'ello.

I'm an existing EVE player that was recently introduced to GiantBomb via the GiantBombcast. I'm not usually in these sorts of game communities (can't remember the last time I touched IGN) but I've trying to branch out more and just generally get the word out about EVE. I've been playing about 3 and a half years and know just about everything mechanics wise (don't ask me about null sec politics) or if not I know where to find it.

I aspire to one day join the devs and help develop the game (which is more likely then you think, CCP's CEO referred to the company as a giant katamari that sucks up it's players into employees and I already do have some in-office recognition xD) but until then I wanna just spread the word and get people to love and enjoy EVE just as much as I do.

So, on to the point of this post. I'm here to offer to help people that are thinking of trying or have just started playing EVE to really get into it and to learn the ins and outs of it. And if you haven't started I can offer a 21-day extended buddy invite trial (these cannot be added to existing trials to poke me first before making one). I usually don't do ISK donations or anything as I live by the school of thought of "teach a man to fish and you feed him for life"; in other words I'd rather teach you to do it yourself than to give it to you. And besides, accelerating you up too fast can be of determent to you. Even though you can legally buy ISK and characters not knowing how to fly or fit a ship properly will just get you laughed at and consequently blown up, even in a capital ship (in fact even more so) so make sure to take your time and not jump into things too quick.

With all of that said you can reply to this thread with just general questions about EVE you may have. You can also find me by the same name in-game too.

And to top it off here is a YouTube playlist of a bunch of the EVE trailers, including the original storyline intro. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6485F69FE6610285

Fly Safe :P

I've downloaded the EVE a couple times, just to find myself watching the tutorial, training up some skills, and then just looking into space until I uninstall. Are there any videos/articles you would suggest to get us newbs past the opening moments? Seems so overwhelming and little direction is provided.

Also, I'm told over and over that I should join a corporation, but how do you go about finding a good corp that will accept a newbie? What is the process once a corporation is joined (to learn and assist the corp)?

@HALNineOOO: You need some Industrial SIzed Knowledge!!!!!

lol, on a serious note, that's how I learned about the game, but there are plenty of other methods. You might want to try signing up for Eve University in-game. It's designed specifically to help ease new players into the world of Eve.

Thanks. Had no idea of the ISK book's existence.

@Xercodo: What is the benefit of going to you when something such as the Eve University already exists? Would it better to go to the University to train in a very specific skill? Or after you've learned the basics of Eve Online?

*sigh* I really wanna get into this game. I tried it for 14 days in the summer, really liked the idea, but had no fucking clue what I was doing.

Ya the ISK guide and EVEUni are great to get you on your feet.

Honestly finding a corp when you start out (or after EVEUni) can be challenging. Essentially you just gotta find a group of guys that like doing what you do and you get a long with. EVE is at its best with friends and the social factors of the game are usually MUCH better then the gameplay itself. The fact that the whole game is on a single server with one giant community kinda helps pushes this part along.

To find corps try looking in the corp recruitment section of the forums or just hang out in some local systems doing what you like doing; eventually you'll come across someone doing the same. Or even if you don't do that you can just find some social channels like EVE radio's channel and make some friends in there. They could eventually invite you along. The butterfly effect is a very real thing.

My own channel is one that I don't mind people hanging out in for stuff like this (which you can figure out how to get into via my in-game bio).

Aside from the ISK guide and EVEUni there are people like me that don't mind helping things along and clearing the fog for you. You can find that the EVE community is one of the most ruthless but equally the most caring, so you can find quite a few people in the starter systems and help channels that you can get quite a bit of mentor-ship from.

As for videos there's the Planetary Interaction and Scanning video tutorials on CCP's main YouTube channel as well as several other tutorials and guides made by other players and groups. EVEUni has quite a few themselves.

@Napalm: Well really there isn't much that I can say to make me such a great person to go to other than someone that offered in the first place. You sure as hell could go to EVEUni over me, my only gain are making friends and the satisfaction of helping people so it's not like I have a secret agenda or anything xD.

I just try to give a bit of a personal touch to how I help people. Think of me as a tutor compared to the professors at EVEUni.

I do have a email from one of the devs personally thanking me for helping so much so I guess that's a bit of a vote of confidence for me :P

(http://sites.google.com/site/xercodo/homeYou can read it here if you want on my Google site page.)

Have you ever thought about doing a blog every now and then? I can only speak for myself but I'm very interested in stories of EVE, but have no interest in playing it. One of my favorite Bombcast moments is when Dave talked about his time with EVE, and in last week's Bombcast only intrigued me more to the going ons of EVE. So give it a thought, and be sure to let me know if you decide to do it.

I have a guy who can fly battle ships and is on hi way to fly a carrier. But I ran out of money for the monthly payments. I had one guy paying for my account for a wile but he stopped when his corp left the area.  
 
 
Anyone care to sponsor me again? 

I have an unopened commissioned officer edition, and it comes with a "cerebral accelerator".... My Question is, if I get a 21 day trial from someone, can I use the accelerator right away if I redeem my game code right away as well?

This post made me open the page to download EVE and have my cursor hover over the button for a good 90 seconds.

Then I thought about spreadsheets and the spell was broken. I'd love to try it out, man, but I don't think I can get as deep as one has to in order to truly appreciate the craziness that universe has to offer. As much as I hate to admit it, I'll probably just wait for the Dude-Face-Shooter in the EVE universe to come out.

If you start with the basics the game is not hard to grasp at a fundamental level.

Skill training, movement between celestial objects, inventory management, the core activities in EVE are not that different from other games. It's only certain metagame activities, like the economy for example, that become graph-heavy.

You can have a perfectly good time just fitting a Rifter (frigate) for combat in low security space and hunting for 1v1s. From there you can move on to piracy, or a mercenary corporation, or maybe join a giant nullsec alliance and participate in fleet battles (all you really need is a frigate to tackle bigger ships).

The big stuff starts from the small. Just try mining or missions to make some cash to start; there are tutorials for those, too. I was a former E-UNI mentor and I gave similar advice to fresh, ambitious pilots back then.

EDIT: Caldari forever

@Giantstalker: I'm real bad at RPGs in terms of inventory management and stuff. Kinda ADHD, and I'm off my meds for the summer so... you get the picture. Shooting virtual dudes in their virtual faces is a pretty ADHD-friendly passtime, though I don't do it too often. Maybe if I could put aside my pride - I'm actually a pretty fucking cool guy, believe it or not - and try to role-play or something, I could get into it.

Fuck, now I'm back on that page. Here's the final deciding factor: can I or can I not make a character who's a average-looking chic named "Midnight Brown" (after Jeff's band) that likes to do a bunch of space-drugs when she's not on a mission for a crack squad of highly skilled government operatives?

@munnyman5: Well, the character editor is pretty amazing, so I'd consider giving that a try (for free!) at the very least. What you do from there is, uuuh, totally up to you. There ARE role play corporations out there so you could probably pull it off with a bit of effort. The fiction's pretty neat in this game, there are four empires, I won't get into it but it's cool. Just be prepared for a bit of a slow burn, as it were

Gahh- I've had eve on my steam list for about 2 years now but I have never once taken the plunge. A 21 day trial seems like a nice thing to have though so I might be tempted to enter the world of EVE on that basis. I agree with @MattadorD though, if you could do an EVE blog it would be amazing just to give some of us outsiders a glimpse into what goes on in that surreal game.

@MattadorD said:

Have you ever thought about doing a blog every now and then? I can only speak for myself but I'm very interested in stories of EVE, but have no interest in playing it. One of my favorite Bombcast moments is when Dave talked about his time with EVE, and in last week's Bombcast only intrigued me more to the going ons of EVE. So give it a thought, and be sure to let me know if you decide to do it.

I'm the same, I've had the free trial downloaded for some time but never booted it up, my real interest is the stories.

Fuck, guys. Fuck.

I created a character, and the fiction's already interesting. I can feel my summer slipping away already...

One caveat, though. One big, huge, awful thing. SOMEBODY ALREADY TOOK "Midnight Brown." So mine's named "Midnight Browns" and she wears basically a Mass Effect hoodie without the hood part. As it turns out, that's kinda meta, since she's pretty much exactly my Shepard from those games. That clothing option CAN'T be a coincidence, right? I mean, the N7 stripes are pretty distinctive.

@dvand987 said:

I have an unopened commissioned officer edition, and it comes with a "cerebral accelerator".... My Question is, if I get a 21 day trial from someone, can I use the accelerator right away if I redeem my game code right away as well?

Short answer: Yes, but:

Please note: It is important that the buddy uses the link, which is given in the email, to create the trial account.

So, as long as you:

1. Create a new trial account using the link in the 'Buddy' invitation email;
2. Use the Commissioned Officer CD Key to activate the trial (into a subscription);
3. Keep in mind that the Cerebral Accelerator will only work during the first 35-ish days of the life of the character it's been applied to.

Long answer:

Don't forget to drop into the GiantBomb chat channel ingame if you're around, where a bunch of us hang out and BS a little from time to time.

Ya I could totally make an EVE blog about of my GiantBomb profile and stuff.

I'll start off with kinda of my own EVE history and then work my way up to the present.

Make sure to bug me if I haven't posted in a while cause I'm not very good at keep a blog going :3

@d0rks: WOW, thanks man, this is exactly what I needed to know. I'm super impressed with how you actually contacted CCP to verify what you already thought was possible, right on man! I have not been invited to a 21 day trial buddy program because I don't know anyone who plays eve. But I am going to ask around a bit to see if anyone would want to send me a trial code (I don't want to be a pushy idiot and create a topic "looking for 21 day trial code"). Also, doesn't the person who sends out the code get a perk if the trial player then subscribes? I just wanted to find out what was possible, so that I can get the most bang for my buck.

Again, thanks d0rks for finding the definitive answer to a question I have been pondering for months. You rock.

@Renahzor: Is the name of the channel just "GiantBomb" Also, I'm going to be a newb to the game so you guys probably don't want to hear some guy ask a thousand question

@dvand987: I can send you a code. You get 10 invites a month to send out so it's no problem at all. Shoot me a PM with your email so I can send it and yeah, the name of the channel is just one word "GiantBomb"

lol and don't worry about asking questions. It's how everyone learns after all. Everyone in the channel seems pretty chill too so I doubt they'd mind.

@Xercodo: I played Eve for a while a year ago. I was taken in by a small mining corp and worked my way up in that career path. Unfortunately, events in real life conspired to force me to leave Eve never having learned anything beyond mining. In this sense I'm still a scrub flying around in a Hulk with hundreds of millions of ISK. How would you recommend I pursue learning new aspects of the game from this odd position if I should happen to return to the game? Thanks!

@dvand987: Ya I can do the buddy invite too. The perk is 30 days free time or a PLEX (which can be used for time or sold for ISK). Just make sure to read the fine print regarding the valid payment methods.

Also feel free to ask anything you want. That's half the reason for this thread :D

Besides, if you ask it now someone that has the same question int he future could read our answer :P

@Dtat: What I'd suggest is going an messing with the career agents. You can find them in the help window (F12 deafault hotkey) and it will automatically show you the nearest ones. Go and do the agents aside from industry (or do industry too for learning manufacture if you only know mining).

If they won't talk to you then you can try filing a petition to have then reset or go to a different group of agents.

I miss the game so much and I miss my two battle ships. I just do not have the extra cash to pay monthly. I was a great ratter. Was also on my way to fly a carrier.  

I'm all sorts of sad I've left for as long as I have, but life kind of does that. I loved my Drakes, was part of a small corp working on getting a POS set up in Wormhole space back when that was fresh. Good times.

Thanks Xerc! My main question is kind of specific. I want to know how to get a good start in regards to specific skills I should train.

I like the look of the Amarr and I've done some research and decided that I want to be a pirate and eventually go to black holes.

Do you suggest that I Start with all the basics including mining and stuff then go for pirating skills? I know the question can be answered in many ways and there is no right answer, but I just want your opinion.

@dvand987: Start with some basics and figure out how the markets and combat work a little, then you need a corp. Best would be to find a low/ null pvp corp that does pirating stuff if that's what you really want to do. Be aware though, pirates aren't always what they are cracked up to be. The trade usually involves sitting in the same spot for as many hours as you can, and hoping something valuable and killable comes through. You're going to have to do other things for money, and that will probably be killing NPC's in asteroid belts. Also by black holes I'm guessing you mean Wormholes. Those are deffinately a higher skill profession that needs a fairly large amount of money behind it. It's easy to say now that you want to go in pirating, which is what I wanted years ago when I started. Today I've barely done any real pirating, and found so much more that I enjoy doing with the game. There's more to do and ways to make money than you would believe.

Honestly I would consider joining the eve university corporation for a month or two, they are great for new players at making it a little easier. Also feel free to shoot me a message, Cronus Zontanos in game.

@Renahzor said:

Don't forget to drop into the GiantBomb chat channel ingame if you're around, where a bunch of us hang out and BS a little from time to time.

How would I find that channel? There are so many windows, man. There are just so many god damned panes to look at.

@munnyman5: lol, you'll get used to it. Open up chat and in the upper right corner, there should be an icon about channels or something. Sorry I can't be more specific but I haven't messed with my channels in months lol. In any case, click that icon and there should be an option to create or search for another channel. Just type in 'GiantBomb' and it should add you to the channel. There may or not be people in there though.

You know what...give me a sec to log on so my instructions aren't so shitty lol

edit: Okay, so open up chat and under the minimize button, you'll see a button called "Open channel window." Open that up and you'll see another window and near the top of that window you'll see a box called channels. Type in 'GiantBomb' and hit Join. And presto!

I'm scared to even try to get into a game like that at this point, but I'll follow you for your blog!

I've thought about coming back a few times. The last thing I remember was buying a Hyperion and a Megathron. But I didn't leave the space station for so long that I forgot how to do almost everything lol

@dvand987: I hang out in help channel and answer questions for probably 40% of my playtime, questions are good! lol

@Cronus42: Thanks Cronus, I will try to join Eve Uni as soon as I can!

I've got yet another starting question. So I found this video on youtube that describes how to "Ninja Salvage" and it looks pretty lucrative. One of my goals is to make enough ISK within 2 months so that I can buy PLEX for gametime. Guys, in your opionions is this an okay way to play for a newbie?

@dvand987: Ninja salvaging can make decent isk, but you wont be making a PLEX every month without some SERIOUS time investment. PLEX are sitting at 480M isk or so, that's a lot of ninja salvage going to nothing but play time. I'd say 10-20M/hr with good scanning skills and a busy system is possible, but that's still 24 hours a month devoted to just ninja salvaging to pay for plex, on the low end.

Also, Ninja salvaging is more generally done as a PvP activity. Most ninja salvagers are alts or have an alt Orca in system holding their combat T3 (or battlecruiser, or whatever). They use a crappy T1 frig to salvage *and* loot (this is the key difference) and flag themselves as hostile to the mission runner. Said mission runner if he's stupid will shoot the now flagged ninja, who leaves quickly to grab his real combat ship. He is now able to retaliate without Concord (space cops) coming and killing him, wiping out a hopefully expensive Mission BS and taking the fittings for profit. The more.... savvy Ninjas can keep a person flagged because of their mission(and wreck fields) until the following downtime if they're patient and persistent, and the missioner has a shiny enough fit.

@dvand987: Ninja salvage can definitely be a great way to make some quick cash early off. It also forces you to train salvage skills which are crucial over the long term as well. So yes you can make good money off of it, but it still takes some time to get good at. You're going to need the skills to do the scanning. That's game skills and real skills. It's probably about a week until you can use the scanning equipment effectively, and getting good at finding things takes practice.

Also, 2 months to get a plex off a new character is going to take some major work. I'm not saying it's impossible, but very hard right now. Because of back to back CCP promotions that let people trade plex for (usually expensive) real world goods, their prices are at an all time high. For a new player I wouldn't suggest the plex rush for several more months. This will let you spend your money a little more freely on ships and skills to try and enjoy rather than hoarding it all hoping you will have enough to plex up. Also bigger ships = more investment = greater potential return, depending on the venture your money is going into.

Final tip: Listen to EVE Radio and join their chat channel. It's easily the best community you will find in the game, the DJ's are fun and friendly, and most run competitions that can give out large amounts of ISK with little to no cost to you. And even if you don't win anything, it's always good fun.

@Renahzor: You mentioned that most ninja salvagers are done on alt characters, in EVE can you have multiple toons on one account like you can in other MMOs or do you have to buy multiple accounts?

Or... just do something awesome with your life...

@dvand987: You can have multiple toons on one account but since you can only train one character on an account at any given time, it's in your best interest to open a second account if you're thinking of getting an alt.

@dvand987: Most people have 2+ accounts that play eve, so they can have multiple characters logged at once, in addition to being able to train both. I would say most PvP players, and a good chunk of pve players play with 2 or more accounts logged in at once, and a big portion more have second accounts for specific things.

Edit: I guess most people is too broad a generalization. I would say a large % of players have 2 accounts or more, and the older the character the more likely they are to have an alt account for scouting, orca hauling, etc etc.

@Renahzor: Does that mean paying 2 sub fees?

I really enjoyed playing the 14 day trial way back nearly 2 years ago now, but I never had the time or money being a student to play for reals. It's a shame cause I'd love to get into EVE.

So most people eventually get two accounts, I don't think I could handle two right away. Guys, at what point in your game did you decide to get a second account? How many months in?

@Cronus42: So would you suggest I start skilling up salvaging right away then?

@Chavtheworld: Yep, 2 sub fees. Thats kinda the standard with the game though. I have a buddy with 3 accounts. And used to fly with a very wealthy guy with 7. We're all insane.

No idea what I'm doing with EVE but I resubbed and I'm just running Caldari Navy missions in my Cormorant. Training up for a Naga battlecruiser and I'm loving it.

I've got about 3 21-day trials left so if anyone wants one just hit me up with a PM and I'll gladly hook you up.

@Cronus42: Absolutely.