Old player back... what to do (and how to do it)?

[Asu_Bayah]

Hi,

I’m trying to come back to Eve after many years of not playing (not even sure how many, probably 6-7, if not more). My main char is over 12 years old and has about 60mil SP. I have a lot of stuff and ships scattered around (and no, you can’t have my stuff, if anyone even stills says that! ).

Unfortunately, I forgot pretty much EVERYTHING in terms of how to play, what to do, terminology, interface, even the absolute basics…, plus, Eve has changed so much over the years.

To alleviate this, I created a new alpha character and completed the new player tutorial and now I’m doing career agents, which are easy enough, but I still feel incredibly out of my depth in terms of bigger picture. I also upgraded my main character to Omega for one month.

Before, when I still actively played I seem to remember I initially did a lot of missions, then eventually got bored with them… I then got into industry and I think I used to manufacture rigs (I think) and sell. Towards the end of my time, before I stopped playing I had a POS, which then got destroyed while I was away. I don’t even remember what I had it for or what it did!

I was never into PVP, although I was always mildly intrigued by it. I also preferred to play solo, as I couldn’t commit to any sort of regular playing, logging on when required, doing stuff the corp required me to, etc… Either I never found a corp that suited me, or I wasn’t suited for any (more likely).

I want to get back into the game and figure out a new (again, most likely solo) career, but I’m struggling to even figure out what I want to do, let alone how to do it. I think I’m sort of trying to get into the mindset when I was quite fresh, but very much into the game… I had all sorts of ideas of what I wanted to do. But really struggling now, and feeling overwhelmed by the length of my absence, the fact I forgot so much and how much the game has changed.

I realise this is ridiculously vague… But if anyone has any suggestions, I’d like to hear them. There must be other players in a similar situation to mine. Also, pointers to some good guides, or articles that might help me in any way to come back.

Many thanks.

[Arcanith_Lionheart]

I came back after years of not playing as well and decided to start fresh, I also am somewhat intrigued by PvP and already had put my Enforcer on the line once.

This is all according to taste, but I have 3 characters and I alternate on what I feel like doing the most since I enjoy a bit of everything:

• My main focuses on industry, research and mining, but since usually its idle most of the time I jump onto my alts to fiddle around a bit, or just watch some videos or whatever. He is also the one that sells everything made and acquired from my alts.
• My first alt focuses on exploration and PI and its slowly inclining towards flying Battleships that tank with armor and using hybrid turrets so I can run either missions or perhaps even do one of those fancy new Resource Wars coming in an update
• My second alt focuses solely on missions, getting skills to fly his ships as effectively as possible.

Just doing missions gets pretty exhausting I can agree with you there, but with so much to do I can just spice it up once in a while since I am not too concerned about the maximum isk per hour I can get, so in one moment I could be exploring, the other I could be running missions, predicting what to manufacture next or just chill, have my main mining and do something else, watch a video or crank up the Nintendo Switch.

You could perhaps enjoy market PvP, buy low sell high, do some hauling for a chill travelling experience (unless someone decides to ruin your day), research T2 blueprints to sell to manufacturers or for yourself, or any of the things I mentioned above.

As for guides… I just went with my guts, followed the New Player Experience (And might repeat it to see the changes they are making in an upcoming update) and just decided “Ok, I like the idea of building stuff, let’s do that first.” But, like mentioned before, being idle for a bit of time while wanting to focus on industry made me think that getting an alt was not a bad idea at all to do other activities.

Nowadays I look at people asking “How can I get Isk quick” and stuff, sure its a legit question if for example you’re an alpha and want to get to Omega asap, but the problem I see with wanting to do one activity for that maximum profit or even the sole focus might end up burning you out, which I am fairly certain it is what you felt when doing a lot of missions.

I just play it for fun, I login, do my daily job of feeding my PI and checking my manufacturing, then do whatever I feel like at my own pace!

[Corwin_Dnari]

That chart is excellent for seeing what you can do. How to do it? FWIW, here’s my advice for a new or returning player: do the tutorial missions. Do all the Career missions. Do the Sisters of Eve epic arc. Join Eve University. Try each of the campuses: Hisec, Losec, Nullsec, WormHole, Project Solitude, and the Amarr Mining Campus. Meanwhile, train the Magic Fourteen if you haven’t already. Get the Level 3 certificates for your racial Corvette (this will give you most of what you need for all the level 3 certificates for ships up to battleships). Train up to your racial battleships. Then cross train the other three races. Once you have good skills you can train for T2 ships. Don’t forget the ORE ships if you want to mine. And don’t forget the social certificates (for missioning) and trading certificates (for trading). Use your neural remaps wisely. Use the Uniwiki - it has a wealth of good information in it.

[Asu_Bayah]

Thank you both for your replies, really appreciate it.

I guess I’m trying to figure out what I might find interesting and fun to do… After I figure that out, I need to then work out how to do it!

My main char is a bit of a jack of all trades… Don’t really have any alts.

Had to google magic 14… Out of those, only shield management is at level 4, all the others are at 5. I have just over 2mil unallocated SPs… I guess I could sink 600k+ to get the Shield Management up to 5 too? Or are there better uses?

My battleship skill levels are Minmatar (my main char’s race) and Gallente 5, and Caldari and Amarr 4. I already have quite a few various T2 and ORE ships.

I think I really have to figure out the game mechanics and controls first, and what’s what. For example, I was poking about, and found I have what appear to be two ongoing contracts with two research agents and some RPs with them… Now struggling to remember what that was all about… Seem to remember this research always sort of ran in the background, like it was some kind of lottery, some chance it might yield something valuable?

I also just googled certificates and a UniWiki page on them suggests they no longer exist? But I can see them in game, but don’t fully understand what they are.

So much to re-learn… Ah.

Thanks again for your help!

[Corwin_Dnari]

Certificates are suggestions as to what to train. If you look at any ship’s “info” window, you’ll see a requirements tab - tells you what skills you absolutely must have to fly the ship at all - and a mastery tab, which lists recommended skills at increasing levels for flying the ship well. The certificate system was changed a while back. The uniwiki page refers to the old certificate system. Unfortunately, the old system was considered useless (I hate that word - in gamer lexicon it means “I don’t like it”) and that attitude has carried forward.

A long time ago data cores were primarily (or only) available through research agents. You’d set up to work with a research agent, and eventually you’d get some cores which you could sell or use for T2 manufacturing. Passive income. Nowadays most people consider Faction Warfare a better source for these cores - they’re drops, apparently (I’ve not done FW), but research agents are still available - I have an alt that has five agents and periodically she collects her cores and sells them. Sometimes she does missions for the agents, which gain her an extra day or so worth of research points (something like 100 RP and 10k Isk for each core, iirc.)

I’d go for shield management 5. The other unallocated points can be put wherever you like, really. Look for holes in your current skill levels.

All my characters turn into jacks of all trades, even if I start them intending to specialize.

Game mechanics - you learn by doing, or by asking questions, here or in E-Uni chat in game. Also, Seamus Donohue of Eve University holds a weekly Q&A session where you can ask him just about anything. If he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll know where to point you to get it. And there are other classes you might find interesting. The class schedule can be found on the Eve University forums. In game you can subscribe to a mailing list that will give you weekly updates (on Monday) for the class schedule that week. I don’t remember the details - you can ask in E-Uni chat in game.

Lots of new stuff in the past few years. That chart upthread will help.

If you need to reacquaint yourself with flying ships, generally or in particular, the campuses I mentioned are good places to do that. Each of them runs various fleets from time to time. Be advised though that the Uni is often at war. That complicates things a little, but only a little.

[Arcanith_Lionheart]

Just take it slow man, no pressure in discovering your path! Fun is defined by your own tastes! Once you find whats fun then you can deepen your knowledge about it!

o7

[Vortexo_VonBrenner]

You also might find these things useful. They are from stickies on the new citizen’s forum, if you hadn’t seen them yet:

new citizen resources

eve flight academy youtube playlist

[Asu_Bayah]

Thanks again all.

I’ve had a look at those videos, some are very useful to me!

I also remembered what I used to do, towards the end of my active playing time… I wanted to become as good a jack of all trades as possible, which meant training everything I was able to! Currently on 264 skills, 74 at lvl5.

It’s kind of fun (and not a little bit frustrating too, but I’ll keep at it!) trying to figure it all out again… Part of the problem is that I’ve forgotten what I’ve forgotten!

[Asu_Bayah]

One further question.

I’ve never done a neural remap and I have a few available. My char was created so long ago and its attributes (including +4 implants) are:

Perception 28
Memory 21
Willpower 21
Intelligence 28
Charisma 21

Should I remap, and if so, what should I do? I realise that this, again, is kind of vague, because it depends on what I want to do, but speaking in broad terms, as my char is so old and the game has changed a lot during my absence, does the spread as it is makes more or less sense, or should I do something to adjust it?

Thanks.

[Arcanith_Lionheart]

It really depends on what you want to skill up, if you are going to, say, focus on flying a combat ship, then you might want to shift your attributes to help that field go faster

So for example if you want to lvl up some Battleship skill to fly the ship and you want to learn skills into turrets you would most likely want to focus on Perception and Willpower since both Gunnery and Spaceship Command have the same primary and secondary attributes.

EVEMon is a great app that lets you form up a plan with the skills you want to learn for the future, it will then recommend you a remap.
https://evemondevteam.github.io/evemon/
What the program will expect you to do is to come up with a year long plan of skills due to how remap cooldown works, if you do not have a bonus remap you will have to wait one year in order to be able to remap again. But don’t worry, EvEMon will take into account the implants your character currently has and everything and will determine the remap that will grant you the Fastest learning of skills depending on the skills you placed on the plan.

More about the app can be found in the EvE Uni Wiki page they made.
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/EVEMon

[Asu_Bayah]

Thank you Arcanith!

I had already downloaded EVEMon and started playing with it. I used it before, but like everything else, had to reacquaint myself with it. It seems that my current attributes aren’t that bad at all, because even when I add a lot of long-time-to-lvl5 skills to the plan that I think I might in theory want to do, and use the Attribute Optimizer, the most it seems to be able to save is a few days (that’s on a year+ long plans), or in some cases even offers setups that would end up being slower! Weird.

Another thing… I have just over 1mil unallocated SPs. I’m itching to use them. How can I post some kind of a link here that you would be able to click on and have a look at my char and all the skills? That way you (or someone else) could recommend what would be a good use for them.

I’m currently thinking Thermodynamics V, or Acceleration Control V or High Speed Manouvering V, or Archaeology V (currently getting quite interested in Exploration, I’ve never done that before).

I’ve been googling this, but struggling to find something that applies to me. Is there an expanded Magic 14 list (Like Magic 20, or 30 or something like that)?

Thanks.

[Arcanith_Lionheart]

Well I unfortunately am against telling others what to do with their stuff because what looks alright to me looks bad to others, so by what you say, if you enjoy exploring, go for the Archaeology! With Archaeology V and Hacking V you get access to the Zeugma Integrated Analyzer, which allows you to have more hacking power for Both data and relic sites compared to theLigature Integrated Analyzer (but still weaker to individual dedicated analysers, specially with just 1 utility slot) and gives you an additional slot for whatever mid module you want to put in for, say, a Stratios or whatever ship you use that could use an extra mid slot by joining both analyzers together.

My thoughts on what to pick to skill up at 5 is… Well… Basically what you find the most useful for what you do really… Do you need more cap? More shield? More agility? The list goes on…

But I am sure there are vets out there that can surely recommend better what to grab first in the activities you may wish to partake on.

[Plastic_Psycho]

Full of useful information - many thanks. Been gone for over three years, come back to find I apparently had a plan, but can’t remember what it was. Ships and gear EVERYWHERE.

Just stumbled across a Cormorant that I’d managed to fit to drop 200+ alpha damage and 125+ DPS at over 100 klicks. What the heck was I planning with a 100-km sniper destroyer…?

~ Plastic