How to earn ISK

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Welcome to EVE: Now get a job!

So, you've joined the wonderful world of EVE Online - congratulations! It doesn't take long for new players to realize that EVE does not present you with the keys to survival on a silver platter. After giving them a noob ship, a short tutorial, and some helpful starter missions, EVE kicks players into the harsh environment of space to fend for themselves. This is one of the aspects of the EVE sandbox that is both thrilling and frightening, at the same time.

One of the first lessons that every EVE pilot learns is: InterStellar Kredits (ISK) run the universe. Without money, you cannot buy ships, equipment, trade goods, and just about everything else one needs to thrive - or survive. In EVE, perhaps more than any other online multiplayer game, TANSTAAFL [1] ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch").

So, one of the first questions that every new EVE player asks is: how do I make ISK? After some experience and education, that question generally becomes: how do I make the most ISK with the least effort in the shortest time?

Fortunately, there are many ways to earn ISK in EVE. This brief guide intends to describe some of the typical options that many EVE players pursue, and to provide some helpful guidance about which ISK-earning careers might be the best fit for your personality and playing style.

Starting Character Skills and Attributes

Few new EVE players 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, however, as no in-game career choice is blocked to any racial faction(Amarr, Gallente, Minmatar or Caldari) or bloodline. Any character can learn any skill in the game.

Starting Skills

All new characters start with the same essential skill set:

• Frigate II (starting racial faction dependent)
• Electronics III
• Engineering III
• Gunnery II
• Mechanic II
• Mining II
• Navigation III
• Science III
• Shield Operation II
• Small Energy Turret III
• Small Hybrid Turret III
• Small Projectile Turret III
• Spaceship Command III

Starting Attributes

However, starting attributes (Charisma, Intelligence, Memory, Willpower and Perception) are slightly different, based on racial faction, bloodline and ancestry choices, and this will affect the rate at which skills are learned. But even attributes can be remapped, so even this does not present a significant obstacle to optimizing your character for different careers.

Race	Bloodline	Ancestry		Charisma	Intelligence	Memory	Perception	Willpower
Caldari	Deteis	Merchandisers		7	8	12	6	6
Caldari	Deteis	Scientists		7	11	8	7	6
Caldari	Deteis	Tube Child		7	8	8	6	10
Caldari	Civire	Entrepreneurs		7	6	9	10	7
Caldari	Civire	Mercs		7	6	5	10	11
Caldari	Civire	Dissenters		9	6	5	10	9
Caldari	Achura	Inventors		4	13	7	8	7
Caldari	Achura	Monks		4	9	7	10	9
Caldari	Achura	Stargazers		4	9	10	9	7
Minmitar	Sebiestor	Tinkerers		7	12	7	6	7
Minmitar	Sebiestor	Traders		11	8	7	6	7
Minmitar	Sebiestor	Rebels		7	8	7	9	8
Minmitar	Brutor	Workers		7	5	9	10	8
Minmitar	Brutor	Tribal Traditionalists		8	5	5	10	11
Minmitar	Brutor	Slave Child		7	5	5	12	10
Minmitar	Vherokior	Drifters		9	10	9	7	4
Minmitar	Vherokior	Mystics		9	9	9	5	7
Minmitar	Vherokior	Retailers		10	8	12	5	4
Amarr	Amarr	Liberal Holders		7	8	7	5	12
Amarr	Amarr	Wealthy Commoners		5	8	10	5	11
Amarr	Amarr	Religious Reclaimers		4	8	7	5	15
Amarr	Ni-Kunni	Free Merchants		13	6	7	8	5
Amarr	Ni-Kunni	Border Runners		9	7	7	11	5
Amarr	Ni-Kunni	Navy Veterans		9	6	7	8	9
Amarr	Khanid	Cyber Knights		6	7	5	12	9
Amarr	Khanid	Unionists		8	8	5	9	9
Amarr	Khanid	Zealots		6	6	7	9	11
Gallente	Gallente	Activists		13	7	5	9	5
Gallente	Gallente	Miners		9	7	9	9	5
Gallente	Gallente	Immigrants		9	7	5	11	7
Gallente	Intaki	Artists		9	9	8	6	7
Gallente	Intaki	Diplomats		11	9	8	4	7
Gallente	Intaki	Reborn		7	9	12	4	7
Gallente	Jim-Mei	Sang Do Caste		9	6	6	7	11
Gallente	Jim-Mei	Saan Go Caste		8	8	8	7	8
Gallente	Jim-Mei	Jing Ko Caste		8	6	6	11	8

Optimizing Skill and Attribute Development

After playing EVE for a while, many players establish an alternative character (generally known as an "alt" in game parlance), either as one of the three available characters for any account, or as a new account. There are many advantages to having an alt character, or several alts, which we will explore further later.

A great utility for experimenting with different starting character races and bloodlines is EVEHQ [2], which contains a very useful Character Creation Tool. With EVEHQ, you can model your starting character, and then develop optimal skill training and/or attribute remapping plans, thus enabling your character to use the equipment or perform the tasks needed for your desired ISK-making activities in the shortest time.

Developing a career plan: What will you be when you grow up?

Once you've established your character or alt, you should play all five of the starter career missions offered: industry, military, exploration, business, and advanced military. 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. Industrial tycoons can create enormous wealth in the EVE universe, but not without a lot of strong competition. Mining is a popular way to make money, but manufacturing tends not to generate any real profits until you have learned some highly advanced skills, and invested heavily in blueprints .

Business missions introduce players to EVE's open and comprehensive market system. With good trading skills, EVE players can earn substantial ISK without ever undocking from a station. Other players can also earn a good income from hauling goods between trade hubs as a trader. The starter missions actually reward you with a basic hauler for free, and the starter systems offer a potential market opportunity for many goods that are in demand for new characters. and amassed enough capital to invest substantially in the game's market

Military career covers the most obvious way of playing EVE - shooting stuff for loot and salvage. Initially you have a skill to fly a frigate of your race, the ability to use the main type of ship weapon traditional to your race and a couple of very basic ship-related skills that are needed by every character in EVE. The 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.

After the five career introductions, each consisting of ten missions, you are pointed towards the first epic mission arc of EVE, "The Blood-Stained Stars". While a definite challenge for a new player, it contains a nice package of "canned content" for those not used to the sandbox style of gameplay, easily keeping a fresh pilot busy for a week or two and providing a soft landing to the more open-ended gameplay. 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.

Step 1) Create a concept in your head, of what you want to do. Anything you can imagine no matter how unlikely or outlandish.

Step 2) Hoe missions until you have enough resources to begin doing what you thought of in Step 1.

Step 3) Execute the idea from Step 1.

Step 4) If the idea isn't profitable enough by itself to SUSTAIN itself, supplement with occaisional mission running.

Step 5) Keep developing your idea, evolve, figure out ways to make it self-sustaining.

Step 6) Mission Hoe as necessary to invest in your idea.

Step 7) If your idea is ultimately NOT self-sustaining, think of a different concept, and go to Step 2.

• Miner/Refiner – extracting and selling ore or refined minerals

• Hauler – buying low in one location, selling high in another / courier contracts

• Trader – playing the market

• Corporate Executive – managing a corporation funded by taxes and fees

• Manufacturer – building items and charging for the value-add

• Researcher/Inventor – building advanced tech items or blueprints for sale

• Explorer/Hacker– searching wormhole and hidden space, selling relics and information

• Salvager – finding, collecting and selling items from wrecks

• Mission Runner – executing assigned missions, solo or in groups

• Ratter – hunting and killing NPC pirates

• Mercenary – gun for hire

• Bounty Hunter – executing contracts on player characters for pay

• Pirate – attack and pillage players (mostly haulers) in lo-sec, or ransom them for money

• Scammer/Thief – tricking players into giving you ISK or luring them into traps

• Mining

• NPC Hunting

• Bounty Hunting

• Agent Missions

• Research Agents

• Production

• Trading

• Pirating

• Deadspace Complexes

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Some professions you can do in Eve :

1) Miner (boring to some, Zen to others)

2) Salvager (I do not consider ninja salvaging dishonorable unless done in the spirit of wanting to grief, there is nothing wrong with flying around salvaging and looting wrecks of people who are done ratting and have logged off.)

3) Builder (rough business to get into unless you use the "Convenience Store" concept, that is go somewhere fairly populated that doesn't have a good market, and either haul or produce EVERYTHING they might need in small quantities, basically like a trade hub except its mostly your stuff for sale.)

4) Explorer (haven't tried this profession personally, people say it's lucrative and addictive.)

5) Scammer/Pirate/Criminal (I don't do this but whatever floats your boat)

6) Recruiter (I've successfully made a living as a 1-man recruiting agency.)

7) Trader (sit in a hub, buy low, sell high)

8) Hauler (look for courier contracts, also can do courier missions in between jobs, also can buy low in far systems and haul them to sell. NPC trading IE buy livestock where it sells for low, transport it to where it sells for high, both the buyer and seller are NPC's.)

9) Work up standings to a faction and sell your services as a "standings pusher."

10) Scientist (work up R&D agents and farm datacores.)

11) Scientist II (Buy BPO's, either research and sell them, or research and sell copies.)

12) Assassin (You have good concord standings from whoring agents all day, you can suicide gank people for money. Not sure if this is possible anymore as they have buffed concord alot.)

13) Operate a POS, join an alliance that lets you put up your own moon mining POS. Also gas cloud harvesting tho I have no experience with this aspect of the game.

14) Make boosters (drugs, yes you can be a drug dealer.)

I'm sure there's hundreds of profs I have not mentioned, but that's the beauty of Eve, if you can think it, chances are you can do it.

Eve does not require you to be smart, it simply requires you to have an imagination.

There are no NPC's to point you to your next task. You need to be self-driven, figure out what you'd like to do, and do it.

Now its time to decide how you want to start off your eve career. I say start because with how eve is setup you can change over to do anything you want later in the game. For starting off you will want to pick one career go at it for a while to build some initial money and skills. There are 3 basic career paths in eve combat, industry, and marketing.

Combat

There are two main ways to start of a combat character. As this is a skill based game you don't want to jump into pvp right away. Best way to start is with some ratting or mission running. There are more extensive guides on this site into these areas but here we will just get you started with the basics, links are provided to the more advanced aspects of these paths along with charts, maps, and NPC (non player characters) stats.

-Ratting-

Ratting is what is referred to when talking about killing NPC pirates in belts. To start off on this career you are suggested to stay in high security space (.5-1.0) while you get the hang of your ship and how to kill the rats. In this space you will not be able to be engaged by enemy players without concord coming in and killing them. The rats in this space are also relatively weak here, never the less they have the chance of dropping some decent isk items (into the multiple mil range. All rats in belts also have a isk bounty on their head, which will appear in your wallet about every 10 minutes or so adding all the bounties you got in the last 10 minutes.

- Missions -

Missions are one of the most common things done on eve to earn isk. There are many different types of agents that offer different types of missions here is the LIST of them. For now we are going to stick to kill missions. You simply find an available agent inside a station on the agents tab. (use www.eve-agents.com if you need help locating one). Best types would be Command, Security, Internal Security, and Surveillance these all offer over 90% kill missions. You talk to the agent they will offer you a mission you can look it over see what you have to do, then accept. When you reach the system the mission is in rightclick in space and you will have a way point to warp to. Warp to it complete mission objectives and return home talk to the agent and collect your reward, rinse and repeat. Read the full article for a more in depth look into missioning and how to get your full isk potential out of it.

Industry

-Mining-

Mining is by far the easiest way to get some isk, it is also very mundane. All you have to do is hop in a ship throw some mining lasers in the highs and head out to a belt. Target an asteroid, get within range and hit your lasers. To make the process go faster its best to jet a can into space and throw your ore into it then go get a hauler ship to come back and scoop it up. This will cut down on time as you will be making less trips back and forth. Sense most everything in eve is player made there is ALWAYS a market for minerals this is a guaranteed way to make some isk with little risk in highsec space.

-Production-

Most items in eve are player produced so this is a good way to make some isk however at low skills you will not be able to turn a very high profit on t1 items. It is suggested if you want to enter into this field make some isk mining and or hauling first while your skills go up and you gain some net worth for the good blueprints.

Marketing

-Hauling-

Many would consider hauling a industry task, really though you are trading your time to move stuff, there is no real construction going on so it has been placed here. This is a easy career to get into as all you need is a cargo ship. You can find courier missions Archives, Distribution, Manufacturing, Storage, agents all give courier 90%+ of the time. You can also check the player courier contracts in the contracts tab. These most often require a collateral that at start you will not be able to afford most the time. This is a good place to start making some isk if you want to get into trade or production as you will make allot of contacts.

-Trading-

Trading itself is pretty easy concept buy low sell high. You can easily train up a good amount of buy/sell orders in a short time. At the start of the game you wont have much isk to play around with but if you familiarise with the items different regions you will notice some items will have sell orders but no buy orders. Throw up a regional buy order for these items at 1 isk buy 100 of them, over time anyone selling them will get your buy order some people will just hit sell. Easy way to make some passive money. Wont get allot with only 1 isk but anything given is worth way more because it can always be refined even if its of no use. See the long term marketing guides for more info on this.