- Abyss- easy to get into and scales nicely. Tons of guides on youtube.
- Incursions- group PvE activity. You can ultimately do better in other activities, but the starting income is really good for newbros, the social aspect is a big bonus for a lot of people, and stepping up to fill roles helps to keep things fresh for a really long time. In fact, they’ll even train you how to be an FC. The downside is that you’ll need to be able to fly a properly fitted battleship first though. So, its barrier to entry is not insignificant.
- Combat Exploration- is fun, easy to get into, and you can sometimes get some really nice paydays, even in HS. And now is a particularly good time to get into it because of the decreased competition.
- Security Missions- Blitzing level 4 missions is now more accessible thanks to the unified Nergal, but it still has a rather high barrier to entry. You need a ship for blitzing the more lucrative regular level 4 missions, as well as ship for running the anomic missions. This means that you’ll need to train for and buy at least two ships that are kind of pricey for a newbro.
- Industry- I did industry and region trading my first year and a half. I enjoyed it, but it has really bad skill overlap with flying space ships (for example, this character has 71 million SP in Trade, Production, Science, and Resource Processing), requires constant reinvestment to keep growing your operation, and you’ll spend a lot of your time docked up doing things like managing production queues, market orders and spreadsheets. I did enjoy it, and you can ulimately start making some REALLY good money. But it’s not what I wanted out of Eve. Of course, some people adopt a semi-passive strategy. So, you don’t have to let it take over all your playtime either.
- Station Trading- The advantages and disadvantages of station trading are remarkably similar to that of industry (i.e. bad skill overlap, constant reinvestment to grow, lots of time docked up, can eventually make a lot of money). On the plus side, it doesn’t require nearly the same amount of skill training.
- Mining- Don’t know what kind of money you can make mining in HS nowadays, but I doubt it’s very good.
- Hacking Exploration- doesn’t pay very well in HS. Of course, you can make better money running ghost and sleeper sites, but they’re more difficult and seem to be a lot more rare than good combat sites. So, I’d rather just run combat sites.
- Hualing- Apparently haulers can make decent money, but I don’t know much about it. Plus, you might need a freighter before you can actually make good money (which is a huge investment).
- P.I.- kind of sucks in HS. But it can also be done semi passively. So, you might find it worth your time.
- Datacore farming- Very low income, but completely passive after you’ve set it up. So, set a bunch up, and forget all about it for about 5 years until someone randomly mentions it on the forums. Then go, “oh yeah, I’ve got some datacore farms going. Wonder how they’re doing…”
- Ninja Looting- Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of good ninja looting opportunities nowadays. It saw a resurgence a little while back during invasions, but that’s over now. Right now, the only ninja looting I know of is people trying to steal from structure bashes, but you’ll need at least 2 people to do that.
- Salvaging- Can make a few iskies as a newbro, but has a very low income ceiling.
- Suicide Ganking- Is a lot of fun, but it’s impossible to make a profit while running solo. So, unless you plan on spinning up an alt, you have to join a ganking group.
- Highsec PvP- Hunting war targets and bashing structures. Hunting war targets is fun, but I think bashing unmanned structures is boring (only time it really gets fun is when you fight other people over the loot). Regardless, you’ll want to join a group to help you learn the ropes. Some groups want you to be experienced before joining, but others will happily take a motivated newbro.
Anyway, you can find guides on most of this stuff online. Just be aware that a lot of people will exaggerate incomes for clicks. So, keep your expectations in check. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
