Tips and Tricks

The point of this page is to list any misc tips and tricks that you've encountered/discovered that don't merit a more in-depth write up.

Traveling

• Don't autopilot -- nothing attracts pirates faster than a ship that shows up 15k from a gate and heads for the gate at normal speeds. They'll know you're not paying attention, and shortly, so will you.

• The autopilot isn't useless, though: with a route set for the autopilot, warping to zero and activating the autopilot while still in warp will make your ship instantly jump as soon as you arrive on the gate. Just deactivate the autopilot as soon as the jump is initiated to prevent it from warping to 15km on the next gate.

• If you set the route to a system, the next stargate on the route will show up in yellow, so you can find it easily. (If you take a different gate, the autopilot will re-route automatically.)

• When you come through a jump gate, you're cloaked for about 40 seconds, or until you move. If you jump into trouble, pause a few seconds to analyze your situation, let the panic subside, and decide what to do.

• If you have a cloaking device and in unfriendly territory you can minimize visibility by doing the following: 1. Jump through gate and pick destination to warp to. 2. Align to destination then immediately hit your cloak. Once aligned then warp off. (Some techniques use a burst of AB or MWD as well)

• Leave a cheap item at stations you visit frequently. This will turn your assets tab (available on the left of the screen) into a handy collection of bookmarks.

Salvaging

• If the wrecks are in large clumps many kilometers apart, clear one clump and bookmark the next set of wrecks, then warp away and warp back to the bookmark you just made -- saving you from having to slowboat to the next set of wrecks.

This works really well if the mission had multiple rooms since the warp point you can use is close by.

• Despite detailing in their description that they are for pulling in cargo containers, tractor beams CAN pull in wrecks also. Indeed, pulling in wrecks is the reason you'd want them. The description is left over from a previous release of EvE.

Hauling

• You can fit an improved cloaking device to your hauler for some added security during wormhole ops. Ask the miners to drop the can some distance from the asteroid belt, and stay between 2000 and 2500 m from the can in the direction that you want to warp to. If trouble arises and you don't think you have time to align and warp out (or you're bubbled), you can instantly activate the cloak and head away from the belt in an open direction. The loot you save may even pay for all those dead retrievers :)

Market

• Use the scroll wheel on the mouse to adjust orders by 0.01 ISK.
• Try to avoid updating your buy/sell orders at the same time each day. This keeps your market competition guessing.
• If possible, leave your trade character logged on at all times. That way, if you were added to your competitor's address book, they'll never know when you log on and off.

Mining

• When you first warp to an asteroid belt you may be up to 70-80 kilometers away from the rocks. Bookmark an asteroid, then warp out and back to the bookmark to save time getting to mining range.

• If you have a really long belt, you may save time by warping between two sets of asteroids >150km from each other when changing rocks, rather than slowboating to the next asteroid.

Missioning

• Buy a hull repairer when you move up from frigates. Keep it in your cargo bay and if you hit structure during a mission warp out, dock locally and use it to repair your ship saving you station repair bills. Remember to swap it back out before going back to the mission.

• Drone users: Make sure you have all the NPCs in a given group locking/attacking you before you launch your drones. Refer to EVE-Survival for info on spawn triggers and the possibility of drones attracting the attention of other NPC groups.

• After training Social to 3 and Connections to 3 you can almost instantly access L2 agents without the need to grind lots of L1 missions.

• If you mission in a fleet with somebody else, you'll get standings increases with that faction. This can save you some grinding, as a couple of shared L3 or L4 missions will give the same increase as many more L1 or L2 missions. Many Uni missioners will be happy to have you come in with a salvage destroyer and do the salvaging on a shared basis, if you're not up to taking on L4 combat yet.

• Similarly, the E-Uni missioning channel runs a spider fleet -- you join and run missions solo, but share the profits and standings with other Uni mission-runners. That can get you standings with companies you couldn't access otherwise.

• Train up salvaging as soon as possible -- salvage can double your mission profit, and a team running high-level missions with a dedicated salvager can be much more profitable and safe than a solo missioner.

Overview

• Hold the CTRL key and left click on an entry in your overview to target it.
• Holding CTRL will also freeze the overview so things don't change position. This is useful for making sure you click the right thing in busy situations.

Drone Usage

• The commands "All Drones: Engage", "All Drones: Return & Orbit" and "All Drones: Return & Dock" can be assigned to hotkeys.
• In your drone window in the overview, don't forget to keep the tab under "Drones in Space" open, so you can moniter your drones health and call them in in case they are attacked. This is especially important if you are using Tech 2 drones, as they are expensive to lose.

Naming Conventions

• Name ships so you know how they are fitted or what their role is. This can be handy if you have several of the same type sitting in a hanger. Use a convention that works for you but is not obvious to others, for example don't call your ship Low Armour Heavy Gank PvP ship.