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EVE Online: Survivor Guy: New Eden - Week One
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com writer Adam Tingle has been sent out into the wilds of EVE Online. His mission? To report on his findings as he simply tried to survive in the game reputed to have the largest learning curve in all of MMOs.
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Hello and welcome to the first episode of Eve Online Survivor Guy. I am taking on the wilds of New Eden, once I'm out there I will have to initiate survival and it won't be easy. I don't have any experience with this game and the learning curve for me will come swift and steady. I don't want to over dramatize this but a mistake out here could prove fatal. This is Eve Online, a landscape of beautiful exploration, dangerous encounters and a wealth of opportunity. Every day new comers to the game become lost and are forced to survive, I am such a person and I have neither aid nor knowledge to help me progress; I simply have my wits. My mission is simple: I have to survive for the next eight weeks in Eve Online.
The playing environment of Eve Online consists of more than 5000 star systems as well as 2500 randomly accessible wormhole systems. It is a rugged and treacherous landscape only tamed by pioneers and the most hardened of gamers. If approached with logical apprehension and intelligence- reward can be bestowed. If approached however with confidence and over-ambition- your only prize is death. I need to combine the advice given to me by the community as well as my natural survival instincts to endure my tenure Eve Online.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
To experience Eve Online at its best, you really need to find and join a player corporation that has goals similar to what you are looking for in the game.
F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html
This is going to be interesting. Lets hope the dude doesnt just mine the entire time.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
My advice to the author is to do all of the extra training mission arcs he can. They give you lots of ISK, useful items, loot from ship you destroy during the missions, and even free ships. These mission arcs are a huge help when getting started in EVE.
Very well written and insightful article, im really looking forward to part 2.
I have no doubt that if you keep up this level of detail, and keep this as well written as it is, then you will help more people to go out and try EvE.
Not a bad start, but not everything you have written so far is what I would call accurate or good advice (played for 5 years). So writing "it is essential to..." , is a little misleading for some people who will read and follow this to the letter.
As some people have pointed out already, getting a civilian mining laser and shooting veldspar is NOT the way to go, and it will not help in the long run, nor will it make you isk that will buy you anything worthwhile.
Look at the recruitment section, join a corp friendly to new players. They will help buy you ships, skills, answer questions, give you advice, talk to you on teamspeak etc. One obvious one that comes to mind is Ivy League (EvE University). They are dedicated to training up new pilots in EvE, they have actual classes you can attend to learn aspects of the game. Check them out!
Have to agree with Andy, there is very little in EVE that "is essential". There are plenty of things that are "nearly essential" or at least "really really good ideas". Mining Veldspar is not one of them. Although it is "safe", for sure, and it can definitely act as a source of income (no ammo is expended, you don't pay for fuel, and refining costs are paid as a "cut" of the results, so there're no up-front costs there), it's also fairly well regarded as boring. (Heh, "boring"... mining... anyways...)
Definitely follow through on all the tutorial missions. The rookie ship you start with is really only good for getting through those missions -- at least one of those missions will give you an honest-to-goodness Frigate to fly, and then you start being eligible for level I missioning...
I'd also be curious to hear how your skill training is progressing. Are you learning up any of the Learning skills? Although they don't open the game up to you, the sooner those get trained up, the faster your skill progression will go, and then the faster the your game options open up after that. Also not essential, but often a "really really good idea".
It's also definitely not a game to solo. Even if you play solo, participating in the community is really the best way to get the most out of the game -- even if it's just chatting in the newbie channels, you will have a much better time figuring the game out when/if you talk with other people....
I really hope the guy doing this series of reports listens to nothing here, until he has done his 8 weeks. I am pretty certain if he has a semblance of a brain he will follow some of the advice here, through his own trials and tribulations that is if he really is a new starter.
This is a good excercise if done properly to help highlight issues or confirm just how good and varied this game is.
I like this.
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
LOL its only 8 weeks. He's gonna spend most of his time gaining isk at first.
If he's mining i can promise you the most he will do is watch a lazer hit a rock for a few weeks.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Good luck trying to compete or even be on an even playing field with people that have played for years. In this game there is no hope of catching up as it is real time based.
Time = Skill gain = fail.
Eve = Fail.
Don't feed the thread derailing
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
You're looking at this the wrong way. You're not really competing against others most of the time, you are competing against yourself. Knowledge is power in EVE.
Anyway, just think about this, when a EVE veteran gets a skill to level 5, thats as high as it gets. So you can catch up. Will you ever have more options than that veteran? No, but you can be as good as him in any field you train for.
So remember, a veteran can never be better than you if you put the training in. The only advantage he has is that he has more options than you in career choices. Thats it.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
I found myself reading that article and saying to myself "no, no, no..don't get stuck mining!"....but, then I thought about it. This is a good chance to document the common new experience a person has and, for many, mining is an early and often activity.
The real interesting developments will be where the story goes after mining and the choices that are made as that is where the game is made or broken for many new players.
All in all, a pleasant read and a good glimpse at how many start out. Anxious to read more.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
Spoken like a true dimwit who has zero clue how to play EvE or how it works. Its this sort of comment that puts people off trying EvE as a new game.
Please explain to everyone here how you are competing in EvE? Simply put.... you dont. Its not WoW, you're not end game raiding. Fail is levelling up to endgame in one week.
You do YOUR thing in EvE, not anyone elses. You dont compete with people, you enjoy the game doing what you want to do. Hence the sandbox element. Can you fly a Carrier when you first start? No. But then you would lose it anyway if you were new to the game.
You can train up to fly a battleship extremely quickly. After that you can train whatever flicks your switch. Or if you want to mine, you can train up to fly a Hulk really quickly and so on... What older players can do is fly maybe 3 or 4 different factions ships, rather than just one. But thats variety, not competition.
Don't listen to idiots like this guy, find out for yourself, and JOIN A CORP!
Ninja salvage level 4 mission runners and join Red vs. Blue. Good luck !
Dowload EVEMON, follow its skill training plans religiously. Make sure you level learning skills first, because past 8 weeks the attribute gains help. You can do a neural remap to lower combat skills like perception and willpower and raise intelligence and memory. New players get 2 so when you have trained all the skills you think you will need that use int and mem, you can switch back.
EVE's curve is not as hard as you think. The biggest problem is that it punishes altaholics and dillentantes, or just muddling around, because of the time based skill system. Research will help a lot, and asking in help will too.
Also, PvP. Mission running and mining are boring as hell, and will burn you out if that's all you do. Try and pilot a ship you can afford well: don't overreach and go beyond that. However if you want to pilot of cruiser, dont waste time raising frig skills like small energy turret high early on. Try and raise general skills at first which apply to all ships.
Good luck. It was a mixed experience for me: I liked the shipbuilding aspect of it, but had zero luck finding a non-sucky corp.
This is not new.
This was already done, with amazingly good posts, which created fun reading for months.
I guess most of the noobs don't even know it.
Oh well.
and you fail for having absolutely no knowledge about the game otherwise you wouldnt post such crap. :P
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
It would be extremely insteresting to read if he went the ninja salv route. which can be trained up pretty quickly and makes some good isk.
I agree what what many of the others have said - get Evemon, join a corp, and finish the tutorials.
As for "never catching up", I started playing in 2007 and routinely take down much older players in PVP. After a certain point it's not how many skill points you have, it's your knowledge of the game, choice of ship, and how you set up your ship for the role you're flying. Each ship in the game has bonuses attached (in the info description). Pay attention to those, and as you get more experienced you'll find that most ships are built to fulfill a certain role.
One corporation that I've heard is great for noobs is Eve University.
Enjoy your start in Eve!
playing since 2003 made a extra newb char and after a bit of training killing off seasoned veterans.
So the people who say "you can never win from the people with more skillpoints and who are playing much longer" have clearly been playing WOW too long.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Just a few thoughts here...
The tutorials that everyone is referring to may be misleading. There ARE tutorials such as Your First Days for the raw new player, but after you have run them, open the Help panel and go to the Career Advancement section. The five Agents are located at a different location from your initial starting system, and the set of Career missions that they each give you are basicly extended tutorials. It is here in these career missions that you will get a good grasp on many aspects of the game as well as many free skillbooks, mods, ships, and even a few blueprints and basic attribute augmentations, not to mention a decent amount of ISK paid to you as rewards, bonuses, and NPC pirate bounty.
There is even a strategy to running these Career missions. Start with the Exploration Career. The third mission gives you the Survey skill. Start training it to level 3 immediately. Then run the Business Career path missions. The third mission gives you Salvaging (you get a Civilian Salvager in the second mission, but I'd suggest purchasing a Salvager I as soon as possible). Assuming you have Survey trained to level 3, train Salvaging immediately. Now you can not only loot the cargo holds of the NPC pirates you destroy while running these missions, but you can also salvage them. Throughout the five Career paths, I estimate that the salvaged items that I sold netted me in the vicinity of 3 to 4 million ISK which isn't too shabby for a noob.
Although joining a Corporation is sound advise for most players, it is NOT essential to learning nor to enjoying the game. I started playing about nine months ago and have enjoyed myself immensely playing solo. I have since started my own corporation with a few other players and intend to begin a recruiting campaign in the near future.
Be sure to use the help chat channels, especially the regular Help which you can join by opening the help panel and click the join button at the top. The default newbie help channel is OK, but the regular channel is much better.
As mentioned by others, as soon as you can afford them, purchase and start training the Learning skills. IMHO they ARE essential to the game. No matter what path you decide to take, the decrease in skill learning time gleaned from training these skills is an enormous benefit. Start with the Learning skill itself since it increases the rate of training of all of the other learning skills, and then add Analytical Mind (Intelligence) and Instant Recall (Memory) since they are the primary and secondary attributes for the largest amount of skills (as well as for the Learning skill itself). If you plan on following an Industry or Missions Runner path, add Empathy (Charisma) as soon as possible, and if Combat is your goal, get Spatial Awareness (Perception) and Iron Will (Willpower).
That's all I have atm. Interesting article. I look forward to the next installments.
~ Adder ~
Quick, Silent, Deadly
Qcats, look them up in Gallente faction warfare, routinely take out cruisers and up with just frigates.
So to the trolls that fail at failing to bring down Eve with their "you can't catch up" trash, screw you.
twitch.tv/itpaladin
@ITPalg
YouTube: ITPalGame
This is actually a really good idea for an article series and it's pretty well written. While some parts aren't completely accurate, I don't think that's important for this series. What's important is seeing how a new player approaches the game and learns from his experience. As the writer's much closer to a new player than any of the older players giving advice, his advice is much more useful to newcomers to the game despite minor inaccuracies. Very nice article, definitely better than I'd come to expect from MMORPG.com! Keep it up!
I've actually flown with the Quantum Cats corp before, they used to do joint ops with Pillowsoft (my corp) and they helped us out in a war someone declared on us. They're an awesome Gallente Militia corp that routinely take down big targets with a squad of less experienced pilots in much cheaper ships. They'll go out with a gang of frigates and cruisers to take down battleships and expensive Tech 2 stuff.
I'd definitely reccomend that the writer at some point joins his race's faction warfare militia or preferably an organised player-run corp signed up to the war effort. There are a lot of corps that will provide free frigates, cruisers and Tech 1 fittings for use in PvP, reducing your losses to practically nothing. Then it's just a matter of joining squads of more experienced PvP pilots going out on a roam and learning from them. It's a LOT of fun.
Insert signature that doesn't break the rules here
Should be a nice read to see what you get up to.
Eve has lots to do and the best part is probably to try do as much of the activities as you can. Explore low sec, 0.0 wormholes etc die a few times and don't be afraid of it the early clones cover you for most of the skill points you'll have gained so there isn't much stopping you from day one.
After you have found as much content as you can find look for a corp if you haven't found one already. It really does open up the game especially if you find it difficult to have a goal to work towards to.
Eve isn't always linear and straight forward as you can do what you like with whats in the game world. If you find something dull, do something else, nothing is forcing you to grind or waste your time staring at inanimate objects.
Eve can be as hardcore or casual as you like it, it depends upon you and your own initiative to see which one you get out of it.