Confused About where to start?

Last guide update: Tiamat

• Do all of the career agent missions, they give you great free loot and teach you a lot, pay special attention to the military and advanced military missions. You can partake in the "opportunities" tutorials, however the consensus is that they are currently barebones.
• For great money early on get mining frigate up to 1, drones to level 2 and scout drone operation to level 1. Fly a venture with two acolyte drones. A full hold of scordite will net you 1mil isk a hold which is the highest form of income that early in the game for the lowest skill investment. You get all the equipment you need for it including the ship itself in the mining tutorial.
• There is a browser built into eve, read these tutorials while you mine. Four trips will pay for a tech 2 fit frigate for pvp.
• When you undock, you must be prepared to lose your ship even in high security space, if you can't pay for another one, you can't afford to fly the one you are in. Ships in eve are like ammunition and are highly expendable.
• There is no need to be fearful, without a monetary incentive to destroy you most will not consider it in highsec. They may do it for tears but the reality is that they will lose money doing so. If you choose not to give them tears or expensive drops, they did it for absolutely nothing and are less likely to do it again.
• If it looks like a scam it is a scam, no exceptions. You will have to trust folks eventually but it is smarter to do so in a group that has a reputation to consider, those groups are consistently trustworthy.
• Your standing with factions is often overlooked and isn't really a factor that is taught, understand that if you attack NPCs in missions or not, your standing takes a hit with them, if you kill enough they will come hunt you and its difficult to get standing back. Killing pirates however will increase your overall standing and you can see if you fight pirates in the mission briefing.
• Learn to dscan very well, it is the single most important untaught aspect in all of eve online and will almost always decide how well you do in the game.
• If you are going to fight NPCs you can afford to to be a bit inconsistent on skills, if you plan to fight in PvP you must be focused on a single ship at a time, your skills must reflect the absolute maximum ability that that ship is capable of in order to fight well and you must actively fly that ship to understand its capabilities. Too many people fly ship fits in eve that are only good on paper.
• The golden two rules, Insured ship, Full skill Queue. Never shirk on these two things and your eve experience will be a better one.
• Consider buying 20 frigates and losing each and every one of them in dangerous space. I had never had so much fun in a game until I did this. Message your killers and compliment them, they may send you fits or isk and will give you tips. You will find that most eve players appreciate a good learner.
• Learn to save your pod, as you get better at doing it, you will get away more and more and do not consider getting cybernetics until you are good at doing so.
• Buy and train for the +3 attribute Cybernetics, they significantly lower your training time overall.
• Get navigation skills up to four.
• Get relevant tanking skills to 4. If you want to PvP I would suggest armor tanking, for PvE Shield tanking. There exceptions to both of these very general statements.
• Get CPU management and Powergrid management to 5, they will help in every ship you decide to fly.
• At this point you should have some Idea as to what you want to do and should find like minded people.
• All good corporations require that you set up a "API key", do not worry or be paranoid about this, the information you give is read only and allows them to ensure that you are not a spy. If a corporation demands money upfront they are not a good corporation and are likely trying to scam you. If you are unsure, consider joining a NPSI (not purple shoot it) fleet like spectre fleet they would not expect you to submit an API or pay money.
• Skill specifically into your role or follow the combat skill doctrine below. This would apply to PvE or PvP.
• For a combat pilot get science to 4 and thermodynamic to 1. Overheating will add around 15% to all dps.
• Respec your character to perception and willpower after you have trained the previous skills.
• Train all applicable gunnery skills and starship command skills to five (which will be easy with the 20% boost the respec gives you.)
• Fight in low security space doing some faction warfare if you would like to hone your piloting skills.
• Consider not flying minmattar frigates however as they have suffered lately (with exception to the slasher), try caldari and galente frigates as currently bad ones do not exist. they work significantly better even with the new buff to the rifter it is still unfortunately bad. If you get some money switch to using your favorite faction frigate, they are all amazing.

Winning in eve online PvP

Do the 20 frigate plan. Go to lowsec and lose twenty of your favorite frigate. If you find yourself in a loss streak choose another area. Write down the following information in the in game notepad and label it " Engagement Log Date:______":

• Overall summary of the fight, range dictated, money lost, possible enemy fit and fit you used.

• Pod escaped?

• What worked?

• What could help improve my survivability in the future?

After every fight, message your enemy and thank them for a good fight. Tell them you want to get better at PvP and ask what you could do to improve. They will often send you isk and the fit they used.

Some Tips in Order of Importance

• If you have a question ask. Ask in local, check out the eve university wiki or post a question on here (Eve has a browser for good reason). Most players recognize this as a sign of a strong learner and will sometimes sent you isk or fits. Most eve players will be very nice in this regard and you will begin to network as well.

• Eve is war, war is not fair.

• Efficient D-Scanfu (Ability to use your ships directional scanner efficiently) wins fights. Create safe spots and scan spots in every engagement zone. In a solar system save a bookmark between two points midwarp to create a spot that only you know about. This spot is considered safe because only you know it, with that being said folks can scan you down with combat scan probes, so if you see them on dscan, warp between multiple safe spots. If they can scan you they can kill you, so be aware.

• If you are able to pick the fight you will never lose your ship if you do it correctly and follow the rules above

• If you can't apply DPS, it isn't dps at all. What this means is that damage per second is great but there is a whole damage equation to consider. (Tracking speed, Radial Velocity of opponent and yourself, Damage Type, Falloff, Optimals, etc etc.) A good example of this is fitting a double web, scram and micro on a hull. The DPS may be meager because of an armor tank but all of it applies because of the superior tackle and you will do more dps in the long run.

• Surprise and novelty are more important then ehp (Effective Health Power: Health after your resistance to damage types are taken into account), dps (Damage Per Second) and SP (Skill Points).

• The difference between winning and losing is sometimes dictated by skillpoints as much as people would say otherwise. You can win with subpar skills but be prepared to lose a lot.

• If you can't dictate range you can't win, but it doesn't mean you can't run. Learning to slingshot your opponent is key. When your opponent is at 1:00 double click towards them to manually fly your ship towards them, as they hit 6:00 overheat your propulsion mod and travel towards them again, they should slingshot out of range and you should be able to warp. PROTIP: On the 6:00 burn make sure you are pointed towards a known point, not doing so means they have time to recapture tackle.

• If you can't dictate range but can hit at a kiting ships optimal and also have a superior tank consider using radial degeneration to Destroy the enemy ship. Simply point your nose 180 degrees away from a warp out spot and use your microwarpdrive to have them chase you in a straight line, this causes their radial velocity to drop and your damage to increase. If you can't kill them simply turn about face and slingshot them away and hit the warp button.

• Even though eve is more of a submarine simulator one should learn to minimize or maximize basic fighter maneuvering by manually piloting to gain positional advantage. Primary BFM are maneuvers taken without respect to the enemy position, an example of this flying is a climb or a turn. Relative BFM is a maneuver taken with respect to the enemy position. An example of this would be an orbit. Almost all combat in eve will require you to understand the basic movement principles of each ship and take advantage of each strength and weakness.

• Learn to assert dominant ACM (Air combat maneuvering). This term covers groups of BFM and is a complicated synonym for "dog-fighting". For instance it wouldn't be smart to travel straight towards slow tracking guns, by corkscrewing towards your target with several maneuvers or planning several short jumps to close range between long reloads you will take much less damage getting into optimal.

• Do not get caught up in everyone's "you should have done this" game. Most of the time without documentation people give dated or terrible advice and like to hear the sound of their own voice. Go out and do all of the things. Listen to people by all means, but understand POS lasers do use ammo even though 90% of eve would tell you differently.

If you found this guide helpful send isk to THE B3AR in game.