EVE General Discussion

Everything I am reading explains how to get around gatecamps using a cloak. Well, noobs don't have a cloak. Are we expected to sit in highsec for months while our skills train and we save up for a cloaking ship?

What can we do to avoid camp deaths when trying to get to losec?

I saw a text article that seemed to claim we could get through a gate camp in a fast ship or a frigate and that we shouldn't die unless on autopilot. I sure couldn't. If that claim is true, is there a video somewhere that will hold a noob's hand through the process?

Not sure how you die unless you're careless. I frequently burn my cyno alts through lowsec and nulsec in a noobship. I only die if I got a bubble and can't get out.

Well, I die because I go "OH CRAP WHAT DO I DO?!" I'm a noob. I don't know what to do beyond watch the pretty lights make thier way through my shields and hull. I don't even know what the pretty lights are. Am I locked? Am I not locked? I dunno.

What do you do, what buttons do you press?
That's why I kind of need a video, that goes slow and explains the his button presses, in a noob ship like a frigate, but all I can find are videos of super fancy ships using cloak.

I'm there to mine the more lucrative minerals, to do the exploration bit and hack for more expensive loot, and sometimes to buy modules for my ship that are significantly cheaper (is it a trap?).

Trying to make a buck.

This is the best answer. I know because all my dealings are in low-sec or null sec.

Scout with a noob ship first. Guess what, it's FREE, and you have absolutely nothing to lose. So jump through the gate with a noob ship. If there is a gate camp, you die. No problem, now you know to look elsewhere. So get into another noob ship, and go to another system. BOOM - you die again. Rinse, repeat until you find an open gate to low-sec or null-sec or wherever you are trying to go.

Go off the beaten path for the best chance of avoiding a gate camp. Many camps are on gates that are known to have high traffic which is why it is worth camping.

For cloaking 3 you just need a day and can do the MWD trick which will be sufficent in low

This only works if OP is has Omega status. OP hasn't specified but I'm wondering if he's an Alpha player.

Anyway, to the OP, without a cloak your best defense is to gather information beforehand on your route. There are certain ships you can fit to have a ridiculously fast align time but those might require better skills than you have at the moment. You have some in-game and out-of-game tools available to you for this.

First off, as was mentioned already, you can scout your route with a corvette and an deadhead (no head implants) clone.

Second, you can use the in-game map filters to impose a heatmap onto the map of the in-game star cluster that illustrates several statistics. Of particular interest are the "ships destroyed in the last hour", "pods destroyed in the last hour", "number of pilots in space", and "jumps in the last hour". You could also use the out-of-game website tool DOTLAN for this.

You can go to the Zkillboard website and search the system you're about to enter. Zkillboard logs killmails and provides a timestamp, so you can click on recent kills in the system and see what the ships were killed by and whether it looks like a gatecamp.

You could also use wormholes to circumvent the high-traffic lowsec routes to nullsec, but wormholes carry their own dangers.

An Alpha char can't use cloaks at all, so that might be what they're referring to when they say they can't use one.


As crazy as it may sound, you'll probably end up making more from mining in highsec. The value of the best ore in Lowsec is only around 20-25% higher than the best ore in Highsec, but you're going to be in a much more dangerous position while mining in. The downtime from waiting and the need to transport it all will eat away any profits you have on it.

Check out Google for information related to ore and it's m3 value (all mining lasers work in volume, not raw quantities, so you want to focus on the best ISK for your m3 that you can get), then see where it's available. You can also give Mission Mining a try to have a more stable "private" belt than the usual atrophied "public" belts in highsec.

Short Answer: You are expected to die. This is Eve after all.

Long answer: Well, if you are in Nullsec, alone in a ship without a cloak and you run into a gatecamp, you may just be out of luck. This does not happen only to newbies, but older players as well. Especially if I want my ship to be able to do something quickly and effectively, then I may not be able to fit a cloak, or an MWD/MJD, depending on the task and the ship. So I may get caught in a camp every now and then - those things just happen.

Lowsec is slightly different: There are no bubbles in low, so unless you are pointed, you can just warp off. So the only thing you need to make sure of is, that you don't get pointed. The easiest way to achieve this would be to get a fast frigate and put Inertial Stabilizers/Nanofiber Internal Structures/Carbonfiber Engine Housings/Low Friction Nozzle Joints in until you get an align time of less than 2 seconds. With that, you are *almost* uncatchable. The same thing works in nullsec as well, but only with an Interceptor, as those are immune to bubbles.

In any case, you need a ship fit for the task, and it may then not be very good at doing something other than crashing gatecamps. You may be able to counteract this by refitting once you have arrived at your destination, either at a station or using a mobile depot.

Even with the metod mentioned above, there is a form of gatecamp, that will still get you, and that is the Discocamp. A Discocamp is when a ship (typically a battleship) is already waiting for you to land on the gate with a full rack of smartbombs in its high slots. No matter if you are a veteran or a newbie, whether you have a cloak, MWD, Interceptor or CovOps, you will literally die in a fire once you land on grid.

That's why the best ship to not only avoid gatecamps in Eve is still the friendship. Just bring a scout along to check what's ahead of you, and you won't ever run into a camp. :)