Greetings,
I wanted to share my experience I had during my first week in Eve Online and what I liked and disliked, alongside with what I’m doing and you may be the judge of that’s by design or if the design failed to enlighten me.
Why I’ve been up to:
First choice, which faction do I join? I don’t know and I don’t care. Quick google search gave me “you don’t block yourself any paths regardless of choice” and that was the info I needed to decide that any faction is fine, so I choose the most generic looking since my choice doesn’t matter anyway in my opinion. Give me a map and “where do you want to spawn?” would have been 10 times better, because using the map is still alien to me, even after a week, and I don’t know where ■■■■ is.
The tutorial was very diverse in teachings and I generally liked.
Directly after the tutorial I had to decide between 4 roles. Again, quick google search gave me “doesn’t matter” and I randomly picked one. Shortly after I quickly saw for myself that I could simply go to another NPC and do their quests.
Since then I’ve been nearly exclusively doing the quests I can find on the stations. I have no goal, since I still have no idea of what I could even achieve.
Pros:
The tutorial is nice, helped a lot and set the mood.
The quests give me something to do and to “finish”. A first goal if you want to call it that.
The quests act as a small tutorial for each little mechanic. Nice!
Skills are also trained when not in game (i think) which is nice.
Cons:
I have no idea what’s happening around me. Where am I? Is XY relevant? What does XY mean? Sure I can right click and call “Info” but that doesn’t work on everything and doesn’t always answer all of my questions. What’s about the security levels? The “Overview” needs a tab “Everything around me” showing only stuff that’s less than an AE (or something like that) around me. In my head each asteroid belt or station is a separate “bubble” and I want to know what is within this area.
The starting guns don’t use ammo. This is great since the game hasn’t taught me anything about ammo, which is bad, so I quickly googled how to get more of the starting guns and I’m using them exclusively, since by now they kill everything pretty quick. I tried using a gun which requires ammo, but had none. Was pretty bad and I disliked that A LOT.
I got a warning that attacking pirates could lower my reputation. What? I just don’t want to die, so figure your crap out and let me shoot back.
What about that warning with low EDENCOM reputation? Which reputation do I have with them? Does this warning affect me? I clicked “OK” and nothing bad happend so I guess that’s completly useless. What even is EDENCOM?
All player-made tutorial videos are just advertisements to join their guild.
Everyone emphasises that I will be killed and scammed. Who wants to play a game where this is brought up all the time? ■■■■ you too I guess. Only bad experience with the playerbase even before starting the game. Ingame I avoided any player contact because of the lack of positive feedback.
I have no idea how I can get stuff. I don’t know what kind of stuff even exists. If I would loose any of my stuff I would have no idea how to get any of it back. Sure, I would like to have a better ship, but what ships are there and how do I get them?
The importance of skills is unclear. What are the skill books? Which skills are important for me? What possibilities does XY skill open up for me?
I hope this shows some difficulties a new player has and may help to refine some game elements. While they may not be hard to clarify now that I asked explicit questions other new players may not even go as far and ask themselfs this, just be confused and turned away from the game because of it. I will likely read more into it, but I doubt I will come very far without getting another players help, even with at least some interest to actually learn the game. There are other games that are fun without me having to learn them first, and Eve Online has to comete with them.
A reference book (I’d call it a manual of sorts, but there simply are too many aspects to EvE Online to keep it under a thousand pages in print) would indeed be a good thing to have, something to leaf through, something with a “start here” and a direction… That doesn’t exist currently (although you can still take a peek at the old, player made guide at http://www.isktheguide.com/ which is what I used when I started out in EvE. That guide hasn’t been updated since 2015, so don’t rely on it now).
However, we do have the website of EvE University that holds their wikipedia EVE University Wiki
Since you seem to know what you want to find, perhaps that website will prove of use to you. Use the search function on the top right. The wiki has high quality information on most things EvE. If you do a search on Edencom there, it will give you info. If you type in “skills”, you’ll get a page with an overview and a big pile of hyperlinks for more specific aspects.
Your other main source as a beginner is the Rookie Help channel, where veterans will try to help you out when you’re stuck or puzzled. On basic questions e.g., dealing with the UI, with missions, the replies will be factual. On more advanced stuff, like making ISK, their answers may become more individually flavored, as with all things EvE.
But all in all, EvE does require a lot of reading, learning and experimenting and, indeed, learning from other players.
Did you already complete the Sisters of EvE epic arc? If not, do it. It’s a nice story, let’s you travel all over New Eden empires, and rewards ISK and standing. But at some point in time you need to get in contact with other players, at least on a casual, low commitment base. The NPSI PvP communities helped me a lot when I was EvE young https://npsi.rocks/ .
Don’t give up, EvE is unique, diverse, and a game for the long haul. It needed about 6 months to click with me. And I’m still here 10 years later.
Nice to hear your experiences, for people who have been around for some years these new player impressions can show that things which seem absolutely normal aren’t always clear for someone new to the game.
My first recommendation is would be to use the Rookie Help channel ingame, but I see Wadiest Yong already beat me to that. I found that channel to be a great help when I joined the game years ago for any small practical newbie questions, like most of the questions that you have asked in your post.
Let me give some extra info on some of the questions you have:
Correct! Skills in EVE train in real time.
This means you won’t have to do certain repetitive tasks to advance your skills, but can play and do anything while the skills you prefer advance automatically.
No worries! That’s normal. Years into the game there are plenty of things in this universe that I have no idea about, and when I set and follow the route that the game picks when travelling from system A to system B I often don’t have an exact idea of what’s going in on the systems in between, except that I need to pass through them.
And yes if you want answers: searching online or asking in Rookie Help can answer many of those questions.
The system security levels have big rule differences between ‘high security space’ from 1.0 to 0.5, ‘low security space’ from 0.4 to 0.1 and ‘null security space’ from 0.0 and lower. I recommend you stay in ‘high security space’ in your first days unless you want to go on a more dangerous adventure in which case you should bring a ship you’re willing to lose when things go wrong.
The Overview can have a tab of “everything around me” and you can make one if you play with the overview filters (which is kind of advanced), but the easier and recommended way I make sure I can see everything around me is to do rightclick the overview tab you’re using and select “show all brackets”.
What this does: it doesn’t add all those items to your overview, but you can now at least see everything in your ‘bubble’ in space around you, where you can select it. No more objects hidden by your overview filter!
You have correctly noticed that EVE doesn’t show everything in your current solar system on your overview, but just the things that are close to you. This bubble is called a ‘grid’, and any time you’re in space you have such a grid around you. The station, sun, asteroid belt and gates to other systems will each have their own grids, unless things are close enough to each other that they can share a grid.
Civilian guns don’t use ammo, but once you leave the tutorial they’re really bad at killing things. Tutorial is a bit easier, but these guns don’t hold up compared to guns that do use ammo.
If you want to continue using guns that don’t use ammo, you could try lasers. Amarr ships use lasers, which use one crystal as ammo, but if you stick to the T1 ammo you will never have to replace the crystals and can shoot indefinitely without ever needing more ammo! T2 ammo is a bit better but will eventually break.
Alternatively Drones are a weapon system that can keep fighting without the need of extra ammo. You just have to keep an eye on the health of your Drones and pull them back if they take damage, otherwise you need to bring spare drones. Gallente and Amarr ships are often used with drones.
Each faction has it’s own reputation.
Yes, attacking pirates means that your reputation with those pirates will lower. They don’t like it when you shoot them. The other factions will like it if you shoot pirates, and you also get a higher security status if you kill pirates for their bounties, so there’s nothing wrong with killing pirates!
Some people like going for reputation with a certain pirate faction instead, to do missions for those pirates or to even get helped by certain pirate ships while out in space with high enough reputation. This is a very rare sight, but it’s possible.
I don’t think the pirates like me. I usually shot and killed them when they bothered me while mining or at a gate.
EDENCOM is a faction that has been created to fight the Triglavian invasion force a couple of years ago. All throughout space you can find systems that have been taken by the Triglavians or taken back by EDENCOM. Your starting reputation to these factions is 0, which means EDENCOM will not fight you, but the Triglavians will. If you help the Triglavians, EDENCOM will instead attack you.
There is a trick to get positive reputation to both these factions, which is if you kill a common enemy of them both, the Rogue Drones, which you can find in the Triglavian space of Pochven. A nice objective if you’re a bit further into the game.
Yes, you can get killed or scammed in this game, but don’t let that stop you from having contact with players! Rookie help chat or player corporations are a good place to find help for a new player like you.
Also, when you put yourself in a situation where you can get scammed or killed, ask yourself what the worst thing is that could happen at that time. Lose a Venture? Well, it’s easily replaced. Lose your most expensive ship with everything you own in it? Maybe dock it back up and think of a way to reduce your risk.
A good question for the Rookie Help channel.
But I can answer it here too. To get new stuff in EVE you usually buy it at the market of a certain station.
In the game you can open the Regional Market window that shows you all the items in the game.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
the regional market shows items from that region only, prices and availability may be different in another region
items are sold or bought in a station. While you can set up buy orders or sell orders, or directly buy or sell remotely, you still have to go to that station to get your items.
some stations will be more popular to trade items than others. The biggest trading hub in the game is Jita 4-4 in Caldari space, you can find pretty much anything there.
If you want to get a good overview of all the ships in the game, the ship tree window shows you all the regular ships in the game!
Ever seen the Matrix movies?
EVE skill training is pretty much the same.
You need a book with the information you want to absorb (skill book) and activate that for your character.
Next, you need to spend time absorbing the information of the skill book which happens in the skill queue. You can only absorb one level of one book at a time.
I cannot say which skills are important for you unless you tell me what it is you want to be doing in the game. It very much depends on the path you want to take. Want to fly Gallente ships with drones? Then train Gallente ships and drones, and likely some armor skills too. Want to fly mining barges to mine ore? Or explore the universe for relic loot? Different skills each time.
It’s understandable that this can be overwhelming for a new player, which is why EVE since a couple of years also gives new players this option:
You randomly picked a role and got skills recommended for that role.
Is this a role you want to play? Then train those skills.
Want to play something else? Pick one of the other roles and train those skills.
There are many skills in the game, you could take a look at the skill window menu to see them all.
If you want to have an idea which skills to train to fly which ship, click on a ship you wish to fly to see the skills recommended for the ‘mastery’ of that ship. You won’t need mastery 4 or 5 for a long time, but Mastery 1 and 2 can be a good goal for a ship that seems interesting for you.
Skills can indeed unlock new skills. Prerequisite skills and the skills that are unlocked upon training the skill to a certain level can all be found in the information window of the skill.
EVE has a whole lot of information and dumps it all on new players.
It is much, but I do not see how this amount of information can be brought to new players in a better way, because as you have noticed, when the game helps new players to pick a role in order to focus the choices they can make, it is yet another choice new players need to make.
All I can say is try to read a lot and take it slow! Some other games are fun from the start, but I have not found games like that which are as deep as EVE. EVE is not a game meant to be played for one afternoon, it’s something you can play for years and still keep learning new things no matter how far you are into the game.
Good luck and fly safe.
Or fly dangerously, whatever you prefer.
First thing not to forget: EVE is BIG. Like really big. Coming from other games, you will most likely not have a clue how goddamn big EVE is. You can play this game for 10 years and there will be stuff you haven’t seen, haven’t done, don’t even understand how they work or that they do exist.
So, FOCUS. Don’t try to understand everything and learn everything from the getgo, it’s simply too much. Avoiding player contact is the biggest mistake you can do in this game, because you simply need other players to learn from them. It is a multiplayer open combat game in a dark dystopian universe.
Trying to learn EVE all by yourself with wikis, videos and guides will take 10x as long as playing it with veteran players who teach you what is important and how to solve the problems that will arise in front of you. And playing solo will make you always end on the weak side of a conflict, meaning people will gang up and beat you, loot your stuff. Cooperation is key. Solo play is for experienced veterans who know exactly what they are doing and are able (skill wise and financially) to reduce the risks and shortcomings of flying around alone.
So, best advice: just look around a bit, following the tutorial agents and some beginner arc to get some basic knowledge and how to maneuver and fight with your spaceship. But soon look for an active and established corporation in your timezone and join them. It doesn’t have to be the perfect one, you can always switch once you know better what you want to do in the game and have learned how things work.
There’s truth in here, but don’t let it stop you from learning EVE by yourself with wikis, videos and guides, or stop you from playing EVE by yourself!
And if you want to play solo, you can do so.
Just be aware that there is strength in numbers and that you are more likely going to play as prey than as predator if you’re solo. But that’s an interesting playstyle too.
The game is fun even if you’re flying solo, for example as a single non-combat exploration ship through space gathering loot from relic sites, even if that means you need to learn how to not get caught by the players that will see you as a target.
Still, joining a group of players is a good idea. I did that when I was a few weeks into the game and had the idea I knew the bare basics. With others you have a lot more possibilities in the game. Fleet combat, cooperation, catching players for their loot, many things are suddenly possible or easier when you play with others.
Solo play is OK, but I agree that finding a group in EVE to play with helps a lot!
As others have said, Eve is huge. It’s also 20 years old and some of the content is pretty dated by current standards. That said, Eve is a sandbox where you decide what you want to do - play solo, with a small group or a massive alliance with thousands of other players. Do you want to build or destroy, accept small rewards in relative safety or take risks for large rewards? The choice is yours and this lack of guardrails can be disconcerting for new players. After 10 years, there are lots of things I’ve yet to try in Eve.
As a new player, there is a progression you should follow: 1. The tutorial, this should point you to the career missions which will teach you some basic skills. The Sisters of Eve Epic Arc (Blood Stained Stars) has been mentioned but I recommend you wait until you can fly a cruiser before tackling that - a few of the missions are challenging with new player skills. There are YouTube video playthroughs for the Arc.
Do consider joining a player corporation that focuses on developing new players. There are lots of them and some are better than others but, you’re not locked in, you can leave with a single click and they can teach you more in a month than you’ll learn in a year of solo trial and error.
I found that channel to be a great help when I joined the game years ago for any small practical newbie questions, like most of the questions that you have asked in your post.