Getting Started in EVE Online
Welcome to Eve Online!
This guide is intended to help you get started with your first few days in New Eden.
Character Creation
Before you begin, the first thing you should do properly is decide a race you'd like your character to be. Keep in mind that all races can pilot other faction's ships if they train the required skills. Your starting faction will determine your appearance, starting location, and the initial racial frigate and gunnery skills.
All races have ships that can fill different roles with differing levels of effectiveness. But in the end, without going into overly elaborate discussions about the strengths and weaknesses of racial ships in various hull sizes, the thing that matters the most is picking a race who's ships you think look cool. You can worry about the details later, and cross-train if there are any particular roles or ships you want to fly.
See the Eve Online Ships database for visual references.
Name and Portrait
Try to pick a decent name for youself. Your name is part of your identity, and it will influence how your corpmates think of you. In Eve Online, most corporations make use of voice communication during fleet operations, and will make their voice server available for casual chatter also. You will sometimes need to identify yourself with your name while issuing orders or making reports on voice comms. Your name will be used by fleetmates to give you intel or orders. Having a name that is simple and easily pronouncable will make things easier for everyone. Pick your name carefully, especially your first name, as that will often be used as your callsign during fleet ops. You cannot change your name after character creation.
If you pick a stupid name for yourself, you should be ready for some people not taking you seriously.
Many races have portraits that are hideous and others are quite pleasing to the eye. Whether you go for a scary or an alluring portrait, do spend some time crafting it. If you are displeased with it later on, you will need to spend real money if you wish to change it.
Goon Wiki Portait Guide Warning: Although goons have some very helpful new player guides on their wiki, they will not hesitate to grief you in-game. They are cruel folk that will do their best to scam, destroy ships and pod-kill, and steal from non-goons (and even other goons for the hell of it).
The Tutorial and Career Agents
These agents will be available in the station in your starter system. You can also find career agents in the NeoCom (the interface on the left of the screen) in the Help section (also accessible by pressing the F12 key), and then clicking the 'Show Career Agents' button. Tutorial and Career Agents in Eve
The tutorials will give various skill books, ships, and modules as rewards to help you get started.
Your first step should be to talk to the basic tutorial agent which will give you two missions before referring you to the career agents.
Once you've done those two missions, we recommend you do the career agents in the following order:
Military Agent
Skillbooks: Motion Prediction, Weapon Upgrades, Shield Management, Propulsion Jamming, Sharpshooter.
Industry Agent
To complete the Industry series, the Industry skill will need to be purchased. It is possible to overlap these agents, for example, when you're waiting for a manufacturing job to build.
Business Agent
Skillbooks: Survey, Salvaging, Hacking, Contracting, Negotiation, Trade, Retail, Cybernetics, Production Efficiency.
Exploration Agent
Some players have difficulty with the probing system. You can watch the CCP probing video on Youtube for a demonstration of the probing mechanics.
The UniWiki also has a probing guide available: Smurfprime's Probing Guide
Skillbooks: Astrometrics, Survey, Astrometric Pinpointing.
Advanced Military Agent
Read the mission descriptions carefully when doing the Advanced Military path. Two of the missions require losing your ship, so make sure you use the ship supplied by the agent and get platinum insurance. The article Advanced Military Career Funnel Chain describes this chain in further detail.
The Advanced Military Agent will give a Letter of Recommendation that can be used to enter the NPC Factional Warfare corporation. Factional Warfare Guide
Skillbooks: Propulsion Jamming, Remote Armor Repair Systems (Amarr and Gallente) or Shield Emission Systems (Minmatar and Caldari), Small Energy Turret (Amarr), Standard Missiles (Caldari), Drones (Gallente), Small Projectile Turret (Minmatar), Destroyers.
Rewards
Once the Career Agents are completed, the character will have acquired around 26 skillbooks (some of them duplicates), about 10 ships and close to 4,000,000 ISK.
A new player that takes time with the tutorials and career agents will learn and experience the basics of much EVE has to offer, aside from PvP.
The Sisters of Eve Epic Arc: Blood-Stained Stars
The career agents will recommend starting the Epic Arc mission series with Sister Alitura in the Arnon system at the Sisters of Eve station. We recommend doing all of the career agent tutorials before heading off to the Epic Arc.
Some of these missions are difficult for rookie pilots. Many new players will lose ships while learning effective tactics to defeat NPC opponents. We recommend you fly cheaply fitted ships and insure with platinum insurance.
The final bosses in the Epic Arc, Kristan Parthus and Dagan, can be very challenging for rookie pilots. Many pilots will get help by asking in local, although you risk having your mission objective stolen and ransommed by fleeting with strangers.
Information and tips on how to run some of the missions can be found on the Eve Survival Blood-Stained Stars page.
Missioning
The Evelopedia has a Missions Guide which can help you decide which corp and deptartment you want to run missions for.
We recommend declining empire faction kill missions to avoid losing access to empire space. Having -5 or below standings with an empire faction can cause problems during war fleets, lowsec patrols, wormhole ops, and many other circumstances. This can also cause problems if you later join a corp that has their HQ in a faction's empire space that is denied to you, or if you join a nullsec alliance who's nearest empire space is denied to you. When you have -2 or below standing with a faction, only the Level 1 Quality 0 agents and below will be available to grind standings, which could be a lengthy process.
You can check mission information before accepting or declining on Eve Survival.
There is a database of agents available on the Eve Agents website. Some of the entries are outdated and you should always check in-game to confirm the existence and location of the agent. You can also use the map to see systems where you have agents available to you. Open the map (F10), go to the Star Map tab, go to the Stars sub-tab, go to the My Information section, select My Available Agents. Flattening the map can make it easier to navigate. Hovering your cursor over these star systems will list the available agents along with their respective corporation, level, quality, and division.
Basic Skill Recommendations
These are basic skill recommendations. None of these skills have prerequisites above level III, and are thus easily accessible to new players. They will provide a solid foundation upon which to develop more advanced skills.
The skills have been grouped to help players find skills relevant to their interests. The Learning & Implants category is recommended for all pilots. The basic learning skills should be trained up to level III within the first two or three days of play. They are quick to train, and will soon pay off in saved training time. Training them up to IV within the first week or two is recommended. For characters that do not specialize in Trade Skills, Social Skills, or Leadership Skills, Charisma is not useful. Thus for many pilots, Empathy can be trained up to III only for the benefit to some advanced learning skills and basic missioning social skills. Cybernetics can be trained up to level I only, as that gives access up to +3 attribute implants which is sufficient for a new pilot's early career.
Some of the skills below are useful in your early days only to use some basic modules, others will increase your ship's performance directly and should be trained up to level II or III relatively fast. Take a look at the skill descriptions to see how they would help you, and use a program like EFT that lets you see how a ship's attributes are affected by skills. EveMon is another popular program that will let you plan skill training for your character. These and other useful programs and websites are linked in the 3rd Party Tools article.
Read more on Support Skills in our wiki article, which also describes many advanced skills not listed in the basic recommendations below.
Armor Tanking
- Hull Upgrades
- Mechanic
- Repair Systems
Capacitor & Fitting
- Electronics
- Electronics Upgrades
- Energy Grid Upgrades
- Energy Management
- Energy Systems Operation
- Engineering
Drones
- Combat Drone Operation
- Drones
- Scout Drone Operation
Electronic Warfare
- Electronics Upgrades
- Electronic Warfare (Caldari)
- Frequency Modulation
- Long Distance Jamming
- Sensor Linking (Gallente)
- Target Painting (Minmatar)
- Weapon Disruption (Amarr)
Exploration
- Archaeology
- Astrometrics
- Astrometric Pinpointing
- Electronics Upgrades
- Hacking
- Salvaging
- Survey
Gunnery
- Controlled Bursts (unnecessary for projectile weapons)
- Gunnery
- Motion Prediction
- Small Energy Turret (Amarr)
- Small Hybrid Turret (Caldari and Gallente)
- Small Projectile Turret (Minmatar)
- Rapid Firing
- Sharpshooter
- Weapon Upgrades (also applies to missile launchers)
Learning & Implants
- Analytical Mind
- Cybernetics
- Empathy
- Instant Recall
- Iron Will
- Learning
- Spatial Awareness
Mining
- Mining
- Mining Upgrades
- Refining
Missiles
- Missile Bombardment
- Missile Launcher Operation
- Missile Projection
- Rapid Launch
- Standard Missiles
- Rockets
- Target Navigation Prediction
Missioning
- Connections
- Social
- Acceleration Control
- Afterburner
- Evasive Maneuvering
- Fuel Conservation
- High Speed Maneuvering
- Navigation
- Warp Drive Operation
Production
- Industry
- Mass Production
- Production Efficiency
Shield Tanking
- Shield Management
- Shield Operation
- Shield Upgrades
- Tactical Shield Manipulation
Ship Command
- Amarr Frigate
- Amarr Industrial
- Caldari Frigate
- Caldari Industrial
- Destroyers
- Gallente Frigate
- Gallente Industrial
- Minmatar Frigate
- Minmatar Industrial
Tackling
- Propulsion Jamming
Targeting
- Long Range Targeting
- Signature Analysis
- Targeting
Trading
- Broker Relations
- Contracting
- Marketing
- Procurement
- Retail
- Trade
Fitting Recommendations
- Fitting Guidelines Some general guidelines for fitting ships.
- Fitting Modules and Rigs Guide A list of rigs and module types with short descriptions.
Racial Fitting Guides
These are all works in progress, some are further along than others.
Eve University Forum
- Ship Setup Forum This should be the first place for new players to look for fits and ask for advice. This forum is restricted to Eve University members and alumni.
Other Web Sites
- Scrapheap Challenge This site has both PvP and PvE forums. Some threads are quite old and the discussions can be outdated in the earlier posts. Scrapheap is often a very good place for experienced pilots to find fittings, and many threads will also have tactic discussions on how to use them. Most of the fits are meant for older pilots with excellent fitting skills, and it can be harder to find fits that work for low skill points.
Neural Remap
New players have access to two neural remaps, and older players have one per year. Do not use a neural remap early in your career until you are certain what you want to train for the next 6-12 months. Then use EveMon to give you the optimal neural remap for that skill plan.
Finding A Corporation
You can find recruitment adverts through the NeoCom Corp interface, under the Recruitment tab.
The Official Eve Online Alliance and Corporation Recruitment Center.
Eve University's Work Fair forum.
If you are looking for a corp to learn the basics of the game, Eve University might be the place for you. Feel free to join us in our public channel "E-UNI". The channel is there to answer any questions rookie pilots may have, and to recruit players into the corp.
Read the Applying to Eve University article for more information.
Buddy Invites
You can send friends a buddy invite which will give them an extended 21-day trial. If your buddy upgrades to a full account, you will recieve 30 free days added to your account.
If you wish to start a second account, you can send yourself a buddy invite, and collect 30 free days on your first account when you upgrade the second account to a full membership.
The buddy invite page is available through the Account Management page in the eve-online.com site.
