

And while it's immediately accessible from the start, avoid mining like the plague unless your ideal night is sitting in space watching your cargo hold slowly fill up for an hour. Once you've figured out a path you want to take, spend some time researching and talking to other experienced pilots to get their opinions on that niche and whether you'll find it fun. Some players fit expensive ships and run 'incursions' for huge rewards, while others brave the unknown frontiers of wormhole systems that are so dangerous that only the most hardcore players tend to survive there. This chart (opens in new tab) does a wonderful job of laying out just about every kind of niche that exists in EVE Online, and even within the more combative professions there is plenty of room to specialize. You can be a jack of all trades, but I highly recommend working towards just one thing before expanding outward. In most MMOs, you'd rarely think a year ahead, but EVE Online's skill system rewards those who specialize in a few key areas and are intentional about training the right skills. Once you've joined a decent corporation, learned the basics, and lost a few ships, start thinking about what you want to do long-term in EVE Online. Whatever you do, learn to enjoy watching yourself explode and EVE Online will always be fun.

Go to low security space with a corpmate and try and set ambushes, or piss off a gang of local pirates and play cat and mouse with them. Once you feel comfortable piloting your ship and shooting at NPCs, do something bold and reckless and have a hell of a time with it. Because when death finds you (and it will), it will be devastating. The biggest mistake you can make in EVE Online is playing for six months, saving up for an exorbitantly expensive ship you can't replace, and never learning to cope with death. Instead of thinking about ships as a reward, like gear earned in World of Warcraft, think of it as a resource to be expended in pursuit of fun. Welcome to the one rule of EVE Online: Don't fly what you can't afford to lose and replace multiple times. But one of the biggest sources that causes players to quit again and again is losing a valuable ship and not having the money to replace it. When you first start playing EVE Online, you're likely to encounter any number of frustrations as you try to comprehend its complicated rules and social protocols. Shooting space rocks as a miner might make a decent paycheck, but it's dueling a pirate and barely escaping alive that'll get your blood pumping. Get blown up sooner rather than laterĮVE Online is a game about conflict, and while some players do everything to avoid it, you're far better off learning to embrace and dish out violence in good measure. They also have a huge repository of information that you should be looking at regardless of who you join. Whether you want to be a pirate, salvager, or an industrialist, EVE University has you covered. EVE University is a fully-fledged educational alliance that can teach you about every aspect of EVE through hands-on classes and live lectures. But if being a soldier doesn't appeal to you, EVE University is where you should look. Ever hear about Goonswarm and The Imperium, the biggest empire in EVE Online history? Yeah, Pandemic Horde was instrumental in their downfall.ĮVE University: The above recommendations have all focused on getting out to null-sec, the regions where player-empires battle for sovereignty. In exchange for a looser atmosphere, you'll also join a fully-fledged null-sec entity who hits just as hard as any of EVE's veteran alliances.

Pandemic Horde is huge and lacks the intimate structure of a smaller corporation, so you'll need to work hard to meet friends and not be afraid to pipe up and ask questions. Pandemic Horde: the new-player offshoot of Pandemic Legion, EVE's biggest group of badasses. If you want to go from scrub to scrapper as soon as possible, consider joining one of these groups. You can now hop into EVE and, within days, participate in the massive, empire-destroying wars we've all heard so much about. Just about everyone in EVE understands how crucial new blood is to its health, and as a result, there's never been a greater number of organizations aimed at helping newbies get on their feet. You can read a million of these guides and learn everything about EVE Online in the process, but nothing will help you grasp the game faster than flying alongside real players. In most MMOs, playing by yourself is pretty easy, but taking that same approach in EVE Online is a shortcut to boredom and self-loathing.
