Getting Started in EVE Online

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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. In Eve Online, many corporations make use of voice communication during fleet operations, and will make their voice server available for casual chatter also. In large fleets, you will sometimes need to identify yourself while issuing orders or reporting target activity. Having a name that is simple and easily pronouncable will make things easier for everyone.

Many races have portraits that are hideous and others are quite pleasing to the eye. Wether 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.

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 for it. 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 much of the basics of almost everything EVE has to offer, aside from PvP.

The Sisters of Eve Epic Arc

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.

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.

Advanced learning skills (Clarity, Eidetic Memory, Focus, Logic, and Presence for those who specialize in charisma-related skills) should be purchased when the ISK is available for them. Training advanced learning skills up to III will pay off relatively fast. Many players will train basic learning skills up to V and advanced learning skills up to IV in the 3 to 6 month timeframe, and these levels of learning skills can take up to a year to pay off. Advanced learning skills at level V are not recommended, as they take many years to pay off.

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

Navigation

• 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
• Signature Analysis

Targeting

• Long Range Targeting
• Targeting

Trading

• Broker Relations
• Contracting
• Marketing
• Procurement
• Retail
• Trade

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.