Creative exercises for the uninitiated

New Citizens Q&A
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This thread is about alternative routes new players can take, with no need for them to follow the path CCP laid out for them. All of you older players who had no tutorials, not much of tutorials or skipped them (:wave:), you’re asked and invited to share your doings from back in your early days.

It is highly encouraged that you do the tutorials, so you know what you are doing. They also provide you with enough isk and stuff to get yourself ready for leaving the path everyone else advises you to take.

All options below are deliberately written in short points, to make sure you learn things by yourself instead of relying on anyone or anything but your own wit and curiosity. It is deliberately written without explaining you exactly what’s going on, or what will happen. Explore the game yourself! There are adventures out there!

This list is not meant to hold your hand and tell you what to do. It’s meant as an offer of opportunities which allow you to explore EVE ONLINE with all the possible risks and unforeseen, emergent gameplay it contains.

Important points:

  • Initiation demands that risks are being taken.
  • Skillpoints matter less than your capabilities of learning and solving problems.
  • ISK does not buy fun and even less so does it buy satisfaction.
  • Any and all “farming” is only a tiny fraction of the game.
  • Being social and talking in local will increase the chance of emergent content happening. Dramatically!

I will promote additions into the initial post, with credits given. There does not seem to be a character limit. :slight_smile:

Head on
  • in your corvette, jump to a lowsec system. You can find them, and their current population, on the map.
  • keep travelling deeper until you’re being killed. if there isn’t anyone around simply keep looking.
  • Eventually, when exploded by a nice fellow player, contact your aggressor. Express curiosity and ask questions. Maybe you even gain friends.
    And don’t be a dick about it.
Minerals you mine are free. For me.
  • go to Arnon, or find a well populated system, or a system with small population, but high amount of belts. Hell, they are everywhere. The map helps too.
  • figure out the station that increases your chances of survival.
  • find a jetcan miner in a belt
  • if you can fly a hauler, go get a hauler (purely optional)
  • bookmark the jetcan, have People&Places opened, somewhere in a corner.
  • take. your. ore.
  • be aware of suspect punishment, so avoid drones and other people.
  • warp to the lonesome station, dock, unload, undock, warp back to bookmark.
  • take more of your ore.

This is a creative exercise, especially for new players, which once upon a time caused lots of social interactions to happen.

Trash belongs to everyone. - Thank you, DeMichael Crimson, for reminding me.
  • Wrecks belong to nobody!
  • Equip your scanning frigate with the Expanded Probe Launcher, Salvagers and an AfterBurner. Seek out a system with lots of npc kills, which you can find on the map. That, often, is a mission hub.
  • Start gaining scanning experience by trying to find a mission runner in space. You’ll be looking for battleships mostly, but it varies. When there is no Mobile Tractor Unit on scan, likely he does not salvage the wrecks.
  • Wrecks belong to nobody!
  • Remember to bookmark the spot via rightclicking and having People&Places open.
  • Don’t be afraid of warping into the mission. Often the first rooms are empty, otherwise use your afterburner to move away. You can always check first using your free corvette.
  • Ignore the colour of the wrecks and start salvaging to your hearts content. Wrecks belong to nobody. It is only theft if you take the insides of the wreck and hell, even that doesn’t need to scare you. If you weren’t scared, you’d lose out on a ton of fun the game has to offer.
Cat & Mouse - Thanks again, DMC!

This one is a bit more skill intensive, as it requires to have at least a prototype cloak. There are other things you can do while waiting for that skill to finish. Instead of listing up what to do, I will link to DMC’s post who does a better job at getting the message across.

Be aware that you do not need any fancy ships, like the force recon cruiser he mentions! That was simply his choice! Any ship will be able to do the same, just more or less as well. Always find the best ship for a task that’s available to you, or within close reach! It’s almost never the ship and almost always the pilot who defines the outcome of his experience! You might not be able to warp cloaked without a Covert Ops Cloak, but who says you need that anyway?? I certainly don’t!

Things you might want to learn about, before you start:

  • How cloaks work.
  • The MicroWarpDrive/Cloak Trick, one of the first things to learn when it comes to surviving gatecamps.
  • How to create bookmarks/safe spots.
  • Warp Stabilizers (ugh)

Read DMC’s full story here

I saw a man who wasn't there.

When you’re more interested in what some people claim to be psychological warfare, then this is for you. All you need is:

  • a cloak
  • a ship you can get into a nullsec system.
  • time and patience

It doesn’t matter if you’re there or not, you alone will be able to abuse the weak psychological structure of the minds of the people in this system you sit in, cloaked, because they will refuse to undock. And you don’t even need to say anything! Your mere presence, or AFKness, is terrifying them!

They’re scared of someone of whom they do not know if he is actually there and most will not even try to find it out. That means you can easily extort them for isk, but you should honour your word (take the money, transfer it to a different char and log off), because your word is also your assurance that people will keep paying. Not keeping your word will generally wreck your income.

To make this clear: You want to sit in a system renters paid for, to be able to farm in piece. YOU ALONE are the only risk they have to deal with, which means that you are the most important factor in their risk/isk equation. they want to farm in absolute peace and your job is to keep them in check and taking their money.

More to come.

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:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Seems you forgot to include Ninja Salvaging. That’s another option that if done right, can turn into a very profitable career choice. Also there’s much more info about that topic available on the internet.

:wink:

DMC

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ooohhhh! true! i forgot about that! will include it as soon as i have a bigger chunk of time available again!

thank you!

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Another exercise for players with a bit more skills is train up cloaking, fit a cloaky ship for speed / agility and go spend time playing ‘Cat & Mouse’ with low sec / null sec residents.

When I first got skilled in cloaking, I got a Force Recon Cruiser and did a little info research on how to survive in low / null sec space, learned how to work D-Scan, how to make Safe Spots, how to run gate camps, how to avoid Bubble Camps, etc. Then I spent 2 weeks in the ‘Great Wildlands’ practicing that info on how to evade being caught.

I will say this about the Russians, they don’t give up easily. They rigorously pursued me from system to system, advance gate camps were set up trying to lock me in, even tried catching me with Bubbles set up on both sides of gates.

Course over time they realized that I was leading them further and further away from the space they occupied. Eventually the last one pursuing me posted a message linked with my name in local chat. The message was in Russian language and the text was bold capital letters.

That was the only time they ever made contact with me during the 2 weeks I spent there. I told my fellow corpmates about it and they said I had obviously pissed them off due to the bold capital letters in the message. Doesn’t surprise me, they almost caught me a few times but I narrowly evaded capture each time.

Gotta say all that time was filled with lot’s of Adrenalin flowing exhilarating episodes, definitely a learning experience that all newish type players should experience. The main point of my story is that I did my homework first, researched all available info and then put that knowledge into practice. Thanks to that I’m now able to tell the tale of how I survived 2 weeks playing ‘Cat & Mouse’ with the Russians in the ‘Great Wildlands’.

DMC

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Updated.

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Added another one.

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there!
He wasn’t there again today,
Oh how I wish he’d go away!

When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door…

Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn’t there,
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away…

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Another useful thing to do with cloaking skills is to sit in ship with only a cloak in a pod with no implants and then go sit in a nul sec system and watch the big tough nul bears whine and cry about cloaky scouts they think are AFK. Can be boring but it is also quite refreshing to watch them scatter like roaches when you turn on the lights.

Trying to visit every single system in the entire EvE universe.

Removing boredom from the mundane task of ISK farming by using unusual methods / ships / fits.

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See also “I saw a man who wasn’t there”. You’re late! :smiley: (and possibly didn’t read them all :p)

The second one is already on my “to do” list and the third doesn’t seem to fit this thread.

Thank you for your suggestions!

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Why not?
You want creative exercises for the uninitiated, this idea is not only creative (how many different fits, ships, tactics etc) can be used to run any one single mission but it has a very important “hidden” aspect to it that you clearly missed. That hidden aspect will help the uninitiated in virtually everything outside of a station they do in EvE, and all by itself this hidden aspect can be extremely creative. Can you guess what that hidden aspect is or do only like to take shots at others for what they post?

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As i said above, this thread is about leaving the path CCP laid out for people. Getting new players to minmax and run missions, which is already covered extensibely by most other guides, people and CCP themselves, really does not fit this thread. i still appreciate your suggestion, but this threar is about social interaction, not running missions. :slight_smile:

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A thing I liked to do is to jump into wormholes that are at the edge of decaying.
So I was forced to find another way back to “safe” space. Such expeditions could take a few days. Also you might have to manage your cargo at times, like decide what loot you want to take - or leave. When you end up in Null or LowSec it always could turn into a cat and mouse kind of thing.

And you surely learn how to scan.

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I believe Donnachadh was talking about doing regular things differently, like using an Assault Frigate to run level 4 missions, solo and or fleeted with others.

Hell, I remember back right after Apocrypha Expansion a couple friends and I would fleet up and run Angel Watch / Vigil exploration sites in Cruisers. We weren’t all skilled up and at different times each of us would have to warp out for repairs and then jump back into the site. Definitely helped us learn how to work as a team.

Course after a couple of sites I quickly got a Battlecruiser which allowed me to tank the DPS just enough to lead the NPC’s around in a ‘Conga Line’, letting my friends pick off the NPC’s from behind.

Ahhh, those were good times …

:relieved:

DMC

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his suggestion, as it stands, does not promote social interaction. it suggests to sit at eft, minmax and run missions. solo. as helpful this might be, it does not actually fit the thread.

We did something like this back in 2010, me and my corpmate. I’ve flown a 10mn AB rifter, he used a hurricane. i’ve baited the NPCs and he picked them. I’d consider a variation of this, but the new aggro mechanics prevent baiting them properly. Not necessarily a bad thing, though.

Running lvl4s in assault frigates sounds fun (and time consuming). i will think about it and try to adapt it into something that feels fitting. the way you put it reminded me of back then, and in certain ways there is definitely room for this in here.

thank you!

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CCP does not set a “path” for any of us, we choose the path for ourselves. Yes the game has some progressions to it by nature like the steps up through the mission levels but even those are not really a “path” pre-chosen for us, we have the option to simply never do them and I know many players that have never run a single mission. We also have the option to use the services offered by numerous corps within the game to bypass this level up process and essentially jump immediately into level 4 / level 5 missions.

I noticed that the moment missions were mentioned your extremely narrow minded view of this game IMMEDIATELY went to the dreaded min / max aspect bypassing all of the other benefits there are to running missions, and yes one of them is the social aspects of the game you now claim to be so concerned about.

Fleeting up with a random group of new players and taking them into level 4 missions is one of those non- min / max things you can do with missions and it usually turns into an extremely social event as well.

Another example, the low sec group I have a character in uses high sec missions at all levels as a training tool. We take a fleet of new characters into missions and use the ships we give them to fly and the situation to teach fleet tactics, target broadcasting, how to read target broadcasts, we teach them how to communicate with and to trust their logistics wing, we use it to teach how we use comms and the list goes on. Yes we could do this in real battles, however over the years we have found that new pilots learn these basic concepts and skills more quickly when we as the vets running the exercise can control the risk of ship loss, because removing or controlling that risk of loss allows them to concentrate on what we are trying to teach them instead of their minds being occupied and clouded by “will I lose my ship”. Yes the ship loses are a different lesson they will need to learn but not here and not in this specific situation.

I noticed that you lack the ability to see the “hidden” aspect of variable mission ships / fits etc that I mentioned in my last post, but then given you stale, definitely stuck in a rut narrow mind set as witnessed by your min/ max comment this does not surprise me. Trying different and unusual ships / fits in missions is an excellent tool to teach new players how to fit ships, how all of the various modules either work together or against each other to make a fit that works or turn it into a disaster. And those ship fit skills will benefit them throughout their entire time in EvE and it can be another of those social activities you desire them to have.

You claim now that this thread is about the social aspects of EvE, and yet based on the section of your initial post you seem to be promoting the solo aspect of game play in EvE.

My suggestions are group neutral, by that I mean they can be done as a group OR they can be done solo it is only your interpretation that I meant them as solo activities because that suits your purpose, or perhaps it simply serves to illustrate your incredibly narrow minded view of missions in EvE and the reasons for running them.

No you should not think about it you need to just go do it.
I suggest you jump right into the deep end and solo massive attack, dread pirate scarlet or perhaps both sides of worlds collide.

After that solo experience I challenge you to fleet up with a group of friends in T1 fit, T1 frigates and then run the same missions as a fleet not only will it be a social thing but it will help you to understand that there is more to missions than the crappy min / max thing you are stuck on.