially? Who can afford more PVP?

I say go for it, cash in one PLEX.

If you start struggling with ISK, I would say go and buy PLEX. Myself I have tried EVE probably 3 or 4 times before my current attempt. During previous attempts I always struggled with ISK and it seemed like a second work to gather ISK to get a new ship or a module.

I started a new account about a week or two ago and this time I was really lucky. I found an exploration site, which for a week old toon made me filthy rich. The amount of ISK available for me has made me enjoy the game much more and I have been playing now non-stop, as I dont have to worry about _earning_ money like in real life. I can finally just enjoy EVE.

Just my humble opinion and experience of EVE since 2009 (and never getting past 1mil SP).

Make sure you do all the tutorials. I believe there are 3 sets of tutorial agents for each faction. Do as many as you want and you will come out with ships, isk, and some skill books.

Many of which you can sell.

Train the basic skills the tutorials require and then start on cybernetics.
Train cybernetics to the level of implant you want to use.
Attribute implants go up to +5, that are available on the market. They're expensive.
This is why you might want to buy plex on the EvE website and sell it in game.

Also some of the skill books are pretty expensive.

Injecting +5 implants might be a bad thing though. Many people fall into a rut with those implants. You become afraid to undock and do things that may result in you getting podded and losing those implants.

So, ymmv on how useful that plex will be.

Regards.

I took the buddy invite and am glad I got the large isk to sit on as a noob. Right now I'm not interested in the isk rat rac nor losing this nest egg on a big ship or fitting. My biggest purchases have been skill books.

This. Nothing will destroy your eve experience quicker than rendering all your attainable goals meaningless.

Depends on what you wanna do.

If you are going into PVP, then PLEX are a way into losing more ships than you need to because you lack proper motivation to manage your resources. I think that losing ships and the resulting hurt to your wallet is a big part of 'the kick' that comes with PVP. Also, remember that bigger isn't better ;)

If you are lokking to get into Trading or Manufacturing, then a little money to kickstart your business might be a good idea. When i started manufacturing one and a half year ago, i sold two PLEX for a nice bit of starting money. I haven't bought a PLEX since, not for ISK and not for the account. With the extra ISK injection from the two PLEXes i was able to get my business to a level where it could pay for my account. And then some.


Whatever you do, once you find yourself buying PLEX for ISK on a regular base, you are doing something wrong.