Attempting to write a guide for starting, and intermediate players is a mountainous task. To cover everything this game has to offer and to do it right is a serious challenge due to the complexity and number of various gameplay mechanics and viable playstyles.
In this guide we will teach you not only how to start out your space odyssey, how to prosper, thrive on weaker space rangers, and how to make the most use out of your time spent in EVE, but also to keep you in the game. Most players get easily overwhelmed by the possibilities and lack of knowledge that they quit the game just when it's about to get fun.
Hopefully, with our guide, you will stay in the game for much longer
What Can You Accomplish in Eve Online
“Jesus, where do I begin?” This question is what brings so many people into the game, and the main thing that overwhelms them. People start playing EVE to accomplish many things that they’ve heard about, they want to become powerful, to be a part of a large corporation, to become a space pirate, to become a respected and wealthy trader. Only to be zerged out of existence as soon as they get out of secure areas of the game.The possibilities are almost endless. To bring you a little closer and help you understand the situation you’ve gotten yourself into, look at this chart:
https://discourse-cdn-sjc1.com/eveonline/uploads/default/original/3X/3/f/3f2be20bec6b128e4c061db73af7b0a9f1f4f09f.jpg
After you’ve looked at it, have in mind that this is not everything you can do in this game. This chart just presents you what can you do. And how you can do it - it’s another story as there are countless ways of doing certain things.
What can you accomplish? Everything and nothing. It depends on your luck, on people you meet, your tactics and strategy, and most importantly - knowledge. You can have literally everything in this game, and lose it just like that, in a blink of an eye. You’ve been warned.
Playable Races and Their Attributes
There are four playable races as seen above: Caldari, Gallente, Minmatar, and Amarr. Each has three subgroups called bloodlines, that alter the looks of a character. Every empire has its strong and weak sides, and we will list them in a handy race guide below.
Caldari
A state built on corporate capitalism, the Caldari State is run by a few mega-corporations which divide the state between them, controlling and ruling every aspect of society.
The most popular Race in the entire game. Great for PvE due to the tankiness of their ships. They focus heavily on defence, shield strength, and support. A bit lacking in solo PvP. Caldari race excels at using various missile types, on the battlefield you can usually find them at the outskirts, behind their allies, providing missile barrages from afar. Besides missiles, they have access to hybrid turrets, but they are not as effective as other gun types but can pull out the longest optimal ranges in the game.
Caldari ships are weak to EM damage since their defenses rely on shields. A large amount of cargo space is taken up by your missiles and ammunition. Damage that Caldari ships dish out is not instant, as there’s a certain flight time that increases with distance. Since Caldari ships work best as a long-range support - PvP will require lots of skill in solo play.Gallente
Self-righteous liberals, defenders of the free world. Gallenteans remain strong believers in free will and human rights.
If you believe in liberal values, then this race is for you. Besides their lore characteristics, Gallente are excellent fighters, due to expert usage of Electronic Warfare and drones. Nosferatu your enemies out of existence, for the freedom of course. Same as Caldari, they use hybrid turrets but their ships are more proficient at using them. Ships like Myrmidon or Dominix are one of the best ships in EVE Online, as they can dish out massive amounts of damage.
Unfortunately, Gallante depend heavily on drone usage for damage which has its drawbacks. Gallente ships are for slower and more strategic gameplay. Despite having the slowest vessels in New Eden, they counter that with superior firepower and defenses.
Minmatar
Very tough and independent people. For the Minmatar, the most important thing in life is to be able to take care of yourself on your own, even though kin and family play a huge role in their tribe-like society.
The most versatile but difficult to operate. Their versatility has its ups and downs, they require lots of skill points to operate to their most potential, but this way they gain access to various damage types that can be changed to best suit the situation you are in. Minmatar ships are the true demons of speed. Even larger Minmatar ships can maintain a large velocity during orbiting, that they seem impossible to hit.
All Minmatar ships while versatile, lack specialization, and require huge skill point investment. Skills that have to be trained as Minmatar are split into five important skill trees, so before a single Minmatar can stand on its own out there in space - he will spend a lot of time waiting in the docks.
Minmatar ships such as Hurricane, Wolf or Stilleto remain as pirate-favorites due to their low cost, superior agility and reliable, adjustable, firepower. Utilizing ballistic cannons (for long range) and autocannons for more “personal” encounters, they can deal any kind of damage type.Amarr
Amarr is the race of religious, ritualistic, authoritarian imperial state, governed by The Amarr Empress, whose decisions are absolute, and five royal families, that advise her in his duty.
Amarr believe themselves to be pure and superior to other races. And they manifest that by practicing slaveholding. Their ships use Beam or Pulse Lasers, while they don’t require large cargo space, as Lasers use special crystals to operate - they drain your ship’s capacitor to shoot. So you will have to pay a huge amount of attention to your ship’s battery and utilize active modules wisely. If you are being attacked by a ship using Nosferatu, or energy neutralizer, your weapons will cease to operate, until your capacitor recharges.
Also their ships are quite beautiful, like they’re made of pure gold. So there’s that.
Get to Know Your UI
Eve Online is truly a very intimidating game. Everything seems complicated, extremely detailed, and the number of information will most likely scare new players like you away. We will cover some of the most important aspects of UI to make it a bit more clear.Ship Controller and View settings
Holds and Bays - allows you to check your inventory, and available cargo space.
Tactical Camera - Allows you to see everything in much more detail on a larger scale. Especially useful when you are on the battlefield as it lets you see more on a useful grid.
Tactical Overlay - Enhances your view providing you with a handy grid. It lets you calculate faster, to measure the distance between you and other objects.
Orbit Camera - Allows you to stick your camera to your ship or an object of your choosing, to see it from a third-person perspective
Scanners - used for finding objects, ships, and hidden sites out in the space. Every ship can use it, to search for anything that can’t be found on the Overview screen
First Person Camera - First person view from your ship’s cockpit
Autopilot - after you set your waypoints, your ship will automatically approach the target
Safety Measures - this one deserves a separate section, as you have to know how it works, basically prevents you from committing a crime.
Shield, Armor, Structure - these are you “Health Points”
Capacitor - energy your ship uses for everything. Without capacitor power you will be useless. It’s important to have just enough for your travels and everything that you find out there (or if something finds you).
Current Speed, stop, fast - your current speed. “-” on the left forces your ship to halt, and “+” that’s on the other side, different from left,
Module Slots - here you will be able to activate your ship modules, weapons (12), mining lasers (13) and afterburners (14) as well as many others. What you will find in this ui section depends entirely on your ships’ loadout (a.k.a “fitting”)
Weapon Slot - please note that mining lasers are considered a turret and will also
Afterburner - exchange ship’s power resource to gain faster speed, you don’t have to abstain from using it early on in the game.
Safety Toggle Options
Safety Enabled: This setting will make you unable to take any actions that would cause a hostile reaction towards you.
Partial Safety: This will allow you to perform actions that will Flag you as Suspect. You will be able to loot wrecks and containers, but you will be unable to do anything that would provoke CONCORD troops.
Safety Disabled: When you turn off the safety, no action of yours will be prevented. Which means that CONCORD might whoop your ass, and you will end up losing your ship and your cargo.
Overview
This window is your best friend out there in the outer space. The Overview allows you to see most things in your vicinity that are not hidden from sight. You don’t have to target or search for every spaceship looking at the vast space. You will see it right here, you will see the distance, name, and type of the object.
You will also be able to access certain actions in regards to these objects, in a very reliable and accessible way
For some details take a look at the list below:
Approach - Your ship will get closer to an object, placing itself as close to it as possible. Have in mind that if your ship is going too fast and you don’t slow down your ship at a proper time you will go through the object, and it will take some time for your ship to approach it properly to the fullest.
Orbit - You can orbit around your chosen object within any range you want. You can circle around it endlessly, with system itself trying to maintain the distance for you.
Keep at Range - When using this, your ship will stay away from the object at your chosen distance. The ship will manoeuvre by itself, taking the best possible path for your getaway. Also good for ships that have the range advantage.
Look at - your view becomes centered on an object. That’s all.
Track - you ship will follow object’s every movement, as long as it can be seen on the Overview.
Lock Target - Locking your target will enable you to fire at the object. Locking takes some time, it depends on your skills and enemy’s counter-measures.
Show Info - Check the details about the object. Nothing more, nothing less.
Remove from Overview - removes chosen object from your feed.
Character Sheet
Here you will find everything that applies to your pilot. Here you will enhance your abilities, write your character’s biography, check the history of your interactions with the world and other players, check the skins and their bonuses, and the history of your entire existence.
Kind of. Not really. No. But your character’s history - yes, that you will be able to check.
On the picture, you can see enormous waiting time for each skill to acquire. Nine days ten hours and sixteen minutes in an MMO seems like an eternity. But do not worry about that. You can set your skill, and leave it there. You don’t even have to be on your character. Hell, you don’t have to be logged. You can dump your PC into the sea and your character will still enhance the skills that you’ve assigned.
Also, if you buy Omega time (premium subscription), your skill time will be much shorter and you will be able to assign more skills in queue.
What To Do in the Beginning?
In the beginning you obviously won’t become a powerful warlord, a corporate leader, or a trader with connections and money to spare. You have to start somewhere. There are a few things that you can do, and one thing that you should do immediately in the beginning. While we won’t exactly guide you through your road to success, as there are some serious and secret techniques of becoming a successful spaceman, and people are not willing to share them, and for a good reason. You want people to be ignorant and you want people to stay poor. Cuz when everybody is rich - no one is. We will just show you where to start.Finish the First Quest Chain
When you open the quest menu, at the top of the list, you should see a series of missions just above the Agent Missions. You should do them all. These missions cover most things that are essential to functioning in the outer world. You will learn how to move around space, how to Warp to important locations, how to PvE properly against packs of enemies, how to add new parts to your ship, how to manage your storage space, how to gather resources, basically how to do everything needed for exploration, and movement around the space, so you don’t fly around pointlessly.Agent Missions and Mission Running
Agent Missions will show you around many activities available in the game. These quests give some decent ISK, and they do a great job at showing you around many activities outside of basic management and movement that Tutorial quest offer. Agent Missions will allow you to explore the large area and maybe even practice your future job that you want to have in the world of EVE Online.This is the most common path for most new players, and for a good reason. After you interact with you will learn how to run missions and how they work straight away. Running Mission will get you lots of ISK, resources for new skills and stronger ships.
Doing Missions for Corporations will maximize your standings, granting you better missions and better rewards. It might be tempting to do missions for each Corp, but completing them for just one Corp is the most efficient way of maximizing your ISK gain.
Completing Missions is extremely easy. You are basically pointed to your objectives, and guided by the invisible hand of EVE Online. Warp to your objective location, complete every task and get your rewards.
To make your time even more efficient you should run missions for NPC corporations that control the trade hubs that you are in. This way, through higher standing with those corps, the goods that you trade will have a much lower tax. This way you will maximize your profit.
PvE: Belt Ratting
New Eden is packed with rats (non-player ships, pirates). Hunting for rats is a fun activity that can be used for profit and learning. New players will get to know the capabilities of their new ships, test damage fall-off depending on range, test tracking and practice in-fight movement and maneuvers.Ratting in a Belt requires no contact with agencies or factions. Rats spawn all over the world of EVE Online in asteroid belts and anomalies found in systems. To find rats you will have to enter systems that have security below 0.9. In 1.0 and 0.9 security systems rats do not appear.
The lower the security system the harder the enemies, but the bounties for each pirate ship increases too. If you want to start out early with the most amount of ISK increase without much knowledge about the game, then ratting is not for you, since you will make more running level 2 missions. But if you want to have fun, or learn about the PvE and craft your own tactic, then Ratting should be perfect for you.
The Most Important Thing: Join a Corporation
Joining a corporation is the most important thing for aspiring EVE players. Whether it’s a NPC corp. or a Player Corp you will find many people that most of the time are more than willing to show you around.There are specialized corps designed for new players that are just starting out, so you will basically be able to study most parts of the game. Helpful New Eden inhabitants may teach you a lot of useful things, but everything depends on you, since getting to know each activity, that you would need to complete your tasks and reach your goals can take a lot of your free time, as you will be forced to study the game.
A little advice from a older player. When you learn the ranks of EVE Online, and you feel like you are ready to switch to serious Player Corporation that bands people with same goals together - don’t switch just yet. Take some time to stay in your beginner-friendly Organisation and help out new players. Activity such as this will be noticed by players, new and experienced, and someday it may help you become someone known and respected. If you play for the people, lots of people should play for you too.
Mining Ores
This is the semi-afk activity in the game, especially when you are in high-sec areas. This is the perfect start for players that would like to focus on gathering resources, manufacturing and research. Best thing about mining is that you can set it up and do your other stuff, while everything is happening almost automatically.If you have something important to do, or if you want to play some other games without loss of progress in EVE Online that mining is your best bet. You will have to be careful though, as even in hi-sec areas suicide bombing players can be quite common. Those players are only there to ruin your day and halt your progress. So you can leave it on afk, just make sure to check every now and then, to avoid losing your ship, which very well may happen.
Skill Training
Show me an aspiring player that isn’t intimidated by the skills system. You won’t find anybody like that. What in the two worlds is CPU Management? Why should I take it? Maybe I should increase my scanning capabilities?Gladly, Skill Training does not punish players heavily for making wrong decisions. You will only be limited by time and Skill Points that you will have to collect. Of course there are things that are more important in the beginning, and choosing something that isn’t suited for your current activities will hurt your early game in some way. But that’s only that.
Every skill you take early that you don’t use currently may become useful in the future when you for example switch your main profession, or your main goal, or you join a different Corporation that focuses on a different idea of spending good time in EVE Online
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