I think there are almost no skills needed but if you really want to, get the racial destroyer skill to level 3 and everything under level 2 Mastery of that particular ship.
Also my first ship loss (excluding the Iteron from 2017) was a cheap Venture that I took out for an adventure. It by far wasn’t anything prepared or fancy.
A few more similar ships followed including an SoE Arc Catalyst before I joined a lovely nullsec corp so yeah, get flying and don’t over-think it with strategies.
To be fair I’m starting to get lost in this thread at the moment.
It’s moderately safe if you’re in Fraternity and using their intel network to dock up at the slightest hint of any activity by pilots outside the alliance. The NS areas controlled by the mega blocs are like that.
If you’re not in Fraternity they’ll rather clumsily attempt to hunt you down and kill you with sheer weight of numbers.
Edit: I’m not advocating for joining Fraternity by the way. I’d suggest repeatedly hitting your hand with a claw hammer as being more fun and effective at teaching you how to play eve.
It depends on what you mean by safe (I’m presuming comparable to highsec), but broadly no.
The higher end minerals are exclusive to lowsec and nullsec so people have to take risks mining for them. (This is so the supply of them is moderated by needing to protect mining operations, and prevents uncontrolled influx of them into the economy)
Now, lowsec and nullsec can be quite safe if you are paying attention, work in a group and understand how to evade pirates. It’s not the mindless kind of safety that you get in highsec however and you’ll have to treat an occasional ship loss as an operational cost.
A major difference in danger between nullsec and highsec is:
In null sec, if there is anyone else in local that isn’t you, it’s a safe assumption they notice you and will try to kill you.
In high sec, if there is anyone else in local that isn’t you, it’s unknown how many of them or their alts notice you and will try to kill (gank) you.
Some people make the mistake of thinking that the “unknown” in high sec is 0%, which sets themselves up for disappointment in all sections of space, because they then have terrible fits, bad piloting skills, and poor gameplay mechanics knowledge.
There are ways to fit a ship, manually pilot a ship, and using game mechanics to escape PvP as prey. But, IMO, it is also a mistake to think these things are also “not PvP”. Every day you survive not being blown up is a PvP success – the ships with guns still also have to follow this rule (they just survive not being blown up by blowing up the opponent faster).