Starting Out - Starting Over

New Citizens Q&A
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Purpose:
The purpose of this “guide” is to provide some information on two things.

  1. Rookie ships and how they work

  2. How you can quickly create a Starter Cash Fund - so that when you move on to something else - such as the Career Agent Missions - you will have some money to buy things. Mining for Quick Cash - is something you can do before, during or after you run the Career Agent Missions - any time you are short of money and need some more.

OK … you’ve got a Rookie ship and nothing else. Here are a few things you can do:

Making things with your Rookie Ship

  1. If you Right Click on your Rookie ship in station and select - Leave Ship - you will leave your ship.

  2. If you right click on it again you can select Repackage and your Rookie ship will be scrunched up into a smaller size (that can be carried by a larger ship like an Industrial) - and - all your stuff will automatically be stripped off and put in you Items Hangar.

  3. If you right click on your Rookie ship and select Assemble Ship the game will put your Rookie Ship back together with - a full set of Rookie Equipment.

  4. If you then click on the button to adjust your fitting - you can then drag a gun or a miner from your Rookie ship to your Items Hangar and then drag a gun or a miner from your items hangar to your Rookie ship.

What this means is - you now have TWO guns - or - TWO miners and it costs you NOTHING. You can keep doing this and make all the Rookie stuff you want.

Further more - you can go to a system that has two stations in it. Leave your ship in one and fly to another. On the right side of the screen there is a button to put you in a Rookie ship - for free. Then un-dock, fly back to the station your first Rookie ship is at and leave ship. You can do this as many times as you want, creating a whole fleet of Rookie ships.

You can then right click on your pod - select Invert Selection - and that will select all the Rookie ships you’ve accumulated. You can then right click on one of the selected ships and select Repackage - then do the same to Assemble them all. You can do that as many times as you want, accumulating as many Rookie items as you want. Click in your Items Hangar and select Select All - then right click on one of them and select Repackage and the game will repackage all of them all. Select Stack All - and they will all be put into three piles. If you click on a pile, hold down Shift and drag it to a new place in or out of your hangar it will prompt you for how many you want to move. This lets you grab one thing (or more) out of a stack.

What that gets you is a plentiful supply of Rookie equipment - and you can sell the miners and afterburners - but not the guns. Right click on a stack, Select Show Market Value to see what they are going for - then right click on them and select Sell This Item - then adust the time period to up to 3 months (as no one is going to be offering much to buy them immediately). This comes more under the heading of “Something You Can Do” than it is a good way to make money - as they won’t sell for much. What you are mostly doing - is helping out other Rookie pilots that don’t know they can do this.

The best thing this does for you - is you can create two Rookie ships - one with Two Guns and one with Two Miners. Mine with one and fight with the other.

A hint here - the best weapon a Rookie ship has - is drones. You can buy drones for cheap and skill them up. If you are an Omega - you can skill Mining Drones. You need the skill Drones - then Light Scout Drones for combat and Mining Drones for mining.

Any one can fly any Rookie Ship from any Empire and you can buy them off the market. Though the ones the game gives you for free - will be from YOUR Empire. Velators have TWO drones. That’s not a reason to create Gallente characters - but it is a reason to buy Velators.

How you can make some money

  1. With your two miners fitted - get into space - right click in space and Select Asteroids - then warp to a field.

  2. Right Click on an Asteroid and Select Save Location. This will let you book mark a specific rock to warp right to he next time you come to the field. You can see a list in your over view by selecting Mining.

  3. Click on a rock in your over view and select Approach. You need to be within two ranges - a) Range to Lock onto the target - Range for your guns/miners - to reach it.

  4. Once you have locked onto a rock - you can then click on a miner to mine it. Do this for at least two rocks and assign a miner to each. You see a little green circle going around your item as it runs. A complete circle completes a cycle. Miners dump their ore into your hold (or ore hold if you’ve got one like on a Venture) at the END of a cycle. If you have two miners on one rock and one miner depletes the asteroid so that it goes away - the cycle for the other miner is lost. If you have two miners on two rocks - that can’t happen. Also - you can click on your miner to shut it off before the cycle ends - and it will dump whatever it has into your hold right then.

  5. Once you have some ore in your hold (I mine Veldspar as I think it works best for this), right click on it and Show Market Value. Look at the place buying Veldspar for the best price. You can sort by price on any item to see which is best. THEN - right click on that spot and select Location/Set Destination. Note how many jumps this is away and decide if you want to go over there.

  6. Look in the upper left hand corner and you will see a series of green boxes representing the different systems you will go through - they turn from green to yellow to orange to red. If they are all green it’s relatively safe to go through them. You can click on these boxes and see what their level is. 1.0 to .5 is High Sec where Concord will Avenge your ship being blown up - .4 and below are Low Sec and Null Sec where it will not.

  7. What you can do then - is to fly over there - go out to it’s asteroid fields - mine and then dock at the station where the guy is giving the best price for the ore you mined - and sell it. In this case - you are trying to raise money now - so select Immediate to sell it to this guy NOW. Rinse and Repeat. One thing to keep in mind here though - is that the Asteroid belts become depleted during the day. They are renewed several times a week during down time. So - one factor in this is getting over there soon after down time as you won’t be the only one doing this.

  8. The first thing you want to get here is a Venture. It has a very large Ore Hold that will hold a lot of ore. You can mine enough ore in your Rookie ship to buy one or if you do some of your Career Agent Missions first - they will give you a Free Venture. The Second Missions from Both the Business and the Industry Career Agents give out Free Ventures - while the first Mission from the Industry Career Agent will give you a Free Miner Module.

Fitting Your Venture

  1. You want better miners. I like the EPS Miners as they have a range of 16k

  2. You can fit a salvager - that way if you kill rats with your drones you can salvage them.

  3. You want an Ore Survey module - this will let you see how much ore is left in the rocks. You can Sort by how much ore each rock has left. Note the ranges and you can mine the biggest one you can reach. That way - the rock is less likely to run out on you.

  4. Miners Shield Tank. You can fit a Medium Shield Extender to a Venture but you can also fit another small one too.

  5. Depending on how far you are going to need to travel you may or may not want an After Burner. Miners tend to Warp from place to place - not travel. When you can enter an asteroid field - Save Location on one of the rocks - then you can warp away to a planet or book mark some where and then warp back to the location of the rock you just bookmarked. This isn’t that important with a Mining Frigate as it’s pretty fast but the Mining Barges are so slow - you don’t want to travel from the Warp In Point to the rock - and putting a AB on them doesn’t help much. Thus - on a Venture - you can use that third mid slot for more tank. You could fit a Shield Booster but what you are really worried about is getting ganked in High Sec with an Alpha Strike - where they blow you up with one salvo. Shield Booster will not help with that. The other thing is - Shields Recharge on their own and the bigger they are the faster they recharge. So - I prefer a Passive Shield Tank.

  6. You have one low slot - I fit a mining enhancer here from Mining Upgrades.

  7. Your drones - Combat or mining - depending on the System. If you are going to be attacked (.8 and down have rats) then combat (thus the salvager). If not (1.0 and .9) mining drones.

  8. Just mine and return - selling your ore each trip as - the guy buying it might run out.

Why Mining?

Mining is the simplest, easiest way for Rookie Pilots to earn money. In a Venture - you can earn about a million ISK per run - doing mine and return in a system where someone is giving the best price for Veldspar. Each time you return to the station and sell an ore hold of Veldspar - that’s about a million ISK each time.

You can use that money to buy skill books or equipment or ships.

You can do this before, during or after you run your Career Agent Missions. Those are designed to teach you how to do things - but they really don’t pay very well.

What does pay well on the Combat Career Agent Missions - is the Asteroids in the Mission Area (which is different than Mine & Return). One thing you can do to keep from having to go back to the station to dump your ore - is to Jettison it into a Jet Can then fetch it later in an Industrial.

Now - if you do that in a belt - people will steal it. Here - because they stole from you - YOU can attack THEM and Concord will not Punish you for doing it - but that is what the ganker WANTS you to do. He doesn’t want your ore - he wants to blow you up. If you attack him - he can shoot back and Concord won’t do anything. So - Solo jet canning in the belts isn’t a good idea.

What you can do - with a buddy you trust … is to create a jet can by dragging like one unit of ore to itself - then jettisoning that. That creates the can and you can label it with the time - as they expire in 2 hours. The mining ship can then dump it’s ore into the jet can. The other guy in something like an Industrial can (leaving the single unit of ore in there to keep it open) then take the ore out of the can and put it in his hold - after you set him to a status that will let him take it without getting flagged for “stealing” it from you. He can then take the ore back to the station when he is full while the miner keeps mining.

But - if you are mining asteroids in Mission Space - then other players can’t just wander in and find you - they have to used Combat Scanner Probes to do it - and if you watch your directional system scans (set to 360 degrees) - you can see those. So - jet can mining in mission space is a lot safer than trying to do it in the belts.

There is no one “best” way to do things. There is only what YOU want to do. Mining is the easiest way for Rookies to earn money - but - if you think it’s boring - then don’t do it. The important thing here - is that you KNOW it is an option.

A Few More Things About Rookie Ships

  1. Rookie ships are free to repair. There is a Repair button in most if not all stations - with other ships - it will cost you to have them repaired (though if you own an armor or hull repair device you can do that yourself - it just takes longer). Rookie ships are free to Repair.

  2. One of the things that’s kind of fun for Veterans - is to go out in a Rookie ship - and just see what you can get away with. If you get blown up - who cares? They’ll give you another one for free. The only thing you need to worry about is the cost of your modules. But - if you get blown up - before you warp out in your pod - do a Save Location on your wreck and you may be able to come back later, loot it and salvage it. The one caveat here - is - there are some rats now that will pod you … guess how I found out about that … If they are normal belt or mission rats - they won’t but some of those new ones will. If you have implants - those will be gone if you get podded.

How To Find Help

One of the best sources for help is the EvE University Wiki:
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Main_Page
This has several pages on the Career Agent Missions:
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Career_Agents

Search Engines are your friend. You can search the Forums here - you can Search YouTube and you can just Google it. Include the term “EVE” in your search if it’s not on these forums - and then a specific EvE term for the thing you are looking for help on.

Well this is pretty long so I’ll end it here. EvE is a very complicated game and I don’t think there has ever been anybody that knew everything about it - but that is one of the reasons it’s been around 17 years. That is one damn long time for a Computer Game.

GL & Fly Safe!
o7

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Or you can do Project Discovery and make 45m + numerous rewards every hour if you get good at it :nerd_face:

And Venture isn’t a general purpose mining ship. It is a great disservice to others (especially newbies) to directly or indirectly encourage them to mine with a Venture outside of ABC(D) ores and gas. Unless you are in a pinch industry-wise (maybe you live far from tradehubs and need to be self-sufficient), it’s not worth mining in a Venture… if you do, mine enough to manufacture a proper barge :muscle:

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Two things:

  1. I don’t know how to do things in Project Discovery. If it’s such a good idea - why don’t YOU write up a detailed description? Or - if there is one already - why don’t YOU post a link to it?

  2. As it says in the Title to this post it is about STARTING OUT - people who can mine in Mining Barges are past this. So - it is NOT a disservice to new people to tell them how to get into a Venture while they learn the skills and save the money for a Mining Barge - or - for people who just want to make some quick money - before they go on with a career running missions or doing something other than mining. Should I really have needed to point that out to you?
    .

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I would have been more than happy to do so, but I don’t appreciate the attitude. Ask again nicely and I might. Emphasis on the word might.

Given that Project Discover requires zero ISK, zero assets, zero skills, and can do Project Discovery while docked up (or anywhere in space for that matter), yes, it is applicable to starting out :+1:.

Absolutely it is a disservice. You make more money and have more fun doing L1 missions. You make more money doing 5 minutes of Project discovery than you do in a whole hour of Hisec Venture mining. I would not recommend Venture mining (outside of ABCD ores and gas mining and industry-pinching) to my worst enemy, it is such a great disservice, such horrible advice, and probably the slowest form of money there is in the game.

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This is the worst and saddest advice I have seen in EVE for new players. This will actually drive them away more then keep them engaged. And for 10 years, that says a lot

Hell: even doing the career agents and the SoE epic arc is more rewarding

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I 100% agree with @J_Poll . The above advice is catastrophically harmful to the new game experience.

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Good guide, and I absolutely agree. There are those who don’t like to mine or think that they need to make 1 billion ISK every 5 minutes who will shoot it down (and obviously have already tried to). I personally enjoy mining in a Venture, and if you know what you are doing you can make more than enough ISK to enjoy the game. I recently started up a new toon and I unlocked L2 missions for EVERY faction and corporation in the first day, then mined and made 100 million ISK within the first 5 days.

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@Toshiro_GreyHawk you had good intentions writing this, and it was not my intention to criticize you, only to provide constructive criticism so you could factor it in and maybe update your guide accordingly (eg. L1s are more profitable and fun than Venture mining, or a 1.5m exploration frig will score you waaaaay more money than Venture mining - literally a hundred or more ISK on your first day playing, etc). You reacted sharply and I reacted in kind.

@QuakeGod I’ve read a lot of your posts and as far as I can tell so far you’re a smart guy EVEwise, so I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not. Excluding AFK Venture mining (which doesn’t count as playing EVE)… “I personally enjoy mining in a Venture” - YOU? Really? And surely YOU know that 100 million ISK can be made in a few hours with a fresh Alpha explorer using a 1.5m exploration frig. I’m not criticizing you I’m just puzzled and can’t tell if you’re trolling or being serious.

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I have multiple Omega accounts with hundreds of billions of ISK. Having access to everything gets old after a while. I like to roll new alpha toons all the time just to “struggle” again. I play on my Alpha alt accounts far more than I do my Omega accounts. I find it quite entertaining. But, to each his own I guess…

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That I 100% understand. I can appreciate reliving nostalgia and even reliving ignorance: “what would I do if I didn’t know better?” - obviously you’d gravitate to the Venture. But the purpose of a guide is to teach newbies better… a guide should say “you could do this, but here are better alternatives”

Every newbie is ignorant. A guide should not further perpetuate ignorance (intentionally or unintentionally).

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Uh … first off … attitude check: Pretend you are ME - and re-read your first post.

No it is not a disservice - and you will NOT make more money running Level 1 missions. If you are presuming to give advice to new people you should know that mining makes more money than several of the early mission levels. If you don’t realize that - you don’t know enough to be commenting.

And - the link on how to do Project Discovery - is not for me - it’s for new players. I think I tried it once and it was … not something I wanted to do.

So - if you were more interested in being helpful than in seeming clever YOU would have posted one in the first place and not have needed me to tell you to do it.

But OBTW - I want to thank you for your Response and the nature of it. I’ve been away from the EvE Forums for a while - and it made me feel right at home again. It’s nice to know that in a chaotic world - somethings haven’t changed.

.

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Only 10 years … I thought you’d been around longer than that … I remember you from before.

2007 for me but i’ve not been on the forums in a very long time.

I understand your attitude. It’s just what I remember from when I was here before.

You’re wrong - but I don’t for one second expect you to accept that.

Again - as I said - this is just about Starting Out and how a New Player can make some quick money - and a few things they might not know about Rookie ships.

What is sad for me - is people like you who think that there is only THEIR way to play the game. But - as I said - this is nothing new. Your attitude was common in 2007 too.
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I would like to de-escalate the situation if you would be willing to do the same.

I’m the Co-Head of the United Standings Improvement Agency [USIA]. For over 10 years we’ve been hiring and paying players to run missions. We teach players how to blitz missions and give them blitz fits to do so. If you use shitfits then go figure your income is going to suck, but if you use proper fits (even with low skills and cheap mods) then even L1s are substantially more profitable (and fun) than Hisec Venture mining. The profit doesn’t come from the mission rewards - those are awful even at L4s and L5s, but the profits come from the NPC bounties and LP and loot. I don’t usually recommend looting L1-L3 missions, but if you’re a newbie and you loot low level missions you’ll still find it more profitable to do so than Venture mining in Hisec.

Like I said, a guide should include alternatives - otherwise, newbies are going to think the one option you presented is the best way to go when it is not necessarily the case. While it might not be for you, it might be fun for someone else - and certainly more profitable.

I’ve written numerous guides and continue to update the existing ones and write new ones. I think I’m doing my part :slight_smile:

Like I said, I’d like to de-escalate tensions. I’m providing the above counterpoints for consideration so you can update your guide accordingly. I’m more than happy to edit/delete my prior responses to this thread if the feedback is taken seriously and if tenses de-escalate.

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I am here for you, friend. Simply send me all your isk and contract me all your ships and stuff.

Then there will be no going back. You will get to genuinely be new and experience the thrill again!

No no - no need to thank me! I am glad to help you with this service for no charge! I just want you to be happy!

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So to summarise that epic post (and it was an epic post) you could just have said “hey guys, get in a venture to give content to gankers and make yourselves easy prey so you can add to the false narrative that miners quit because they get ganked” :wink:

New beans quit because they get into mining, realise how utterly boring it is and then run off to other games. It’s a true story, go and ask them :grin:

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You cannot actually believe the hype you are spewing do you? I would never, much less anybody else I know thats played a lot longer than I have, EVER recommend a new player to get in a venture and mine ■■■■, thinking they will make more isk. Especially an alpha, considering thats all they can fly.

What is going through your mind thinking they will make a lot more isk than an L1?? If they wanna make quick isk, I’ll give them a salvage dessie, and let them salvage my L4’s then give them isk plus 10% for the salvage… I’d prefer that over telling them to mine…

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No need for me to re-wite anything.

You’ve got your way of doing things and I’ve got mine.

Now - as to adding to the discussion the correct attitude would be:

“I’ve had a different experience - here are links to the guides I’ve written: [link] [link].”

If that had been your attitude - then there would be no “tension” - so that is on YOU.

And you are really, really wrong about running level one missions … on average. Now - if you get “Worlds Collide” Every time - then yeah … you can make a fortune off of THAT from bounties, salvage and loot - but you have No Control over that. You get the missions the agents give you - and if they give you some mission with two rats to kill - then you’re not getting squat for that one.

And - my post was about people running missions in Rookie ships … you want to try running Worlds Collide in a Rookie ship? For one thing - if you don’t get blown up - it will take you forever. I know - because I HAVE tried to do that.

Oh and - they are in Rookie ships - because they haven’t got anything any better YET.

Now - if YOU have an organization that is furnishing Rookies with ships and fits - and maybe skill books too - then that’s great. Lots of Corporations do things like that for their Rookies. The problem with that - is that lots of corporations take advantage of new people too - and how’s a new person going to know which Corporations to trust and what some of them will do to them instead of for them?

For some Rookie that has a good corporation holding their hand and showing them how to do things - that’s going to be a LOT better than some simplistic guide post in NCQ&A. But for someone who doesn’t now ANYTHING about the game - I’ve passed on a good bit of basic information here for just their first few days.

I’ve done this - with new characters - a lot. I’ve got almost 20 accounts - that’s accounts - not characters. I was really active between 2007 and 2012 … then things changed IRL … and I couldn’t have 12 full accounts … 5 corporations … and run Orca based mining ops with Hulks, Covetors and haulers mining mission space - any more. All by myself. On four or five computers. For one thing - I had a lot of 486’s back then on my LAN and … those won’t run this game any more … The last year … I’ve had some Omega Accounts for the first time in a long time and the system I’m using now - which cost me $300 … can run three Omega Accounts … but … there are delays and I have to make sure that that click on a module really took … We’ll see … I want some better systems but I like to build them myself and that takes more time - especially the research …

I would not recommend that ANYONE else play the larger game he way I did - but that was just me … then.

But - I did just create another character and had them in destroyers in a few days - and that was two destroyers - one for combat and the other for salvage. I don’t run missions in Frigates. It’s to slow. I run them in destroyers where I can slaughter the rats, then come along with a salvager destroyer with salvagers and tractor beams to just vacuum up the wrecks. I run several missions in a row, book marking my wrecks then sorting them by Date in P&P. That way I can keep an eye on them and get back to them with the salvager before the wrecks expire.

There are two schemes for creating wrecks - you can orbit … something - let the rats come to you and kill them at close range to create a wreck ball. Then when you come back warp to a bookmark at the center of the ball and put your salvagers and tractors to work. The problem with that is - can you tank all those rats? So - the alternate to that is to Kite The Rats having them chase you - and creating a Wreck Stream. When you come back to salvage THAT - you warp to a bookmark at one end of the stream and make your way to the other. Of course it never works out that clean … like with Worlds Collide you pretty much end up with two bunches of wrecks.

But - even then - even with all the mission rewards, bounties, wrecks and loot - even Worlds Collide does NOT generate the amount of money in the same amount of time - as just doing mine and return in a Venture to the guy giving the best price for Veldspar. It just doesn’t. If you believe otherwise - I can’t help you - but you’re wrong.

That you can make more money is especially true if you are going to be a miner and are improving your mining and drone skills as you do it. Having Miner II’s and Mining Drones - with your skills up can make a lot of difference. If you are not training to be a miner - then it’s not going to make you as much money and you need to think about how long you want to do this - that is make yourself some starter money - before you go on to what you really want to do.

As to past “guides” I’ve done … all my old posts would be in an archive on the old forums … I don’t even know if you can get at that.

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I can actually get worlds collide with one bundle of wrecks in that first pocket.

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YES!

Absolutely!!!

I think every New Player in EvE should be issued a Rookie Ship - and a Benefactor who is going to give them money and skill books and let them come salvage his level IV wrecks!!!

That is a GREAT IDEA!!!

But … you mentioned giving the 10% for the salvage … shouldn’t you … as a benefactor be giving them all of it?
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Cool. I never seemed to manage to do that - despite trying …