Eve Online: Getting Started


Read the tutorials & do the 3 career mission chains.

Hit F12 and look at the bottom where it says "show career agents." While you may not identify with all 3 career categories, each will give you free stuff and a better understanding of the game.


What's next?

Eve is a "sandbox." There is no linear progress down a preset path.

It has a steep learning curve and can thus be frustrating for new players who don't know all the choices and opportunities ahead of them. Embrace the steep learning curve because the depth and sandbox aspect of Eve is what makes it so great.

Basic initial options:
  1. the epic mission arc
  2. the militia
  3. build standing by doing missions with a Gallente corp
  4. mine, manufacture and trade (i.e. be a spreadsheet junkie)

The "epic arc" is a set of new missions designed for new players. It's a very significant chain of missions which take you around the entire empire regions dominated by the 4 major factions (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar). You can make good money as a new player, as you work your way through these missions and learn more basics. It starts with Sister Alitura who is located Arnon IX - Moon 3 - Sisters of Eve (station). Check your journal.

The "militia" is an opportunity to engage in faction warfare with an emphasis on PvP missions. Be sure to read about joining factional warfare and that you understand the full implications. This puts you at open war with Amarr and Caldari factions. There are special missions, events and locations. WARNING #1: this will be extremely frustrating for new players and cost you a lot of money that you don't have yet, because PvP means losing ships. WARNING #2: this will remove you from your starter corp (i.e. CAS).

Doing missions with Gallente NPC corporations will open up higher level missions and new opportunities. When you do missions with a Gallente-friendly NPC corp, you will gain standing with that corporation as well as with the Gallente faction. High standing with NPC corporations will cut down on station charges and open up new opportunities like creating Jump Clones. Completed missions will also get you Loyalty Points (LP) which can be used at LP Stores in corp stations.
  • Pick a corporation based on the kinds of missions you want to do. If you like combat missions, you may want to investigate Federation Navy or the Federal Intelligence Office. You can browse the Gallente corporations using People & Places. "Fed Navy" is popular because it has a lot of agents and has many stations with Cloning Facilities (which you can use with 8.0 personal standing to create Jump Clones).
  • Find an agent by looking at the "agents" tab in the Corp Info (i.e. Federation Navy), or by looking at the map ingame (set filter to show agents), or by using a nice website like eve-agents.com which also lets you sort by "required standing."
  • You'll start with lower quality Level 1 agents. Levels 1-5 indicate difficulty. The "quality" of the agent represents the scale of rewards for that level (i.e. L1 Q18 would be an agent with high rewards for Level 1). As your standing increases, you'll gain access to higher quality and higher level agents.
  • When picking an agent, consider the location carefully. Look ahead. Don't go into "low sec" (i.e. 0.4 security or below). Consider a location where there are several agents available, or soon to be available as you gain standing.
  • When doing combat missions, you may want to decline "faction missions" against Caldari and Amarr because that will lower your standing with them.
  • Frigates and destroyers are good for Level 1. Cruisers are good for Level 2. Battlecruisers for Level 3. Battleships for Level 4. Salvaging combat missions is great money.
  • You can read about your combat missions at eve-survival.com where they will also tell you the types of damage the mission involves. This is very useful. We tend to "armor tank" Gallente ships, which means we mostly ignore our shields and focus on making our armor stronger by increasing their resistances to specific damage types while also using armor repair modules.
Mining, manufacture and trade can offer great rewards and challenges. Eve's economy is vast and complex. To find your niche requires careful observation and curiosity. Trading & manufacturing can be very profitable. You can also simply mine.

For more info on basic mining, see Mining 101.



About Training

Passive skill training may be counter-intuitive for gamers at first.

Get Evemon (the most useful eve tool of them all).

It will help you manage training plans and is also useful for looking up items, ships and skills. Combine this with EFT, which is another useful tool that let's you play with ship setups. You want to particularly look at how Evemon will show the benefits of Learning Skills as well as examining the "battleclinic" links at the top of ship information pages.

Learning skills?

Every skill that you learn has a primary and secodary attribute that they connect to. Some skills harness your intelligence and wisdom attributes. Others may harness your perception and willpower attributes.

The higher your attributes then the faster you can train related skills. For each of your attributes, there are corresponding Learning Skills to increase those attributes. Get it? Perception of 30 will speed up training for new ships as compared to a character with only Perception of 10.

This is why veteran players tend to focus entirely on Learning Skills when they make new characters, because it will dramatically speed up training on other skills. THIS ISN'T PRACTICAL FOR NEW PLAYERS because they need to train more fun things while they try out the game.

Once you've committed to Eve and have played for a week, you need to look ahead with a tool like Evemon to figure out what your priorities are. It would be wise to get the basic Learning skill along with the other basic learning skills up to Rank 3. Rank3 for those skills is fairly quick and worth the time. Once you've picked up more fun abilities, you can start slipping in more learning skills. Once you hit Rank4 in a tier1 of learning, you can quickly pick up 3 more ranks in the next tear (i.e. Spatial Awareness 4 --> Clarity 3).

Use Evemon. Use EFT. Ask questions. Fly safe.

CAS Rules


CAS Rule #1 - Don't ask for isk or stuff. Just don't.

CAS Rule #2 - We must disagree, without being disagreeable. If you insist on being disagreeable, at least have the decency to be funny.

CAS Rule #3 - When asking for a price check, please link the item to chat.

CAS Rule #4 - When asking for help, please link the system.

CAS Rule #5 - Do the newbie tutorials along with the 3 career mission chains before asking a million questions.

CAS Rule #6 - We don't care who your alt is or if you are an alt. CAS is CAS. It's like a vacation spot with a lot of nipples and bacon.

CAS Rule #7: Please don't use the in-game browser. And if you do, don't tell anybody.

CAS Rule #8: Do not even pretend that Canadian Bacon is real bacon. It's not. It's ham, not bacon. So go buy a bag of milk.

CAS Rule #9: Nipples shall be mentioned at least once an hour within CAS chat.

CAS Rule #10: You will be punished for bad puns.

CAS Rule #11: The most valuable item in-game is the corpse of Prideof USA (with the exception of Aegis Scout's corpse).

CAS Rule #12: Female avatars represent female players. We will believe this until proven otherwise (i.e. speaks like a man on voice).

CAS Rule #13: Keep your bacon pie off other people's roosters.

More Vids: Butterfly Effect et al

In addition to those listed at Eve Videos for New Players, I'd like to show off the following...


The Butterfly Effect (youtube): Arguably the best Eve propaganda I've seen from CCP. I sure wish CAS patrols had dreads...

Got Cooch? Solo PvP: a great "tutorial on pirate hull tanking"... (this guy dives into fights against multiple opponents, alone with an incursus!! ...much respect)

Romania Renegades New Step (youtube): another corp video. Not a lot of action, but absolutely brilliant overall production.

Re-arrange Gallente frigs!!

The Proposal:
Incursus stays the same.
Atron stays the same.
Maulus model --> new imicus / helios
Tristan model --> new maulus / keres
Imicus model --> new navitas
Navitus model --> new tristan / nemesis






Navitas









Imicus & Helios











Tristan & Nemesis











Maulus & Keres







And please give new Gallente players an Imicus, Hobgoblin and appropriate skills... rather than a Tristan.

CAS Schadenfreudeners


When you fail so badly that you couldn't even cook Failgravy if it came in a microwavable dish, then we have special Anti-Heroes to make you feel at home.

Terri Lam > LMAO, your misery fuels my spaceship

Prideof USA > i dont know why people keep podding me.....

Singularity: Huckery Tosspots Inc


Huckery Tosspots (tspots) corp has been created and is open to CAS members. HQ in Eglennaert.

This is good for those wanting to setup POS. POS 101 here.

Last character mirror on Singularity: July 5th.

Check sisi status here: http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/server_status.php

Learn how to connect to singularity here. It's really simple. You just make a copy of the Eve install, change the shortcut and patch it.

Test server rules. NO PODDING. PvP is consensual only, on the server. You can also happily buy most items for 100isk in select systems. You can find lots of people in the "FD-" system, where folks often meet up to duel and such.

You can find the Test forum here to discuss issues, bugs, etc. Just keep in mind there are no paid GMs or customer service for this server. It's for bug finding and testing.

In-game, be sure to join the "Singularity" channel.

CAS at 2009 Tour de France

Our own AshrouD made a poster for the Tour De France. Mais oui, viva la CAS!!


3 Week Fast-Track Guide

(DRAFT - this guide is incomplete & being tweaked still)

Goal: to streamline your character's initial growth while you learn the game. After 2-3 weeks, you will have strong Gallente standing and some good options. Having access to higher level missions will be optimal generic income.

This plan is not "the right" or ONLY path. Eve is a sandbox, full of choices and many paths to take. This path is not perfect. You can freely go your own road at any time, pick different skills, different ships, etc.

Caveat: Times will vary. You may find that your skill training outpaces your time available to run missions (and thus your standing and income).

1. Get Ready

A. Do the 3 career mission training
Before starting, take a few hours to do the 3 career agents and tutorials. If you skipped them, hit F12 in-game and look at the bottom. Click "show career agents."

Your likely starting point as a CAS noob:
  • Cistuvaert - do the crash course tuts & missions with Jarck Feritte
  • Clellinon - do the 3 career agents (all 3, yes)
If you have not done these 3 mission arcs yet, you may want to immediately start your skill training with Gallente Frigate 3 & 4 in the skill queue, while you figure out other options and needs. You could also start training Drones up to rank 3.

You should have:
  • about 3 million ISK,
  • civ damage control, an atron (ship), webber, 75mm guns, small armor repper
  • relevant skills: repair systems, hull upgrades, social, connections
  • a basic grasp of how to move around in Eve and to manage missions.
B. Get Evemon http://evemon.battleclinic.com/
Evemon is a program that will help you plan training and to look up Eve information. It will track your character training, "live." You can quickly look up items or ships to see what training is required for them (and how long it will take). It will also let you figure out what attributes to increase and optimal "Learning Skills." If you have a 2nd monitor or play Eve in windowed mode, it's a very valuable thing to have open in the background.

Evemon connects via CCP's API system, allowing Evemon to keep up-to-date with the basic training and skills of your character(s). Using the basic API is safe. Get your info here - http://www.eveonline.com/api/default.asp

EFT is another excellent program that let's you play around with setting up ships.
C. Understand the goals of this guide
You will be using these ships:
  • Imicus (L1) --> Vexor (L2) --> Myrmidon (L3)
You will rely heavily on drones for damage.

You will increasingly use an "armor tank" rather than shields.

You will run missions for the NPC corp called Federation Navy.

You will end up with good income and core skills for mission running.

Locations:

  1. Mirilene (L1) standing -0.75 (2 agents)
  2. Oursulaert (L2) standing 1.1 (3 agents + 1 in Mies)
  3. Eglennaert (L3) standing 3.15 (3 agents)
  4. Masalle (L3) standing 4.5 (3 agents) *** optional
  5. Aunia / Dodixie (L4)
D. Remap your attributes
Eve allows new players an extra remap. After that, it's only once a year. My advice is to remap along the following lines, and then use the 2nd one a month or two later once you've learned the game a bit more and have a clear idea for the next year.
  • First Remap: 6 int, 10 perception, 5 charisma, 5 willpower, 15 memory
This was precisely what Evemon calculated as the ideal attribute spread for 2 months training along the lines mapped out below. Yes, check the math. Don't do this if you already blew your first remap. If you already used one, then wait a while (a month+) until you have longer-term plans and then check in Evemon for optimization.
TIPS:
  • Always have your 24 hour skill training queue filled.
  • Keep your Damage Control module ON (if equipped)
  • General Settings: under "station," select the option to merge items and ships into station panel.
  • Read through Overview 101 and setup a 2nd tab for "all" things to show. This may help in some missions where you could have trouble spotting the objective.
  • Use hybrid Lead ammo until you have a good understanding of the different types.
  • Don't waste time mining unless it is for a mission.
  • Learn to use the in-game maps (F10) and to look at a nice "flattened" map on the web, like this: http://evemaps.dotlan.net/map/Verge_Vendor/

2. Federation Navy - Level 1 (2-3 days)

Required Fed Navy standing: n/a
Required ISK: about 200k
Goal: achieve 1.1 standing

A. Ship & Training
First of all, buy & setup an Imicus (~100,000 ISK).

Imicus #1 - first setup (expect to warp out of a lot of fights)
Imicus #2 - shield tank (not cap stable, requires strategy)
Imicus #3 - noob armor tank (requires turning repair on/off)

3 drones. Use hobgoblins. You need to immediately train Drones to rank 3 & Scout Drone Operation to rank 1 (go to rank 3 when you can). Scout Drone Op rank 1 + Drones rank 3 = 5 hours or so. To add drones, right-click on the ship in the station.
  • TIP: Drones can be set to passive or aggressive. You can also setup key shortcuts for controlling them. It's wise to keep them on passive unless you're facing sensor dampening (i.e. you can't target stuff).
Your drones will be your main damage. They will kill everything in Level 1 missions. All you must do is stay alive and not lose them.

You will start off doing a bit of shield tanking rather than armor tanking. If you haven't yet, train both Shield Operation 1 & Shield Management 1. Proper armor tanking will take time and better ships. Armor tanking will require Energy Management 2 (at least) and Energy Systems Operation 3 (at least). That's 10-11 hours of training that will you will want in before L3 anyways.
  • TIP: you will be warping out a lot, initially. Learn to keep moving, "zig zagging" when you can, but always ready to warp out to a station.
Connections 3. You want to get Social skill up to rank 3 & then train Connections to rank 3. That's about 20 hours. This will dramatically improve standing.

While these things train, you can use civilian gear or anything else you can find. Once you get those skills, start training Gallente Frigate up to rank 4.
  • Gallente Frigage 4
  • Drones, rank 3
  • Scout Drone Operation 1 (or 3)
  • Hull Upgrades 1 (done during tutorials)
  • Energy Grid Updates 2 (go to 3 for Tech 2 cap rechargers)
  • Repair Systems 2 (go to 3 for Tech2 armor repper)
  • Afterburner 1
  • Social 3
  • Connections (go up to rank 3 when you get the time)
  • Mechanic (go to 3 for Tech2 armor repper) **OPTIONAL**
  • Energy Systems Operation 3 (armor tank) **OPTIONAL**
  • Energy Management 2 (armor tank) **OPTIONAL**
  • Targeting (increases targets) **OPTIONAL**
  • Salvaging **OPTIONAL**
  • Learning **OPTIONAL**
  • Analytical Mind **OPTIONAL**
  • Instant Recall **OPTIONAL**
  • Iron Will **OPTIONAL**
  • Spatial Awareness **OPTIONAL**
B. Level 1 Missions
The next step is to find Level 1 agents for Federation Navy. Use that link to see a listing of the agents. In-game, you can also type "federation navy" in chat, then right-click the highlighted name and pick "corporation." Open the corporation's Info window and notice the Agents tab. You can always find available agents that way.

Notice the "required standing" each agent has, which means you need that standing with Fed Navy to gain access to the agent. "Quality" of the agent means the amount of rewards they give. The level implies the nature of the missions available and their difficulty. You tend to gain access to low quality agents first. However, what matters most to us is having good locations with several agents available.

Go to Mirilene (see map & agents). Pack lightly.

You'll have only 1 Public Relations agent available, initially. This is good, because those boring courier missions you'll get 1/3 of the time will help you raise standing quickly.

All you'll need is your Imicus and basic gear. You can leave all your other items behind for now or sell/reprocess them, unless you want to toss your Imicus and gear into your Iteron.
The most important thing to know is what type of damage the enemy does and what type of damage they are weak against.

You'll get different types of missions. Some are combat. Some are courier. Always try to do the courier missions. Do NOT go to lowsec. Don't accept those missions. You get to decline a mission once every 4 hours per agent. Having 4 agents in one system comes in handy for this reason.
  • TIP: Consider buying a station container for your gear. It helps organize items within your station cargo area. Use the main cargo items area for incoming loot and minerals after reprocessing. You may even want a 2nd container for stockpiling incoming loot. Be sure to check and change the settings to not lock items by default.
Going through L1 missions as quickly as possible will pay off, because the time spent later on L2 and L3 missions will be much more income. Likewise, every 12th mission or so, you'll get offered a "storyline" mission for Gallente. These give nice rewards and big jumps in standing. That's why running fast courier missions is particularly great.

Your objective is to raise your standing quickly, while you train. You want to be getting Gallente Frigate 4 as soon as possible, so that you can start pounding on L2s in 2 days or so. You also want to build up good income.

Every 16 missions you will be offered a "storyline" mission via mail. These are vital missions that give good Gallente standing boosts and valuable rewards. The faster you get these, the better (which is a reason many people love courier missions so much).

If you find that you've raised your standing up for L2s but don't have the cash for a Vexor (4mil isk), feel free to run the "Epic Arc" (Sister Alitura in the Arnon system). That apparently has very good cash and let's you see many places in Empire space. Also, just carefully sell everything you have (iteron 3 included).

Salvaging: Getting a salvager requires about 8 hours of training. It takes a high slot. You may want to setup a 2nd ship to salvage after you kill everything or just use a highslot and let your drones do the killing while you salvage. Salvage mats will add up to be significant additional income. Optimally, you will use a Catalyst (destroyer class ship) with 4 salvagers and 4 small tractor beams (1 day training). That may be a huge distraction for L1s, but it depends on your early income. You should try to at least start salvaging L2s if you skip L1s.

TIPS:
  • Maximize income from loot. Most of the loot will be garbage that you can reprocess for minerals. When you do find something worth a pretty penny on the market, use the "advanced" options when selling the items. Don't just sell it at the first offer price.
  • Avoid all lowsec systems (0.4 security or lower) until you know what you are doing.
  • While in combat, learn to align to stations and to immediately warp out when in trouble. Let your armor repair and head back in...
  • Setup an Overview tab that shows "all." See Overview 101
  • Ask questions in CAS chat. Try to be as efficient as you can be, while running missions.

3. Level 2 & Your First Vexor (3-5 days, minimally)

Required Fed Navy standing: 1.1
Required ISK: about 4 million
Goal: achieve 3.15 standing

A. Ship & Training
Train for the Vexor (cruiser). Frig 4 is 2 days and hopefully you've done most of that already. I assume you have around 250-300k Skill Points.

Getting a Vexor with 4 drones active is a huge, huge step in Eve progression. The Vex is an ugly cruiser to some people, but an outstanding ship. L2 will offer a big jump in both fun and profit. In the coming week or two, you'll have to run away less and you'll have many more options.

But first, hull upgrades 3. This gets you EANM and dmg control II. You also need an Afterburner, if you didn't train it yet.

You want 4 drones, asap (1 day training).

Vexor #1 - initial setup (for L1 or L2)
Vexor #2 - stable L2 boat
Vexor #3 - strong L2 boat
Vexor #4 - a perfect L2 mission fit (skip)
Catalyst - salvaging boat

First, you'll need to do some basic Vexor "tank" training. Focus on ship survival while you rely on drones to do the dirty work.

While you train for the hardeners, use the damage control and 2 armor reppers. Just be careful, keep moving and rely on your drones. Align to stations and warp out when you need to.

Once you have the hardeners trained, you're capable of setting up a proper "tank." The most basic armor tanking setup includes lots of cap recharge (mid slots), the armor repairer and these armor hardeners that increase resistances for specific damage types (the "n-type" hardeners are great investments).

This is a time to improve your combat skills and to learn as much about the game as you can, while you do several days of training. Do not start tossing in a ton of extra skills.

Focus on your income and standing, because L3 is where you'll start to make a lot more ISK. There's plenty of time to train all the other cool stuff.
  • Mechanic 3 (Tech2 armor repper)
  • drones 4
  • hull upgrades 3 (armor hardeners - 2days - very important!!)
  • Energy Systems Operation 3 (armor tank)
  • Energy Management 2 (armor tank)
  • Energy Grid Updates 3 (Tech 2 cap rechargers)
  • Repair Systems 4 (Tech2 med armor repper)
  • scout drone operation 3-4 (drone link)
  • medium hybrid turret
  • targeting 4-5
B. Level 2 Missions
Start in Oursulaert. There are 3x L2 agents there with lots of combat missions.
  • VII - Moon 1 - Fed Navy Testing - (required 1.1 standing) Q -18
  • III - Fed Navy Testing - (required 1.25 standing) Q -15
  • IV - Fed Navy Testing - (required 2.9 standing) Q +18
Pack lightly. I'd advise moving with only your Vexor inside your Iteron 3 and core fittings. You can leave the Imicus there, just strip anything you need from it.

In Mies, the system next door, there is also a personnel agent available at 1.25 standing (33% chance of courier missions). That's 4 agents within 1 jump, so making good progress should be easy.

TIPS:
  • Setup key shortcuts for your Drones. Make sure you can quickly "engage" and "return to drone bay" for your drones. Get in the habit of bringing your drones in the first moment that you're able to.
  • Check the market values of all loot. This takes time but it's a vital step in really learning Eve, because you'll be gaining knowledge of all the different types of items out there as well as their respective values. As you become more knowledgeable, you'll be able to know immediately what loot is worth selling on the market and what's junk.
  • Don't sell at the first buy price. Use the advanced interface to set reasonable prices. There are lots of people who place low buy orders, hoping new (or lazy) players will just mindlessly sell assets.
  • Reprocess junk loot for minerals. Even the junk from drone wrecks will be valuable.
  • Use station containers to organize everything. They are cheap. When you are mission running and salvaging, you may want to put all your incoming loot inside a special station container. Once in a while, you go through through that container searching for the valuable stuff and then reprocess all the rest.

4. L3s & your Myrmidon!!

Required Fed Navy standing: 3.15
Required ISK:

barebones skills: drones, tanking, energy/cap.
drone interfacing & tech2 drones
learning skills
salvaging (if not yet)

simple myrm setups.

Eglennaert 3.15
back to masalle 4.5



rank 3 learning
remapping
battleclinic setups
what's next?

How do I setup my ship for missions?

Those are the 3 categories to think about: tanking, stability and damage. As you progress upwards in mission difficulty, you must adjust in each of these 3 categories. You'll find that simply getting better types of ships takes care of most of your challenge.

Imicus #1 - first setup (expect to warp out of a lot of fights)
Imicus #2 - shield tank (not cap stable, requires skill)
Imicus #3 - noob armor tank
Tristan - starter setup
Incursus - speed tanking fun

Vexor L2 Template - solid mission running with armor tank

Myrmidon L3 Template - basic armor tank setup


ARMOR TANKING

There are general principles and setups used for armor tanking. Let's look at the core building blocks.

Mids:
  • cap rechargers (get tech2, asap)
Lows:
  • armor repairers/reppers (get tech2, asap)
  • 3-4 armor hardeners (use n-types initially), with 2 for primary damage type.
  • power relays - help with cap recharge rates, if you have an extra slot
Rigs:
  • 1-2 capacitor control circuit (increases cap recharge)
  • 1-2 auxiliary namo pump (increases armor repair)
Those are the building blocks for making a solid tank. Depending on the ship and your skills, you can adjust and obtain more choices. Many folks prefer 2 reppers (perhaps even mixing a large and a medium on a battleship). Others rely on 1 repper and speed. Experiment.

For hardeners, you want to invest in high quality ones. You want 2 hardeners for the main damage type being done, and 1-2 for the secondary damage type.


STABILITY

Being "cap stable" means you can run at least your basic tank and guns continuously without your capacitor going dry.

In PvP, folks often do not worry about cap stability. They often use cap boosters which dynamically load more cap with ammo-like charges. The goal in PvP is to burst with your DPS and defenses. In PvE, it's not the same. You want stability to be efficient. Ideally, you can run all of your modules & guns non-stop without ever running out of energy.

Being "cap stable" is why you want to initially focus on filling out your mid slots with cap rechargers, tech2 preferably. I'd strongly suggest that this be the first tech2 training that you do, perhaps only second to Damage Control modules or Armor Repairers.

You can get Capacitor Control Circuit rigs to boost your cap recharge rate significantly, but this costs a pretty penny. Having 2x CCC on a myrm is very helpful. Investing that kind of cash into a cruiser is not advisable, but your battlecruiser can easily pay for this investment with L3 missions.

There are a number of skills that will help build up your tanking ability and cap recharge rate.

While you become increasingly stable with better skills and equipment, you can practice cap management strategies while in combat. You may want to consider using more cap "neutral" hybrid ammo such as Lead. You may also want to get good at switching guns and reppers off for a cycle or two, just to regain some cap while in battle.

DAMAGE

Get tech2 drones, asap.

Look for the critical skills in drones that significantly boost dmg output. Understand that as a gallente player you have the choice to fly ships with strong drone bonuses (even if they are ugly).

Use the Imicus. Use the Vexor. Use the Myrmidon. Use the Domi.

As you get access to L4s and find you can tank them reasonably, that's when you can sit back and start training more advanced skills to make your weapons effective. In the meanwhile, I'd strongly advise relying on your drones' DPS and just surviving.

How do I make money?

ISK can seem hard to come by at the start, especially to those who around curious and looking ahead.

Mining is easy money but can be a hassle in the early stages.

My advice is to run missions for Federation Navy with the aim of getting to battlecruisers and battleships as soon as possible. In the time it takes to build up a character nicely, you can be aiming for running Level4 missions out of Sinq like so many others. L2-L3 missions are very good cash flow for the new player. Even if you get to L3s and stop to train up strong skills with a battlecruiser, you will be making good money. Train for tech2 drones to speed things up.
  • A word about agents: a location that has several low quality L2 agents within 1 jump is superior to a location that has one high quality agent. What matters most is getting lots of mission choices and moving up to the next level, asap. Ignore agent quality until you get to L4.
Learn to salvage. Use a catalyst to separately salvage your missions.

As for the skills required to handle L4s properly, I found that the combination of tech2 drones and a basic tank (4x meta4 hardeners, 1x power relay, tech2 LAR and mids filled with tech2 cap rechargers) was surprisingly sufficient.

Meanwhile, you should try to learn a little bit about the market by looking for opportunities to sell more rare rigs made out of salvage mats. Try a little bit of trading and see what happens. :-)

Ode to Pandorae

KY-Intense, some toys, LOTS of bacon and a couple friends...



Cerebella almost died!!!!!

In very unwelcome news, Cereballa has almost been killed. The event was reported in this video.

http://www.damagedealer.com/game/eveonline/watchvideo/1052

Obviously CCP has changed the code to harm our almost-dead Cerebella. This is unacceptable and CAS will be filing a strongly worded 200 word complaint.

Overview 101

The "Overview" is the window with the list of objects in space around you.

It has a menu where you can save/load settings, change what's shown and to setup multiple tabs each with unique settings. The best way to master the Overview is to just go through all the settings and to play around with things. Let's setup a tab that shows everything possible.


1. Click the triangle > and save your current settings as something like "default."

2. Open the Overview Settings.

3. In the "filter" tab, hit the "select all" button at the bottom.


4. Click the triangle > and save your settings as something like "everything" or "all."

5. Go to the "overview tabs" tab.

6. Name the first "default" and set the profile to "default" (or whatever you named it).

7. Name the second tab "all" and set the corresponding profile you just made.

8. Click "apply"

Voila!

You now should have 2 tabs. One shows only a simple set of "default" objects and the other shows everything. You can make up to 5 tabs. This is very useful when you want a specialized tab perhaps for PvP purposes or Mining.

Ships 101

Eve has a lot of ships. Once again, there's no real linear progression. Much depends on skill + play-style.

Click for 4mb "Huge Version"

As a new Gallente player, you are not limited to specific skills or technology. Unlike most MMOs, you are free to train any and all the skills. You simply start off in Gallente space with a slight emphasis on initial paths.

Guidance for New Gallente Players

I'd suggest you stick to basic Gallente ships and techology for now. Some zealous veteran players may stear you into training other race's ships, but at the start you should pick one race and settle in that area (both in terms of skills and location).

There are general "base" categories of ships that reflect 4 standards sizes but not necessarily strength (more on that later):
  1. frigates & destroyers
  2. cruisers
  3. battlecruisers
  4. battleships
These categories roughly represent the tiers of mission levels (level 1-4). There are also special icons in the game Overview which indicate the corresponding ship size. There are more categories beyond this, as well as more advanced variations on these ship sizes, but for now just understand these categories.

You'll soon see that the combat skills often correspond to ship categories. You may notice skills devoted specifically to "small hybrid" weapons or "gallente frigates." Some players specialize in smaller ships. Others may specialize in the larger fleet "capital" ships which are even bigger than battleships. There are lots of choices.

You start with simple frigates.

Gallente 101

You'll see there are a number of Gallente frigates to pick from.

Gallente technology is known to give great bonuses for the use of drones. Drones are a very powerful. Many pilots rely on them for damage or support abilities. Depending on your play-style, they can be trained up to be your primary damage dealing. New players would be wise to build up basic drone skills.

Gallente technology emphasizes "hybrid" weapons. Railguns and Blasters are the 2 types of hybrid weapons, with blasters being better at very close range and rails being better at longer ranges. Hybrid weaps inflict a combination of Kinetic and Thermal damage (but not EM or Explosive damage). You'll notice there are about 8 different ypes of standard Hybrid Ammo, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Some ammo is good for long range and use less energy. Some are great for close range & max damage. There is no "best" ammo, although you may want to start with something somewhat nuetral in stats like Lead Charges. I'd suggest doing that and using small rail guns, to start.

Gallente technology emphasizes "armor tanking." Notice how ships have shields, armor and structure hitpoints. Gallente ship pilots rely on their armor defenses, often disregarding shields entirely. They fill the "low" slots with modules that focus on armor repair, armor resists and armor strength. When you are starting out, it's a good idea to use a "Damage Control" module, because they give some general resists with particularly strong "last chance" structure support. As you get better at setting up armor tanks, you should drop the damage control for running missions.

As you look ahead at making your ship stronger, think about these aspects of your ship:
  • DPS: your damage-per-second output with guns and drones
  • your capacitor recharge rate
  • your armor repair rate
  • your armor resistances (EM, Kinetic, Thermal and Explosive damage types)
For cap recharge, you can use "cap rechargers" in the mid slot along with "cap power relays" in the low slot. There are "armor repairer" modules for the low slot. For armor resists, you can use "armor hardener" modules you activate to increase specific resistances (i.e. thermal, kinetic, em and explosive damage). Players focused on doing missions will often match specific assets with the mission at hand, using the right drones and hardeners. As you do more challenging levels of missions, it becomes vital to stack several hardeners along with good armor repair and cap recharge rates. Players focused on PvP often take an alternate route by using more "passive" setups that increase your total armor hitpoints mixed with more omnidamage, passive resist modules.
The Imicus frigate is great for drones, which can be very powerful tools in combat. It can hold up to 3 light drones. Use of "hobgoblins" is recommended as your default drone for basic Level 1 mission running. You can switch drones depending on the type of enemy, as different drone types have different strengths and weaknesses (i.e. different types of damage inflicted, max velocities, damage modifiers, tracking capabilities, etc). It also has the largest cargo hold of all the Gallente ships, making it one of the stronger options for Level 1 missions.

The Navitas frigate is a decent all-around frigate with bonuses for mining.

The Incursus frigate is a great gun boat because it has 1 extra turret slot compared to most of the other frigates. It can only fit 1 drone, however. It has a good sized cargohold as well.

The Tristan frigate is a cool ship, but it mixes hybrid weapons with missiles. This can be very confusing for new players, as the use of those missile slots implies cross-training with Caldari skills. It also implies using multiple types of guns & ammo. While it's a fun ship and playstyle, I'd suggest to avoid this initially.

The Atron frigate is a fast frigate, with decent all-around capabilities. It's limited to 1 drone.

The Maulus frigate is a powerful frigate with 3 turret slots and room for 2 light drones.
As you move ahead, you may want to train the extremely fun destroyer class ships. The Gallente destroyer is called the Catalyst. They are gun boats that are particularly strong at popping frigates, making them a lot of fun for Level 1 missions. They also become great dedicated salvaging ships once you move onto other ships.

It's a good idea to move onto cruisers fairly quickly. It doesn't require a lot of special skills to fly a cruiser as a new player and they are much more powerful than frigates. The typical choice for new Gallente players are the Thorax and Vexor.
The Vexor is a strong cruiser that can hold a lot of drones, making it very adaptable. It has drone bonuses and is a very strong all-around ship.

The Thorax is a fun gun boat, but with limited drone capacity. It's a hell of a lot sexier than the Vex.
Cruisers are well suited for Level 2 missions. They will allow you to start fitting real "tank" setups, as they allow 4-5 low slot modules. You can start stacking 3-4 hardeners along with your armor repair module.

Check out this simple Vexor fitting (you can find many more example fittings within Evemon). This uses a couple "tech2" items which require special training, but understand the basic principles behind the setup: several "named" railguns; a drone link augmenter to extend drone range; several cap rechargers; a nice armor repair module; and hardeners. The PDS is a good module but you might use a cap power relay instead. This player also has a mix of light and medium drones which might do most of his damage and easily take care of enemies that get too close.


CAS Basics

The Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) is a starter corporation for new Gallente players. It's a real corp, but just an NPC corporation. We don't pay corp taxes. We don't have "wardecs" and thus can safely pirate, carebear or just build up our characters for the time being.

Whether you are a freelancing libertarian, industry magnate or vicious pirate... CAS has room.

These days being put into CAS seems to be the luck of the draw, but historically CAS was for characters set upon an industrial career path at character creation. Gallente happens to be quite good for industrial characters, CAS thus has a considerable number of veteran players on indy alts and indy main characters. CAS also has quite a few bloodthirsty killers. Villains and heroes alike.

It's notoriously fun. CAS chat has a solid 600-1000 people at any given time.

It has alumni who keep in touch and run regular pvp fleets. There are also regular mining fleets.

CAS is also lucky enough to have one of the official CSM members (bunyip) who work directly with CCP (the devs).


CAS Combat

CAS has a group of alumni and current players who love to organize PvP. This leads to small bands and ad hoc fun, but also implies a set of semi-organized activities by some of our awesome vets & alumni.

There are occasional PvP Training sessions where new players can learn the basics of setting up the overview, handling fleet maneuvers, etc.

There have been some recent frigate PvP Tournaments with prizes.

There are regular PvP fleet events. One recent fleet had 30+ pilots zipping around 0.0 space and lasted 10+ hours. Here's a short clip of a Claymore being popped by CAS. How embarrassing!



Keep your eye out for events & mailing list.

CAS Rules - Killboard
CCG Forums

That's a CAS fleet hunting enemies in 0.0 space...

Space 101

Space in Eve is dangerous.
The only 100% safe location is being docked in a "high security" system.

You start off in a very secure area of "high security" space - aka "highsec."

Highsec is 0.5-1.0 security rating and means the police (Concord) will destroy anybody who is inappropriately attacking another player. This means that PvP is mostly voluntary in such areas (although players can attack suicidally).

There's also "lowsec" which indicates 0.1-0.4 which new players should avoid. It's mostly lawless in lowsec and you seriously risk being shot at by other players.

Finally, there is "nulsec" which indicates 0.0 security and below. That's the lawless "wild west" where player alliances fight over sovereignty.

You can look at the awesome in-game map tools using F10. You can toggle between a map of the local system you are in and the star map. Inside the star map, you'll find that you can show all kinds of amazing information on the map.

For fun, try to color stars by:
  1. region,
  2. security status,
  3. services --> cloning
  4. statistics --> ships destroyed in the last hour
What you see on this map is sometimes called "known space" or "k-space." There is also "wormhole space" or "w-space." Spontaneously popping up around k-space are unstable wormholes that connect to unknown space or sometimes to other parts of k-space. It's very dangerous in w-space. Finding wormholes requires use of scan probes.

For now, enjoy the massive opportunities that highsec systems offer. As you grow stronger, you'll be able to better take advantage of lowsec, nulsec and w-space.

Here are some great maps:

Mining 101

Read Halada's Mining Guide
Mining in Missions: a list


Jetcan mining

If you right-click on the ore in your cargo, you can jettison it into space (as with any item). This is called jetcanning. The jetcan is fairly huge and will hold a very large amount of ore.

There is risk of having your stuff stolen from that can. Avoiding this risk by mining in a hauler ship (i.e. iteron) is a bad solution. Here's a better solution:
1. Many missions have asteroid belts in them. Do L1 missions as quickly as you can until you find one with veldspar (or whatever floats your boat). The idea is to clear all the enemies but don't turn in the mission.

2. Head for your "mission belt" in a simple mining ship (navitas, vex, retriever, hulk, etc).

3. Jettison the ore and rename your cans with the time in it (i.e. "susie10:25"). Cans will last 1-2 hours.

4. Bring your hauler ship (iteron) in to transport your ore to a station.
This is not perfectly safe. Pirates & crazy homeless people can still scan down your ship, attempting to either steal your ore or to "can flip" it in hopes that you'll give them a chance to kill you.

Our suggestion is to try to get out of the completely newbie starter solar systems to avoid the goofballs who seek to grief new players.


What exactly is "can flipping"?

Eve is full of pirates and griefers.

When you steal from another player, even in highsec empire space, they get a temporary right to shoot you down. This mechanic can be turned around whereby pirates will come up to your can, then "flip it" by adding something to it or making a fake one. This gives them ownership although it also makes them open to attack.

If you take the ore back, they get to shoot you. That's their game.

If you thirst for vengeance and attack, they get to shoot back.

Mining away from busy crowds and also in your own mission belts will dramatically reduce this from happening.

Eve Videos for New Players

New to Eve? Check out these videos:
Eve has a lot of PvP.

Here's a fun video of 2 brand new characters doing pvp together, showing that you do not need to have trained for months upon months to start enjoying that aspect of gameplay:
Eve is all about emergent "sandbox" gameplay, driven by player activity. This can lend itself to great narratives and power struggles. Eve thus makes great inspiration for general stories and movies. One of the best is this:
"Clear Skies" (an eve-based machinema movie)
Most of the Eve universe is player-controlled and constantly at war. Eve battles for contested systems and stations can involve 500+ pilots. For example:
That's a fairly recent battle ("49-u") between two major Eve rivals. Some say 1500 ships were involved in this one fight. There were 300-600 ships lost every night in that system for almost two weeks. At one point, apparently Goons brought in 27 or so Titans as a show of force. See this wacky video of many Titans going fruity disco pew pew.

If you want a high-res look at more fleet combat, check out The Clarion Call - Triage Support.
See more trailers and highres versions at CCP's website.

If you're really into these videos, check out this forum thread as well as the 2009 Eve Tournament Finals.

CAS Hot Topics: Space Oompa Loompas


One of the most compelling and thus important debates that regularly emerges among the citizens of the Center for Advanced Studies pertains the nature and status of crews on Eve ships.

The arguments range from "even pods have crews" to "none of the ships actually have crews." There is firm evidence that ships do utilize space oompa loompas, including the current tutorial which states:

"You are the ship's captain. You issue orders, which your crew must follow."

This leaves no doubt that Eve capsuleers are pilots of ships with crews. However, there appear to be exceptions to this rule as seen in this older Chronicle story which explains that the capsule technology allows "small ships" to run without a crew:

"This is a capsule," Anu said to the Caldari. "It is used to control a ship. With it a ship a big as this one can be controlled with only a handful of crew and smaller ships, like your frigates, can even be controlled by a single person."

"How is this possible?" Ouriye asked. He was obviously skeptical, even if he didn't seem as surprised by what Anu said as the other Caldari.

"The controller, captain if you like, of the ship is stationed inside the capsule. Through it, he's neural rigged to all parts of the ship. The capsule is like one gigantic computer, with the captain at the core, controlling everything." Any answered.

"But how can a single man control a whole ship?" Ouriye pressed.

"Thank you, captain, I was coming to that. As I said, the captain acts as the central unit in a highly advanced computer. This role allows him to access and evaluate data at extreme pace. He can easily handle the jobs it takes 5 or 10 people to do normally. It also makes him a better commander, he has better understanding and awareness of his environment and he's not boggled down by tedious crew management issues and frequent communication breakdowns are now history." Anu finished, looking over the faces of the thoughtful Caldari standing before him.

"So what is the downside?" Pirkotan asked. "There is always a downside."

"Not in this case, lieutenant," Anu replied. "The capsule offers greater control to ships, yet fewer crew members. As you know one of the biggest costs in maintaining a ship is training the crew, this cost is now much reduced. We Jovians are not numerous, yet we can field a very formidable fleet because of capsules."

"So what about this capsule controller? Can anybody control this thing?" Ouriye probed, obviously eager to garner as much knowledge as he could about these capsules.
This clearly indicates that pod/capsule technology can allow single person control over a smaller ship like a frigate, although some oompa loompa zealots have insisted there still must be a crew for general maintenance even if they don't directly control the ship.

Complicating matters considerably more are cases like shuttle craft where you may be transporting livestock such as diplomats, politicians or prostitutes. One might assume there are certain luxuries requiring basic oompa loompa amenities and services.

It's my belief that pods and frigates do not require oompa loompas, but that shuttles would have them. I am eager for further clarity from the developers of the Eve universe.
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