After reading up more about Eve, I really wanted to play this amazing game, but I felt I had let to much time pass between the beginning of Eve. I would be caught in the same trap then every other older mmo out there. The same rules that most mmo’s go by regarding time and time spent playing do not apply to Eve. If I knew these things before, I would of started playing eve much earlier. There are probably many people in the same boat was I was who are putting off playing Eve because they will be alone, have no skills and no isk that older members will have. After being on Eve for almost 2 and a bit years, I can now explain why its never to late to start playing this fantastic, amazing and sometimes fulfilling game.

Will I be alone when i start playing?

• There are always new people playing eve. Eve’s sub base is always growing, so you will always be with someone on the same playing level as you. Also, remember a newbie is very capable of surpassing in many ways someone who has been playing for a year, which leads to point #2;

Everyone will be better then me.

• Skills are what let you fly better ships or the same ship much more efficiently. There are so many skills its easy as a newbie to surpass someone who might of fast tracked to battleships but neglected to train skills to fly frigs and cruisers better. with less then half the skill points, you could probably tackle the battleship in a T2 frig, or kill the guy easily if he is flying in a frig, since his skills are focused on battleships and not small weapons, navigation, frig to level 5 etc. Frigs are a great example of how a newbie can still own a older player. Also, don’t make the mistake that frigs are newbie ships. They are integral to solo pvp and small gangs.

Everyone will be better then me anyway.

• A carebear will make much more isk then a pvper but will have next to no pvp skills, and actually fear anything below 0.5 security space. A pvper will own a carebear or anyone whos been in empire for to long pretty easily, but will most likely be broke from losing ships. This is important to know because whatever path you choose on Eve, not everyone is going the same way as you, so its hard to compare skill level and competency as a good pilot to everyone else.

Corp’s dont want newbies to look after, they only want skilled players.

• Corporations and Alliances generally want newbies to join their ranks. Its worth training a newbie and gaining the loyalty from supplying, training and supplying them. If you join the right corp, you will most likely have skill books and frigs paid for. Corporations in Eve require loyalty to work. Not alot of people would hop corp once trained up and acquainted with corp members. Some people have been in the same corporation for 5 years because of the people they have known in game and the history the corp might have that they had a part in creating, and those core members are the backbone of a successful corporation.

How can I have any impact Eve?

• Eve is mostly social engineering. No matter who you are, you will find a corporation that suits you and who you are. Also, if you can gain influence with the right people, you could hold more political power then people playing since Eve began. If you want to grief people, see them cry in local, collect tears etc then piracy is for you, and within that kind of circle holds its own culture. Normally alliances have a industrial corporation who constructs capital ships, but not always. Informal contracts are formed between corps and alliances to external corporations for very large ships, which for a industrial corp would be very profitable. The CEO’s of such corps are of varying skill ranges, their success is in able to branch out, communicate, convince and gain trust.

I could probably go on and on. In summary, time spent on eve + skills does not = better then you. The differences of actually flying a ship (which takes most skill of all rather then what levels you have) vary greatly between every eve pilot, and no matter how new you are, you are probably doing much better then someone else.

If anyone has something else to add to this feel free to comment. Its an important topic if you want to see Eve grow even more, so give a comment and maybe, just maybe, someone will be convinced to give Eve a try.

Kai.

I can remember last years tournament. I was burning out, getting bored and finding something better to do then play Eve. The matches slightly depressed me because I found myself just looking at the bars on each side and thought that’s really all there was to PVPing. Having more and/or better ships = win. The problem was I did know know what I was looking for. Having no PVP experience, I wasn’t able to make out fleet compositions and what value and meaning each ship was bringing to the field. I was not able to see tactics and skilled logi pilots, just red bars going up and down. Goes to show what a bit of pvp can bring to someones experience on Eve.

Anyway, congrats to Pandemic Legion for a flawless win, and kudos for CCP for hosting another great Eve tournament.

Kai.

Trading in all its forms has potential to be a massive earner. Even the local market in null sec, you can see holes to be filled and items you could manipulate into worthless crap into nice earners. After trading on one client and ratting on my main, id rather have a set of eyes while I rat, and also a tanking domi so eventually I could solo sansha sanctums, which would be much, much more profitable then spontaneous station trading. Maybe if you have access to null sec with plenty of blues around, it would be the natural step up for earning isk.

After an hour of running through a Sansha Sanctum with a corp member, its hard to want to do anything else anyway.

Kai.

1.72 Billion isk.

A 320mil profit.

I will definitely try this again with much more information. At the start of this, I had access to null sec space and was ratting while trading. I can make roughly around 45mil in 5 hours (not including faction rats and loot). I probably spent around 4 hours a week setting up orders on the trader to gain 320mil.

If I consider the actual time trading in relation to ratting, I think ratting pays off more. Sometimes the things I trade are not profitable for a day or two, and my trading alt is left doing nothing. If I plex any character, then I might as well keep the one account. It would only pay off once all the trading skills are leveled and then it would be like having a free character on the traders account. Even then, depending what your alt is training for, it can conflict with your trading.

The other alt on the trader is training for a Orca. My main character can fly a hulk and sometimes I spend the day flying back and forth in Empire lazily mining while I do other things. With the Orca, I would make much, much more isk and it would also be a valuable asset for my corporation to have a Orca on most of the time.

The trader only requires around 25 days for efficient trading. If you have the investment after that, then your only limited by time for how much isk you could make. If I knuckled down and traded much more, I’m confident I could make 600mil a month, and if that’s re-invested, then the next month would be more. If your willing to not fund an account with plex’s, then the trading alt is extremely valuable. Also, you cant expand your trading capacity with more alts, so its a one stop solution to potentially making alot of isk (unlike missioning with a dps and a tank, or mining with two hulks and a orca).

In a few days I will collect much more infomation and try this again, and put in the hours to see how much I could really make. I started this to show how much isk was to be made by literlly sitting in a station setting up orders, but after ratting I wondered if it would make more isk running missions in a afk domi, or as a Orca. Its not just about how much isk you can make per hour, but the comfort and fun in making isk. Running three alts missioning can be stressful and draining, and while the isk is very nice you could make a fraction less ratting in null sec and trading on the side for a few hours a week.

Kai.

Start: 29/3/10
Investment: 1.4 billion isk
playing time avg: 4 hours a day (this might be adjusted at the end report)
End: 26/4/10

This should be definitive on how much you could casually make with this amount of isk. One billion isk is an insane amount for alot of people, but just like the real world trading money makes money, and I can just as easily lose it from misfortune or bad judgement. Hopefully this will show people if its worth working hard to save the isk to do this, because ultimately having a huge amount of isk is not going to “win” Eve, especially for someone with just one or two characters to work with. Pvp, industrial skills and real leadership on a corp and alliance level mean more have have a bigger impact then making isk. Its like people who mission with three alts, making hundreds of millions and having nothing to show but extremely expensive faction fitted mission ships (which they will lose sooner or later).

If you like stockpiling internet spaceship money then this is for you

Kai.

Much of the content I wished to create has been on hold, which is a shame. What I normally want from a guide is not easily found. Its a kind of style and a way of explaining that Is as basic and as stupid friendly you can get. I’m fairly compulsive, and if I think one small, minor detail is missing, it confuses everything else.

Apart from the inactivity on blog and game the trading guide gets a fair bit of traffic. I hope people can benefit from its style, and have the success with station trading as I had. I wont ever stop playing Eve Online, so sooner or later this blog will pick up steam and will hopefully grow again when I have the time and commitment. Thanks for the comments so far, and let me know if anyone has made a good amount of isk after reading my guide.

Kai Honsou.

I realized how small the blog actually is after trying to give this theme more life, but i think this is as good as it gets. Im having problems putting up the eve online affiliate banner, and also for some reason my post titles are not showing and its making the blog look ugly.

Im also toying with the idea of hiring someone to write an article or guide. I can perfect the trading guide, but the only other thing i really do is run missions and stuff for the corp, so if i want good content i will have to branch out. Paying isk per article sounds like a great idea. Apart from that, its been a slow week.

Kai.

The pages not showing is the most frustrating issue I’ve came across. Googling on the net for the solution only causes more confusion. I actually accidentally found out that you have to select them to be shown from the appearance tab and the theme options.

Once that was out of the way, my post titles wont show. I can find them on the blog, but they are set to show as a horizontal next option just under the pages.

Lastly is trying to redirect traffic from my old blog to this one. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Every guide on the same thing are all different. Hopefully i will get the hang of it. Its a good way of forcing me to get familiar with MySQL and CSS. Always wanted to learn how to use them but never had enough reason to and got bored. Now its my sanity on the line so I’m fully motivated.

Kai.

Guides – I want to make a small guide on how to use Evemon. I find it invaluable managing my skills and seeing what i need to train for what. The guide will only cover the basics, and i will link all the other more in depth guides out there in the mini-review page.

The station trading guide is still a work in progress. I have no idea about its usefulness since i haven’t had any proper feedback yet. I changed the comment reply settings so no-one has to register or enter there e-mail, so all ya have to do is type what you think about it and put it out there. I was thinking of a trade route guide as well. I don’t have any experience hauling crap loads of anything from one lucrative place to another, but i think ill give it a go.

Ships – The ship overview page is something i think i will always be adding to and updating. I think its useful since it adds together in one page all the best suggested fittings out there.

New page – I will add a video page, embedding all of what i think are the best eve online videos. It will have everything from epic fleet battles, pirating exploits and emorages.

That’s all!

Kai.

I lost my 3 hakim 1200mm arty’s, my 1 x caldari shield boost amp and 2 x republic gyros.

Now, the amp and the gyros i wouldn’t mind losing. The turrets on the other hand took me AGES to get on contracts. Also, a few days before this happened, i was just about to buy a 1 bil officer cap module so i would be perma-tanking in the mael. Regardless of my shield rep, i would of lost the ship anyway, and if i lost that cap recharger i would of had to jump in front of a car or join goonswarm after losing my sanity.

But then again, its just a Internet spaceship. I have another mael set up for pvp that can replace my old maelstrom. Also, after losing those few precious modules, it has kicked me into realising how flawed my fitting was. I had no resist mods at all. I thought i was brilliant in my almost perma-boosted maelstrom. I couldn’t tank the bonus room on AE, or evidently stop the thief, but a perma-tanked mael was supposedly something epic. I cant even remember where i saw the suggested fitting.

So, the moral of the story is a old mantra that null sec ratters strictly live by, one of those sayings that you want to ignore when you find a domination gyro to fit on your hurricane and go back out to rat in a empty and quiet system, or fit officer gear on a mission maelstrom. No matter how careful you are or what your doing, you will eventually LOSE your ship. Unless you fly a Raven.

Kai.