If you have never experienced EVE Online or if you simply tried it once and never played it again, here is a primer on what you are missing, how to get started and at the end there is a 21-day trial sign up link if you wish to give it a try. In this overview we’ll go on what to expect during the first month of your EVE Online experience.
Where does one begin when trying to introduce someone to a game such as EVE Online? A game which has a great fame of being both brutal and with a memorable learning curve?
Lets start with what you will be able to do then move on to what you can look forward to doing. Firstly you have the tutorial which is definitely worth completing, unlike in other games where you can skip the tutorial and generally pick up on what you are meant to be doing the EVE Online tutorial will proof itself worthy of your time.
The EVE Online tutorial is designed to get you through your first day in EVE and introduce you to a variety of activities and basic mechanics as possible. While it does its job fairly well, it is rather limited in what it shows you and teaches you and misses a lot of follow up. Thankful EVE puts you in a in-game “Rookie help” channel populated with other new players as yourself and staffed by both CCP Games employees and volunteers, if you have any questions (which you should have quite a few) this is the place to ask and don’t be shy about it.
Believe it or not, even a one month old player can be pivotal in large scale engagements.
Assuming you have finished the tutorial ( No small task ) you will have had a small taste of what it is like running missions in EVE Online, exploration; using scanning probes to find cosmic signatures and even mining. Where you go next is purely up to what interests you, but a rundown of three paths will help you pick which you would like to do:
The tutorial missions have quite a lot of isk (in-game currency) and ship payouts and are worth doing for new players, they are also tailored to the amount of skill points you have at the start of your EVE Online career. As you complete each mission you also receive “Standings” with the corporation listed as you are actively helping them, these standings are used like a ride in a theme-park with the “Must be this tall to ride” sign, meaning you need at the least “This much” standings to be able to start the higher level missions. As the mission level increases (all the way up to 4 (5 in low security space)) so does the difficulty and the reward, for your first week i would recommend sticking with level 1 and 2 missions. It is also worth a mention there are multiple types of missions, Security (combat), Courier ( taking an item from point A to point B) and even mining missions ( you are tasked with mining certain types of ore and to bring it back and hand it to the mission agent).
Exploration in EVE is as every bit dangerous as your could imagine it.
This profession can be hard to understand at first but after a small amount of time and possibly some “How to” video checks on youtube you will have everything needed to scan down cosmic signatures. This profession can be quite valuable and has what boils down to 3 different types of sites. The first type of site will have pirates inside that you will need to kill to progress or get the valuables, the second type of site is a “Hacking” site which has you hacking into some structures to retrieve the goodies inside. The final site type is a mining site that is independent of the solar system you are in (can have ores not found in that space) and can be either a gravimetric site (Or site), an ice belt (ice ore inside and requires different skills and bigger ships to mine it) and lastly a gas site, this site also requires additional skills and can only be found in certain areas of space. I personally recommend starting with asteroid belts or gravimetric sites.
While we have touched upon the different types of mining and how you can find some of the rare mining sites the “bread and butter” of a career in mining will be in asteroid belts mining different ore types.
Every solar system in EVE has different amounts of asteroid belts and the system the tutorials are in will likely have no asteroids left in the asteroid belts, they will respawn but take hours. Instead of waiting i recommend heading to the next solar system over and checking those belts instead.
All of the mentioned career paths are valid and scale well as you get more skill points, but these are merely ways to make isk. What do you do with it once you have a nice pile?
I recommend some more “Fun” activities, while running missions, exploring or even mining are good ways of making isk it’s always nice to have fun spending it, these can even lead to more exciting EVE careers after having some basic start up funds.
Heading out to dangerous space in low security or even null security space with a cheap and easily replaceable vessel ( frigates and cruisers) and while expecting to loose your own ship you try and take as many other vessels down first! Roams can be solo or in a group, the group size depends on your friends and how many people are interested.
While also a good way of making isk you also get used to flying bigger and more expensive ships and do so in a community of people who are there to have fun while making isk.
Dueling is a decent way to practise your pvp skills in a ship that you want and you can even pick the enemy type you want to duel by looking for a player in the type of ship you want to fight.
These are just some of many things you can do in the sandbox we call EVE Online, in upcoming articles of this series we’ll talk about the politics involved, why is important to be on a non-NPC corporation and how to find a style of play within EVE Online compatible for your. There is a great and extensive FAQ written by CCP Games which covers in fine detail a lot of the basic question on how to play EVE Online, to download just click on this link.
The great thing about EVE Online is how, even after ten years of service and continuous development, the game seems to be heading into a new era – the upcoming release of EVE Online: Valkyrie an Oculus Rift / VR Headset title and EVE Online: Legion; a First Person Shooter spin off for the PC platform, both of which will be connected to the EVE Online universe is an excellent incentive to kickstart your EVE Online experience:
If you wish to give EVE Online a try, we recommend you to sign up using the following link, it will grant you an additional 7 days to the basic 14 days trial for a full 21-day trail, a good way to find out if EVE Online is right for you.
