EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm reading that people are struggling for money when they first start out and considering buying a couple of plexes, converting to Isk in order to fund their purchases.

Well I've been in this game 9 days and have a wallet balance of 120M now, more than enough to fund my needs for the next couple of months. More to the point I've had a blast doing it.

First off I read up a hell of a lot, everything I could get my hands on, especially fitting guides and stats on various modules and ships. This games is complicated, everyone knows that, so just throwing some crap on your ship, undocking and hoping all the knowledge you need is just going to find you, isn't going to cut it. Even then I still made a load of mistakes, but the key is to take little steps so that you can recover from them.

The first thing I did was do the tutorials, all 5 career agents, every mission. That left me with a load of ships and about 4M Isk. I subscribed at that point and plugged in the Cerebral Accelerator, bought the Gallante Industrial Ship skill and moved all my stuff to Dodixie. There I sold loads of stuff that I collected. I wasn't interested in mining but had been given two Ventures, both sold. So what if I change my mind later? All I've done is convert the ships into Isk and they will convert back to ships later if I need to. I sold the two Iteron I's, an Imicus and a load of other stuff at the same time and then bought a better hauler (Iteron IV).

That's when I discovered the first trick to make Isk, Buy and Sell orders. Sell your stuff with Sell orders, buy it with Buy Orders. Yes you have to wait a bit, so plan ahead, you know what ships you are going to be using for the next week or so, put up a buy order for a spare in advance and if you don't need it, it will always sell again. As for selling, you don't have to sit there and play the isk game, just leave it, adjust the price a couple of times during your play time and eventually most of it goes.

Secondly, don't bling out your ship at this stage. Obviously, we can't fit T2 yet, but you don't have to fit Meta 4. Meta 3 is like a quarter of the price for only a fraction reduced bonus. Sure that might make a difference in one fight in twenty, but at this stage you are interested in the long term financial viability, not kill stats. Losing 20 x 1M Isk ships as opposed to 19 x 4M Isk ships, is considerably more sustainable.

So what next. I did the Sisters of Eve Epic Arc over 3 nights, that netted me around 20M Isk. I then decided to try out PvP in low sec and I would supplement that by ratting in the belts while looking for player targets. The first night I had a blast. I killed an Incursus then lost an Atron. The Atron loss was valued at just over 1M, but a third of that was loot from the Incursus. Meanwhile I'd killed some rats and got half a million back.

I fitted up another Atron the next night, back at Dodixie and got ready to set out again. However, someone had advised me that I should try Faction Warfare. Go to the plexes, if I was interested in PvP in low sec. So I did just that. Joined the Gallente Militia and set off back to Old Man Star.

I had an absolute blast. I went through several systems and was hunted by several guys. I ran away from most of them cause they were in ships with fancy names like Caldari Navy Hookbill or Republic Fleet Firetail which I knew were super frigates. Eventually though a player in a regular T1 Punisher came into my plex. We had a great fight, left me shaking with excitment, but it ended with me exploding and I pod ran back to the nearest high sec system, Villore. I docked at the Federation Defense Union station to get a noobship. At that point I realised that I'd earned 52500 LP for that corporation, cause I'd shut down about 4 small and novice plexes while I'd been bouncing around, some of which had been partially run down when I first entered.

I couldn't believe what I could buy at first. After some research I bought a Vexor Navy Issue BPC for 45000LP and 5M Isk. Dropped from FW and ran it over to Jita. It took 24 hours, but it sold for 89.7M \o/

I had planned to do the same thing the next night, I fitted up an Incursus this time and headed back to Villore. Docked up and tried to join the Militia again. Got a message saying I couldn't rejoin for 24 hours. So decided to just go back to plan A. Rat and PvP in the belts of Old Man Star.

Went through them all and made about half a million Isk then finally on the bottom belt found one of the special NPC ships, a Clone Soldier Recruiter or something. A cruiser. He was incredibly hard. It took around 2000 rounds of Antimatter and I had to reload 4 or 5 times, which took about 15 minutes too. People were entering and leaving system but nobody came into my belt. Eventually he popped, 1.5M Isk bounty and the tag.

Back at Dodixie I see a buy order for 8M for the tag, but I stick to my discovery and put it on a sell order. Just as I was about to log it sold for 13M.

I don't understand why people say they are struggling Isk wise. Maybe I've been lucky. However, I could have farmed the crap out of FW and be a lot richer than I am now, yet all I did was play around and have fun with it. I think people are shooting too high at the start. 2 Plexes is like a Billion Isk, what the hell do you need to buy for that amount, when you're a few weeks old? Take your time, enjoy the journey and just be sensible with the cash.

It's simple because people are often lazy and entitled. You thought things through (wasn't that hard now was it?), played the actual game, and got rewarded for it. You did one thing very right: you didn't make buying PLEX with ISK to sustain a subscription a GOAL. Instead, you chose 'have fun' as a goal. People struggling to make ISK often see buying PLEX with ISK as the prime way of sustaining their suscription. Some people feel as if they should be able to play for free all the time.

They're struggling mostly because they were directed to high sec mining, exploration and missions by the tutorial. You're not lucky you're just above the curve and took risks. At 9 days you have better advice for new guys than some vets I've met.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm at 4 days in, and progressing more slowly, but not having any isk issues. Question - do you lose your Cerebral Accelerator booster if you get podded before it expires?

Fortunately I've not been podded yet. However, the Cerebral Accelerator I understand is a 'Booster' not an Implant. I'm sure I read on one of these forums that a 'Booster' survives podding.

But give me a few days and I'll know for sure lol.

Let us know if it explodes with you or not, my characters all pre-date the Cerebral Accelerator so it's my chance to learn something from a newbie

You will do well in this game.

That's the 'S' key by default to warp out, correct?

Nice story. I'll definitely agree with you about the buy/sell orders thing, but it's mostly a matter of valuing your time. If it takes me 2 hours before somebody completes my buy offer for 100k isk less, it isn't worth it.

I'm also a fairly new player, a bit over 1 month into the game. For the first week or so I just did the tutorials and the Sister's Epic Arc, which after skillbook and ship expenses meant I had around 12M isk. After that though, I really didn't know what to do. Eve is known for being a sandbox, but the disadvantage is that noobs can easily lose a sense of direction. I tried mining but it was so boring I fell asleep and ended up getting killed by a belt rat (lol). I then tried mission running but shooting NPCs was only slightly more exciting than shooting rocks, and the pay was pitiful for level 1 missions. I then tried out exploration, but it was a frustrating experience might be different with Odyssey now, haven't really gotten around to trying it yet). With my low probing skills it took ages to scan out anything, and even then half of the signatures I found were wormholes. Even there, I couldn't do many of the combat sites in a frigate, and I wasn't going to spend almost everything I had on a cruiser I could barely fly. I was still lucky enough to get a faction spawn once which sold for 7-8 million, bringing my total to around around 25M after selling the other loot and mission rewards.

Around that time, because I was traveling around a lot, I noticed that many items sold for different prices in different regions. With some research as well as help from Eve-Central, I came up with a list of stuff I could haul around and sell for profit. I reserved 20M isk for trading and after my first run I had 30M - 50% profit! I kept doing this and my money kept growing and growing, diversifying my list of merchandise and my area of operations as my wealth grew. Some may consider hauling stuff around to be boring, but I found it enjoyable - knowing I was making money, while not having to put too much effort into it (aside from the initial research) since trading generally requires little attention. After I had enough capital, I was able to get into speculation - the price changes due to the Odyssey patch netted me at least 200-250 million isk.

I made so much isk that by the end of my trial, I was able to afford to purchase a PLEX, with some isk left over to continue trading (~250-300M in isk and assets). Now, 5 days after I upgraded my account, I have 254M in liquid isk, 72M tied up in buy offers, ~400M-410M in assets/sell offers as well as 100M that I lent to a RL acquaintance so he could start up his WH operations, for a total of 836M net worth. That means that by the end of this month I'll probably be able to buy another PLEX to keep my subscription going with more than enough left over to do anything I want to.

I think the biggest flaw with the tutorials is how they are laid out in a structured, mission-like format (not to mention the abnormally large amount of emphasis on mining IMO) when the reality of EvE is so far from this. Even the normal missions have little structure and are often repetitive. I wouldn't be surprised if many newbies turn to mining and/or mission running as a natural continuation where the tutorial left them off, only to discover there's no handholding at all. The EVE Sisters arc remedies this somewhat, but it still is a series of structured missions - which makes the new player believe that missions play a big part in EVE (which is perfectly understandable since this is the case of many other MMOs) when they don't. Most of the content - and consequently success - comes from interacting with players. I'm not a game designer by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if the current tutorial is one of the biggest reasons for a lower player retention rate.

About the Cerebral Accelerator, haven't had one myself as they were introduced after I started but acording to the evelopedia

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Cerebral_Accelerator

they are destroyed on clone-jump but not if you get podded. It's at the bottom of the linked page in a note.