EVE Online Blog

I�ve always wanted to try EVE Online for years. I remember looking at �copycat games� in the Philippines and there was even an attempt to hack EVE so that it can be run from a private server. The idea there was that with a private server, there would be no need to pay for a monthly subscription. As a college student in a third-world country, hobby money was as real as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

Suffice to say I wasn�t able to play EVE Online and was just forced to watch from the sidelines. I�m not very good at that and luckily, I had other interests to keep me occupied.

On February 2010, I moved to the UK thanks to a lucky break in my career and managed to snag a Special Edition box of EVE that came with a 60-day time card. I made my character, did the tutorials, and then had a general putter about. I had no clue what I was doing aside from what the tutorials taught me so I sought membership into EVE University, a corporation that specialized in teaching new players what to do. Unfortunately, due to the wait times, I wasn�t able to join in soon enough and my subscription ended. I didn�t exactly have much fun so I didn�t re-subscribe.

I did, however, keep getting newsletters on my email address so I knew that EVE was alive and well and went through a good few expansions. Every now and again, Steam would put EVE starter packs on sale and I would get tempted to play it again, but I always had excuses and other games to keep me busy.

On May 2014, I was feeling a bit down, my current games list didn�t look too interesting despite having tons of games I�ve not finished and even more games I�ve not really played at all, and then EVE was up for sale again on Steam. As an added bonus, FrenchToast started asking about EVE on the SimHQ forums. I thought about it and decided to check out how EVE was doing. I decided not to dig too deep into the expansions and stuff as these were most likely advanced stuff that I won�t be dealing with until much later anyway. I looked around for info regarding the best way to start up and what sort of help new pilots would get.

I knew EVE offered 14 days free trial, or I could get 21 days free trial via a buddy invite. However, a sticky thread on the EVE forums caught my eye. People were offering not just buddy invites but also rewards for using their invites! Apparently, EVE would give them a PLEX (in-game item that gives 30-days game time if used) which they could then use and sell, and a good few members were selling these PLEXes and using the money to attract others! The basic idea is thus: I would use Person A�s buddy invite to get me a 21-day free trial. If at any time I would upgrade my trial account to a full account, Person A would get a PLEX. He would then sell this PLEX on the market and give me back ISK and/or items as agreed. In my case, I got a few tips on making more ISK and about 564 million ISK (80% of PLEX buying price at the time) for my troubles.

So now I have a new Caldari character with 564,688,000 ISK --- more than enough to buy what I want in skillbooks, modules, implants, and even ships. To put that into perspective, each basic implant that gives a +3 boost to a stat costs about 10 million ISK each so 50 million will put +3 on all my stats. Caldari destroyers look sweet and cost between 1-2 million per ship, fitting them might cost a few million more. No sweat with a wallet of 564 million.

At the moment, I just finished doing the basic tutorial and am starting on the Business Career Agent line. I�m grinding a few skills but will buy a cybernetics skill book soon. This line should give me a Limited Social Adaptation Chip (+1 to Charisma) and I wonder if it�ll give me a Cybernetics skill book as well. I�ve bought two skillbooks that I already �learned� so I had to go out to Jita to sell them for a small loss, so I don�t want to buy skillbooks that I�ll end up selling again later on. Every now and again, I look at the market for +3 implants and if there is one close by, I buy it, fly to the station, pick it up, and return to my station to store it. As soon as I train up my Cybernetics skill, I�ll be plugging in my implants straight away and should quicken my skill training considerably.

At the moment, I�m almost never using the autopilot. Manual warping means I come out of warp right on top of the jumpgates and jump through straight away. This means less flying about and less chances of being jumped and having my precious cargo stolen. I spend most of my down time reading some threads on the EVE forums or looking at the various ships available later on and daydreaming about how cool it would be to fly and fight in them. Everybody says PvP is the heart and soul of EVE, that it drives everything in the game and I see their point but at the moment, I�ll see what else I can do.

I�m hoping to play mostly PvE in co-op play with some friends I know in real life. I�m also hoping to be able to get to the point that I am self sufficient and can play without paying real money for the subscription. I realize that I�d be lucky if my character ends up totally self sufficient but if I can pay for only 3 months for a 5-month game time, why not? The pros say that it is totally possible to play without spending money, but they�re pros. Let�s see what a newbie like myself could manage. Unfortunately, this might mean less pew-pew-pewing and more mining, trading, and doing mission/courier runs. Let�s see where my 3 month subscription will take me.


Character Advancement Log:
Shield Operations 1-2
Caldari Frigate 3
Mining Frigate 1
Drones 1
Social 1
Scout Drone Operation 1
Industry 1
Negotiation 1
Trade 1

I started training Caldari Frigate straight away since this skill would take long and so any �free time� my character would have would be training Caldari Frigate. As I accomplished the tutorials and the Agent missions and got skillbooks, I would insert them to the start of the queue. At the moment, I have Caldari Frigate to level 4 at the bottom of the queue which would take 1 day, 13 hours, and 36 minutes to train. If I have to leave the computer for a length of time, at least that time would be spent training Caldari Frigate rather than having the skill training list empty. I also have Refining 1 and Contracting 1 currently queued up before Caldari Frigate.


EVE Impressions, 5th May 2014:
I�d have to say the game is beautiful. I�ve always liked space games, I�ve thoroughly enjoyed Homeworld 1 and 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, and other games. EVE does not disappoint in the eye candy department.

A new feature as well is the ability to create your own avatar or pilot for EVE, and the choices now look infinitely better than what was available 4 years ago. Since I will be �looking� at this character whenever I�m out of my ship, I decided I�d like to look at a lady rather than a rough-looking bloke. I have no patience with the character creator so after a few random rolls, I settled for a normal-looking character, swapped a few things around, and started my EVE career. This character also ends up as my avatar on the EVE forums and I know that a few others out there have created rather interesting-looking characters so the character creator is quite robust.

I�ve also spent some time viewing YouTube tutorials on starting out on EVE and combined with the in-game tutorials, everything made more sense and I wasn�t flopping around like the last time.

With a HD7970 video card and 3x27� screens, the game looks absolutely beautiful. I�ll have to try this on my son�s computer with a HD 5770 and a 24� screen and see how it looks like from that PC. One thing I really like now is the sense of scale. Standing in my Captain�s quarters looking at my ship floating in front of me, I can see it�s quite a big ship compared to a human figure, but everytime I approach a station, jump gate, acceleration gate, or other structures, I am amazed at how big those structures are compared to my Ibis. Everytime I undock from a station, I see my ship make its way out of the massive docking bay of the station. On my two visits to Jita, the docking bay was very busy with so many ships coming in and out and again, I was amazed at the scale of everything compared to my now-tiny Ibis! Sweet!


Okay, by this time, I�ve completed the Business Agent�s line and indeed, he did give me a Cybernetics skillbook. I�m glad I didn�t go out and buy it otherwise I�d be making a visit to Jita again. I know I could�ve just saved my unused skillbooks and just make one trip to Jita later on but I like to keep my inventory tidy and also was worried that I�d forget about having to sell them and that would just mean the skillbooks would stay in my inventory forever. Better to take care of selling them straight away and not forgetting.


5 May 2014 5:25PM

Stepped away from the computer for a few hours to do some chores, came back and all my minor skill training has finished, namely Cybernetics 1, Refining 1, and Contracting 1. At this moment, I�ve got no clue what to train so I put up another rank of Cybernetics which would take 1hr and 56min to train. Since I have one level of Cybernetics anyway, I look for the remaining implants I want and pick them all up from Jita. I�ve decided not to plug in the implants at Jita and bring them back to my current �home base� of Ultra VI Moon 4 State War Academy. I�ll queue up some more skills, note their times, plug in all implants, and note the difference. I must say it was quite intense undocking from Jita with 3 implants on board.... I had to scroll down a bit to find my stargate and for some reason, the warpdrive took slightly longer to kick in. I look at my screen and see �warp scramble attempt� and I think �this is it, I�m not even a few km from the station and I�m getting trapped and killed!! Luckily, it was two other guys fighting it out so I warped out of there quick! The next few systems on my way home (4 jumps) were quiet so I had time to shake out the shivers.

For record purposes, here�s what I�ve queued up:
Hull Upgrades (2x) Level 1 � 18m 40s
Cybernetics (3x) Level 2 � 1h 56m 20s
Drones (1x) Level 2 � 38m 50s
Scout Drone Operation (1x) Level 2 � 38m 50s
Gunnery (1x) Level 3 � 3h 39m 30s
Mechanics (1x) Level 3 � 3h 39m 30s
Industry (1x) Level 2 � 38m 50s
Mining (1x) Level 3 � 3h 39m 30s
Refining (1x) Level 2 � 38m 50s
Refining (1x) Level 3 � 3h 39m 30s
Survey (1x) Level 1 � 8m 20s
Astrometrics (3x) Level 2 � 1h 56m 26s
Caldari Frigate (2x) Level 4 � 1d 12h 13m 22s


I noticed that some of them, if the same difficulty (1x) training to the same level (Level 2) would give the same time to train, so I guess that determines how long a skill would need to be trained up to the next level. I�ve paused the training at this time to see how the new implants will affect things. I have partially trained the Cybernetics skill and the Caldari Frigate skill, all the rest are new to the queue. All my implants are basic +3 implants; I�ve left the fancy ones for later.

Plugging in the implants was surprisingly simple. I was expecting a cut scene or something showing how gruesome it would be to insert an implant --- after all, they said that it is impossible to take an implant out without destroying it so surely the installation would be quite complex. Nope. Select the implant, plug it in, done. New stats are now 23 points for Per, Mem, Wil, and Int and 22 points for Cha.

The new training times after implant installation:
Hull Upgrades (2x) Level 1 � 11m 10s
Cybernetics (3x) Level 2 � 1h 41m 10s
Drones (1x) Level 2 � 33m 47s
Scout Drone Operation (1x) Level 2 � 33m 47s
Gunnery (1x) Level 3 � 3h 10m 53s
Mechanics (1x) Level 3 � 3h 10m 53s
Industry (1x) Level 2 � 33m 47s
Mining (1x) Level 3 � 3h 10m 53s
Refining (1x) Level 2 � 33m 47s
Refining (1x) Level 3 � 3h 10m 53s
Survey (1x) Level 1 � 7m 15s
Astrometrics (3x) Level 2 � 1h 41m 15s
Caldari Frigate (2x) Level 4 � 1d 7h 29m 54s

Note that the Hull Upgrade time is not accurate, for some reason my training resumed automatically.

That means a difference of around:
Hull Upgrades � 7.5m
Cybernetics � 16.17m
Drones � 5.05m
Scout Drone Operation � 5.05m
Gunnery � 28.62m
Mechanics � 28.62m
Industry � 5.05m
Mining � 28.62m
Refining � 5.05m
Refining � 28.62m
Survey � 1.08m
Astrometrics � 15.18m
Caldari Frigate � 283.47m

Total time saved for this queue: 457 minutes or 7 hours, 37 minutes, and 4 seconds. Not bad!


5 May 2014 8:50PM

Resumed playing after dinnertime. I�ve finished the Business and Exploration agent missions and started off on the Industry agent. I�m looking forward to finishing the next two Military agents as well tonight, but it�ll probably have to wait until tomorrow.

I had a bit of an adventure trying to find a spare manufacturing line for my �make 2x Civilian Afterburner� mission but I finally found one just a jump from my base! Bwahahaha! I made sure I got in straight away.

I also managed to hook up with Nixer in the game. It�s nice to be able to chat to someone while waiting for my production line to finish up. I also hope to get more �professional� help. I�ll be finishing the basic agents soon and will thus have a bit more free time later and I�m not sure what I want to be doing just yet. I need more ISK so I definitely want to find ways of making money quickly.

I also had my son play with the old trial account with about 10 days left, just so he can have a bit of experience and try out EVE. He�s doing the tutorial missions like me and seems to be having a good time and is following the game quite well. I�ll see how he does later on when he gets to the combat missions. Still, it�ll be fun having a wingman I can shout at (he's in the other room) when we�re exploring wormholes and scanning sites and such.



[Hmmm.... apologies for the wall of text, might need to edit and break up with some nice pics.]

Hey Ice,
How old is your character? Did you just create today? I am sitting on a Prototype Cerebral Accelerator(+9 to all attributes) that you can have if you want. The catch is it only works if your character is new. After the character is 14 days old its useless. Let me know if you want it and a station to set up a contract for you.

Quickcord

Oh, sweet! My character is 2 days old. Check PMs please!

One downside though --- I have five implants plugged in already, does that mean I'll have to unplug one of them?

it uses a different slot

Just remember if your character gets ganked, all the implants are gone. Not your ship getting blown up, that happens all the time, but your capsule. So stay away from Low and Null-sec. Because you will get ganked. Alot. Mercilessly. I occasionally hop in to kill some pirates, but 9 times out of 10, a player warps in, webs me, and kills me. Usually without me even firing one shot.

Welcome back to Hell!

Ice,

Contract created at your location. Check PM. 35 jumps to get there.

Quickcord

35 jumps to get there

Love those short hops. Really fun in a Freighter.

Got it, Quickcord! Thanks for the awesome gift! Sorry you had to jump so far... I'd have met you halfway.

What do you think of the "blog," guys? More pics? More detail? It seems like it's a wall of text at the moment, but I'm too busy playing to snap pics. I really should turn on FRAPS next time so the screenshots just gets saved to the folder automatically.

No worries. It wasn't bad, I was just tired. Glad you could use it!

Quickcord

BTW once you've done all tutorials the Sisters of Eve mission arc is a great way to see a bit of the Eve universe, earn some cash (and even ships) and is a lot of fun.

Yeah, if I could find where to start that mission arc.

Get EveMon - a third part skill,planning program. It will help you plan you skill training and set up a queue to follow.
For example, if you want to fly a certain ship or use a particular module, you can select it and the skills needed will automatically be added to the queue. Note this is a planning app, and while it will produce a queue to follow, you have to set the I game queue up manually.

Im. Getting the ol Eve itch again. I've got a nice little one man Indy corp I may revive.

Talk to Sister Alitura at Arnon IX - Moon 3 - Sisters of EVE Bureau.


And yeah, EVEMon is a must. As is the EveFittingTool.

I'm guessing you're an EVE player as well, Para? Thanks for the info!

I've got EVEMon and EFT, but still mucking around and finding some skills to quickly level up. I leave the 4+ or 12+ hour skill trainings for when I'm at work or go to sleep.

Read ALL (5) the Dev Blogs on the new Industrial changes and you might change your mind. I have been HARD into research, invention and industry for the last 5 yrs. These new changes are DRASTIC and seem very biased against folks in High Sec, just like most of the changes in the last couple of years.

These latest changes have me contemplating joining a friends Merc outfit instead of all the industry grind. Hell I've got enough isk to just coast for awhile, but I have always spent just part of my PROFIT to pay for my accounts and hate to change that. For now I am just building as many exhumers, freighters and Orcas as I can for a "savings account".

OH, and LOTS of T2 combat ships and mods.....just in case

I hate flying junk......

I had been building rigs and few high demand modules in high before I let the sub lapse last time - is high sec building getting hit hard?

I spent a good bit of time in 0.0 as well, maybe I'll just go look for some goodfights if the indy doesn't work out.

is high sec building getting hit hard

Much more costly mainly, and, at least for me, a very confusing bunch of changes to the whole Science/Industry interfaces.

Not playing ATM but yes, I've spent quite some time in EVE over the years.

Costly due to the change in the way the cost of manufacturing slots is calculated now? Something about scaling with the number of jobs, but slots are unlimited IIRC.

Didn't I read that they removed the standings requirement for anchoring a POS too? (Of course you gotta find an empty moon) Wouldn't that mitigate the increased cost (at the cost of having to run a POS)

Yeah cost per job is WAY up....including in your own POS.

Didn't I read that they removed the standings requirement for anchoring a POS too?

Yea made me really happy I had done about a 2 yr grind to get really high standings to anchor my POS's.

Refining is getting screwed with also now, again in favor of null sec.