EVE New Citizens Q&A

New explorer here. Competition for Relic and Data sites are high in HiSec, especially in prime time. Besides, with Astrometrics III (Rangefinding is in progress) you will find that you can't scan down a good margin of sites even with 2x Small Gravity Capacitors and bonused T1 frigate. So get Astrometrics III-IV and specialized skills first (Rangefinding and to lesser extent Pinpointing). Don't forget also installing Scan Rangefinding Array on your frig.

And if you see a site - don't get your hopes high immediately - it can be DED site (you might be able to do 1/10 with good drones and tanking skills), wormholes or hard to scan site.

You can try to do Burrows and Hideaways with with decent drones+ support skills in an exploration frigate, but I don't know yet how profitable they are (Drones IV are 11 days in my queue).

Another option - L1 mission running or Epic Arc missions. You can get up to 0.8-1 M Isk/hr here (Incursus on Epic Arc) and it is not that much skill dependent.

Fair point.

What would you recommend as the best way for a New player to make the most ISK without mining? or going into Low areas?

for example: Is hacking better for ISK over Planet management? or missions better than planet management?

I have done the tutorials and the hacking looked fun but have not tried much other stuff as it requires skills and I dont want to spend a week or 2 on skills that are useless :(

At ultra low sp hacking in high sec is good isk. Ship fir is a mil or less and the loot from a couple sites should pay for it. Station trading requires no ship and can also be lucrative at little sp, but the sp you do train won't have cross application. Career and SOE arc missions are good for getting a big boost of starter cash and encourage you to train combat skills. Joining a rookie friendly Corp will tend to get you showered in free stuff so making isk is less of an issue. FW farming is more of a process to learn, but it is similarly lucrative without sp. Salvaging wrecks for people is another way to make a quick buck. I could go on, but you get the picture. Basically anything besides solo pvp is going to be viable as a money making endeavor if you learn how to take advantage and work around any sp limitations you might face.

When in doubt kill somebody.

The answer to your literal question: Missions. You can do L3 missions with cruiser training (you may want to use a battlecruiser, but you only need to train the BC to 3 or so and the rest crosses over with cruisers), and L4s in a partially-trained Battleship which is also relatively low time-investment in skill terms (I did L4s with battleships 3 and tech 1 weapons for a long time, the only reason I have BS V is because I had the silly and incorrect idea that the Sin might be more fun than the other stealth boats).

The REAL answer to your question is to get over your fear of low-sec. The best-isk jobs in terms of risk/reward for a player under three months old are in low-sec rather than high or null:

1. Exploration in low-sec space and C1/C2 wormhole space. W-space being essentially like low-sec in that no one has sovereignty and CONCORD won't help you. Strictly speaking it's more like NPC null, but you see what I'm saying there.

2. Faction Warfare (every bit of time not spent killing or being killed is spent waiting for people to show up and doing complexes in the meantime... which generates a lot of LP, which becomes isk in short order).

You need to get out of the idea of "isk per ship loss", accept that all your ships are disposable (ESPECIALLY that rare and expensive one you spent a week saving up for. That one is EXTRA doomed), and start thinking in terms of isk per time or, ideally, entertainment value per time spent obtaining isk.

Essentially, low sec exploration minus the cost of a ship loss every day or two is more net monetary gain per hour played than mining or site running in high and never losing a single ship in your career. Even if you're not paying the slightest attention, in w-space you can lose a ship per _hour_ and still be running a higher profit than either.

EDIT: Station-trading is a good isk generator for a new _character_, but since you can lose isk as easily as gain, it's a terrible one for a new _player_. As a new player your income stream needs to be somewhat reliable while you try out various things, something with a risk of breaking your bank so you can't do anything for a week is a bad idea.

if you ever go exploring into a wormhole remember to bookmark every entrance and exit otherwise you will get lost very fast and have to scan you're way out again.

i always like the anathema for exploration

I'm new.

I found that I enjoy trying to find escalations. Specifically 3/10 from Serpentis or Sansha sites. You'll need to be able to fly a cruiser to do them on your own. (These are the only ones that escalate to 3/10 in my experience)

You can find these sites as Cosmic Signatures using core scanner probes or by running Serpentis/Sansha Hideaways and Refuge Anomalies, found in the Probe window.

I felt like missions were too much of a grind and you get to see some of the universe wandering around. The money is a bit of hit or miss, the site can drop faction modules or nothing at all so you really can't measure your game time in ISK per hour.

Lots of people are saying try everything and I agree.

Sorry if I keep rambling but I just came up with another analogous hypothetical situation.

Let's say that you were in a brothel and there were dozens of prostitutes there and you had your run of the place when ever you wanted without limit. You could leave whenever you wanted to and stay as long as you wanted to, come back as frequently as you like.

In the above situation would you:

A) Find a forum of other guys that had been to this place and try and find out which prostitute was the best so that you did not have to waste your time on all of the ones that were < the best?

B) Try out as many of them as you could until you passed out from exhaustion and then take a nap and eat a sandwich then rinse and repeat?

C) Pick one and hope for the best so that you could get over with and done and get home as quickly as possible so as not to miss your favorite TV show?

The most helpful answer to your question is to try everything as previously stated. If you're intent on exploration I found the below site to help a lot:


http://www.toptiertactics.com/21341/eve-online-exploration-guide-billions-and-billions-of-isk/#axzz3e8qrIsb9


The income suggested is maybe out-of-date... Actually I'm not sure really as I don't do much exploration any more since I feel that the risk isn't worth the reward however it's now a nice to have when I feel like a change of scenery.

In Eve combat is inevitable. I always recommend getting into L3 and L4 missions to learn the basics of combat, ship fitting and SP required.

RISK = ISK

If you're not risking anything you won't gain anything.

Though the level of risk hacking data/relic in a T1 exploration frigate is very very skewed and if you're smart you will make several hundred times what your ship might be worth.