EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Other Career Options

Salvaging: Going pro with vacuuming up wrecks and loot from missions has a lot of potential, though it can get you blown up if you don't have the permission of the parties involved. Though some people have turned stealing this stuff into a calling, I recommend that you do this in tandem with a truster corp mate that is running level 4 missions. They drop a lot of loot, and most players probably don't bother to collect it all. In order to perform this effectively, you should train Salvaging. If you are going to join a corporation, you will want to pick up a few Small Tractor Beams to speed things up.

Production and Marketing: Much has been said elsewhere about making use of markets to your advantage, and producing for them. Even if you do not want to dive into production or market manipulation wholesale, most players build up a personal blueprint collection over the course of their EVE career, in order to supply themselves with needed ammo and modules, and to supplement their income.

Villainy: The most easy version of this is stealing ore from miner cans, though they tend to get wary and may blow you up for your trouble. Ransoming is a possibility, too, even if it's just to get you to stop bumping their ship away from asteroids. Small-scale corp theft is usually pretty easy, too, just join a corporation and take whatever they have lying around in their corp hangars --corp hangars are collective hangars corporations rent in specific stations, in order to better manage their goods, and most small corporations take insufficient precautions to prevent theft.

There are tons of other options, too, once you have a better grasp of the game, including: piracy, organizing a full-scale business, mining moon minerals, exploration, plumbing the depths of wormhole space, inserting yourself into a profitable step of a production chain, or any number of other things. If you can think of it, and think it will make money, go for it.

Week Three: Find Or Make A Home

If you made it to week three, you're no longer on a trial account. Barring some kind of special offer, anyway. This means you're sticking around for at least a month. Good. That means more corporations will consider letting you join. It also means that you need to decide where to live.

Different locations within high-sec have their virtues. The four main market systems are Jita, Amarr, Rens, and Oursulaert, in rough order of importance. Proximity to one of these systems will allow you to get pretty much any item, because the markets there are so well stocked. The closer one is to these hubs, the less asteroids there will be in belts, though, and the less mission agents will generally be available. Jita, the largest trading hub in EVE Online, has neither agents nor ore.

Staying near a "school system" where new players begin the game and most skillbooks are available on the market is a good idea, too, since you will need a lot of them during your first few months.

Ways to make your new home more amenable:

• Keep all of your ships there, in one location, for ready use. Having ten ships scattered across EVE is pointless.
• Buy the blueprint originals for whatever ammunition you use, and keep yourself supplied with ammunition that way, using minerals from your mining or reprocessed from your missions.
• When you pick your home, try to get skillbooks and other items you need in batches, so you aren't constantly auto-piloting between where you live and where the markets are.
• If you choose to join a corporation, all the above considerations apply, except that you should be moving to whatever area they inhabit, and doing you best to help your corpmates along the way.

Week Four And Beyond: Discovery

At this point you may feel confident enough to try something fancy, like one of the epic mission arcs. The most basic, newbie-oriented epic mission is based in Arnon, at IX - Moon 3 - Sisters of Eve Bureau. Fly there and talk to Sister Alitura. Her missions will take you on a tour of every area of high-security space, and introduce you to most of the major factions in EVE. It's occasionally challenging, but nothing a new player shouldn't be able to handle.

By now you should be getting into the swing of things a bit better. If you still find yourself getting frustrated, the best thing you can do is read more EVE guides, sift through the official EVE wiki, read the official EVE forums, read the other Ten Ton Hammer articles, and talk to corp-mates. Get corp-mates, if you haven't already. The vast majority of players that get frustrated with EVE do so because for whatever reason they have not availed themselves of the vast number of corporations that fit all play-styles and activity levels.

If you're feeling up to it, this might be a good time to try moving around in low security space. Perhaps you're one for sight-seeing, and you are willing to venture into low security space to see the EVE Gate in the New Eden system. Just don't use auto-pilot, no matter how abandoned it seems. The same goes for null-sec.

After a month of EVE, you will probably be ready to try getting your feet with with PvP, on an experimental basis. The best way to learn to PvP is to fly on ops with more experienced pilots, and learn from them. It is important to not fly anything that you can't afford to lose. For the first few months you should be flying frigates and cruisers, and that's it. Try not get too emotionally invested in victory. Even competent pilots lose their ships all the time. I've lost hundreds, but I've killed twice that.

That's it for now. Be sure to let us know how your first month of EVE Online is coming along, on the Ten Ton Hammer forums.