EVE in a Nutshell, and How to Crack it.

By Vulxanis Viceroy

Welcome! This document is intended to help less informed or newer players(and older players trying to explain concepts) enjoy eve online in a much easier manner by consolidating a lot of useful information sources into one. I will periodically edit this, so sorry if that throws you off while you are reading! 

If you have any suggestions or questions, please comment on the reddit post with the same name, and I will try and edit the document accordingly!

 You should look for players to play with and join a corporation, of course. But not everyone likes to do the same thing, and a lot of people are not sure what to do in eve to further their career. This document hopes to make that a simpler task. Remember to join the ingame channel “Rookie Help”.

Also, I actually found a similar document on reddit that goes into a lot of what I have here. It’s simply in a different format. You should totally check it out too!

Most of the links in this document are not embedded specifically so you can easily copy and paste them when sharing. There are a bunch of helpful links at the bottom of the document that I may or may not have covered before, so be sure to check them out!

Hope this all helps!

General Guides and Tips you should definitely check out:

Mailing lists you should join:

  • Overviews 101(WIP!!!)
  • Zirio-Syundai Overview 
  • Color Coding 101
  • Implants 101
  • PVE 101
  • NPC Mining 101
  • Tradehubs 101

Sidenote on mailing lists:

I will be referencing mailing list a few times in this document. How to access a mailing list? Go to your neocom (the bar on the left by default with the icons), and look for the envelope icon. That’s your mailbox. Open that, and go to the bottom left of the window, it says “add mailing list”, then type in the name of the mailing list you want to join (or create).

This is especially helpful for multiple reasons. It is an easy way to send information to a specific group without adding them individually to the mail, but it is also easy to store information across characters.

Table of contents:

  1. The Neocom
  2. The Overview
  3. The information tab
  4. Fitting your ship
  5. The Skill Queue
  6. Killboards
  7. PvP
  8. Markets
  9. Eve Slang
  10. Fitting Tools
  11. The Lore of EVE Online
  12. Clear Skies
  13. Making Money in EVE Online
  14. Out of Game Content
  15. Broadcast4reps
  16. Links for Easy Reference (In no particular order)

The Neocom:

The Neocom is your menu interface. It is by default on the left of your screen, and the order of the icons can be edited at any time. If there is an icon not on your neocom that you wish to be there, or are curious what features your neocom provides (such as ingame browser or calculator), simply go to the top left, click the “E” button above your profile picture, find what you are looking for, and drag and drop the icon onto your neocom. This can be changed at any time and is totally customizable.

Links:

The Overview: 

The Overview is the single most important tool in eve online aside from the neocom. Without it, EVE becomes incredibly difficult to play. The Mailing list “Overviews 101(WIP!!!)” is periodically updated with each new change that comes out, based off of the famous “SaraShawa-Overview” setup. The mailing list explains how to edit the overview further, as well as provides ready made edited versions of the overview for easy use.

For any further questions that mailing list does not address, please join the channel “Zirio-Syundai Overview ”. 

Links:

The Information tab:

The information tab on any item in the game (ship, module, ammo, structure, etc) is extremely helpful for understanding its properties. When you click “show info” on a ship, you can see how much base cpu and powergrid (essentially the little building blocks you can fit inside your ship fitting) your ship can hold before skills, rigs, or modules edit this.

When looking at a turret, launcher, drone, etc, you can actually see what their likely damage output is before your skills affect it. Just right click the “show info” tab on the item, and go to the section that says “attributes”. A good way to understand what different modules and drones do is to hold them side by side and compare them. You can separate tabs by holding the shift button and clicking on the info tab.

Fitting your ship:

Fitting your ship is one of the most important parts of the game. You access the fitting window via your neocom with the little ship icon in a circle. 

Links:

The Skill Queue:

NEVER LET YOUR SKILL QUEUE RUN DRY WHILE YOU ARE SUBBED!

Always make sure that your skill queue is running. Your skill queue is a time-dependant setup where you “train” or “download” skills into your character’s head. You need skills to use ships and modules alike, as well as to use them more efficiently. Different skills do different things, and some skills are helpful (such as armor resists) that may not be visibly important right away.  You would do well to go into the market and look at all the skills and read what each one does.

Links:

Killboards:

Did you know that when your ship is killed by another player, it will likely show up in the public domain? Anyone can look up any losses or kills you have if someone either posts it or you give your api to www.zkillboards.com so you can see the results. Zkillboards is generally considered more accurate in referencing how much a loss is worth vs the in game killmails because it tracks the market prices more accurately.

PvP

PvP (or Player Vs. Player) is a core part of EVE Online. It can happen, anywhere, any time, if you are undocked. Join fleets, make mistakes, ask questions, try things out, and you’ll get it eventually. Joining a corp that has an SRP(Ship Replacement Program) setup would be wise when first starting out. If you are curious about flying a specific type of ship or doing a specific type of combat, YouTube has hundreds of videos on the subject. Experience and skill points are what get you good at pvp, in that order. See the links at the bottom of this section for opportunities for public fleets.

PvP in different sections of space:

Hisec:

  • Ganking: Someone shoots at you to harass or attain your cargo for profit.
  • Wardecs: Concord is paid to look the other way and you can legally be attacked by that corporation or alliance even in hisec. Only player corporations can be wardecced.
  • Warp interdiction bubbles and bombs are illegal to use here.

Lowsec: Any and everyone can be attacked. You will lose security status if someone is not flagged “criminal” (they did something to piss off concord like shoot someone) or “suspect” (they irritated concord by stealing something). Also, if you attack someone on the gate or stations, the guns anchored there WILL attack you. If your security status gets too low, you will be unable to go back into specific areas (or potentially all) of hisec. Please join the mailing list “PVE 101” for further details. Warp interdiction bubbles and bombs are illegal to use here.

Nullsec/0.0 space: Bubbles and bombs are legal, no rules. 

Wormholes: Same as null, except there are no gates. Please see the exploration section of “Making money in EVE online” for further details.

Links:

Markets: 

Do you want to know where the most popular trade hubs are? Join the mailing list “Tradehubs 101”. It not only has in game links to the stations you can use for bookmarks if you lost yours, but it is very easy to label them if you follow its suggested method.

But say you know where the trade hubs are, and want to know how much something is being sold for in a different trade hub? Look up www.evecentral.com for all your marketing needs!

Also a newer feature(as of 2014?), you can buy multiple items simultaneously! Just click “buy all” on a fitting window. You can also “sell all” your items in the item hanger if you so choose. Gets a little slow after you fill it with enough orders, so be aware.

Links:

Eve Slang: 

Ever hear a term on comms that you don’t recognize but are too scared to ask? First, you should still try and ask. But for future reference, see the links below for many of the common phrases in eve online used as slang terms!

Links:

Fitting Tools: 

Fitting tools are extremely helpful in saving you money on fitting ships and figuring out how to fly them! EDIT: There is an in-game “Ghost Fitting” tool that is a work in progress as of this writing. Look into that also!

Links:

The Lore of EVE Online:

Ever since CCP decided to quickly and abruptly remove the wiki(CCP statement) with only a week’s warning, the lore for the game has been difficult to find in a consolidated manner until there is a replacement. Some dedicated players were able to back up most of EVElopedia, as well as there are other sources of EVE online lore available out there. The following links are the best sources that are available at this time.

Links:

Clear Skies:

There is an AWESOME (but super old) fan made video series called Clear Skies. Even if some of the game mechanics have changed (ask a vet about clear skies and how the game has changed since) it’s still a lot of fun and really well done series. It’s really sad how few people actually know about this. If you like eve, you’ll like clear skies. Episode links below!

Links:

Making money in EVE Online

Here are some easy examples of ways to make eve online that you can do. This is by far not a complete list, but it should cover most of the more popular ways of making isk. My personal suggestion would be to make a different character for every type of gameplay that you want so you have multiple options for when one source of income dries up. This will take time, but it is most definitely worth it. Some of these categories overlap, so please just be aware. Hope this helps! 

  • Missioning: Missioning is the easiest and most common(although not the most lucrative) way to make money in hisec for new and more experienced players alike. All you need to do is find an agent in the agent finder(see Neocom basics) that you have enough standings to use, follow their directions, don’t die, and salvage the loot. Don’t bother salvaging if the mission is only a level 1 or 2. You want to get to a level 3 agent as soon as possible, and then a level 4. Then you most definitely want to salvage and loot.  Join the mailing list “PVE 101” for helpful reference on damage types.
  • After you have enough lp, you cash it in at the lp store and can either sell it on the market, or use it yourself. Sisters of Eve missions are generally considered the easiest to make money from. The station “Simela IV – Moon 7 – Sisters of EVE Academy” has a level 1, 2 and 3 agent in the same place, so it saves you a trip from going a lot of places to find the right agent level. Reprocess all the loot that you can’t bother to sell, use your lp to buy astero blueprints, make the astero, and either sell or use the astero yourself. You can easily make yourself a 60mil profit from doing this alone. 
  • A great way to help you get yourself back on your feet so you can try more lucrative means of making isk!
  • BE AWARE! If you do a mission that fights a particular faction YOU WILL LOSE STANDINGS AGAINST THAT FACTION! So if you care about factional standings, don’t shoot at anyone that are not pirates (or Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar navy npcs). This also goes for anomaly ratting.

Links:

  • Eve survival: This is a really link I will reference multiple times. I embedded it instead of linking the address because I needed to explain this link’s significance. This site essentially gives you the information on almost every mission in the game so you know exactly what you’re getting into. It also has information on anomalies in hisec/lowsec/nullsec and wormholes as well. It is one of the most important websites you will ever bookmark. For anything else that it doesn’t cover, there’s google.
  • LP Store: https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/lpstore 
  • Missioning and Standings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzUyXWILFmo&list=PLC09EB7E88FB25E5E&index=22 
  • Incursions: Incursions, in short, are essentially large scale fleets of players shooting at npcs, and if they do it right they all get paid. The largest public english speaking fleets ran in eve are “Warp to Me Incursions”, and “The Valhalla Project”.  There are others that are Non-English speaker focused(Russian, German, Japanese, etc), so check them out if needed. 
  •  It takes a lot of skill points to get into this form of isk making, but if done right can get you billions in a fun and social environment, and is one of the most popular side projects to fund the various exploits of players. Join the in game channels of an incursion fleet and ask them about what to do.

Links:

  • Faction Warfare: Faction warfare (aside from the pvp aspect) is a very profitable style of gameplay consisting of earning lp passively through “plexing” or sitting in a complex long enough without dying and shooting the npc that comes up for it to get you lp. You do get lp from killing people on the other side of the war as well. You can also do Npc missions in lowsec for a lot of lp (level 4s being the most lucrative). Similar to mission running, you turn in lp to get items to sell for money.

Links: 

  • Station trading: One of the more difficult and boring but ludicrously profitable methods of making money in eve online. Station trading is the act of buying and selling items and ships with the intention of making a profit. Please also see the market section of this document.

Links:

  • Ratting in anomalies: An Anomaly, simply put, is anything that can be scanned down or warped to directly in space. Usually there are NPCs to shoot there, but not always. Different types of anomalies do different things. Look up the type of anomaly you want to try ahead of time on EVE survival before entering it so you know what you are getting yourself into. Join the mailing list “PVE 101” for further details.

Links:

  • Hauling: Transporting, or “Hauling” items and ships can be profitable if you take contracts and haul for others for isk. You need a ship with a big enough cargohold to do this, though, so hauling professionally is generally done in freighters. Freighters generally have over 1,000,000 m3 (meters cubed, how cargo size is measured) so they can hold quite a lot.

Links:

  • Exploration: A unique and very easy to get into way to make money in eve with very little skill, this is something that is highly recommended for alt characters for new players after a few weeks so they have something to switch back and forth to in case something happens where they can’t do something on their main character. Exploration does not take very many skill points to get started in at least, and can be very profitable if you are lucky. Much of exploration is wormhole focused, but a lot of it is also in known space. Many players love this aspect of the game so much it is almost all they do.

Links:

Exploration tutorials:

Wormhole tools:

  • Industry: Industry(and manufacturing) is EVE online’s crafting. You essentially make modules, ammo, drones, and ships with blueprints using materials. This can be anything from minerals mined from asteroids, to algae scooped off of a planet. It’s a long and complicated process, but if done correctly it’s a good way to make money. Also see the links at the bottom of the document regarding industry and manufacturing, as well as the PI(planetary interaction) section.
  • Side note: Be careful of CODE. and other gankers while mining in hisec(and anyone else anywhere else). They will try and blow you up in hisec and bully you into paying them to go away.

                                                                                                                                                  Links:

  • Mercenary contracts: If you are good enough at pvp, someone may hire you to wardec and harass someone else, or to hunt down a specific player. Entire wars have been fought on behalf of others via mercenaries. For example, the infamous World War Bee was started by IWantIsk (a gambling site) that paid a ton of players to harass SMA for various reasons that are beyond this document. Suffice to say, this is a viable option, but not an easy one to get a consistent source of income.
  • Pirating: Yoho me hearties! There be booty to be got! In all seriousness though, this is a viable source of money, but requires you to be decent at pvp. You mostly survive off of the loot you get from destroying player ships. You can also fight someone to the point where you ask them for money to not blow them up (ransoming). You will have a reputation at some point, so be sure to be consistent if you want people to see you as honorable. BE AWARE! If you are a pirate that frequents lowsec, your security status will go down and eventually that character will not be able to access hisec, so be prepared!

Links:

  • Gambling: Yes I said it. Gambling. There is gambling in eve online. It is legal in all 50 states since it’s not using real life currency(when people do cross that line, they get shut down). Open the below links in the in game browser and follow the directions they provide. You need to be logged in via the in-game browser to use their services. There is everything from raffles, lotteries, poker, to betting on real life sports games.  See this article by Mynxee for details.

EDIT: Gambling has been banned as of November 8th, 2016 by the EULA changes. Please refer to EVE’s EULA for more information.

Links:

  • Project Discovery: Project discovery is a real life science mini game implemented into eve online. You can get the items in the reward store and sell them in contracts in a trade hub or use them for yourself! It can be accessed via your neocom at any time.  

Links:

  • Scamming others: And finally, Scamming. Or as I like to call it, “fishing for stupid”. Almost everyone in the game has fallen for a scam or been inadvertently victimized by one at one point or another. They can come in many forms. The most obvious ones are in the trade hubs local chat. Others might be someone coming into your corporation, getting into a position of power, and stealing all the corp’s stuff(called AWOXing). This is not the nice part of eve. You should never trust anyone with enough of your stuff that they can take it all from you for this very reason.

Links:

Out of Game content

Are there ways to contact players publically out of game? There most certainly are! Other than corp/alliance specific app uses, there is an easy way to communicate with the EVE community via twitter. Just put the #tweetfleet on the tweet when you mean it for the eve community.

There is also a slack channel called “Tweetfleet” that anyone can join after a moderator invites them. There are plenty of Mods you can ask. Please try and contact one of the mods in the list to add you if you are not already on slack.

Links:

Broadcast4Reps

If you are having trouble in real life and need someone to talk to, there is an ingame channel called “Broadcast4Reps”, as well as a channel on slack of the same name. The below link also has plenty of phone numbers and ways to contact people no matter where you are. Please know that you are valuable and appreciated, and there is help out there.

Links:

Links for easy reference (in no particular order):

General

Markets & Manufacturing

Planetary Interaction

Other

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EVE Carrier Ratting Guide

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EVE Guide For New Players

EVE Nullsec PvP Kestrel Guide

EVE Comprehensive Jump Freighter Guide

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EVE Black Hand Agent Guide

EVE GMVA Faction Warfare Vision

EVE Burner Mission Guide

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