Whether you’re intending to become a miner, industrialist, mission runner, ratter, PvPer or simply don’t know yet… these 17 tips should help any beginning EVE player off to a good start. And if that’s not enough, then you can scroll down below the list and find a collection of websites containing information that can come in handy for any EVE player. If you’d like to start playing EVE Online yourself, then head on over here and get your 14 day trial account! Don’t forget to message/evemail Aeroth Aerinaeris if you happen to start out as Gallente and would like to team up.

1. Do not ever cancel the tutorial. You will need to follow it if you have never played EVE Online before, because it’s simply too complex, unusual and free form otherwise.
2. Once you accept a tutorial mission, do not abort it. If you can’t figure out what to do in your early missions, it’s probably because there’s an acceleration gate nearby and you’ve missed the tutorial bit regarding those. Basically what you do is approach them, activate them, and you’re propelled towards the next stage of your mission.
3. Don’t randomly start targeting players in massive battleships and do not attack people in high security systems (0.5 and up).
4. Avoid other people’s containers or kills, because they’ll be allowed to kill you if you use them.
5. Stay away from low-sec space until you’ve got a decent frigate, and preferably a couple of corpmates to watch your back.
6. Do not stay solo when you’re a total newbie. You’ll need help, particularly if you want to enjoy the game, so join the recruitment channel and find a decent corporation which suits your tastes.
7. If your ship has a drone bay and you have drone skills, then buy drones! They’ll make your initial play experience much more enjoyable, because you basically have 1 or 2 extra supersonic mobile guns flying around, which will do a lot of damage to the earlier foes. As for controlling them: this is done below the overview tab on the right-hand side of your screen, just use the right click menu for any orders you want to give them.
8. When using drones do not forget to have them fly back into your drone bay before you jump! I’ve lost nearly half a dozen drones because I’ve abandoned them at the combat site… now I’m starting to get used to recalling them to my drone bay.
9. Don’t buy a ship straight away, make sure you have at least 150% the purchase cost of your ship in ISK, and always insure it. The first series of missions will hand you two new frigates as you progress, so initially you can settle for hording ISK and occasionally purchasing some ship equipment, skills or ammunition.
10. If you know you’re going to play past the trial, then gather and use the learning, instant recall and analytical mind skills up to level 3. This will significantly reduce your learning time for other skills.
11. Use the regional market overview to see where you can get better deals on items. If the item you want is sold for 60000 ISK in one system, and 40000 ISK in another, 3 jumps away, then you’d be a fool to just settle for the 60K version. At least in the beginning… as you advance that kind of money becomes peanuts.
12. In low-sec, don’t trust anyone! In high-sec, you’d better not trust anyone either, but be especially on guard for people flashing red.
13. If your ship is running low on armor, run. Even if you’re in the midst of a mission, you can simply dock, repair, restock and head back out to continue your mission.
14. Keep your local chat open if you’re doing a mission, sometimes important messages related to the mission are shown in that channel.
15. Agent quality determines the level of rewards you’ll get for missions received from them. This means you’ll want to use those with the highest possible ratings accessible to you, at all times. Note that this also slightly increases the difficulty level, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem by the time you’re done with the first few storyline missions.
16. Don’t be in a hurry to expand your capabilities beyond frigates. Ideally you’ll want to master frigates, before moving on to cruisers. This doesn’t just mean you have to be a capable pilot, but also have the skills required for your ‘profession’. As a miner or industrialist you’ll probably move on to cruisers fairly quickly. If you’re intending to be a mission runner, ratter or PvPer like me - then you should wait until you have the most essential of combat related skills trained before bothering with new ship classes. Frigates can be very capable, particularly if you move in gangs, and having someone with the experience and skills required for proper frigate combat is a boon to any corporation.
17. The initial tutorial is far from the only tutorial available. As a new player you’d do well to sift through the bulk of available tutorials and learn as much as you can about the game.

Lastly, here are some useful links for beginning EVE pilots:

• EVE Academy - features a set of useful newbie guides, particularly the combat guide is useful because it details the damage types to be used on NPC opponents. To change your damage type you can change your type of missiles, drones or turrets.
• Friedrick’s Guide to Tanking - a guide detailing the different tanking types and how to utilize them properly. Important for beginners. Note that if you’re Caldari you’ll generally want to shield tank, whereas Gallente will want to armor tank, because of their ships’ base statistics.
• Restrius’ Guide to Ships and Modules - an essential guide for newcomers, which provides a basic overview of all factions’ ships and important information on modules. If you know nothing about EVE Online then this is an absolute must, if you don’t want to totally gimp your character from the get-go.
• EVEWiki - does this really require any explanation? It’s a wiki, so if you have any basic questions about things in the game, then you’re bound to find the answers in this wiki.
• Hammer’s Eve - a great blog for experienced MMO gamers heading into EVE for the first time. A vast collection of useful entries and definitely worth bookmarking for reference.
• EVE Skills Roadmap - not sure which skills to train first? This site gives a quick overview of the very basics.
• Keitaro’s Guide to Drones - essential reading for drone users.

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