So here I am about 3 years or so since I unsubbed for the last time. I log in and O.M.G. things have become pretty. Unfortunately things have changed as well. While the interface appears pretty much the same there seems to be an awful lot more useful screens available as well as much more PVE content and things to do.
Last time I was around I was pretty much a L4 mission runner and large scale miner. Obviously I still have all those ships sitting in my inventory but my question really is how I should approach exploring all the new stuff EVE now has to offer.
Make a new account and an alpha character, play through the New Player Experience and run a few career agent missions of various types to see what gets you going. Once you have done that, get back onto your main account and look for a corp that does what you want to do.
Why the new account/char? You can mess around with it without risking your existing character/assets to “old newbie” mistakes and you can’t go too fast since your new character won’t have the skills to skip steps. This is a safe way to get going. Once you are a bit more comfortable with the controls and everything, you can join other players and slowly take out your old shiny toys to play with them once more and acquire new ones.
Level 4 missions haven’t changed much - rats are red chevrons instead of red crosses but that’s about it. A new class of level 4 burner or Anomic missions are available but can be declined without penalty. https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Mission_running:_advanced
Large scale mining changed quite a bit last fall with the Ascension expansion - you’ll want to study the devblogs before undocking an Orca or barge.
Running the career agents and SOE epic arc are a good way to reconnect old skills - you can roll a new Alpha (free to play) character or run them with your main - there are 3 sets of career agents for each empire faction, pick one you haven’t used before.
I don’t recall any changes to battleships but you should probably run some low end anomalies to make sure things work the way you expect them to before taking one into a level 4 mission.