EVE New Citizens Q&A

First tip I really have, and this is specially for the mission runners in EVE. Buy a blueprint of the ammo you use and produce your own. You can easily get the minerals from reprocessing the loot you gather during your missions. This may seem that you are loosing money as you could have sold that loot, but on the other hand it means you don't spent money on buying ammo.

And in general:

I always look at multiple regions for a price when I'm out and thinking of buying stuff (specially if it is very expensive).

What I use is 2 alts who sit in either Jita and Amarr and this website: http://eve-central.com/

On that website you can look at buy and sell orders for everything that is sold on the market, so it's a nice idea too see where people sell it at the lowest price.

Also take into consideration shipment times (time is money, even in EVE) as time spent flying to and from the place you buy stuff is time lost making money. So that 1mil you save on buying a ship for 80mil instead of 81mil but is 15 jumps away might look a good deal but in the end it isn't, you could have made more then 1mil in the time it took you to go and pick up the ship.

Another way to avoid scams is always take a look at the market, the regional avg. price isn't accurate as it is an average of all buy and sell orders in the region. So a really high sell order or a 0.01 ISK buy order can alter the regional avg. quite a bit.
Also take a look at the avg. daily price history (both 5 and 30 day), this will give you an indication if the price for items is dropping or rising. If it's dropping it might be good to wait a couple of days if possible to buy it, if it's rising and you want to sell something, wait a couple of days before selling so you might get more profit from it (or set up a long time sell order on a price you expect to sell in a couple of days).

Also ALWAYS make your buy and sell orders the longest time possible, price you pay to set up a buy/sell order is the same even if it's a 1 day order or a 2 week order. So always stick with the longest as it can be fulfilled in a day, but it's really a waste of money if in the 2 weeks you have to set up a buy order 5 times and each time you have to pay for the order fees.

Last thing, don't buy ships you can't use. Even if you want to fly a carrier in a while, don't buy it in advance. You might have to skip the carrier skills plan due to a lot of possible reasons or prices of the carrier might drop a lot after you bought it. Either way you lost money from buying a ship you can't use yet. Same counts for all stuff you can't use, skillbooks are only of use if you can implant them, why waste money on that titan skillbook if you can't use it for months, better use that money to do actual stuff and make more. You can always buy the skillbook once you can implant it.

J'Poll

For people who just buy stuff, sell loot, or do a very minor amount of trading:

- learn how the market screen works.
You can sort your results according to price and number of jumps ( most often used).
Sort for lowest price in Sellers, highest price in Buyers.
You can filter your results, so you can automatically reject orders from lowsec/nullsec. This may save you a lot of grief.
Turn the checkbox "show only available" on or off , depending on what you are looking for, it saves clutter in your tree.
Use the search function if you know what you are looking for. Partial matches also work.

- Never, Ever Quick-sell. (right-click on item, sell this item).
Especially in the more outwards lying regions buy orders reflect the lazyness of players, so you will get a lot less than if you are willing to fly to any trade hub.
Especially when you are starting out, every ISK is important, don't rob your own wallet by being lazy.

- Learn to read the graph for items in the market screen.
The 3 month/one year views give you an idea how a certain item is doing over a period of time. Is it rising? Is it falling? should you sit on your stash for a bit, or do you want to sell now because the price is tanking, and you can use the ISK?
You do not have to have a degree in economics to "read" the market, just some common sense and the willingness to hold on to stuff you have for a bit.

- Use sell orders to "negotiate" a price you like.
Quite often, there is a rather pronounced difference between what buyers offer, and sellers are trying to get. If you have a decent amount of an item it may be worthwile to set up a sell order in between those prices. If you do it right you will get a better price than the buyers offer, while avoiding the 0.01 ISK game if you are trying to get top dollar for your stuff.
Pay attention to the regional average when you set your price.

- Always remember the Effort/Gain balance.
Spending an hour just to gain a million more is wasting your time. Try to get a feel for what is reasonable, and what is not.
Waiting a week to get your buy orders filled, or for your stuff to sell while you are sitting still is a waste.

- Never EVER fly a lot of valuable stuff into/out of a trade hub in an untanked industrial. You will get ganked if you do.
If you must use an industrial, at least passive tank it. If you fly low volume stuff like salvage, use a passive tanked cruiser/BC.
Ganking is a matter of calculating the loss of the ganking ship(s) v/s the possible value of the cargo that survives being blown up. Making sure you are not a sitting duck, and ensuring the cost of blowing you up is more than the casual ganker is willing to pay is a good deterrent. It does not stop a dedicated ganker, but nothing is ever sure in EVE.

- learn how Excel works.
really. do.

- treat market tools with a serious amount of caution. Do your own research.
They are handy things to use to get an idea of what may be profitable, but unless the data is less that 2-4 hours old, it is probably outdated/incorrect.
Also some orders are plain traps for the unwary.

- Get your trade skills up.
Less taxes is good, m'kay?

- if it sounds too good to be true, it is.
Trade hub local is not worth opening, set blink off and ignore.
Check the sale volume on an item. If it is low, and seems to offer huge profits/has a minimum sale amount, it's a trap.
Read contracts, check item type offered and the actual price.
If someone offers a station trade, decline it. It's a nice way of avoiding sales tax, it's also one of the more commonly used scams to fleece the unwary. only station trade with people you know and trust.

Scamming is legal in EVE, so don't bother the GM's if you do get burnt, they have enough to do as it is.
Scams are a part of market-pvp, get used to it.

As a general rule of thumb, buy things using buy orders, sell things using sell orders. Your patience allows you to profit from everyone else's impatience.

Remember to set minimum quantity for long-range buy orders, unless you're willing to jump a few systems to get 1 unit of whatever you're buying.

Set your market up like this

Prevents you from buying duplicate skills you already have (and makes the skills sections slightly easier to manage) and prevents you from buying stuff in low sec and null sec

Also, ALWAYS look at the details of an item to see the buy and sell orders, never use the buy button on the market description page...