Your First Steps in Eve Online

Introduction

The beauty of Eve Online is that it has a multitude of choices and options for a player. The path you take could be very different from the next pilot. To support this variety of choice, the game has to be complex and far reaching. A new pilot may find this complexity daunting to begin with so the first advice I'd give to a new pilot is to do the introduction tutorial and Career missions. This is because the tutes do more than teach. They set you up for your life in Eve.

The Tutorials and Career Missions give you equipment, ships, skill books and a decent amount of money to get you started. You will have made your first million ISK by the end easy and have half a dozen ships. In fact the Career Missions and Tutorials give you just about everything you need to finish all the Career Missions. You shouldn't need to buy anything except a skill book or two and some minerals.

After the Career Agents there is the obvious question: What do I do now? To do everything you want to in Eve you will need money. Earning ISK is your first task. You want to get to a point where you can earn reasonable amounts of cash for a fair effort.

Each career has a skill set to learn and ships suited to that career. There are entry level options you can try out while your skills train and earn some money for it.

I suggest everyone learns a little bit about combat as it has effects on most facets of the game. Even market tycoons are selling to combat pilots. You may also want to protect what you have earned with your hard work.

Please read the “Things You Need to Know” as soon as possible. We are trying to stop you making the basic mistakes that often give new players a bad Eve experience. This game is a sandbox with few rules and people will take advantage of you sometimes or just kill you.

Starting at the Beginning

The first Tutorial is given by Aura, the AI “voice in your head”. This mission set is called “A new life: Your First Days”. You can find it in the Eve Help > Tutorials window if you lose it somehow. Work through the windows Aura gives you. Aura talks as well as gives text information. Make sure you turn on the sound.

It is a good idea to read the full text of a window or tutorial before doing anything as your actions can progress the tutorial before you have finished.

You will be given a copy of the Repair Systems skill book during these tutorials. You should train at least to level 1 straight away as the tutorial instructs you. Its important in the Starting Tutorials to organise your skill training. If you don't do this you could waste days of play. You do not earn skills in Eve like in other MMOGs. You train them in real time. Even when you aren't logged in. So its a good idea to fill up your training queue with skills so you don't waste precious time. The last item in your skill queue can be any length you want so queue up some short skills inside the starting 24 hours and put a 2-3 day skill on the end in case you don't log in the following day. There are some specifics about skills you will need to know later but for now this is enough.

All but the last missions will be in the solar system you started in. No need to go tramping around the galaxy to find your ship. Its in the system you started in at a bookmark the agent gave you.

Bookmarks are locations in space, like a set of co-ordinates. You can save your own bookmarks but the important point is that agents and Aura will give you bookmarks to the mission zone. To see the bookmark launch into space, right-click on open space and look for the agent or mission name (usually at the bottom of the list). If you hover over the mission name it will give you two options. One is the station where the mission giver is located and the other is called “Encounter” which is the place where the action is happening. Hover over Encounter and you will get an option to “Warp to location within 0km”. See the image to get an idea what it looks like. Its a good idea to always check for a mission bookmark when doing a mission. Some of the Career Missions require you to get your ore from a specific place to make it work. Sometimes missions sites will be in another system. Aura goes into this and explains that the right-click is only available in the relevant systems.

After the starter tutorial from Aura you will be sent to a station where there are Career Agents who will continue your training with Career Missions. It would be a good idea to read through the Things You Need to Know section when you reach the station. You are now in the big Eve galaxy of New Eden and there are people quiet happy to prey on you. Don't let this happen. Arm yourself with knowledge.

Do the Career Missions before doing the other tutorials. Relevant tutorials will pop up as you need them. We'll discuss Career Agent Mission later in this blog.