Getting Started in EVE Online
Welcome to EVE Online! You are now a citizen of New Eden. This guide will lead you step by step on your way of surviving and even prosper in this cold and harsh place. You can read it whole or just on-the-fly while you are making your first steps in EVE. You can also go to Youtube and watch the How to Survive EVE Online video series by Seamus Donohue.
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 whose 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.
See the Character Creator guide on the UniWiki for details on creating a character and portrait.
Name and Portrait
Try to pick a decent name for yourself. 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 pronounceable 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 prepare for some people to not take 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.
The Tips For Character Creation site may be of help for aesthetic portrait design.
Starting your Career
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.
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 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 who takes the time to do all the tutorials and career agents will learn and experience the basics of much EVE has to offer, aside from PvP, as well as build up a bit of wealth.
For further details, read: Tutorial and Career Agents in EVE
Make sure you complete all 5 career agents before moving on to the epic arc or other activities.
The Sisters of EVE Epic Arc: Blood-Stained Stars
After you have completed the Tutorial and Career missions, you will have an opportunity to continue your missioning career.
The career agents will recommend starting the Epic Arc mission series with Sister Alitura in the Arnon system at the Sisters of EVE Bureau 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 ransomed by fleeting with strangers.
Information and tips on how to run some of the missions can be found in our wiki: The Blood-Stained Stars, and also on EVE Survival: Blood-Stained Stars
Further Missioning
The UniWiki has a basic Missions article. The Evelopedia has a Missions Guide which can help you decide which corp and department you want to run missions for. Pilots who wish to mission close to the EVE University HQ in Aldrat often run missions for the Minmatar Mining Corporation in nearby systems. Other corps to mission for in nearby systems are listed in the Mission Guide to Aldrat.
We recommend declining kill missions against the four main empire factions (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar) 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 whose nearest empire space is denied to you. When you have -2 or below standing with a faction, only the Level 1 agents will be available to grind standings, which could be a lengthy process. You will know if a mission is a faction kill mission because it will have the faction's logo next to the objective.
You can check mission information before accepting or declining on EVE Survival. If you want to find agents close to a particular system, you can use the Agent Rangefinder web application. 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 and 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.
Career Choices
Although most players start making ISK in EVE by running missions, there are plenty of other ways to make a fortune. The Tutorial Agents give brief insight into some of the many careers in EVE. You are not restricted to the list below, but here are some popular choices:
- Ratting - Killing NPC pirates ("rats") for bounty rewards and loot.
- Exploration - The search for hidden combat, relic and data sites.
- Mining - Farming asteroids or ice belts.
- Science and Industry - Reasearching Blueprints and producing items out of them.
- Trading and Hauling - Playing the market in different ways.
- Piracy - Leeching on the effort of your fellow players by blowing them up.
- PLEX - Buy a PLEX with real money and sell them on the market. Not a career, but definitely quick ISK
For further details on career choices (and PLEX), read our guide on earning ISK.
Skills and Learning
How to Learn
Apart from ISK, skills are the most important thing that new characters are short on. The skill and learning system is quite complex, and understanding it from the beginning will pay off very quickly. Take the time to understand how Skills and Learning works.
What to Learn
The Skills and Learning guide gives helpful suggestions. While you are considering your choice of career, you may wish to round out your skillbase by consulting the Basic Skills or Support Skills guides. You can use 3rd party software such as EveMon to plan your skill training.
Neural Remap
A brief word on neural remaps: 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 to 12 months. Then use EveMon to give you the optimal neural remap for that skill plan.
Fitting your Ship
For general principles for fitting ships, read our Fitting Guidelines. For a list of rigs and module types, with short descriptions, visit our Fitting Modules and Rigs Guide. You can plan your fittings with 3rd party software such as EFT, EveHQ, or Pyfa.
Ship Fitting Guides
These basic ship fitting articles also contain recommended skills for specific fittings.
EVE University Forum
As a new player, don't be afraid to ask for fitting advice in the EVE University PvP and PvE ship setup forums. This should be the first place for new players to look for fits and ask for advice. These forums are restricted to EVE University members and alumni.
Other Web Sites
- Failheap Challenge: This site has both PvP and PvE forums. Some threads are quite old and the discussions can be outdated in the earlier posts. Failheap 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.
Next Steps
Finding a Corporation
You begin EVE in a non-player character (NPC) corporation, which charge an 11% tax on mission rewards and bounties. To avoid this, you can form your own independent corporation. However, most people choose to join one of the established player-run corporations, which provide better opportunities for social interaction and other in-game benefits.
You can find corporation 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 receive 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.
Related Links
- How to Survive EVE Online A series of instructional Youtube videos by Seamus Donohue.
- Category:Getting Started collection of guides on this Wiki.
- EVE University Class Library contains recorded classes that cover a wide variety of subjects.
- Crash Course for rookie pilots on the Evelopedia.
- Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase A guide that covers almost all aspects of EVE .
- Career Chart A chart that serves as a short summary of what you can do in EVE.
