EVE New Citizens Q&A

Last autumn CCP Fallout introduced a weekly section where EVE Online veterans could share their own experiences on a certain topic with the new citizens of New Eden. We decided it is time to bring it back, so please welcome: the New Player Advice 2012! It is going to be published on a bi-weekly basis and cover a wide range of questions most commonly asked by the new players. Everyone is welcome to pitch in and contribute their own answers and advice, but please do so in a civil and friendly manner.

So you finally decided to give EVE Online a try. The game client is downloaded and installed; you have already found the EVElopedia and the ISK Guide; a friend gave you a few useful tips… and yet after logging into the game you feel completely overwhelmed.

How did you survive your first month in EVE Online? Did you have a plan, or did you just start doing things at random? Did you try to explore as many different areas of the game as possible, or selected a career and stuck to it? Which piece of information was the most helpful to you during your first days in the game?

This is really good advice.

I actually still use several of them.

I'm building up a bundle of guides to help new players get into EVE, I just started this a few days ago and I'll keep adding more (and editing) the whole time. Link is in my signature, if someone has questions or ideas feel free to contact me.

Stay out of Amamake and Rancer.





I was 8 days old the first time I got blown up, jumping into Amamake - totally clueless, in my totally cool Minmatar Hoarder.

And then as my shields went red and I caught a glimpse of the combat message, all I saw was , "Tillers Cruise Missile hits you for 100,000,000 damage."

And my first thought was, "Cruise missile, isn't that a bit of overkill?" - Not that I had a clue what a Cruise Missile was, nor what Low Sec truly meant, nor did I have a clue about EVE other than trying to go out and "Strike it rich and explore".

Alas, I didn't realize that Industrials are the worst exploration vessels (mind you this was 7 years ago).


Noobs should be armed with 3 things :

#1 - Murphy's Law - EVE Corollary : if it CAN go wrong, you will die in a horrible ball of fire before you even realize what happened. Guaranteed, 100%. If you think "It won't happen to me" this is 100 times more likely to happen to you. Meaning you have a 10,000% chance of dying horribly. Do the math, it's not in your favor. This applies to EVE Noobs and EVE Veterans. i.e. "My fleet of 100 hurricanes won't get hot dropped by 50 carriers". It will.


#2 - You will blow up. You can not survive that fact. You can survive that it was pretty damned cool and go get yourself another ship and try and do it better next time and make sure you leave no margin for error for rule #1 to kick in.


#3 - Rule #2 and Rule #1 don't apply if your **** drunk. (They do, but you're less likely to remember it happening.)

1) Join a corp. Doesn't matter that much which, but joining any corp will help you have more fun.
If you don't know which to join, join EVE University.

2) There is no such thing as a corp-joining deposit for GoonSwarm.

I started with a few friends, which quickly dwindled to only two of us playing. I forget exactly what my first few days were like but I remember I chose combat in a broad sense as the direction I wanted to take. Me and that friend joined a small startup corp a few days in with guys we were chatting with in local. They were a pirate corp, not that we did much pirating, but the corp part really helped me stick with it I think.

I don't remember a single most helpful piece of information (other than the corp itself, new players, get involved in one), but after recently helping a friend he thought the most useful thing was me helping him setup is UI. By helping I of course mean copying all of my settings to his machine so he had exactly the same UI and overview as me. Everyone's UI and overview are different, but if you can get someone that's been playing for a few years then most of that stuff is just the details, the broad picture is that it's years of getting it setup to be efficient. It really helps.

When I started I already had in mind what I wanted to do, which was Industry (puts on his carebear flaming tank). I found a nice corporation to join and they thought me a lot of the basic stuff around EVE *yet not everything*.

Once that corp got wardecced (how the hell would I know about wardecs and overview icons) I lost a dozen of ships cause war targets camped my station out of which I kept undocking. After I believe the 8th ship 1 of them opened convo and explained how war / PvP rules worked in EVE and even refunded my lost ships + some extra cash.

I felt a bit down by this war mechanics etc and decided to get back in NPC corps for now, started building up but became bored again of that corp. One day I was mining in high-sec when a (at that time) massive mining fleet rolled in with me in the belt. Did a check on them and actually joined them not long after that. Stayed there for a while before trying multiple things out, shortly after I was 1 year old, I took the leap of faith into null-sec and I love it.

My advice for the new guys on their first month:

1.) Take your time, you are new. So did the older toons in EVE, they went to everything you are going through at this stage.
2.) Ask questions when you don't know something. There is only 1 stupid question, that is the question you didn't ask.
3.) When flying around and lost, open assets to see where your stuff is. Right click the station that it's in and set destination. All you now have to do is follow the yellow bricked road (aka the yellow coloured stargates).
4.) Most important IMO: Have fun and do what you like to do, after all EVE is a game and you pay for it. So you should have fun playing it.

Also, finding a nice corp that you like and does the things you do is a nice addition to EVE, after all it's a MMO. But keep in mind research a corp before you join, see how they are, what they do and also how active they are at the times you play.

p.s. If a new player ever needs advice on questions or how to research a corp, just open a converstation when I'm on or shoot me an EVEmail.

EDIT:
I just remember I have some more advice:
5.) When in doubt what a module does, or what kind of ship you are buying, right click it and select show info. the show info (description, attributes, prerequirements) will show you all the information you need, from what the module does, what bonuses the ship gets and which skills it takes. Lately I told a 'older' pilot in my corp the same in a less nice way: "Click the ****ing show info button".

And then there are the 3 golden rules in EVE:
1.) Don't fly what you can't afford to loose. (any ship you fly can be shot down by others, even in high-sec. So if you fly around, your wallet should be able to buy at least another of that particular ship.)
2.) Don't trust anybody you don't know in real life. (EVE is a very harsh world, as soon as you fly out of the starting-system you will eventually find out. Scamming and lots of forms of grieving are allowed, so trust is something that has to be earned in EVE and not given to just anyone.)
3.) If it sounds to good to be true, it is. (Like real life, nothing comes without a price. If you see something that sounds like a really really good offer, look closely at it as it is likely a scam. On contracts / trades, always double (or tripple) check what you are buying (show info *yes here it is again* on the items) and for how much you are buying it. (1,000,000.00 looks very similar as 100,000,000.00 when you don't pay attention)

Kind regards, fly safe and hope you have a good time in EVE,

J'Poll

I remember going into lowsec for the first time in a Vexor and shooting a hauler on a gate. That was the day I learned of the existance of gate guns.

oh, and before you hit "post" or "preview" on the forums... do a ctrl+a ctrl+c... then when the forum eats you post you can just paste it back in and push the button again...

How do you survive your first month in EVE Online? My advice. Read the patch feedback and issues forums.

Examples:

EVE Online: Crucible 1.1 Feedback

EVE Online: Crucible 1.1 Issues

Now go fly your rookie ships into 0.0 space. So what your character loses a free ship and gets a new free clone. It's free.