Theramore Jane's Gallente Newbie Guide for Making ISK This guide is written to give a brand new EVE player (an actual newbie) a way to get into the game and make some decent cash, as quickly as possible. Basically, what you need to do is become an effective Scordite miner. Most people will tell you that mining is terribly boring (and they are mostly correct), but in the first few days of play, you will need to put together a lot of ISK to buy all the starting skills you should be training up (See http://mail.trekmush.org/~yoshi/eve-starting-skills.xls for suggested lists of priority skills). --- A Recommended Starting Character --- When you are creating your character, the following design seems to work well for getting into the game very quickly and easily. This character design is almost perfectly balanced, allowing you to train skills in all catagories equally fast. This character design is NOT well-suited if you plan to specialize in a certain skill catagory, for example, Gunnery, which demands high Perception and Willpower. If you are a newcomer to EVE, a balanced character will serve you well until you decide exactly what you want to do in the game. The following guide will produce a balanced Gallente character who is able to mine immediately upon creation. When making the character: Step 1: Choose Empire, Gallente. Step 2: Choose Bloodline, Gallente (Male or Female). Female avatars are easier on the eyes. Step 3: Be pretty. Too many ugly faces in this game already. Step 4: Career, Custom. Choose a Name that does not suck. Example: xxAnythingxx is a name that sucks. Step 5: Attributes, +2 Intelligence, +3 Willpower. Your attributes should then be 8/8/8/4/7. Step 6: Ancestry, choose Miners. Your attributes should then be 8/8/8/8/7. Step 7: School, Federation Navy Academy. Step 8: Department, Operations. Step 9: Field, Command. Step 10: Specialty, Captain Training. ...and you enter the game automatically, no going back. Welcome to Duripant. --- What you start with --- Your character begins with 9 skills and 96005 skill points: Drones: Drones, level 1 Scout Drone Operations, Level 1 Gunnery: Gunnery, Level 1 Small Hybrid Turret, Level 1 Industry: Mining, Level 2 Leadership: Leadership, Level 2 Learning: Iron Will, Level 1 Spaceship Command: Gallente Frigates, Level 4 Spaceship Command, Level 2 Your attributes should be 8/8/8/8/8, with the +1 Willpower from the L1 Iron Will skill. You have 5000 ISK, and a crappy rookie ship to fly in. Aura appears, and it is time to do some things... --- What to do First --- Do Aura's tutorial. Yes, all of it. Pay attention, and do the entire tutorial again, if necessary: The learning curve in this game is steep, and her advice is very helpful. Asking your friends to answer tutorial questions over and over is irritating to everyone. At some point she will recommend you start training up a skill. Choose Drones, train it up to Level 2. When that is done, train it up to Drones L3 (Level 3). Make sure you have Gallente Frigates L2 or better, so you will be able to fly the Imicus later on. At some point further, she will have you talk to an agent and do some missions, which leads us to... Do the tutorial mission out of the Federal Navy Academy base in Duripant. Aura will walk you through it. You will blow up a pirate, and then deliver some stuff. Do NOT go to the second agent and ask him for missions. You will be Blown Up if you try that in your rookie ship. Go back home to Duripant, instead, after the first tutorial mission is done and you have been paid for doing it. You should have over 90,000 ISK in your wallet at the end of the tutorial and tutorial mission. --- A brief Interlude on Mining --- Scordite is the best selling ore in newbie systems. At the time of this writing, unrefined Scordite ore is being bought at the Duripant academy base for 10.8 ISK per unit. Refined Scordite minerals pay less, so don't bother reprocessing what you mine. It is still always a good idea to find out which sells better: Ore, or Refined Minerals. To do this, mine some ore... or buy some ore. 200 units will do. Refine 100 units, and sell the minerals you get. Add up the money you made. Then sell 100 units of raw unrefined ore, and compare the money you made on that, to what you got for the refined minerals. Whichever sale you made that made more money, is the type sale you will want to keep doing, obviously. The prices can change, so repeating this test occasionally is adviseable. A rookie ship hold full of Scordite ore in Duripant is, at the time of this writing, worth: 120 m3 | 6.666666 Scordite | 10.8 ISK | -------|-------------------|------------| = 8640 ISK (you can do fractions, right?) | 1 m3 | 1 Scordite | --- What to do Next --- Now we get to the point of this guide: Buying Stuff and Making ISK. You should have your rookie ship docked in the Duripant base, with 90,000+ ISK in your wallet. Step 1: Open the Market, and drill down into Ships / Frigates / Gallente Step 2: Click on Imicus. On the right, under Sellers, sort by Price and find the cheapest Imicus you can, within a few jumps. Try to find one selling for around 60K ISK. Or less, if you get lucky... Step 3: Right-click on a cheap one, select Location, then Set Destination. Step 4: Open the Map. Check to be sure all the hops from Duripant to the seller location are blue or green. If they are not, choose a different seller on the market. Flying through Yellow, Orange, or Red systems means a good chance someone will Blow You Up in PvP. Close the Map when you seller with a green route picked. Step 5: Buy your Imicus at the remote destination. If you cannot afford one, go and mine with the rookie ship until you can. Step 6: In the Market again, drill down into Ships / Shuttles / Gallente. Step 7: Buy a Gallente Shuttle, at the Duripant station, for around 9000 ISK. It will say 'Station' under jumps, on the seller list, if it is for sale at the station you are on. If you cannot afford a Shuttle, go and mine with the rookie ship until you can. Step 8: Unpackage and get into (Make Active) your shuttle, leaving the rookie ship on the base, intact. KEEP your rookie ship there with its modules, and do not sell it. You may need it for emergency mining if you run out of ISK later on. Step 9: Find the Imicus you bought in your Assets window. Set Destination to the location of your Imicus, and fly the shuttle there and dock. This assumes you have Gallente Frigates L2 and are able to fly the ship... if not, abort Drones L3 and train this skill up now. Step 10: Get in your Imicus. Repackage the shuttle and sell it immediately. If no one is buying, reprocess the shuttle into minerals, and sell the minerals. Be tidy-- shuttles are expendable, for one-way trips. Step 11: Fly your Imicus back to Duripant, leaving nothing behind to clutter your Assets. You now have two ships at the newbie base. --- A Bried Interlude on Buying Modules and Skills --- Now you need to buy modules for your Imicus, and the skills to use those modules. Buying skills and modules will require searching the market to find the best prices you can manage, and flying out to get them. You will have to mine with the rookie ship, before being able to buy everything you need for the Imicus. When you see the little blue (i) next to an item on the Market, that is a Show Info shortcut. Use it, and click on the Required Skills tab for that item (if there is one) to see what the Required Skills are. You must have -all- the skills in the list (they are green if you have them, otherwise red) to use the item. Getting skills you do not have in your Skill List, means opening the Market and buying skill books with ISK, down in the Skills section. Once you have the skill book in your Items on the station, you right-click on it and Train Skill. The skill book will vanish, and the skill will appear at Level 0 in your Character's Skill List. It will proceed to train up to Level 1, and then stop. You can train it up to Level 2 at that point, or train up another skill, or whatever. You can buy a lot of skill books, and rapidly train and then abort each one, putting them all in your skill list where you can select and train them up to usefulness as needed, without having to carry a cargohold of skillbooks around with you. It is generally recommended to get at least 1 or 2 skill points in a skill, minimum, before aborting and training something else. Otherwise, they might vanish... --- What to do After That --- Here are some starting modules you will want for your mining Imicus, in order of priority, and what skills you will need to buy, to use them. Prices listed are the best in the Essence region at the time of this writing: Miner I (Turrets & Bays / Mining Lasers) x2 Cost per Unit: 6500 ISK Required Skills: Mining L2 Mining Drone I (Drones / Mining Drones) x3 Cost per Unit: 13,500 ISK Required Skills: Mining Drone Operation L1, Drones L1, Mining L2 Expanded Carghold I (Hull & Armor / Hull Upgrades) x2 Cost per Unit: 29,000 ISK Required Skills: Hull Upgrades L1, Mechanic L1 Small Shield Booster I (Shield / Shield Boosters / Small) x1 Cost per Unit: 7200 ISK Required Skills: Shield Operations L1, Engineering L1 1MN Afterburner I (Propulsion / Afterburners) x1 Cost per Unit: 3000 ISK Required Skills: Afterburner L1, Navigation L1 Hopefully you can buy the two Miner I's, fit them to your Imicus immediately, and go out into the Duripant asteroid fields to mine. After that you will need to buy skill books using the ISK you make mining. The Imicus can hold three light drones, so to increase mining power, getting the three Mining Drone I's, the skills to use them, and the ability to fly three drones at once, ought to be the next priority. --- And now, some math --- If you followed the character design above, you will already have Mining L2 and Gallente Frigates L4. Assuming you bought and fitted the two Miner I's on your Imicus immediately and went-a-mining, the two skills give you some considerable bonuses: +20 percent Drone range (36 km total, useful for combat missions), and +10 percent yield on your Miner I's, increasing their performance from 40 m3 / minute, to 44 m3 / minute. An Imicus hold full of Scordite ore in Duripant, at the time of this writing, is worth: 320 m3 | 6.666666 Scordite | 10.8 ISK | -------|-------------------|------------| = 23040 ISK | 1 m3 | 1 Scordite | The Miner I mining laser will mine 44 m3 of ore per minute with Mining L2 skill, as above. That means it will take two Miner I mining lasers approximately (320*60/(44+44)) 218 seconds, or 3 minutes 38 seconds, to fill the Imicus cargo bay completely. If you can fill your hold completely, warp back to Duripant base, dock, sell the ore, undock, and warp back to the Scordite asteroids, in, say, 6 minutes total, you can make: 23040 ISK / 6 minutes or 230400 ISK / 1 hour That's a quarter million ISK per hour. That is a LOT of money for a new player to have on hand for modules and skill books. But wait, there's more. Let's assume you've gotten your three Mining Drone I's, the skills to use them, and have your Drones skill up to Level 3. Mining Drone I's will mine 15 m3 of ore every 60 seconds, so adding that, we can now fill the hold in approximately (320*60/((44+44+15+15+15))) 144 seconds, or 2 minutes 24 seconds. That shaves another minute off of our roundtrip time of 6 minutes, bringing us to: 23040 ISK / 5 minutes or 276480 ISK / 1 hour Quite a bit more ISK, for one hour of our time. --- A Brief Interlude on Bookmarking --- You can shave off more time by eliminating having to thrust into docking range, or into mining range of asteroids, by setting Zero Point Bookmarks (or Instas), in your bookmark list. Setting one for the Duripant base is easy. The MOMENT you undock from the base, Add Bookmark in People in Places. If you warp to that bookmark from someplace else, instead of to the base itself, you will arrive out of warp well inside of the base docking radius, and be able to dock with the base instantly. Setting one for the asteriods you are mining is trickier. You need to understand that warp will place you (very) roughly 15 km short of anything you are warping towards. To compensate, you will want to place your bookmark 15 km beyond the place you want to arrive at, along the direction of travel. In the case of asteroids, find a cluster of Scordite you would like to mine, and fly to them to point blank range. Then, point your ship AWAY from the Duripant base (where you will be warping in from), and fly away into space until your asteroid cluster is 15 km behind you. Then bookmark your location. When you warp to that bookmark from the Duripant base, you should come out of warp 15 km short of your bookmark, and thus be right in the middle of your cluster of asteroids. Warping back and forth between these two bookmarks should mean you are never having to thrust to get into range for mining, or docking. You will come out of warp already in range, to do either. --- A Brief Interlude on What to do When You Get Sick of Mining --- The Imicus can actually be turned into a very effective tool for handling Level 1 Combat Missions. It can field 3 Scout Drone I's, and can target much farther than the other T1 frigates. This gives it the ability to kite large groups of enemy frigates, keeping them at a distance while chewing them apart at long range with its three drones. It is arguably just as useful as a Tristan or Incursus for this purpose, and can carry a lot more cargo. It is -much- cheaper to buy and fit with modules. Of course, you ought to upgrade to a Catalyst (Destroyer) as soon as you can... --- And finally, some more math --- There are other mining ship options to consider. One option is the Navitas, the so-called mining frigate. While lacking the larger drone capacity and cargo capacity, of the Imicus, it has considerable bonuses to mining yields: +20 percent yield per Frigate skill level. Assuming you already have Mining L2 and Gallente Frigates L4, and fit two Miner I's on it, your mining rate per laser is (40*1.10*1.80) 79.2 m3 mined per 60 seconds. You will have a cargo capacity of (215*1.2) 258 m3. You will be able to fit only one Mining Drone I, which mines 15 m3 per minute. The Navitas ore mining rate is ((79.2+79.2+15)/60) 2.89 m3 per second. To fill a Navitas cargo hold will take (258*60/(79.2+79.2+15)) 89 seconds. You earn about 18576 ISK per 4 minutes, which is about 278640 ISK per 1 hour, with the Navitas. To compare with the Imicus: The Imicus ore mining rate is ((44+44+44+15+15)/60) 2.22 m3 per second. To fill a Imicus cargo hold will take (320*60/((44+44+15+15+15))) 144 seconds. You earn about 23040 ISK per 5 minutes, which is about 276480 ISK per 1 hour, with the Imicus. So, the Navitas mines faster than the Imicus does... but it has a smaller hold, so you will burn more time warping to dock, unloading and warping back. It's increases your mouseclick load and effort, for nearly the same amount of ISK. The Imicus is also a powerful combat frigate, so... not much point in bothering with a Navitas, unless you're mining in a gang and someone else is hauling the ore to dock for you. Another option is to mine with a Catalyst (Destroyer) Setting this ship up is trickier. For this, you will want to use a different mining laser: the EP-S Gaussian I Excavation Pulse mining laser. It has a lower CPU cost of 51, rather than the 60 required by a standard Miner I, and a base mining rate of 42 m3 per minute, 46.2 with Mining L2 skill. The Catalyst only has 170 CPU points, but with sufficient Electronics skill, or perhaps the use of two or three Co-Processor modules, the Catalyst CPU can be boosted up to support four of these 51 CPU lasers easily. Your cargo capacity is large, at 400 m3, but your drone capacity is small, only 5 m3 like the Navitas. Putting all this together... The Catalyst ore mining rate is ((46.2+46.2+46.2+46.2+15)/60) 3.33 m3 per second. To fill a Catalyst cargo hold will take (400*60/((46.2+46.2+46.2+46.2+15))) 120 seconds. You earn about 28800 ISK per 4.5 minutes, which is about 384000 ISK per 1 hour, with the Catalyst. That is a 39 percent gain, over the Imicus, in terms of profit per time spent mining. If you have a dedicated hauler in a gang with you, then the only thing matters is the m3 per second rate, and in that case, the 3.33 rate of Catalyst is a 50 percent gain over the 2.22 rate of the Imicus, and also beats the 2.89 rate of the Navitas. So, once you have a Catalyst, using a Frigate for mining becomes a waste of time. --- Happy Mining --- Cheers, Thereamore Jane