Eve and CB (in Off-topic)

Since Godwolf opened up a thread for WoW and CB heres one for Eve. That and I want to see how many actually DO play Eve.

I'm Rudie Capone in the Eve world.

I played it for a while until I realized the "level up" system is designed to siphon money out of people's wallets.

Come on... A week to learn mining lvl 5?? And that's just the most basic mining tree!

Hehe on the grand scale it actually takes less time to specialize than in a grinder :P Guess you never got to the fun parts, pity. Either that or you got owned, hard

First off, mining is one of the most boring things you can possibly do in EVE... no, cancel that, it is THE most boring thing you can do :)
Second, you don't really need Mining level 5, when Mining level 4 works almost just as good (for T2 miners and stripminers) and takes at most a couple of days.

Other than that, I'm at around 40 million SP over there on my main "generalist" account and around 25 mil SP on my secondary "combat-focused" alternate... and haven't paid a single dime to play it for over one year.

Yup, you read that correctly : I have NOT paid any real-life money to play any of my two accounts in well over one year. I just buy game time codes with ISK via the secure trading system.
Even right now, when they're (for the time being) terribly overpriced compared to what they used to cost, my corpmates can still make the in-game money to buy a 2-month code in about 20 hours of gameplay, tops (so, that's what, 20 minutes per day on average ? I spend more time on a daily basis in CB)... I make much more just trading in various goods, so it's even less of an effort for me than it is for most others.

Besides, it's not like it costs much even if you WOULD have to pay for it with real-life cash... 130$ if you pay for an entire year, that's only around 11$ per month on average.

Last but not least, if you're impatient, you can always just buy a character... buying one with in-game money is perfectly legitimate (actually, the ONLY legitimate way to buy one).
Characters of relatively high SP count sell for well over what would be worth in game time code equivalent to train up for (mostly because characters are seldom abandoned for good, but passed on from user to user inside the corp/alliance as people quit or come back).
As for how you get the in-game money (ISK) to afford a high-skills character... either you earn it through hard work, or you just sell some game time codes yourself.

And by the way, fully trained miner characters (and only mining-oriented) sell for barely the equivalent of two timecodes nowadays, if even that much. It's combat pilots that everybody craves (or, well, better said, demand for fighters is much higher than demand for miners).

Sorry I meant "well under" not "well over".

Oh I totally forgot... this is me ;)

Yup, most people do find EVE overwhelming, but... eh :)

Have to purchase a CD or pay online to start?

Free download for the client (600 MB classic graphics, very good for older machines... 1 GB new/premium graphics, recommended for people with over 1 GB of RAM, good CPU and decent graphics card).
All major game updates (there's usually one inthe summer and one in the winter) are also free.


14 day trial for every e-mail address you want to use (they send you an activation code on the email, they won't send a second one on the same email, but they do send out trial codes on just about any free email, so it's not a problem)

21 day trial if you're a STEAM user


You can activate the game with a Game Time Code bought with in-game money, but you'd have to be a very good player to pull that off (getting enough ISK in the trial period).
You can always activate any old acount (be it a regular account or a trial acount that expired) either with credit card, game time code or various other payment methods.

Game time codes have the "initial activation fee" included (35$ for a 60-day GTC) ; accounts activated for the very first time cost 20$ for the first month (instead of 15$), and 15$ per month afterwards if you pay on a monthly basis ; you can pay in advance for 1 year though for 131$ (coming out at 11$/month average).

EU players pay in EUR instead of USD, but they pay the same numerical amount. The "good" news is that a lot of EU players just buy GTCs with USD from US retailers to sidestep that. That's one of the reasons GTCs are quite a bit more expensive than paying with a creditcard directly.


The current skill level keeps on training wether you're online or offline, and even if account expired.
Many people that are not very active regularly set a very long skill before their account expires, and when they reactivate it later on, that skill finished training.

If you decide to play, USE THE HELP/ROOKIE CHAT A LOT early on.
Preferably, if you can, find a decent player corp that will let you in.

Seriously, I can't stress that out enough : the gameplay experience changes drastically from a trial that never interacts with other people to a trial that gets into a helpful player corp from day one :)

Also, mind you, it's a cutthroat game environment : for every one genuinely helpful person out there, you WILL find at least two or three that are JUST "out to get you", so paranoia is not a luxury later on, but most times a necessity :P

A good corp that will probably let you in even as a trial is "EVE University". They specialize in training newbies.
At any one time, there's up to 1500 people in that corp, with over 200 online most of the time on their public chat channel... some of them are veterans (not even in that corp, I occasionally volunteer too, but not so much lately due to RL time constraints) whose only purpose is to teach the newcomers the ropes.

how much ISK does a gamecard cost?

Sorry for the many posts, I REALLY wished there was an "edit" button... HERE you will find a decent guide to character creation (well, I wrote it, so I'm quite partial to it, hehe).

NOTE: as a trial account you can NOT post on the forums. You don't need to be a user at all to read them though.

"how much ISK does a gamecard cost? "

It's like the price of CB$... it varies with supply and demand.
There was a recent low of 300 mil ISK, right now we're on a high that can go up to 500 mil ISK.

Personally, I can make up to 30 mil ISK per hour speed-running level 4 missions, but newbies might actually find it hard to get 2 mil ISK per hour running L1 missions. Still, some do something called "ninja salvaging" that can net them up to 10 mil ISK per hour if they're lucky, but it's risky (as it depends on what other people let you, or better said allow you to do).
I've had newbie corpmembers tag along in missions (speed-running involves doing just that, blazing through the mission and nothing else) and net well over 20 mil ISK per hour on average just from the wrecks I left behind untouched (it's about 50% more profitable for me to just speed through missions instead of wasting time collecting everything).
There was a recent "experiment" made by a market trading veteran who created an account on which he ONLY traded and nothing else... he managed to raise (from the initial measly 5,000 ISK you get) using trade exclusively (no mining, no missions, no nothing to "earn" cash at all, ONLY trade) over 500 mil ISK in less than a month.

So, well, it's all relative :)

I'll consider it... I do kind of miss it, and one of the reasons, although not as major as the skill system, was the crappy computer I used at the time.

one of the reasons I left*

My greatest achievement was investing around 2.5 bil ISK (that's 2000 mil) in some goods I had a good feeling they would go up in price after a patch, and I sold them a couple of months later for close to 11 bil ISK :)
So that was a 8.5 bil ISK net profit, with actual time spent doing the actual activities well under 10 hours (plus the waiting, plus the brain-crushing to gauge the right venture, etc).

There are also player-run banks (EBANK being the most proeminent one, with a 2+ year history), that offer up to 3% interest per month on ISK banked with them in savings accounts, and they give out loans for up to 10% interest... but you will need some form of collateral for that loan (or a very good history of debt repayment with them).

So with that 11 bil, do you fly a titan or what? =P

Nah, I gave about 2 billion to my brother, I loaned another 2.5 billion or so to friends (only some returned, but I don't mind), I paid my two accounts for over one year with ISK instead of cash, had some fun blowing up some ships in PvP, and I'm still sitting on a good couple of bil ISK liquid (plus a load of assets) right now as we speak :P
Yeah, I got lazy after I made all that cash... I barely trade anymore, just enough to keep the accounts afloat (it's really easy once you have some decent capital and experience).

Also, no, a titan hull plus fit costs more around 75-85 bil ISK :)
Just the skillbook needed to pilot one costs over 5 bil ISK, and the other prerequisite skillbooks closer to half a billion.
And anyway, a titan without a support fleet is a dead titan :P
There's a reason they call titans and motherships "alliance only vessels"... you need one alliance to keep them alive, and you need an alliance to use them at their full potential.
If you think about it, for a solo//carebear pilot, any capital ship (even a carrier which costs under 1 bil ISK) is a waste of time... you're better off in a heavy assault ship or a command ship (if you're richer) or a battleship / battle-cruiser (if you're a penny pincher). Also, interceptors (which cost around 15 mil ISK and you can train for them relatively fast) are quite fun solo to fly even if you can fly capital ships for massive PvP ops...

I'm downloading the client :o

I just (shockingly) discovered that I am the #3 in the "most posts per character" top list over on EVE-O forums...
o.0

Well, I guess in hindsight 14k posts and almost 15 MB of text should have been a pretty good giveaway :)

Just downloaded and started playing tonight.
Seems decent so far, not sure if it will hold my attention or not.