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.

More details to come once I find the time.

Kai.

I have two alt’s, a tanking domi alt and my dps Vargur. I was thinking about the people who would like but can’t afford a second account. It is not that hard to gain enough isk to run a second account on plex’s. I try and fund at least two of my accounts with them, but it adds a different kind of gaming time. If I don’t fund the two accounts, I lose 382 odd euros a year. My time on eve is split between playing eve, and working to earn plex’s on eve. The best I can do is to earn as much isk as I can so I can go off and do fun things.

Missions are my main earner. What I get in bounty all goes to my trader to earn more isk from plex’s (at the moment, 1 plex bought and sold gives me around 12mil, so you can imagine what kind of isk station trading is once you have the capital). The bounty gets stored, and on an uneventful evening, gets filtered and reprocessed, then shipped of to jita to be sold. If I can run the high end level 4 missions extremely quickly, then I’m on my way to becoming a very rich (carebear). At least soon I will be able to fund two of my accounts without having to do anything but change a few orders during the day.

When I have more time, I think I will post my fittings for both my ships, since if you mission full time it is worth seeing and something to aim for, especially if you mission in minmatar space. If you want to know how to trade plex’s, check out my station trading guide.

Kai.

Me and my girlfriend recently moved apartments, and had to wait for the Internet to be reconnected. It took much longer then I had wanted, but I came back to eve with the drone interfacing lvl 5 on my tanking domi alt, and the ability to fly marauders on my main. I relocated to minmatar space before we moved just for angel missions for my brand spanking new Vargur.

After flying this ship for a week or two now, It is probably my best ever purchase in Eve. I was slightly hesitant after reading many a forum thread about the minmatar marauder, and it seems the arguments for it are correct. If anyone says you are wasting time buying it, they are lieing. If they throw some etf numbers at you, just laugh at them for wasting time fantasizing how great the Golem is that they never flew. The Vargur, is absolutely amazing…against angels.

I have had good results against merc’s drones missions. I can hit out to around 40km before the dps starts to become terrible. Against angels its a dream. I spend more time salvaging then I do taking down bs’s.

I am using a very small tank, with 5 gyros in the low. 2 gallaente tracking computers with tracking scripts. I tank with my Domi, so im able to have the dps setup on the Vargur. I think if you are at the marauder stage, then you could try and go for a alt, and run it on plex’s. I am making a good amount of isk from the bounties, but no-where near enough to run 3 accounts on plex’s, but I do have an insane amount of crap on my salvage alt, which will probably give me a massive lump sum of isk once I have the patience to waste a day refining and selling it.

If anyone has something to say about the vargur/domi setup, let me know. I cant imagine anything better for angel missions, and will happily defend the Vargur.

Kai.

Not long ago, one plex (30 day pilots licence extension) peaked. I was trading at the time, and watched from start to finish all the plex’s being emptied from the selling market, only to come back with a vengeance with a plex averaging around 420mil (rough estimate).

Fast forward a week or two, and right now the cheapest plex is 328mil. It is the perfect time to buy if you use them. For me, the gap between the buyers and sellers is getting so close, its almost not worth trading them anymore. Every now and then, there will be a good 18mil difference and I  have been lucky enough to be on top of my orders to milk it as much as I could.

If the plex market carries on like this, then I will have to find something else as my primary money maker. I used to trade Morphite with the isk iI had left that I couldnt buy a plex with. It is more of a risky market, but I will have to go where the isk is.

Kai.