Creating a portable EVE Client
Having a portable version of your EVE Client with all accounts logged in, ready to play, can give you a time-efficient and bandwith-saving advandage. Whether you are travelling or do not want to leave traces of your computer activity, or just like to have an "EVE To Go" on a portable medium of your choice, this tutorial might be for you.
Hardware
- EVE Online requires 20GB or more so it is strongly reccommended to have at least 32GB free space on your storage device.
- It is strongly discouraged to use USB 2.0 interface for playing EVE via pen-drive because load times and overall performance drops to almost unplayable.
- Use 3.0 or better interface for outstanding performance that allows you to play stable 60fps on full details (of course other hardware requirements must be met).
- Proper drivers (graphics card drivers, DirectX) must be installed on the machine. Without them the game will not start.
First installation
Legend (recommended names for easiness of explanation. You can name all things however you like):
- C: - your system's drive letter
- X: - your pen-drive's drive letter
- .user. - your username
- Navigate to your plugged-in disk and create a directory of your choosing to store all your EVE data, for example "EVE Online".
- Inside newly-created directory, create folders called "Documents", "Local" and "EVE".
- Open EVELauncher installer from eveonline.com/download.
- Select location of installation as your newly created "EVE" folder and install EVE.
- Do not forget to delete desktop icon and start menu entry in "C:\Users\.user.\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs"
- When your launcher is downloading data, make sure to set SharedCache folder inside "X:\EVE Online\EVE\EVESharedCache" folder.
- Log into all accounts you want to save for your portable client.
- After all data is downloaded, exit EVE Launcher (make sure it was not just minimized into tray).
Now, there are two different approaches you can choose. One is manual, second more automated but requires a minimum knowledge of Windows
Manual
Navigate to "C:\Users\.user.\Documents" and cut folder named "EVE" and paste it into "X:\EVE Online\Documents" Navigate to "C:\Users\.user.\AppData\Local" (this is a hidden folder) and cut folder named "CCP" adn paste it to "X:\EVE Online\Local"
Automatic (WARNING, ONLY FOR PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND XCOPY AND RD COMMANDS)
- In "X:\EVE Online" create a text file named "startup.txt" and paste the code below:
xcopy /E %userprofile%\Documents\EVE Documents\EVE /Y
xcopy /E %userprofile%\AppData\Local\CCP Local\CCP /Y
rd /S /Q %userprofile%\Documents\EVE
rd /S /Q %userprofile%\AppData\Local\CCP - After saving the file, change extention from ".txt" to ".bat".
- Run the script.
Voila! you have portable EVE Online!