EVE New Citizens Q&A

I've been noobing it up for a while as an explorer, but found myself really interested in the market too. Problem is I don't know if the trade skills are worth training for me since I don't have combat skills sufficient to run missions. My understanding is that you need to run a ton of missions to get competitive standing with a trade hub corporation and their associated faction. According to google there are some other ways to boost faction standings like running trade goods in a hauler or buying datacores, but the former seems to be excruciatingly slow and the latter is too expensive for me right now.

So is this a bad combination of professions or is there a way I can work up my standings to an acceptable level without blowing months of training on weapon skills? I'm currently trying to max out my scanning and hacking skills as well as covert stuff which will take quite a while already and I would prefer to get those done first so I can do exploring outside of highsec without losing ships so often.

Thanks in advance!

You can easily trade with zero standings. Your margins will be a bit lower but it's only crucial when you are trading very thin-margin items like PLEX. I have made billions trading on an alt without any standing. I am considering grinding some at this point, but just to squeeze out some more effectiveness.

Trade skills are also really quick to train. You only need a few days worth and can trade quite effectively for a long time. So if you are worried about trading on your main it's quite easy to train up an alt. This comes with the added bonus that you can just leave them in the trade hub instead of having to fly back there every time you want to update your orders.

This is where you are going wrong right here. A one day old toon should not be trying to max out anything. Level 1 and level 2 skills train ridiculously fast, level 3 skills aren't even that bad. You should avoid level 5 skills for a while unless they unlock something.

This is a game and you are new so play around and try stuff out. You can trade with zero skills and zero standing. A couple of hours of skill queue time could open some more options to you however there is no need nor any reason for you to commit to long training queues on anything.

Get a general skill plan and train lots of low level skills. When you figure out what you enjoy doing train more skills associated with those tasks. If you like exploration for now that's great but regardless of if you decide to run missions or get involved in PvP you will almost certainly need some combat skills at some point.

And fyi reducing the frequency with which you loose ships while exploring outside high sec has more to do with situation awareness than it does your skill points. Learn how to play the game. Learn how to use the tools available to you. Don't worry so much about skill training. Sure skills open up options for you and can help you do the things that you like to do more efficiently but once you figure out what you enjoy doing then you, most likely, won't be coming back here to ask us what you should be training.

I am not trying to discourage you from asking advice about training. You most certainly will be doing that even after you've settled into a playstyle. I am just telling you to play around a bit and not worry so much as skill points don't hold you back from doing anything in this game. Like others have said the only kind of trading that is not available to you without very high skills and standing is extremely low margin, short duration, high frequency trading of high volume goods at Jita or Amarr. You can still make isk trading trit or PLEX at jita or Amarr you just aren't going to do it at low margins with a 5 minute turn around.

^^ This.

I make rather large margins on equipment that I ship from high-sec trade hubs to low-sec "conflict points."

It's (very) risky... but those margins add up FAST.

Fantastic feedback! Thanks everyone!

One more related question I just ran into: I see there are blueprints that come from some of the sites I found. According to the industry screen it looks like some of them cost more in materials to build than they sell for. Is it common for these blueprints to be essentially worthless?