SwagVault MMO Blog

Surviving the EVE experience

October 15, 2008 – 11:40 pm
Posted by: gmaxwell

Introduction: This is a guide aimed mainly at new players to EVE, but also to returning players who may have missed large chunks of content introduced over the last year or so.

What is EVE?

EVE is a MMORPG, set in space. EVE is a non-consensual PVP game, and perhaps the only one of its kind out there. What do I mean by non-consensual, I hear you cry? Well, in other games, WoW for example, you choose your server, if you dont want pvp, you pick a non-pvp server. Then if you find yourself wanting a bit of pvp, you can choose to engage in such against other players who want the same. Doesnt work like that in EVE. Simply by being in the world, you are in a PVP environment. You can lose your ship anywhere, anytime.

That doesnt sound like much fun. Ah, but it doesnt happen all that often. I personally know several people who spend their time in (relatively) safe Empire space, mining, trading and mission-running their little hearts out, and making obscene amounts of money doing so, while never engaging in PVP action. Equally, many people, like myself, spend 90% of our time in 0.0 space, engaged in our own ways of making money, and engaging in PVP action when we want to (and sometimes when we dont, but hey, them’s the breaks ).

The basic rule of EVE is this.

Don’t fly anything you cant afford to lose.

Were you listening? I’ll repeat that.

DON’T FLY ANYTHING YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE

Yes, you just got your skills up to fly a battleship. Congratulations! It’s a big step. Those behemoths of destruction and doomination are now within your grasp. You eagerly go out, buy one, fit it out, insure it and proudly set out into space with your wallet blinking at around 1000 isk, or even lower.

Then the worst happens. You overestimate your abilities on a mission, or venture into lowsec space, after all, you’re in a battleship, right? Right. At least for the time it takes for the gatecamp of evil pirates to lock, scram, jam and pewpew your shiny new battleship into space debris anyway. Then, to add insult to injury, they pod you too.

Now what? You’re in your station. Your insurance payment covers the clone of course. But it wont pay for a new battleship, fittings and insurance. So you’re back in a cruiser or battlecruiser, feeling sorry for yourself, and blaming those evil pirates or NPC rats, or whatever caused you to lose your ship.

Here’s the thing. It was your fault. Yep. Yours. YOU took the ship on that mission. YOU chose to go to lowsec. YOU put yourself wherever it was that you got blown up. If you’d been in a cruiser and the same had happened, you’d have learnt a valuable lesson about your capabilities and the people out there, and taken it in your stride, knowing that you could replace your losses and carry on, with the only real damage a slight bruising to your pride.

So, back to the rule. Don’t fly anything you can’t afford to lose. Always keep that in mind, and you’ll be a lot happier for it.

So what CAN I do in EVE

Pretty much anything you want! Want to trade items on the market? Go for it! Want to do missions for agents? Sure! Want to be an evil pirate and blow people up? YARR! Go get em! Want to be a peaceful miner? You go get those rocks! Want to do a bit of each? Anything you like buddy, you go have fun.

This, as I see it, is the true beauty of EVE. You can, quite literally, do anything you want.

But I’m brand new! Im in a little frigate! How can I be a pirate?

Here’s a little secret. You can pirate in (almost) anything. As long as you can fit a warp scrambler and some guns, you can be a pirate. It’s all about picking your targets. If you’re in a little frigate, obviously you want to pick something that cant shoot back. So go hunt those miners in lowsec! (Just watch out for the drones).

Corporations and Alliances

For all you new players, you’re probably still in your newbie corp. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you want to get the most out of EVE, at least in my own humble opinion, you’ll want to be moving out of that newbie corp and joining a player corporation.

But there are so many! How can I choose?
Well, there is an in game recruitment channel which you can go in and look at the adverts people give. There’s also the EVE-O boards, which have a recruitment forum there. And you can also put yourself forwards. Go to somewhere busy, and ask in local if anyone is recruiting. Maybe you’ll get an answer, maybe you wont. Got any friends playing? Ask them if their corps are looking for members. Sometimes corps will advertise in local chat. Keep an eye out, and ask them for more info if it looks interesting.

Why join a player corp?
While the newbie corps, and other NPC corps, are full of helpful people, who will generally be able to answer questions you ask, they are doing their own thing. If you join a player corp that has the same goals as you do, you can get more directed assistance with your goals. For instance, as a miner/industrialist, you can mine and build on your own. But if you join a mining corp, maybe you can venture to less safe space and mine some rarer rocks for more valuable minerals, knowing that your corp buddy is there in his combat ship to watch your back. Or if you want some of that pewpew pvp action, joining a pirate (or anti-pirate) corp gets you some friends to go around with and hunt down your targets, letting you take on those big bad boys out there.

You said corporations and alliances. What’s an alliance?
Right. Alliances are groups of corps that have formally allied to achieve their goals. This can be as simple as a mining corp and a pvp corp getting together to help each other out, or something as gigantic as the Band of Brothers alliance, whose stated aim is to control all of 0.0 space.

Most of 0.0 space, which is where the good rocks and rats are, is controlled by one or another or the alliances in the game. Some alliances are happy to allow neutrals to enter their space, kill NPC spawns in their asteroid belts and mine their rocks. Others will shoot such neutrals on sight, and pod them back to Empire space. Figuring out which is which, is generally a simple matter of asking. And a lot of the killer alliances will happily talk to you and make some sort of agreement if you want to use their space, usually involving you paying a rental fee in exchange for using the space.

The other option of course, is to enquire as to joining the alliance where you want to go. Most alliances are looking to recruit more corps to their forces, so just ask who you can talk to about joining. Then, if you join, you get access to the space and its resources for free! The only thing being that you would then be expected to help defend it, should it come under attack.

But what if I dont want to join a player corp or alliance?
Then dont! Simple as that, you can play your entire EVE career in the newbie or other NPC corps and never get involved with corporation or alliance activities and politics. Personally, I think you’ll miss out on a lot of the fun. But it’s your choice.

And that, at the end of the day, is what EVE is all about. Choices. You are free to do whatever you want. And if you find that what you’re doing is getting a little tedious, go do something else for a bit. See if it interests you more, or makes you think that what you were doing before wasnt so bad after all.

EVE is a game of gigantic scope. There is always something new to do, and CCP are constantly introducing new things to do and play with. Get out there, find your “thing” and have fun.