Steam Trial

[NiX]

I can't seem to figure out how it works in terms of when the trial starts. I'm waiting for Bhodi to get back to start, anyone use this method to start a trial?

[Gets]

I tried using it and failed miserably. Supposedly all you have to do is download the client via Steam and then go to the account creation screen via a link in the Steam game properties window. The trial starts when you have made the account.

In the course of 3 weeks I downloaded the client two times. Once to something like 60% then refused to go further, so after doing a file authentication it started the download again. At all times it downloaded a little bit and stopped to a halt, meaning most of the downloading happened in slight increments right after each time Steam started itself.

And after all that rigmarole there was no link where it was supposed to be.

It was right after it launched in late February though, and since it's Steam I didn't actually expect anything different. Even despite my mishap getting the 21-day trial myself (although I used the Wingman Promotional while it lasted for the extra subscriptions) I would suggest not getting it via Steam and just download the Premium client. You're Steam rating will never drop below EAGLES SOAR though with EVE 

[Slayerik]

Nixxy poo, just get a regular trial. If you like it after 14 days I'll pay for a game time card to activate your account.

I know, I rule.

[Thrawn]

Nixxy poo, just get a regular trial. If you like it after 14 days I'll pay for a game time card to activate your account.

I know, I rule.

If you don't mind your account activation being covered in the blood of innocent haulers that is!

[Jayce]

They're better that way.

[Slayerik]

Nixxy poo, just get a regular trial. If you like it after 14 days I'll pay for a game time card to activate your account.

I know, I rule.

If you don't mind your account activation being covered in the blood of innocent haulers that is!

I loled IRL

[NiX]

Nixxy poo, just get a regular trial. If you like it after 14 days I'll pay for a game time card to activate your account.

I know, I rule.

Guess I have to find a creation/fitting thread.

[caladein]

Bhodi's Useful Links thread is awesome and the sooner you start using the references linked, the easier your time in EVE will be.  That said, here's the stuff focused on character creation:

Goonfleet Wiki: Basic Character Creation.  This will give you some context to the midly arcane choices you'll face in character creation.  If you don't much care for any race in particular for RP/character aesthetic reasons, you'll want to go with one of the Caldari builds in the following wiki page, it's best min-max route.  (I emphasized character, because if you want to fly Minmatar ships, but really don't care for the Minmatar portraits, or simply don't care either way, it's a very small amount of training to swap over to another race's set of ships at the start of the game.)

Goonfleet Wiki: Recommended Base Stat Builds.  You likely want to pew pew, so go with one of these set-ups.  (I didn't, but I planned for (and have) a relatively large amount of skill points in Corp Management, Leadership, and Social.  If you don't have a good reason to not go with a low-Charisma/high-Perception character, follow these builds.  You'll thank us later.)

Goonfleet Wiki: Your Character Portrait and Bat Country - Class of 2008.  The first gives you a good run-down on avoiding common pitfalls in regards to portraits.  The other link is a page that Quinton whipped up a bit ago and, at least for me, provided some inspiration for my alt characters' portraits.

Once in-game: do the tutorial, join the F13 channel (go to Channels & Mailing Lists on the left-hand side, and join "F13"), and ask us for some cash and any other questions you've got (don't be shy, a few million is chump change for nearly all of us, but makes your life as a newbie 100x easier and more enjoyable).

[NiX]

My memory is hazy, but would it be silly for me to want to get into hauling/mining from the get go? I'd try the market, but I'm 100% sure I don't have the know how to do that well.

[lac]

I've never mined but I did some half afk hauling of npc goods when I just started and you can make quite decent isk that way. You will need to export the market data of a couple of regions and put it into a program that calculates the most profitable routes (I'm sure the program is in bhodi's links somewhere). I made more money that way than I did doing level 2's at the time but it's all peanuts compared to what you make later on so make sure to ask for some starter isk in f13 channel when you get there. That way you don't have to worry about the money and you can find out what part of the game you like and train your character in that direction.

[Hoax]

I've known people that don't mind the whole hauling/mining thing, so it might be an ok thing to try.  Also if you want to try the market in the future, hauling might make the transition to that easier in the future since you will have traveled some regions and can take a look at the various markets and perhaps find a quick isk to make somewhere.

Also the great thing is, you can train for other stuff in the meantime with hauling because there aren't a ton of skills to train before you can do it well and they will come in handy in the future. 

I'm much less excited about the idea of mining, unless you are the type who can log in while working and do some afk hisec mining 8hrs a day for free isk, then it makes more sense to me.

[caladein]

* Contracts are a lot more reliable than the old escrow system, but to make any sort of money on them you need to put up a good deal of collateral.  10% of collateral is about as high a reward I've seen (for jobs that didn't require a Freighter ).  I usually pick up a few contracts when I'm leaving 0.0 after a hauling run, simply to make the most of the trip.

* Hauling in general is pretty scalable (unlike courier contracts), and you can make a decent profit with it.  I'd recommend EVE-Central's Trade Finder.  Just moving goods between trade hubs (Jita 4.4 -> Amarr 8) nets me around 1.3m ISK/jump for a nine jump trip with my current hauler (Badger Mk. 2 w/ 3 T2 Expanders).

* Mining is a bit of a bitch as it stands right now.  Mining in our slice of 0.0 is about as profitable as mining Veldspar in hi-sec.  As to how profitable it is in general, I don't know.

[bhodi]

Nix, you can haul for me.. I have a miner character that can fly a covetor   

Get minmitar industrial IV (2 days training)

[NiX]

So, for hauling, what's my best starting setup?

[Furiously]

So, for hauling, what's my best starting setup?

Not being afk with 1 billion in cargo.

[NiX]

That was incredibly unhelpful.

[Hoax]

For ships, I think 'matar haulers are the best cargo per sp race???  If you knew you wanted to go for hauling though I thought Itty V (Gal) was the best?  Luckily you dont have to pick race or anything based on hauling industrial skill is only thing needed at least for t1 haulers.

As for how you go about setting up some newb friendly npc good courrier routes?  No fuckin clue.  I'm sure f13 will backroll your initial liquid isk though, gotta have money to make money and stuff.

This post only seems helpful compared to Furiously's, I don't really know enough about the subject to give good advice.

[Logik]

That was incredibly unhelpful.

It does, however, have the possibility to be roughly 'one billion isk'-helpful.

[NiX]

Maybe I should clarify. I'm trying to figure out the best character setup to get started with hauling.

[MahrinSkel]

Maybe I should clarify. I'm trying to figure out the best character setup to get started with hauling.

Depends on whether you're also going to be working up Trade skill, and what future plans you have for the character.  It's pretty easy to get up to basic T1 industrial skills in just about any character build.

--Dave

[Gets]

Fastest way to get into Gallente Transport ships is to roll as... Minmatar 



Granted it depends if you have a nice Caldari Achura mission blazing character for getting that early ISK.

[NiX]

Depends on whether you're also going to be working up Trade skill, and what future plans you have for the character.  It's pretty easy to get up to basic T1 industrial skills in just about any character build.

--Dave

I'm leaning more towards trade and doing what you used to do.

[MahrinSkel]

The main difference is that you're going to be training your advanced Charisma skills so you can work up Trade skills.  Even the highest of these (Tycoon) is only a rank 6, so compared to other things you may eventually want (like Advanced Spaceship Command and [racial] Freighter) they aren't worth putting initial points into.  You're going to need basic ship-handling skills like Navigation and the skills to fit basic tanks and hull mods, but that's pretty basic.  A quick rundown on the Trade skills is probably in order, since they aren't discussed that often.

Trade/Retail/Wholesale/Tycoon: These control how many Buy/Sell Order slots you get.  Later on, when you've got plenty of capital and it's micro-managing and transport overhead that are limiting you, you're going to want lots of these.  Trade 4/Retail 4 gets you to 54 slots, this will be enough for most low-end trading operations, you'll know you need more when you find yourself dropping orders so you can put up more valuable ones.  At the top end (Tycoon 5) you can get to 301/303 slots (depending on if you take Trade to 5).

Marketing/Procurement/Visibility: You'll need these both as pre-req for other things, and for convenience.  If you're managing a lot of orders, it can be very convenient not to have to get closer than the same region to them in order to adjust them.  Procurement doesn't work properly, it will work for stations in the same system if you're in space, but it won't work for other systems.  It's required for the others, so you have to train it anyway.

Daytrading: Another "convenience" skill, I mention it separately because it's comparatively expensive.  But if you're managing orders in a lot of different stations and you're going to be needing to tweak them a lot, you absolutely must have it or you'll go insane.

Accounting/Broker Relations: These reduce the cost of market orders.  That 1% broker fee may not seem like much, but when you're trading high-end stuff in large volumes it can add up (especially if you're placing big Buy orders).  And if you're working with large-volume, low-margin stuff like minerals, NPC trade goods, or construction intermediates, the 1% tax can eat up a big chunk of your margin.

Buy low, sell high, and the tradeoffs between margin and volume, there's a million different ways to make money on the market without ever building anything or firing a shot.  But they all depend on seeing where the market isn't working efficiently, either because of player behavior or because things have changed and other people don't see it.  Newer markets tend to have the greatest opportunities, and a good thing to watch for is when a market is just about to "go liquid", reach the point where people routinely buy and sell through the market rather than hand to hand.  I made my biggest killing by spotting those moments on things like T2 intermediates, capital ship components and modules, and Salvage (I made about 10B in the first month of the Salvage market, when it was considered real money, I financed a month of alliance POS war out of petty cash the next month).  In general, you make money from other people's laziness.

The wealthiest people in the game tend to be the traders.  They also work harder for it.  You can sometimes find a gimmick and milk it for low-effort profit for a while, but over time margins tend to sink and effort goes up.  So you've always got to be looking for the next opportunity, and recognizing that your time is a limited asset.  And as has been noted, when you reach the point where your cargoes will justify suicide ganking, you want to be into ships that can't be suicided.  I've been very fond of the speed and survivability of Minmatar ships, but I pay a price in volume for that.  Avoid low-sec.  It sucks, and the margins aren't worth it.  Better off getting the big paydays of 0.0 for not much more real risk.

--Dave

[NiX]

Suggestion for character creation? Not too sure what to pick to get the most out of my character right away.

[MahrinSkel]

Frankly, given the diminishing returns that sets in when you're +8/+9 in the learning skills, and fitted with a full set of +3 implants, I wouldn't worry too much.  Eventually you're going to be done developing the essential skills for trade, and want to either do something else with that character or develop another alt.  My freighter/empire trade alt wound up getting trained into Carriers, and I was using him for Covert Ops from early on.  Use the standard templates, but train the Charisma learning skills up with the rest, and you'll be fine.

--Dave

[Reg]

You really can't go wrong with balanced stats with charisma as your lowest. Sure, you can make an uber character if you know exactly what you want to be doing a year from now and don't change your mind but really you aren't going to notice some huge difference if you do.

As it is it's going take you a few months to make up for the 3 days you've spent agonizing over your build even if you do make the perfect character. :)

[sanctuary]

You really can't go wrong with balanced stats with charisma as your lowest. Sure, you can make an uber character if you know exactly what you want to be doing a year from now and don't change your mind but really you aren't going to notice some huge difference if you do.

Agree totally with this and what Mahrin has said above. I made a trading/industrial alt a few years ago, high Mem, Int and Cha. Now that I've pretty much got every skill I considered necessary (trade, science, industry and some spaceships) to at least 4 if not 5 i'm working on her skills in gunnery, electronics etc. She blitzes through skills that require Int and Mem, but for the majority that require Per and Will, it's slow.

My point is go for a balanced stat set, because a year or two from now your priorities may change.

[NiX]

Kal Koran. I did the tutorial again just for shits. They've made it surprisingly short. Either that or my memory is really THAT bad. Anywho, who do I poke for a little bit of monies?

Edit: Typos

[Slayerik]

Ill hit ya up when i get on...

[Slayerik]

190 mil sent, 170 for the GTC and 20 to play with

Enjoy! Now all I ask is you post a screeny of Nixel again from LOTRO :)

[bhodi]

You should just take over cmlancas's account, since he just quit. Like a big ol' quitter.

[NiX]

Enjoy! Now all I ask is you post a screeny of Nixel again from LOTRO :)

My roomie had to ask why I was laughing so hard. God that character was so gay.

[Slayerik]

lol, thanks!

My character was gay just by proximity. Though I think I did sew that purple outfit for you, so.....yeah.....

[Phred]

You really can't go wrong with balanced stats with charisma as your lowest. Sure, you can make an uber character if you know exactly what you want to be doing a year from now and don't change your mind but really you aren't going to notice some huge difference if you do.

Agree totally with this and what Mahrin has said above. I made a trading/industrial alt a few years ago, high Mem, Int and Cha. Now that I've pretty much got every skill I considered necessary (trade, science, industry and some spaceships) to at least 4 if not 5 i'm working on her skills in gunnery, electronics etc. She blitzes through skills that require Int and Mem, but for the majority that require Per and Will, it's slow.

My point is go for a balanced stat set, because a year or two from now your priorities may change.

Someone added up all the skills and worked out what percentage each stat was used. The results were roughly Perc 30%, Int 27%, Mem 26%, Will 16%, and Char 2%. So even if you are planning to go for a trader char only 2% of the skills in the game use charisma.

Note: I didn't check their math. Took their word this is accurate.

[MahrinSkel]

Someone added up all the skills and worked out what percentage each stat was used. The results were roughly Perc 30%, Int 27%, Mem 26%, Will 16%, and Char 2%. So even if you are planning to go for a trader char only 2% of the skills in the game use charisma.

Note: I didn't check their math. Took their word this is accurate.

It is for "all skills".  But that includes a lot of science and construction skills that only industrialists and research point farmers will use.  Outside of those, it works out to Perception and Will being about 70%, Int/Mem about 25%, and Charisma about 5%.  It also ignores that virtually all of the "insanely high rank" skills are in either Gunnery or Ship Handling (both Perception/Will dominated).  I don't think there's anything outside of those that goes over Rank 8, while there are quite a few capital ship related skills in those two over Rank 12.

--Dave