EVE General Discussion

Just from me (a moderately inexperienced player who has made the same mistakes over and over), to all the up and coming newbies of Eve Online - Especially for when the clone states kick in.

1. DO NOT apply with any player run corporation for a while. No matter how well intentioned they are or how willing they are to teach you. You will find yourself war dec'd by HiSec griefers like Marmite Collective and so on and you will be unable to do much in the game except hide away all the time.
2. DO NOT apply with a nullsec corp for a while either. Not only for the same reason above, but if you have low skill/training, low ISK and so on you're not going to find this game fun. You will feel useless and trapped and without a market in nullsec and will be at the mercy of higher ranking members. Basically, you're cannon fodder. Again, no offense to them and no matter how well intentioned they are.
3. Consider sticking with an NPC corp until you have at least 50 - 100 mil ISK and can fly a cruiser at 4 or 5 mastery [EDIT: Or maybe not as much but when you're comfortable] before considering any of the above. That means doing missions, exploring, mining (If it must be done), industry etc... and getting well acquainted with the game. Do not rush to nullsec or rush into PvP. NPC corps cannot be war dec'd so this reduces griefing chances in HiSec to all but those who want to suicide gank you.
4. If you do want PvP experience early on, consider Faction Warfare instead. Use it as a learning path also.
5. Learn how to evade gate camps and traps as quickly as possible. Lots of YouTube, google links etc... to research. Use a shuttle where necessary and don't put your good ships at risk unnecessarily if you need to fetch a small market item a few jumps away.
6. As the old saying goes, fly what you are prepared to lose. In fact, consider whatever you are undocking as lost already. So check your ISK budget before undocking. It is the same as playing an FPS - you will die frequently and you will respawn again, except in Eve you lose a lot more.
7. Finally don't frustrate other players by asking questions that are covered by tutorials and career agents already. Besides - you will want to do the career agents for all the free ships and goodies you get via them anyway.

The rest will come naturally as you learn the game (i.e. Ship fitting, The Market, Working with the overview etc...). And you can still learn a lot through NPC corps, forums, YouTube and trial/error without relying on some muppet in a player corp to train you :P

If you don't follow my advice, well then either you're one in a thousand or you will quit the game soon after. Do not listen to the more experienced players [EDIT: If there's a chance they are not well intentioned - but otherwise everyone else here thinks this is generally bad advice so scratch that], they may still tell you to join X corp as soon as possible coz they has cookies and that this is all BS :) But you will learn ;) And they went through all this when the rules/environment was a little different so what do they know :P

Cheers.

EDIT: Many have disagreed here with valid reasons so read through and decide. This is just from one newbie having gone through the process a few times to others. Some players like to dive into the deep end immediately so if that's you then go for it. Just consider changing your situation if you no longer find it enjoyable or have joined up with the wrong corp before you decide to quit Eve. If you do happen to find a great corp early on or join up with personal friends then go with it. And if you do find a well intentioned seasoned vet then by all means take his/her advice.

You've forgotten what I'm going through. So null and void :P

Pay attention ladies and gents :)

bad advice is bad, don't listen to this numnuts.

Edit: +1 for the edit though, initial op was stupid but this one responded well to being shouted at.

The PVP aspect of this game should be taken seriously from the word 'go', because PVP is the central theme to this game. Marketing is PVP, mining is PVP; everything is a competition, or a driver for competition. But even if all you're doing is bumming about running missions, if you're not prepared for someone to jump into your mission and mess with you, and you don't know what to do about it because you chose to ignore everyone and just go off and learn for yourself, then guess what? You get to learn the hard way. That's what you've chosen for yourself, and as a result, you have no one but yourself to blame for your own failure to mitigate the risks by garnering that much-needed understanding of PVP.

Even if you never click F1 in anger against another player, understanding PVP is vital for any measure of success in this game, because someone is sure as hell gonna click F1 on you one day, be it sooner or later.

Do you address this "numnuts" as a newbie who needs correction and guidance? Or do you simply treat all newbies the same and somehow feel your response is adequate?

I will humbly allow you to ponder that little philosophy before addressing said numnuts again :)

when i was a noob the best thing i done was get out of highsec at 1mil sp and moved to lowsec

I've run with quite a few corps with various roles from HiSec to Nullsec. This isn't my only account. I just rejoined Eve recently and via Steam and am relearning again. Maybe I've just been horrendously unlucky? :( I am really trying though.

But how does one get around all the griefer corps in HiSec when you're just starting out? They basically stop you from doing anything. There is plenty of PvP to be had without them actively hunting you when you have close to zero ISK. And with instalock they pop you in a second at a gate camp. There's really no PvP learning to be had when you're popped so quickly in your measly frig/dest with a poor fit :(

I say a player char should at least be a month or two old before experiencing that else they might quit. Or have a hard shell and bare with it (If they have the patience).

romi, top station

Actually, there is lots to learn when you're killed in a measly fit frigate or destroyer. There's always lots to learn when you lose, regardless of the loss. In fact, you learn a lot more from losing ships than you do from killing them, because let's face it, if you're killing ****, you're probably set.

What are these griefer corps you're talking about?

Are you talking about the ones that invite people to corp and kill them? Simple, don't join corps with friendly fire enabled. Really not a problem anymore on that front. That being said, I've trained a lot of very capable PVP'ers, one of my proudest being Benji Dan. Feel free to peruse his KB. I trained him by fighting him, and making him go find fights in lowsec, or getting him involved in wardecs, giving him advice with every loss to begin with, and as time went by, instead of giving direct advice, I began asking what it was he learned. Sure, I killed him myself a few times too. But one day, he took his 4-6 month old toon out to lowsec in a ****-fit active armour blaster thorax, and killed a 2008 veteran in a t2 fit rupture. It shouldn't have been possible, but Benji used what he'd learned, and won anyway. It was close, like, about 8% structure close, but he won.

Because he learned fast, and learned by losing. In-corp sparring, even to total shiploss, should be encouraged for new people. It's not for KB padding, trust me. I don't stop trying to kill my newbies until they demonstrate they're able to kill me, and trust me, I'm on Benji's KB too.

So I'm going to have to ask you to define what a griefer corp is exactly, please, because I've yet to encounter such a thing.