EVE Online: Diary Of A Noob Part 2 .

Click here to read Part 1.

 

Welcome EVE Online: Diary Of A Noob Part 2! Last week I introduced everyone to a new series of articles, EVE Online: Diary of a Noob. Essentially I am here to help new or existing players of EVE grasp the ropes of this punishing Sci-Fi MMORPG by allowing them to learn from mistakes I have already made. If you missed out on Part 1 then be sure to read it by clicking here. We already took a glance at the character creation, playable factions and a general overview of careers. I left everyone with something to think about, which faction fits you? I chose the Minmatar and created a pilot named Pleasure Winters. I am presented with the next question, who do I want to be? There are several career paths to follow, you don’t have to pick just one either. Players can mix and match skills from different areas without restriction. This is a question for you to think about as well, so to help make it slightly less overwhelming I will be taking you through what career paths are available for you to choose and explaining some of the fundamentals in the best way I can.

Upon entering the game you find yourself in your Captain’s Quarters. This is your personal room in each space station you visit, they are all identical for the time being but an update is soon to be released that will add some variety. These quarters are where you will craft, access the marketplace, hand in missions and much much more. Outside of these quarters, the entirity of the game takes place in your space ship. Each captain’s quarter is separate, whichever station you are docked at will hold all the items you left there but won’t be accessible outside of the station. This means if you leave for another station, you must cart your items along with you unless you want to make constant trips. This can be hard because ships have a limit to how much they can carry, and ships that can carry a lot generally aren’t well equipped to be fighting.
Moving around space is done through warping, stargates and other means of high speed transport. Flying isn’t twitch based, you click in the direction you want to move or right click on an empty area of the screen and select a location to warp to from the drop down menu. Places you can visit in each zone are different planets, asteroid belts, stargates, stations and mission locations. The secret to finding your way for missions is in the mission log. Your mission log will tell you the location of the agent who gave you your mission and the location of the objective. Right click on the location you want to travel to and click set destination, for example do this on an objective location to set your destination to the mission area.

In the top left of your screen a destination window will appear. This window tells you the destination, next jump (which stargate you must travel through) and how many jumps to go. You can either manually right click on the screen, mouse over stargates and travel to the ‘next jump’ or you can right click on your ship and select ‘activate autopilot’ and watch your ship fly itself to the destination. Everything in the game is activated by right clicking on it, targeting enemies, opening cargo holds, interacting with objects, everything is done with a right click drop down menu. If you are ever wondering how to use something, just right click on it. If you are unsure what something is, everything has a ‘show info’ option which details everything you might want to know. These are things you should be watching out for, the tutorial will explain it all and hold your hand through the process but just make sure you have this down. 
Last week I mentioned the following career paths: Ratting, Exploration, Mining, Industry & Production, Trading & Hauling, and Piracy. Don’t worry, you aren’t going to have to pick one of these straight away and if you want to, you can do all of them. When you first enter EVE Online as a new pilot the game introduces you to each career path through tutorial missions. Career Agents for each path will assign you ten missions each, totalling fifty tutorial missions. I highly recommend you complete all of them, you will gain a basic understanding of each career and gain some essential ISK (money) and equipment for getting off to a good start. It doesn’t take too long to complete them and they are generally pretty straight forward. During the missions you will be taught all the fundamental controls for the game, which are absolutely required. Those little tutorial boxes popping up, read them or you will regret it! Okay, on to the matter at hand, let’s take a look at the Career Agents.

Career Agents
Military The missions from the Military Career Agent trains players in combat. Missions consist of tasks such as killing pirates, destroying bases and escorting important documents or people. I would assume if you want to be a ratter or a pirate then these missions should be of interest to you.
Advanced Military The missions from this Career Agent will teach players more advanced combat tactics. Essentially the same as the Military missions except they are more difficult encounters. I highly suggest completing the normal Military missions before tackling this one. Once again a ratter or pirate might find this career interesting.
Industry If combat isn’t exactly your thing then the Industry Career Agent will have you off mining for resources from asteroid belts or crafting ships to sell on the marketplace. If you are interested in becoming a crafter or miner then visit this Career Agent, these quests will offer you the chance to craft some ships and make easy ISK.
Business Does fighting sound too dangerous, mining too boring? Maybe you would rather becoming a “space trucky” buying items cheap then delivering them to far stretches where they will sell for a higher price. Or quite possibly, you just want to kick back and make everyone else do the dirty work. If any of these sound like you then maybe a career in business is the right choice. Play a marketplace that resembles the stock market, create production factories and assembly lines, run an entire business from your Captain’s Quarters.
Exploration Are you curious about what is out there? This Career Agent will have players sending out scanning probes to discover strange undiscovered anomalies, dig up archaelogical sites, salvage equipment from wrecks or unlock hidden technologies that sell for a high price. Explorers make their ISK from doing exactly what you would think, exploring the places no one else dares to go and selling everything they find.

The first thing I considered with these careers is why can’t someone just do a bit of everything? The answer is you can do everything but you won’t be great at everything. Basically every task in the game has a corresponding skill that must be known by the player performing it. The skill represents knowledge of the task and takes time to learn, skills are constantly levelling up inside a ‘levelling queue’ controlled by you whether you are playing or not. Skills have up to five levels and each level takes a certain amount of time to acquire. You could just begin learning everything, but it would take you more years than you will realistically play to do so to an efficient level. The amount of skills available is both amazing and daunting. You are really forced to decide where you are going to focus your skills and what you want to master. This is mainly hard because you aren’t restricted, but you can create the perfect blend of skills for your exact playstyle.
This is partly where the complexity of the game comes in, you can build ships, add extensions on to them, guns, turrets, upgrades etc. Each type of ship however requires a skill, each weapon requires a skill, each upgrade requires a skill, see where I am going with this? To add scope, each type of upgrade or weapon generally has a list of variation for difference scenarios. The list grows quickly, so play through the tutorial missions and see what works for you, what you like and what is the most fun. To help you on these missions, I suggest doing the Industry and Business tutorial missions first as they are the easiest and will give you plenty of ISK to spend. Once you have completed them open the marketplace and buy yourself a cheap but effective Combat Frigate. This will be listed under ships, find your faction and then select ‘frigates’. For me as a Minmatar I bought a Rifter, a fast combat frigate that is quite popular I believe. While you are in the marketplace also buy yourself some weapons to fit which can be found under Ship Equipment> Turrets & Bays.

Remember you need a skill for all these, when browsing in the marketplace if you click on a category it will show the contents of that category and what skills it requires. In the top left of the  item description there will be either green or red boxes, red means you haven’t learnt the skill. Hover over the skill to see what it is then buy it in the marketplace and learn it. Now here is the first mistake I made, going into the marketplace can be tricky business. When you are browsing through listings, the far left column is called ‘jumps’ and will have either ‘station’ or a number in the column. Always try to purchase something that has station written in this column, like I mentioned with items remaining in a particular station, your auctions remain in that station as well. If you buy something that is ’15 Jumps’ (basically 15 zones) away then you must travel to all the way to that station just to pick up your purchase. Don’t end up like me, purchase a bunch of things from all over the galaxy then have to run around picking them up for several hours. Some of you might be realizing at this point how the “space truckys” can make money, selling goods at stations which are short on supply.

So back on track, complete Industry and Business then buy a combat frigate from the marketplace and it it with weapons. You will have learnt how to do this in the tutorials don’t worry, it will make sense once you are looking at it. Now you are free to either go complete the military or exploration missions and they will be extremely easy with your fancy new combat frigate. Another feature the game will ask you about is insurance, most stations have insurance brokers available that will allow you to insure your ship. Pay a premium and when/if your ship is blown up you will receive a payout to help cover the costs of replacing the ship. Oh yes, once your ship is blown up, it is gone forever.  After completing the tutorial missions these are my tips so far. By the time you reach the end of the line it will be time to begin forming a picture of who you want to be.

I have so far decided that I would like to participate in military or pirate style encounters. PvP is something that seems fun to me and warring with other players is intense. To establish my fundings for all the skills and ships I will require to become successful in PvP, I have decided to take up mining and crafting of a few select items to sell for a tidy profit. I am currently mining ore to craft ships for a newbie station where they are currently being charged an extremely high price, I will get a steady flow of ships and equipment into that station at a reasonable price and hopefully fund my future ventures. I will be pursuing a PvP / Industry role from here on in but I may only mine my own resources until I can earn enough capital to begin working purely as a Businessman.
So take some time to think about who you want to be because you can literally be anything you want. Take it further than these career paths and blend them together to create your own unique career. Politician? Loan Shark? Spy? Bounty Hunter? All these things are possible and much much more, dream of careers you would love to have in a game like this and then see if you can make it possible. The entire game is run by players and only continues due to the work everyone puts in to keep their corporations (guilds) running and that ISK changing hands. Work your way in from whichever angle you like and if you come up with a possible career post it in the comments below and let us know not only what career you want but how you would / are going to accomplish it.

One last piece of advice for today, while you are completing these tutorial missions you should keep an eye out for noob friendly corporations (guilds) to join. The NPC corporation you belong to in the beginning charges you an 11% tax on all your mission rewards, most corporations don’t have this tax. You will generally find people advertising their corporation in chat or through the corporation button on the left of your screen. Stay tuned as we return with more on life in Eden, we will discuss how to get on your feet, how to get the most out of your corporation and most of all which direction I have chosen to head in now and what obstacles I have faced.
Click here to read Part 3.