The Saga of Kessiaan the Noob

Well, since the server is down for extended downtime today, and I can't play much in any case (got crap internet right now, for the next six months likely), I figured I'd share the saga of Kessiaan the Noob, a tale that unfolded about fifteen months ago, but one I hope you might find interesting, and possibly encouraging for all those rookie pilots out there.

So, it was a day early in the summer of 2007 when I was sick to death of WoW and wanted something different. Having heard that Eve was not just different, but completely different, and pvp focused, I downloaded it, made an account, and decided to give it a go. I created a character that looked interesting, and, not having any better ideas, named it after my WoW shaman, and away I went.

Suddenly I found myself floating in space, looking at my ship and this strange, slightly confusing interface. An annoying female was giving me instructions, but I've never been one for tutorials so I decided, "I want to go THAT WAY!!!!" and with grim determination pushed the up arrow to go forward.

And nothing happened. I tried all the arrow keys, said "wasd" in chat a few times, fiddled with the mouse and after a few minutes succeeded in learning how to look around. After that I figured maybe the annoying voice had something useful to say, so I did what I was told. I bumbled my way through the first two rookie missions, then when I got to the ten-parter I decided, "I'm tired of this, go away." and closed the tutorial, never to return to it.

Instead I looked at the market in my little rookie system... Ammold I think it was... determined to get a shiny new ship that didn't suck. Of course, 350K ISK for a Rifter is a lot of money to an hour-old rookie so instead I bought a couple of mining lasers and off to the belt I went, bringing in load after load of Veldspar as I followed my conditioned WoW impulses to grind something. I chatted it up with the locals and played around with the interface, and remarked that Eve was less like WoW and more like Second Life. In space. With guns.

That remark earned me a free, fully rookie-friendly fit Rifter from a generous vet that I've unfortunately forgotten the name of, in order to spare me countless hours of mining veld so I could buy a Burst (which I'd set as an intermediate goal). I fully insured it as was suggested, he said "Have fun" and off I went to do level 1 missions for a while.

I did level one missions for a little while, and the advice to insure it came it handy as I managed to explode it not once, but twice doing missions - once when I didn't warp out in time during... um.. Worlds Collide I think it was, and another time when I got hung up on a rock and didn't know what to do to unstick myself before I went kaboom. Insurance picked up the tab though and I went on.

It was a few days later I decided I was tired of Ammold and wanted to go somewhere else. So I asked in the friendly, if rather busy, "Rookie Help" channel how to find new agents. "Use the Starmap!" I was told, and so began the day of self-inflicted Map Reading lessons. In the station I sat, all day, first trying to figure out just how to bring up the starmap, then fiddling around with it so I could actually get useful information out of it. Along the way I learned that doing "Show Info" on an NPC corp will eventually get you a list of all the agents for that corporation, and then you combine that information with the starmap and then you're getting places. It was all rather arcane and I didn't actually do much that day except sit in the station (as far as anyone else was concerned) but I came away with a basic knowledge of just how to navigate the big world that is New Eden.

And did I use that knowledge to go find a new agent, new missions, and more ISK? Of course not! Well.. maybe the last point, as I had heard that rats with huge, enormous, rookie-enticing bounties lurked in the dangerous regions of lowsec. Just watch out for other players, they will ALL try to kill you! But I did the math and figured that I only needed to kill a handful of rats to earn back the ISK I'd spent on my ship (which by this point was fit with T2 guns) and hopefully I could escape.

So off I went on my one and only lowsec ratting adventure! I flitted from belt to belt, system to system, putting my newfound navigation skills to good use as I raked in millions of ISK in fat cruiser and battlecruiser bounties. It was easy - I didn't see why everyone didn't do it. Of course I didn't have a clue at this point how to operate my scanner so when two ships (a Brutix and a Hyperion I believe...) warped in to say "Hello" it was a complete surprise. Now, I'd heard all the tales of how if you met another player in lowsec and you were just a rookie you were going to die for sure, so I didn't know that my little Rifter, even totally surprised, could have easily escaped at any time since they never pointed me, instead I decided that if I was going to die I was going to die in style, so I locked on the Brutix, set a tight 500m orbit in an attempt to get under his guns, and opened up with three guns and a missile launcher of rookie mayhem.

Of course I warped away in a pod a few minutes later but I felt vindicated in the fact that I'd actually managed to scratch his armor. Instead I went back to highsec, fit out (yet another) Rifter, and decided, "Hmm, I need to join a corp!". A few minutes later I was inducted as the newest employee of Cassarri Industries, a highsec industrial corp that wanted me to train up mining skills! I didn't know it at the time but they were also notorious for exploiting rookies, but at the time I didn't really care about the 10% tax rate, and did what I was told and started working on my mining skills.

And so I went on my first corp mining op, run by one of the vets in the corp. I still couldn't mine that well, but I had trained industrials up a level or two so I hauled ore in my Wreathe, which struggled to keep up with the barges and Hulk it was hauling for. I did it for a couple of hours, and when all was said and done and I got my share, it was something like six million ISK, a fortune to my rookie self. My eyes filled with dollar signs and I decided that someday I would be able to fly those mighty mining machines myself.

I did several more ops that week, until we were wardec'd by The Really Awesome Players (aka TRAPS). Apparently CI and TRAPS had a long-standing beef with each other and I was caught in the middle. But I didn't mind - I'd read up on the forums about rookie tackle fits so I fit out my Rifter as a suicide tackler so I could go pvp with it. After all - the war was on, let's go fight. But that didn't go over well with my corp, as it seemed our standard procedure for dealing with wars was dock and wait for the war to go away. The war eventually did go away but when it was redeclared a few days later I came to the conclusion I wasn't paying a sub fee to play "Hide in the Station" so I quit and back to the NPC corp I went.

By this time I was in a mining cruiser, and now that I was solo I was reduced to jetcan mining, and that meant can flippers. I wasn't the kind of person to just let the jack my ore though, the first time it happened I went back to the station, switched into my mission ship (a Rupture by this time) and we shot it out. Rookie Rupture vs vet Rifter was a surprisingly good fight but in the end he was driven off and I victoriously reclaimed my ore can. After that I kept a pvp ship in the system I was mining in for the express purpose of fighting can flippers, but after a few battles the local pirates mostly left me alone for easier targets.

It was about this time that CCP started the Power of Two promotion and I got an alt account so I could mine in relative safety, and I continued mining until I was skilled enough for a Retriever, at which point I decided to train up my combat skills, and, since both barges and Gallente ships make extensive use of drones, I cross trained Gallente extensively, and still fly Gallente to this day. Eventually I joined up the Guiding Star corporation (an industrial corp, unlike CI they actually have some balls though), and moved out to Venal, an NPC-sov region in 0.0.

And that's the end of this little story. The point? I dunno.. I just think it's important for new players to keep in mind that even though it may take a little while to get on your feet it's important to get out there and try everything you can - especially at the beginning where no screwup will take more than a day at the most to bounce back from - just keep at it, find something you like, and have fun. If you're not having fun do something else, you don't need to stick with something that's not fun for you :P