Newbro - advice please

New Citizens Q&A
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Hi All

Given the thread’s title, unsurprisingly a new player here, looking for some advice across a few topics please – pretty long read so TL/DR: looking for ship progression advice, exploration tips, and corporations to join.

To kick off about my NPE I’ve been really impressed with the community so far. I had heard mixed things to be fair, but have found it to be brilliant - welcoming in game, and from comments I’ve read on forums in this space too, even the title ‘newbro’ has a charm to it. The training, and career agents, while do a job in helping teach a few things don’t really give a tutorial experience I would want for the game; but, given its vastness understand the line has to be drawn somewhere. I have found forums, wikis and even reddit (despite being told in game about the space there being a breeding ground for toxicity) to be all good sources of information to guide me.

I played EVE previously, or rather, I tried EVE about 5 years ago for a month – I couldn’t get into it at all, I did the usual career agent path and subsequent high sec mining, ratting missions and played the markets for a month before quitting. I knew the game had a billion more things to offer, all of which better, more engaging, and rewarding, than what I was doing but didn’t know how to engage with it, and ultimately wasn’t enjoying it – I’m sure countless others have done the same.

I’ve done a bunch of research this time round, and within a few days of starting up a toon was seeking out relic and data sites in WHs. Already been having great fun, and just over a week in, with a couple hours logged on each day, I’ve 150 mil ISK in the bank, 100 more in assets, while tiny compared to what you all will have, for me, it’s been great. This is the game I wanted to experience last time but didn’t. I can’t help but check the EVE app on my phone to see what sold on the market since I logged in – in other words, I’m already hooked.

I’m now thinking ahead – what do I want to spec into down the road. I’m already approaching the game differently, learning a bunch online, and a huge dose of patience added in. Setting these expectations has helped a lot – but I have found that I’m more much more active than I thought I would be. IRL I’m pretty busy, I’ve job which is great but demanding, and as such will likely be a causal player but already find I’m online every day for at least a couple of hours.

To the questions –

Ship progression

  • I’m gallente, currently running, unsurprisingly, an Imicus. Looking at getting the entry SOE ship or T2 Helios, the latter cheaper but longer to spec into. The former I can get now and probably fit it, but if I die all my work so far gone, so not really a ship I can afford to lose at this stage.
    o A separate note… Can anyone explain why the first SOE ship you can get bounced from c. 40/50 mil in value to 80/90 mil a few months back? What changed?
  • My ideal ship progression path will see me develop in exploration, but lead me to new ships to experience other parts of the game. What do you recommend? I’m relatively committed to SOE ships at this point, but open to choices. Down the line I really like the look of the Tengu as a longer term ship to work toward, but not sure that my skill points would be optimised for that, it being a Caldari ship. I went Gallente as the drones seemed appealing – that Tengu though….

Skill training/attributes:

  • Looking to better understand and learn how I can positively affect my skill training. As I say, I’m new, but I’m on Omega, 1.4 mio skill points (no referral as I am using the account I made 5 years ago, and the other character is only on 2 mil anyway). I’ve read various pieces of information on this but generally, it’s quite old – you may be able to link me to a more recent, or still relevant, page. I’m looking at how optimise attributes. Probably a general balance would be best as I decide on what I want to do. Currently I’m focussed on speccing exploration; along with the magic 14.
  • Implants – same as above, but for implants. As I say I’m new so I’m pretty poor respectively, and will likely die a bunch, which I understand would likely destroy implants? I plan to fit a bunch of cheap ships and go to null and get them blown up in some pvp to help learn. That said any advice on this would be appreciated.

Corporation

  • I’ve read online, and heard from YouTube guides, that EVE University is good, in game I get mixed messages with others recommending other corps. Ultimately, I’m looking for a newbro friendly, casual corp to chat with, learn from and share with. At the moment I’m interest in WH gameplay, but options currently limited for getting nice ISK a week into my experience, so might change down the road. Any recommendations? (From a timezone perspective I’m based in London.)

Exploration

  • As I say, I’m having fun here. I’m doing “unknown WHs” and pay little attention to their lifespan before entering, as happy to log out in them. I think I now understand how to identify C1-3 (Grey, Brown, Grey with red star, respectively – please correct me if wrong). I use D-Scanner pretty religiously, and managed to escape a stealth escape bomber attack while at a site; more luck than anything else I guess, was at about 25% hull in an instant. I use bookmarks, finding safe space and sticking there in between – in all it’s been helping me get the ISK and staying in WHs despite no cloak.

o Scanning; any tips to be more efficient here? Generally I start at 4AU on pinpoint on any given sig; if there are a cluster I do one of the wide spreads to kick off, sometimes worth it other times not so much. I’m using sister core probes, which have been a nice boost in scanning time. I read somewhere that a tip to save me loads of time is to do a big scan and if I see sigs that move around loads chances are they’re a WH? Is this correct, and any other tips like this?
o Can you confirm the naming conventions “Unsecured” and “forgotten” are the only ones with sleepers in, and all others are without NPCs?
o Tips to speed scanning generally, I learned to double click the screen for the change in view which has helped immeasurably (newbro life)
o Where to base myself – I’m not in a corp yet so while I frequently logout in wormholes and find an exit somewhere in low/high sec later, I wonder where I should base myself rather than at the Calle university starting area/and the Dodoxie trade hub. Effectively, should I just find a random system to base myself and find WHs from, what’s best, does it matter?
o Anything else I should do with explo? I’ve been into Null Sec, but have no idea who owns what territory and where in null sec (excluding gate camps) I’m good to go about my business, so generally shoot back to WH space. (I understand that anywhere in Eve I can get shot at, but I imagine some places are more accepting of an Imicus than others.)

Planetary Establishment

  • Worth me setting this up? If so could you recommend a good source for me to read up on it please?

General

• Any general advice in keeping with what I’ve discussed appreciated too. As I say, really enjoying it this time around, exploration has been brilliant, and I want to learn about more things I’ll enjoy.

Thanks
Ayjay

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I’m glad you’re enjoying it more this time and hope it continues. I can’t give good advice on exploration or which corp to join but re: implants you can train a single level of Infomorph Psychology so that you have access to jump clones. That way you can have a pod with learning implants and jump into an empty pod when you go to nullsec. I’d say a full set of +3s is the best price:reward benefit for new players then, as you make more ISK and train the cybernetics skill, you can get some +5s if you decide end up sticking with the game. They are definitely a worthwhile investment and the benefits are more pronounced the longer you play.

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Jump_clones

If you keep your jump clone in a NPC station there is a 24 hour cooldown timer but if you install it inside a citadel/upwell structure (one of the player-owned structures) then you can jump between clones that are inside the same station as many times as you want with no limit. If you base out of Jita there are lots of public structures in Perimeter you can use or you can search for soemwhere else using the Structure Browser (the “E” menu in the top left corner->Utilities->Structure Browser and change the settings to Structure Type: Citadel and Service Filter: Clone Bay). I use a variety of implants/empty pods for PvP then just jump into my learning pod when I log off at the end of a session for the skill training boost.

As for attributes and skill planning the best way is to use the tool Evemon:

You plug in a long training plan and it will optimize the attributes for you. The only problem is that you probably don’t know exactly what you want to train yet and you are likely to change your mind multiple times over the next year. My advice is don’t worry too much about attributes right now. Set them to either a PER/WIL mapping (because most ships/guns/etc use that) or INT/MEM (for scanning skills) or just leave them on the default until you work out what you’re going to spend a few months training. Attribute remaps are precious and you’ll only have one per year after you use your bonus ones but when you’re just training skills to levels III and IV attributes don’t really make a hugely significant difference to such short training times and you’re going to be flipping around between different things so much early on that it’s not really worthwhile. I would advise getting your scanning/exploration up to the point that they’re good enough for what you want to do (probably level III or IV and the ability to fly a covops frigate would be a good target) and then/as well as max out the Magic 14 - the fitting and navigation skills which are crucial and will be useful for every ship you ever fly:

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/The_Magic_14

Try not to worry too much about optimising things perfectly at the moment. Just have fun and try out as much new stuff as you can. You should definitely join a corp and, from reading your detailed and well structured post, I think you might enjoy the formal learning style of Eve Uni. They’re just generally a good group and I’ve also ran into them PvPing in lowsec a lot recently so it would be a good gateway drug for you to get into that too. They’re a very wide-ranging group with expertise in most aspects of Eve and have some really committed veteran players, good teachers and some fantastic online resources.

EDIT: with regard to scanning I seem to remember this being the best guide I saw. Really concise but I also picked up a couple of helpful tips from it beyond the basics. Everyone seems to have a different scanning technique and it’s largely a matter of preference whether you use keyboard shortcuts or the mouse scroll or have the map detatched or docked or etc etc etc. Also lots of practice ofc. If you’re doing exploration I’m sure you’ll be a master at scanning in no time.

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Ship Progression

  • Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose. I know how tempting it is to rush into more efficient ships as a newbro, but there’s a good chance you’ll just end up losing it, and have to go back to a T1 hull. I’ve heard some people say that you shouldn’t fly a ship until you can replace it 5 times over. I don’t know if you have to go that far, but you should definitely be prepared to lose it. So, train your skills for a little bit longer, gain some more player experience, and build up a little bit of “insurance money” before upgrading.
  • Industry changes caused a lot of ships to go up in price, including faction ships.
  • Gallente/SoE is a great progression path, and the stratios has good skill overlap with the Legion if you’re not a fan of the proteus (which I find to be kind of lackluster).

Skill Points

  • Everything in this series should still be accurate.

Corporation

  • There are a lot of great corps out there. Unfortunately, most people aren’t going to be familiar with most of them. Moreover, there are certainly a ton of crappy corps out there (i.e. they’ll “train you wrong”, scam you, poison your morale). So, I usually just point people towards the corps that I know are good. Eve University is a good corp, and they have a WH campus. Moreover, you can always leave if you find someone that is a better fit for you. Other than that, I suggest checking out in-game corp ads, as well as ads in the recruitment section of the forums. You can also post your own ad, and see who wants you.

Home

  • I wouldn’t move homes until you decide on a corp. However, living near a trade hub has it’s tradeoffs. You can easily reship and unload loot, but there is also more competition and hunters.

Welcome to Eve
No P2W

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Welcome!

Let me try answer some questions:

We’re very similar, I still mostly fly Gallente ships and do a lot of exploration for my ISK.

After the recent changes to the T2 explorers the Helios is my favourite of the cloaky frigates. It’s a cheaper, safer and better than the Astero for noncombat exploration, but the Astero is a good ship too, especially when you want to be able to fight.

The price of the Astero went up as result of the recent industry changes and I don’t think it’s likely to come back down soon.

Helios is my ‘end progession’ for exploration, I have perfect scanning and hacking skills and it makes good ISK from relic and nomcombat data sites.

If you want to do exploration sites that involve combat you can indeed look at the cruisers, but you could also look at other activities to do in EVE once you have a decent income from exploration.

One activity I really enjoy is flying bombers in PvP. When you train for a Helios, you get good skills to fly a Nemesis, so then you only need some weapon skills!

Implants aren’t needed but can help you get SP a little faster.

If you have access to a player owned upwell structure (if you’re in a corp, or a public structure) in which you can swap clones without daily cooldown, it may be nice to have a training clone with some implants to log off in. +3 or +4 implants are only about 10 or 20 million each.

If you’re living from an NPC station or travellong a lot, consider cheaper implants so it hurts less when you die, or just ignore them. :grin:

Set up keybinds to open tye scan window, to activate the scan, and to make the probe size bigger and smaller. Saves a lot of time while scanning!

Worth setting up if you don’t mind the upfront cost of a lot of clicks and some reading.

PI and exploration are my two main sources of income. PI requires some clicks a couple times a week and hauling every week or so (depending on how you set it up) and exploration is much more active.

Rest of the time is having fun trying new things or fighting.

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This is brilliant - thanks for the quick, and detailed, responses from the three of you. Despite posting simultaneously, it’s as if you delegated, and in full, the sections i was looking for clarity on!

The links and advice all great. Already read and watched through some of the sources, and will do the rest later on.

Sounds like I should apply to EVE Uni then, good to get the feedback on this - in addition, I’ll be setting up some jump clones and getting implants… and take it easy on optimising for now. I’ll take a look at Evemon nonetheless!

Just ticked to 225 mil ISK so reckon I may be getting there for SOE, and the 5x benchmark region for a manageable loss. I suspect I’ll see what comes first: T5 frigate skill or 500 mil - the latter meaning the SOE ship being bought.

Helios will be bought whenever I have the skill - sounds like it’s the most optimum ship for the job, and from the feedback. The bomber transition is a great shout too. I like the idea of that for some PvP.

The legion looks good, and good to know there is overlap in ship progression through SOE, ahh that Tengu though…

Thanks again, will be reading through this in more detail… and have already set up the key binds this evening for my scanning!

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If you enjoy scanning and exploration, I can heartily recommend the corporation Signal Cartel. They are widely respected as the ‘good guys’ of EvE (a universe largely made up of all sorts of villainous, mean and nasty characters in contrast to the players behind the screen) and are besides, extremely knowledgeable about all things Exploration.

They are pacifists though, so if you are leaning towards being a PvP Explorer/Wormholer, they may not be the best choice - or maybe a good start before seeking something else.

And don’t forget that your character can train into any ships, from any faction. Starting Gallente only gives you a marginal step up into that line of ships. You may like to consider the Buzzard (Caldari CovOps frigate) early on rather than the Imicus as a goal, especially if you want to scratch that Tengu itch. (Of course, if you are committed to the Astero/SoE line, that’s fine. The Astero has the advantage of being able to defend itself and/or kill other explorers for their loot).

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Thanks for the recommendation, will check them out.

That said I do want to get involved with pvp to be fair, the aestro is appealing because of it - although I’m torn because I don’t really want to blow up fellow explorers lol, or I would likely get the bad feels if I did it, I mean I’m the one supposed to escape with all my loot not being blown up! (Wait… maybe I am a pacifist lol.) Any etiquette on this?

Would the Aestro be able to defend itself against a nemisis or equivalent bomber? If not then I think Helios or equivalent from caldari for moving toward a tengu could work.

The SOE ship I like the look of which is in main why I’m interested in it.

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I am, by nature, a player that doesn’t actively seek out a fight - but accepts that the is Eve, and in New Eden you always risk being in combat. I’ll fight if I have to defend myself, and I will fly with the awareness that I may have to.

The important thing to appreciate is that if someone attacks you it is solely because they sincerely believe they can kill you. No one enters a fight with the objective of losing - losses in Eve have genuine cost.

So, if you are flying an Astero, or a Stratios, compared to a cloaky T2 Covert Ops Explorer, what you are defending against will be ships that can kill you.
The best solution is to not give them the engagement. If they get on grid within about 30km of you then you’re already in a poor position unless you actually want the fight - because he may have mis-judged you, or be willing to take the risk for a nice killmail.

Get used to watching local. Set poor standings on known trouble makers or hostile groups. Use D-scan. Frequently. Understand how to use D-scan. Wear out that button. If something makes you think “not sure” then stop what you are doing. Be elsewhere.
A fast aligning ship will serve you better than a tanky ship - in one you can escape, the other just gives you time to rue your situation before the inevitable.
Your objective as an explorer is to raid the loot and get it to market/wherever. Loot in the wreck of your ship isn’t worth anything to you.

The above is why I recommend either cheap (T1 explorer and a paranoid runaway trigger) or a T2 explorer (modest price with a good runaway and cloak habit). I like the Astero (pretty) but it’s expensive and tempts you to take the fight on.

Before you go “A T3 Exploration Cruiser is my objective so I am safe” - you will be attacked by people that think they can kill you and those that want a shiny killmail. And you seriously need to think about the cost. The cost of subsystems and modules quickly adds up.
I have the skills to fly all the T3Cs, but never have - I can’t justify it to myself given how I play Eve - and that’s not because I can’t afford it.
(I have a HAC habit, but I can control that - they aren’t expensive and I don’t need them. Saying otherwise would be Sacrilege).

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The Tengu is much stronger than everything else you mentioned as a T3C but T3C’s really are very much overkill for exploration and are more often used for explorer hunting. The Stratios is the big brother of the Astero but IMO the same thing applies re: exploration. People DO explore in it but unless they’re looking for a fight it’s just an expensive killmail waiting to happen. You want a small, fast frigate for exploration and the Astero is by far the strongest out of the T1 exploration frigs/Cov-Ops in terms of PvP capabilities (although you need decent drone, navigation and armour tank skills really to get the best out of it - it also has a high skill ceiling and isn’t an easy ship to learn PvP IMO). It’s easily a match even for actual combat frigates when fit for PvP but Terak’s advice about avoiding a fight when doing exploration is good.

In the future if you enjoy the PvP side you could strike a balance between exploring, killing explorers and baiting explorer-hunters all at the same time (the Heron can be strong as a bait explorer when fit for PvP) but at first I’d say it makes sense to just get used to moving around space, using d-scan and avoiding PvP - well, I say avoid…the cat-and-mouse dance of hunter and hunted is just as much a part of PvP as the shooty and scramming stuff.

Asteros are pretty expensive right now so I also second his advice about flying cheap disposable frigs first. You’ll learn a lot more from taking out 4 Helios and losing them in various ways than 1 Astero. There actually isn’t any benefit at all to choosing the Astero unless you’re planning on PvPing with it but it’s a nice goal to shoot towards.

I just put a contract up for you in Jita with a few covops so you can lose your first few for free as you’re getting started and sent you a few mil to fit them. Have fun, lose them in interesting ways and learn from the losses GL.

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Thanks for the advice, and insight, Terak. I’m smashing the V key a bunch for the D-Scan already; need to work on paying more attention to the results when I’m hacking though! I think it only makes a sound on the occasion the D-Scan catches something entering, but only at that time right? (i.e. if someone warps in but I D-Scan just after they arrive, there won’t be a sound cue, but if I catch them mid warp there is one? At least that’s what I’ve assumed based on my own probes entering my D-Scan.)

Will think about the longer term plans - I like the idea of a T3 cruiser to work up to but plenty of time to change my mind. The idea earlier in the post to roll into a stealth bomber for PVP sounds great - so will do that when I can down the line.

Plenty to learn still, but enjoying it!

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Thanks for the insight, Fury, appreciate it.

Sounds good - will take my time, learn and skill up both myself, and the character, and see how I get on. Still waiting a little bit for the T5 Frig and Electronic Upgrades 5 before as pre-requisites before I can learn the covert ops skill for Helios but will main that for explo given what you’ve all said once I can use it.

Ah thanks mate, I appreciate it - will give you an update down the road when I’ve put them to use, given them some abuse - and ultimately had them all blown up!

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Every time your d-scan goes off you will hear the sound (which is each time you press, unless you press too quickly as there is a small cooldown).

The moment the d-scan goes off you will see everyone who is in range of the d-scan and not cloaked. It’s not a live feed, so if you want to keep track of the ships around you, it is recommended to regularly do another d-scan.

A few useful things you can do with the d-scan:

You can change the range from maximum (14.something AU) to a very small range (1 AU) if you want to know when something is going to arrive at your site. This will give you a couple of seconds advance warning before people arrive at your grid. (But remember to move back to maximum range to keep track of what happens elsewhere in system).

You can also change the angle. I often use the minimum angle (5 degrees) and hold d-scan while clicking at a gate or site within d-scan range. That tells you which ships are most likely at that gate or site.

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Thanks Gerard for this - and the response you have already, will definitely be speccing into stealth bombers down the line. (And, using the Helios a bunch for exploration.)

With the D-Scan, not including the sound it makes when you hit the key, I’ve noticed if my scanning probes move into the bubble from outside of it, having been scanning something elsewhere, that they make a different sound when entering the D-Scan compared with the sound it makes when I hit the scan. Is this just for my probes or anything that comes into range while a scan has been activated?

The 5 degree change is a good shout. Do you use this when warping into a site? Or, when you’re there, and if when you’re there how do you decide which way to point it/degree to set at?

I’ve been dropping to 1/2/5 AU when on site and I’ve been relatively lucky so far and haven’t been blown up (from PVP at least… those sleepers got me before I locked down the naming conventions!) that said had a ship arrived I probably would have missed it, I’d be easy pickings - I spam d scan but probably only actually look at the result 1/3 times when doing cans… think I need to rush less!

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Sorry a final question, for now at least. While I’ll be using the Helios as you’ve all recommended, I may end up getting 1 Astero and accepting it will get blown up while waiting for the skills to come through so I can use the Helios. I read somewhere on the Astero:

“It’s ability to warp almost instantly without pre-alignment is a big deal.”

Not sure how to read this comment about it - can it literally warp without aligning, or it just aligns real quick, or the site I got this quote from is incorrect? As you’ve all recommended the Helios I imagine it’s better to escape, and as such align, than the Astero so not sure what to make if it!

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Scanning probes are unrelated to the d-scan. You have two types of scans: the probe scan (for which you need probes) and the d-scan, which can be used on any ship. I haven’t noticed a difference in d-scan sound when probes are in it or outside it, but there are different sounds when your probes move or when your probe scan ‘finds’ something.

I use it when I see (enemy) ships on d-scan and I want to know where they are or where they aren’t. An empty 5 degree scan on a gate shows that there aren’t smartbombers or bubbles on a gate and that I can safely warp to it. If it shows a battleship I might run into smartbombs if I’m not in high sec.

If I noticed probes on my d-scan earlier and another explorer, I can scan the relic site to see if the other explorer is at the site I just scanned down (although he might be cloaked).

D-scan is your eyes. Start with learning how to spot danger with dscan, learn how to quicly find where people are in space and eventually you can use d-scan to hunt other players. :wink:

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Awesome, got it. I haven’t yet tried, but will down the line - and as you say can use it for hunting when I try that as well, and I guess when finding someone on d-scan using combat probes on that point - or just going in without using them. All part of the ecosystem, right!

A final question, deja vu given I’ve said that a couple times, but given you mentioned your playstyle is similar - do you mainly do wormholes, or null sec sites? I find WHs are great fun, but can be annoying with bad RNG when coming up with a lack of sites. I get there is a risk/reward payoff in both WH and null, WH having the benefit of not being logged in local. That said which do you do? When I have the Skills for the Helios I’ll be trying null, but interested to see what you think about both WH and null for explo. And, do you use any third party app like Pathfinder in Null? (It was mentioned to me as something I should look into.)

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I used to live in (and later nextdoor to) a null sec region with valuable relic sites (Catch), so that’s where I did my exploration.

I did occasionally use a third party app hosted by an ally to collaborate with allied explorers to put in all the scanned sig names (which saved scanning time when you’re looking for relic sites and know that the 5 sites in system are all gas/data/combat), but I didn’t use that in the end when most blue people moved out of the area and hostiles (for me) started living there. The tool relied on intel from blue explorers, but it was mainly enemy/neutral explorers then. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve heard about pathfinder and I guess it’s especially useful tracking your route through WH space, but I haven’t really explored in WH space yet. I may try it soon, as I’m looking for new places to explore.

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Try out the Cheetah Cov ops.
I love it…

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