Careers

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EVE is a sandbox game, so it's up to each player to set their own goals and decide what they want to do in the game. Here are some of the most common activities available in the game, although keep in mind that many players engage with the game in far more unusual ways, and that therefore this (or any) list of "things to do in EVE" can never be complete.

Choosing a career

Few new capsuleers consider the potential career implications of their racial, bloodline and ancestry selections when establishing their first character. Generally, they select what sounds like the most interesting or fun character background to play.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing for Omega players (with an EVE subscription), however, as no in-game career choice is blocked to any racial faction (Amarr, Gallente, Minmatar or Caldari) or bloodline. Omega characters can learn any skill in the game. On the other hand, Alpha players (with no subscription may find themselves limited by their choice of race, as they each have their own strengths.

Do the starter career mission tracks

Once you've established your character, it is recommended that you play all five of the starter career mission tracks offered: industry, military, exploration, business, and advanced military. These career introduction missions dish out numerous additional skills for free, and each is nicely explained in practice - sometimes with special "civilian" versions of the necessary module so you can try out the mechanic before training the skill needed for the real version of the module in question.

To access these career mission tracks, press the F12 key, then select "Show Career Agents". These introductory missions are entirely optional, but highly recommended because they provide essential skillbooks, ships, and some initial capital, with a relatively minor investment in time. The starter missions also teach you the basics of the principal career options for making money in EVE.

• Industry missions cover the basics of mining, refining and manufacturing of goods.
• Business missions introduce players to EVE's open and comprehensive market system.
• Military missions cover shooting stuff for loot and salvage.
• Exploration missions cover the discovery of valuable sites in EVE space - wormholes, deadspace pockets, and undiscovered archeology sites, among others.
• Advanced Military missions will introduce you to the finer details of EVE combat. These missions are more difficult than those of in the Military career track, and as a result, these should be taken after the other track is completed.

After the five career introductions, each consisting of ten missions, you will be pointed towards the first epic mission arc of EVE, "The Blood-Stained Stars". While a definite challenge for a new player, this 50-mission arc provides some substantial rewards, and is worth finishing. The arc takes you all over the safe empire space and you can freely branch off to do other things, returning to the arc later as you choose. If you decide to pursue this arc, you should read the handy mission guide on our wiki: The Blood-Stained Stars.

Develop a career plan

Once you've been introduced to some of the basics of EVE, and have sampled the starter career mission tracks, you now know enough to begin optimizing your character for one or more ISK-making specialties. It's generally best, at least initially, to get very good at one kind of ISK-generating activity, rather than be not-so-great at a lot of different money-earning ventures. The essential steps for developing your ISK-earning career plan are as follows:

1. Create a concept in your mind of what you want to do in EVE. Don't limit yourself. Make this anything you can imagine, no matter how unlikely or outlandish.
2. Do some Level 1 (and later, more advanced level) missions until you have enough resources to begin doing what you thought of in Step 1.
3. Begin to execute your idea from Step 1.
4. If the idea isn't profitable enough by itself to sustain itself initially, supplement with occasional mission running.
5. Keep developing your idea, evolve it, and figure out ways to make it self-sustaining.
6. If your idea is ultimately not self-sustaining, think of a different concept, and go to Step 2.

Though this approach seems obvious, very few EVE players actually plan their character's career development in this way. Instead, they try everything that comes by, as it becomes available to them, which provides a lot of variety but not any development of expertise (except in a very long run). Or, they get in a rut and start doing the same thing over and over, and eventually lose interest. If mining isn't your thing, don't do it just to earn ISK - try something else. But first, think, develop a plan, start executing the plan, refine the plan as necessary, and then either build on the plan or start over. This approach will produce the best results - in EVE, or in real life!

Security Missions

Doing Security Missions is one of the two most common career choices next to Mining. In its essence you keep doing combat missions while increasing your combat skills and your standing. This then allows you to do more difficult missions with higher risk/reward. The upside of this career is, that every skill you learn for PvE is also useful for PvP. And in the end you can naturally progress to Incursions which are one of the best sources of PvE ISK out there.

The UniWiki has a basic Missions article. Pilots who wish to mission close to the EVE University HQ in Slays often run missions for a number of Gallente and other NPC corps located in or near the Highsec Campus (HSC). Many active members in that campus will assist you and have you join missioning fleets. There is a lot of benefit to running missions in fleets.

We recommend declining kill missions against the four main empire factions (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar) to avoid having access to that faction's empire space become problematic due to negative standings that can accrue for you. Having a negative faction status will start to cause you problems when it's at an adjusted -2.0 or below. When you have -2.0 or below standing with a faction, only the Level 1 agents will be available to grind standings, which could be a lengthy process. At an adjusted -5.0 and below that faction's NPC navy will spawn attack you. Station and gate guns will also look to attack you. Unlike CONCORD you can evade these NPCs. 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. Using the Agent Finder in-game is also a good tool. Access this via the NeoCom Menu, Business, and select the Agent Finder. You can also drag the icon from that submenu onto your NeoCom bar for quick access.

There is a database of agents available on the EVE Agents website.

Notice: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 (Ctrl-F10) or click on the default (beta) map icon off your NeoCom, mouse over the colored circle in the menu at the top to open the "Color by: menu. Select the "Personal" line to open the selections and click on the radio button for "My Available Agents". For the old 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.

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Mining

Main article: Mining

If shooting red icons is not your type of work you may want to consider the second popular profession in EVE: Mining. Mining is as straightforward as is doing security missions. You start out with a Venture and then progress to Mining Barges and Exhumers. Mining is infamous for being able to be done afk. Just start your mining lasers and do something else while your ship fills its orehold automatically.

When you become more proficient you may also try Ice Mining or even Gas Cloud Mining. You should also join the Amarr Mining Campus where you will get advice and can join mining fleets. This fleets will usually provide an Orca which will increase your mining yield. If you have no access to the AMC you should consider getting a second account in order to train a hauler and Orca alt.

After you have mined your ore you might consider refining it. This is not the default choice but needs some serious calculation. Since refining is determined by your skills and your standing with the corporation owning the station where you refine a considerable amount of minerals might be lost to the Nether if you are a new player. Unista Makie Tachibana created a helpful spreadsheet for you to determine if you should refine or just sell your ore. If you are a member of EVE University you can also use the Perfect Refine Service where other Unistas will do the refining for you.

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Exploration

If doing missions or shooting space rocks is too dull for you, you might be in for the recently updated profession of exploration. Exploration means that you look for hidden sites and go to loot them for profit. A guide to exploration is provided in the wiki.

Exploration is a very fun activity but the gain is somewhat random. While data and relic sites provide blueprints and material for production, combat sites may escalate and drop valuable faction or deadspace loot. Or not so valuable, if you are unlucky. As you get more experience you can progress from high-sec exploration to low- and null-sec explorations where the rewards but also the risks are higher. A cloaking device is most essential.

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Science & Industry

So you neither want to shoot ships nor asteroids? And you do not want to endanger your ship while strolling around in null-sec? You are pretty decent in math and you want to create instead of destroy? Welcome to Manufacturing! Manufacturing is the art of using a blueprint to produce items that are then sold to the market. You can read this guide to get an overview of how it works.

Basically you will first search the market for something you want to produce. Ships, Drones and Ammunition are a good starting point since the modules you can produce have better (and cheaper) counterparts in their Meta 1-4 variations. You will then acquire a blueprint. This can either be a blueprint original (BPO) or a blueprint copy (BPC). The first one allows unlimited runs, the latter only a specific number until it vanishes.

You can also buy either unresearched blueprints from the market or researched blueprints from contracts. Research provides lower material costs and lesser production time. If you go for a researched blueprint do your math first and compare the amount of ISK you save for lower production cost with the cost of the blueprint. If you save less money then you spend its obviously not worth it.

You can also always research the blueprint yourself. The problem with that is, that you might have to wait for a really long time until a high-sec research slot becomes available.

If you are a member of EVE University you can use the E-Uni POS to do your research. You can also join Project Solitude which operates in a high-sec pocket surrounded by low- and null-sec. This has the advantage that it is far easier to get a empty research facility. You can also sell ships and modules for a premium price there.

Like Security Missions and Mining, Science & Industry comes with a steady progression. You will start manufacturing T1 items. But after a while your skills are high enough to start producing T2 items. And after that you can venture into T3 production, manufacturing the components that Strategic Cruisers are made of. You could even become a capital ship manufacturer as the pinnacle of your career.

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Business

What do the mission runner, the miner, the explorer and the manufacturer have in common? They sell their goods to the market. So why not be the market maker? Let the peons grind, while you sit in the station buying low and selling high? Pretty good idea! But not so fast, the entry barrier to doing business is pretty high. Experience-wise as ISK-wise. You can read this basic guide on Trading to get a good idea.

Basically there are three different types of trading with increasing difficulty.

The first one is hauling. Hauling means that you buy items at station A, put them into your cargohold and ship them to a local tradehub where you can sell them higher. You can either do this as inter-region hauling, where you exploit price differences of items in different regions. Another apporach is to set-up buy orders in mission hubs to buy the loot from mission runners. You then haul the stuff to a local trade hub and return with ammunition, ships and exotic dancers that are useful for mission runners. A third way to do hauling is to buy up stuff for cheap in the career agent systems. Especially the ships that are given out by the career agents to new players can be bought cheaply and resold in the next hub.

A more sophisticated form of trading is station-trading. This involves no time in space. Your character is just sitting in a station and buys and sells items. For this you want to look for items that have high-volume and high-price differences. You will then set-up buy orders and wait for people to sell you their stuff. You will then resell it on the market for a higher price, therefore making profits. Your biggest competition in this field are market bots that over-/undercut your prices by 0.01 ISK.

The ultimate form of trading is inter-hub trading. This combines both approaches above. You set up buy and sell orders for items in several trading hubs. You will compare the prices and volume of items in different hubs and then buy where it is cheap and sell where it is expensive. This might require additional characters in each of the trading hubs you are dealing in.

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