Hello
I’m a noobie, barely know how to D-Scan thanks to lurking in Help Chat, lol… I’ve been reading on EVE for a year of so and thought “Why not? Let’s be crazy” for the few hours I have free in a day. Especially, it’s a free game so why not, I like space games…
Been playing a few hours a day and slowly but surely going through missions and learning to kill rats.
Skills are moving on slowly but hey, surely. It doesn’t matter how fast I skill up since I won’t be able to buy/build a good PvP ship and its modules faster than that anyway. Forget about cloaking though, not on a free account as I found out. Sniff…
I got a free Venture from a mission ( my first real functional ship, YAY! ) and been mining Veldspar like there’s no tomorrow, in between ratting and figuring out other things from this complex game. Selling it unreprocessed for some ca-ching!
When I decided to play this game I promised myself not to spend any money since I’m already paying for Star Wars Online and it seems that I can do a whole lot more in EVE for free than I could on S.W.O so a big thank you to the devs for letting people play their game for free.
I met a lone ganker few days on a “discovery trip” to Null. I had my eye on some of their ore.
He started shooting at my ship while I freaked out, paralyzed as to what to do while my ship was caught in a force field that made me a sitting duck.
Desperate of losing my ONLY ship ( my Venture! ) I contact him in private.
I asked him to not destroy my only service ship, the only ship to bring me ISK. I begged him to let me leave, explaining to him that if he shoots me down now all he’ll have is an empty wreck. I begged him to let me at least mine out my cargo and promised him to transfer a week’s worth of ore to him plus ALL the ISK I have, right now, over to him.
The shooting stops. He seems to mull my proposal over then responds to my request by agreeing to let me mine for him for a week and 3Mil. ISK right now.
An expensive “voyage of discovery” but I still have my Venture…
I thanked him enormously and he asks what I was thinking going to Null in a Venture, unprotected. I explain that I’m new and haven’t made up my mind yet as to what kind of corporation I want to join, if at all.
I tell him that my playthrough hasn’t prepared me for gankers yet and he’s the first one I run into. He adds a crass joke into it and then writes “Slow game, quick death, honey.”
I thanked him again and flew back to my system, tail between my legs, with a few valuable lessons. What he wrote last will forever define EVE for me.
Checking on my skills… Yep, I have long months to go before I can get into that cool ship I really want to fly. I Beggers really can’t be choosy.
Well, I’m so daft that I didn’t think to check the price for Ventures at market after getting one for free. I earned it on a mission so I thought… well maybe I didn’t think, yes, lol.
So it’s almost the end of that week I bargained for. I stayed true to my word of contracting every pound of Veldspar to him. As a reasult, he sent me a message saying that him and his buddies would leave me alone in their space unless I’m flying a Cruiser. He also sent me 1Mil for staying true to my word and proposed some hours of training into ganking when/if we’re both online.
I could at least learn how to avoid them when I know how they operate.
In the end… that right there is all that matters. Always honor ransoms.
Eve is a reputation game, and if you play the so called bad guy that honors ransoms in EVE and people know of you. 90% of the time you will always get paid.
It does not matter if people hate you, if they ever find themselves being killed by you, they know they can trust you to let them go once they have paid.
What are you talking about? Trust no one but yourself.
Eve is not for weaklings. I would take ISK and kill him anyway while the losses are still small.
Then he knows very well that there are no friends in EvE, only competition.
Na, that’s not really “death”.
I prefer “Live - Die - Repeat”.
Go visit a set of Career Agents, and you get some further ships for free, and additionally about 10m ISK.
And you did right to contact your foe. I disagree about it’s all competition - it’s all about fun, and for most, success in competition is fun. So now, you just have to learn that losing ships or even Pods is no problem, and you can even enjoy hostile nullsec.
If you carry on playing AND learning, you can afford 100 Ventures next month, don’t worry.
BTW: I would have killed you, no matter how much you’d have begged. And then you would have received some Million ISK and some fitting suggestions easily affordable with the donation. Communication is way more important than survival.
That’s a brave thing to try early on in game and needs to be applauded.
I need to say well done to the player/corp out there that honours the ransom, too many don’t and that’s making being an honest Pirate harder work.
Try to get it to where ships are like ammo, and use them for fun. Stick to your own rules, even if no one else knows what they are, and fly/explode by your own honour. If they don’t provide on their PvP training offer, feel free to poke me in game and I’ll try and help out.
I’m old enough in EVE to remember where honoring ransom was a career choice rather than a topic to be denigrated and sneered at by newer members who took the money and still destroyed the ship. Course, times change.
Since EVE Isn’t a twitch game, one of the biggest skills to learn is the ability to not panic when things go wrong and still be able to make correct decissions under pressure. I think part of the problem CCP has with game development is that one group of players lead rather mundane lives and look toward EVE to raise their heart rates/excitement, while another group have lives full of increased heart rates/stress and look toward EVE for activities where they can slow things down a bit. Tough for a company to accomplish both things.
Bottom line is that you had enough poise to handle a stressful sitsuation without panicing…
That alone in EVE is a vital skill.
It’s going to take a long while for me not to feel the pain of loosing a ship as little as the one of knowing that every shot costs something, from the hybrid shells to the lazer lenses, all translated into loss of ISK.
Ratting offsets some of that cost when the salvage is good but there’s only so much I can grind in three hours.
Thank you for the offer and don’t mind if I do.
I guess I’d be fine with that outcome as well. I’m under no illusion that I’ll lose ships in the processs of getting up to that point where I can be worth something to a group of reliable players and form fleet to go blow a
POS, losing a cruiser in the process or whatever.
As long as the fun balances off the grind I’m ok
Most Eve players will help a new player. There’s no forgiveness - New Eden is cold and harsh - but there is the concept of honourable behaviour among many. I’ll not kill someone for the pleasure of it. If I hunt it’s for the skill of the stalk, not the joy of murder.
And for an older player, the amounts a new player worries and frets over are relatively trivial. I can make more in profit making and selling one T2 module than your Venture cost. I’ll happily help out a new player who is showing some promise.
@Red-Sonja - you were handed a harsh lesson but did exactly the right thing: behaved with honour. You may have, in ignorance, made a bad agreement but you kept your side of the deal. There is a reason that people are not allowed to change names in Eve: all your actions, good and bad, stay with you. They have consequences.
Getting out into Null and mining there, yeah you learnt a lesson, but that took willingness to put yourself on the line. There are too many that would not take that risk, and not get the rewards you have.
ISK isn’t a score.
o7 Thanks for the encouragement. And yes, I didn’t download this game just to spin my ship in dockyard.
All the skill management and sifting through deals in the Market to find that perfect module is kind of tedious but necessary. I very much like planning my routes and discovering new things. I’m learning to scan systems for all sorts of stuff and knowing I may not dock back but wake in my clone bay is exciting, especially worth the good lessons I bring back along the way is worth way more than few T1 ships and their modules.
I’ve been thinking about joining a corporation since day one but
I’d be of no use right now and for many months to come.
I don’t want to be just another number on someone’s spreadsheet.
And
I really don’t know where to steer my skills to. Some activities will require a paid subscription, along with the restrictions of ships and modules and it’s too early to commit. As mentioned, I read about EVE for a year or more, the good and the bad. But I don’t want to concentrate on that as long as I can fun for now.
You always will be of use - there are many roles in fleets and operations for relatively new players. There are many things you can do now, or with minimal training. E-war support to a fleet is often T1 frigate based, tackle: holding down a target while the big hitters deal with him, a thousand and one roles.
The fact you’ll throw yourself into something and have a go makes you valuable.
With your attitude and approach I don’t think you are ever going to be that!
No one knows where they will end up when they start out (in Real Life as well as Eve) so don’t worry too much. The important thing is to get out and try different things - you may suddenly discover that industrial business management really floats your boat even though you saw Eve as a spaceship game.
You read about how cut-throat and ruthless Eve is.
You never hear about the good things: the people make New Eden live.
The 3m ISK you paid out to stop dying is back in your wallet.
I won’t pay for the weeks worth of Ore you lost - that’s your lesson!
you come here, and you don’t whine. I like it. Keep the faith keep learning and improving.
the other guy proposed you to train you. It is a very good opportunity to learn and improve much quickly. Also, feel free to join eve-uni or a newbie friendly corp, where you will get help and advices.
As i like your behaviour, i will log in tonight and will send you a small tip (for me) which will allow you to buy dozens of ventures if you loose one. But don’t stick to mining, try also explo, missions etc to find what you like. Use the isks to buy a magnate or a pvp frig and go
Fly UNSAFE and have fun
There’s so much to do I’m trying to approach it in a practical/tactical manner. I have to try and see what satisfies me most. I can tell you that looking at lazers lapping a rock isn’t my idea of fun.
Exploration is neat. I may even pay for a couple months just to try it in a cloaked spyops ship.
There’re months and months of Alpha content still to go so learning something knew everytime I log in is why I log in.
I’d rather go against npc pirates than to mine. I like loot and combat. I like to combine activities like mine and shoot at rats, explore/mine and later when I know more maybe I can get to the point of leading a fleet on a raid.
Faction warfare intrigues me. I need more info on it. Is it possible to do with a buddy?
So much to know so little time.
