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Master Entreri
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Posted - 2007.11.20 15:51:00 -
[1]
A Complete Newbs Guide to Starting off in Eve-Online.
Introduction:
Eve-Online is, in my opinion a much more complex MMO then many others, so it does tend to have a fairly higher learning curve. This guide will give new players the gist of what to do in the first few days and weeks of starting a character in Eve.
Please notice the words "starting off" in the title, this guide will not hold your hand all the way into late game, its just meant to teach you how to get your character off the ground in areas such as -- Making your character, Making Isk, Setting up your first ships, and other basic concepts.
Also keep in mind that I'm sure that there are people that will disagree with some of the ideas and suggestions in this guide. As Eve tends to be more complex in many areas then in most MMOs there are many times in which the answer to a question will be "It Depends". One example of this is to a question I here very often from new players. "What is the best (insert ship type)?" The answer. . "It depends"
Depends on what? The situation, and your skills mainly. Say you wanted to know if you should choose a Thorax or a Vexor for your next Cruiser and you ask "Which one is better?" In this case it depends on your skills. There are different weapons skills you can have such as Missles, Gunnery, and Drones. If you have high drone skills the Vexor would be the ship for you, while if you have high gunnery skills the Thorax would serve you better. But thats enough about that for now onto the real guide.
Part 1 -- Making a Character, well.
There is a difference between making a character and making one WELL. This isn't WoW where you just throw together a character and most of the choices are made after its created. In Eve some of the most important choices you make are made right here, at the beginning.
This may mean restarting your character in order to get a better start. Trust me, its better to do this sooner rather then later, making your character well in the beginning will pay off in the long run. Now we will break making a new character into steps.
1. Decide what the character is going to do. Are you going to be combat oriented, making your fortunes with guns blazing? or do you want to aim your turrets at some juicy asteroids, mining masses of valuable ore and either selling the ore or perhaps manufacturing goods to sell at a profit? Then again you could go the way of the trader and look for those lucrative "Buy low sell high" chances in the markets of Eve.
All of these choices are viable ways to make a living in Eve, some pay off in late game more then early game but none the less all can make you money. So it is important to know what way you are going BEFORE making your character.
2. Choosing your Race. In Eve there are 4 races. The Amarr Empire, The Minmatar Republic, The Gallente Federation, and The Caldari State. I will not go into their histories as that is not the point of this guide.
If you have chosen the path of the Industrialist and wish to mine, there is little difference in what race you choose as the biggest mining ships, called "Mining Barges" and "Exhumers" are a non racial ship so you get the same bonuses no matter what race you are.
Now if you have decided to be a combat pilot the choice in Race makes a MUCH bigger difference as each have very unique fighting styles. I will briefly outline each race one at a time.
-The Amarr use energy weapons that never need ammo. This can be very nice as you will never need to store ammo in your cargo hold and you will not need to go back to a station to get more ammo since you will never run out. A disadvantage to the Amarr however is that all their weapons do EM/Thermal damage and while that may be good for taking out an enemies shields (shields are inherently weak to EM) its not so good for taking out their armor (Armor is inherently strong against EM). (DO NOT take this to mean the Amarr are not a good choice, the Amarr
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Master Entreri
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Posted - 2007.11.20 15:51:00 -
[2]
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Master Entreri
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Posted - 2007.11.20 15:53:00 -
[3]
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Master Entreri
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Posted - 2007.11.20 16:20:00 -
[4]
Part 2 -- I Have A Character!! . . . .What now?
Well there are a few things you must do at this point. The first of which would be to start a skill. Probably right off the bat you would want to start to train for a Frigate class ship so you can get out of the Newb Ship you start with. Once you have a few levels of Frigate you can decide where to go. I personally went for Destroyer after that, as it has more guns and is a little more durable then the Frigates and 99% of the time you could have one by the end of your first day or maybe the second. Or you can go for a combo of learning skills and support skills.
What I did was I went back and forth. I would get a level or 2 of my basic learning skills as the first few only take minutes to learn and then get my Frigate skills up to where I could get Destroyer. Afterwards alternating between support skills such as Mechanic and Hull Upgrades and then back to a few more levels of Learning. Once you have all your Learning skills to level 4 you can get the advanced Learning skills which yet again increase your attributes by +1 per level.
Now once you have your learning skills up a little and your support skills up to where you can outfit your ship decently well I would then proceed to train up for Cruiser. (Some go all the way to Cruiser before seriously training support skills) Once you get Cruiser you will want to get at least level 4 of it fairly soon as it will be your main ship type for a little while.
That is as far as I'm going to go into skills here cause by this point I will hope you have linked up with a corp that can help advise you on where you ultimately want to go. You could pilot big Battleships for large front line battles, or you could choose to fly an interceptor and run circles around the bigger slower ships. There are many choices to make and this is only meant to be a basic guide so for further skill advice talk to an experienced player.
Next I would suggest doing the tutorial missions. They do a decent job of getting you settled with the controls of the game, make you a few isk, and get you a nice shiny frigate to get you out of that newb ship.
So, you want to make some Isk (Interstellar Kredits) huh? In the beginning there are two main ways of doing this.
Missioning: Each NPC corp in Eve has agents that you can run missions for. You overall probably make more money doing this right off then you would Ratting. As when you go to an agent and get a mission you get paid for doing the mission, you get a bonus reward for doing in in a timely manner, you get the bounties for the ships you destroy, and you get the loot from the ships that you can sell. But also, doing missions will open up "storyline missions" in which an agent will contact you and give you something to do and in return you get a few bucks but as a bonus you often times get implants, which were touched on earlier as another means to increase attributes.
Ratting: In each system there is a certain amount of asteroid belts. In the asteroid belts you can find NPC pirate spawns which each have a set amount of Isk you get for killing them (the bounty) and you can loot the ship and take whatever is left. The main thing this has over missioning is you are not stuck on a time table and you can stop whenever you want. Also if you find a nice system that doesn't have a lot of ratters and it has some good spawns it is possible to make more money then missions. Also in lower sec areas you have a chance of finding faction spawns which often times carry very expensive loot that you can sell for mucho isk.
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Master Entreri
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Posted - 2007.11.20 16:20:00 -
[5]
Ok so choose what you wanna do.
Ah, so you wanna rat? Excellent choice! Here is how you start.
Pull up your map and go into the map options and find filters and then filter the systems by Security Status. Find a system that is .7 or lower as rats will not spawn in 1.0 or .9 systems. The lower the security rating the higher the rats bounties will be worth and also the better the loot.
When looking for a system to rat in, DO NOT go into systems with a security rating of .4 or below (when you try to gate at a system .4 or below you will see a pop up warning you that you are about to enter a dangerous system). In fact I would not wander into low sec space till you have at least a Cruiser with decent support skill and some experience playing under your belt (unless of course you are lucky enough to join a corp/alliance experienced in low sec that can hold your hand). In systems that have a security status of .5 -1.0 you are protected from player pirates by a corporation called CONCORD. They act as the police of high sec systems and will attack with extreme prejudice anyone dumb enough to attack you in these systems.
Note: This does not mean that you can't be killed by a player in high sec space. Its the same as if a bunch of friends came to your rescue, they might not get there in time. What it does is it makes it so most people will not want to attack you here as they will soon after find themselves being ejected into the cold unforgiving space, less one ship.
But anyway onto the meat. Once you find a system to rat in, preferable one with as many asteroid belts as possible you just start warping from belt to belt and open fire on the filthy pirate scum! Loot and repeat.
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Master Entreri
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Posted - 2007.11.20 16:21:00 -
[6]
Oh I'm sorry. You didn't want to rat? Well then here is how you find a missioning agent!
Missioning is a little more complicated then ratting but is fairly simple once you get into it.
Lets say you want to do missions for the Federal Intelligence Office (Thats a Gallente corp). You would open your "People and Places" window from the menu on the left and select "corporation" from the drop down box. Then type "Federal Intelligence Office" in and search. Once you find it right click it and open its info and you will see a bunch of tabs, you are looking for the one that says "agents" this will show you a list of all the FIOs agents listed inside other tabs that describe the type of agents such as Intelligence, Security, Command and so on. These tabs are important as they will determine what kind of missions you will be doing. Here is a list of what the different types give you for missions.
Administration: 50% Combat, 50% Courier Advisory: 34% Combat, 66% Courier Archives: 5% Combat, 90% Courier, 5% Trade Astrosurveying: 40% Combat, 30% Courier, 25% Mining, 5% Trade Command: 97% Combat, 3% Courier Distribution: 5% Combat, 95% Courier Intelligence: 85% Combat, 15% Courier Internal Security: 95% Combat, 5% Courier Legal: 50% Combat, 50% Courier Manufacturing: 5% Combat, 95% Courier Marketing: 5% Combat, 95% Courier Mining: 5% Combat, 85% Courier, 10% Mining (II) Production: 5% Combat, 95% Courier Public Relations: 34% Combat, 66% Courier R&D: 0% Combat, 50% Courier(S), 50% Trade Security: 90% Combat, 5% Courier, 5%Trade Storage: 5% Combat, 95% Courier(L) Surveillance: 95% Combat, 5% Courier
So lets say you now want to do combat missions, you would open the tab of the agent type you want, namely Security, Internal Security, Surveillance, Command or any of the other ones with a very high percentage of Combat missions. Once you click that it will pop open with a list of agent names and some other information, here is an example of what you will see.
Carane Poi, Level 1, Quality -19 Location Renyn IX - Moon 4 - Federal Intelligence Office Logistics Support.
The top line shows you the agents name, the level of the mission and the quality. You are at first looking for, most likely, a level 1 agent but you want the highest quality you can get as this will equal more rewards for you. In the example above the quality is pretty low -19. You would want to see if there was a different agent with say maybe a -5 or if you can even a positive number, at first this may or may not be possible. You might have to take what you can get and do missions for him a few times. As you do missions for that corp your standings with them will increase and more Agents will open up to you pretty fast.
One last thing about missions that really set them apart from ratting is that when doing missions you get awarded Loyalty Points (LP) along with your isk reward. The LP can be spent along with isk in the LP Store of that corp. You can get implants, skills, and even very powerful faction ships that would normally cost you much much much more. The higher the level the better the LP.
Also worth noting is that there are skills you can learn that will increase your standings, the amount of isk you get, as well as how much LP you get.
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Master Entreri
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Posted - 2007.11.20 16:22:00 -
[7]
Part 3. Awesome!!. . . . So how do I setup my ship?
Well this depends on things including your race and what skills you have. Since you are just beginning and don't have a lot of support skills your choices in the beginning will be limited. Here is a short list of support skills you REALLY want to get up to level II or III asap in order to be able to get a complete basic setup on your ship.
Mechanic - Repair Systems Hull Upgrades Engineering Energy Management Navigation - Afterburner Propulsion Jamming (requires Electronics III and Navigation II)
That pretty much covers the basics unless you are a shield tank. . . Whats a shield tank you say?
In Eve there are 4 types of tanks.
Shield Tanks: Basically this means you concentrate your repair and resistance boosting efforts on your shields. So a shield tank would have things like Shield Boosters and Shield Hardeners in order to keep their shields up in combat.
Armor Tank: An armor tanker puts his repair effort to, you guessed it, the armor. The shields of the ship are simply a free damage buffer allowing him some time before having to turn on his tank. An armor tank would have things like Armor Repairers and Armor Hardeners in order to keep his armor repaired.
Structure Tank: This is a foolish way of tanking and I personally don't know anyone that does it. It would involve using Damage Controls and Structure Repairers to keep your structure up, but as your structure is the last line of defense between you and a very short trip back to your home station its not a very good idea. That and, the structure repairers aren't as efficient as Armor and Shield repairers.
Speed Tank: I'm by no means an expert at speed tanking but, it has nothing to do with repairing or hardening. It has to do with moving fast and in such a way that the enemy can't land a hit on you in the first place. An example of someone that would use this is an interceptor pilot.
What determines what type of tank you are actually depends on the ship you are flying. But for the most part if you are Gallente or Amarr you will probably be an Armor Tank (though its important to note that some Gallente ships can shield tank well), if you are Caldari you will most likely be a shield tank. And Minmatar have a number of both types.
So thats the rule of thumb, heres the more technical explanation. Whether you are an Armor or Shield tank comes down to how many Low or Middle slots your ship has. Since everything having to do with repairing your armor or boosting its resistance goes in a low slot, if you have more lows then middles you are an Armor tank, and if you have a lot of mids, you are a shield tank.
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Master Entreri
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Posted - 2007.11.20 16:23:00 -
[8]
Now, I suppose I should tell you that there are 2 other types of tanking that go along with the ones I just showed you. They are Active and Passive.
Active tanking means that you have hardeners and repairers that you must turn on once battle has commenced.
Passive tanks on the other hand work by boosting your resistance and increasing your ships ability to automaticly regenerate its shields in order to negate your enemies damage.
Well then, now that you are an expert on tanking, if you happen to be a shield tanker you will need these additional skills for a basic setup. (keep in mind that these skills are still useful even if you are not a shield tank and you will want them up anyway)
Shield Operation Shield Management Shield Upgrades
All those support skills (and then some) you will want to get up even further, I especially urge armor tankers to get Hull Upgrades IV asap (level IV takes about 4 days) as that is when you can use real armor hardeners and not just Nano Membranes.
Alrighty then, now that that is out of the way lets learn how to setup a ship. There are many ways to setup a ship, some focus more on damage while other focus more on taking damage. So I'm not going to show you a setup. I'm gonna give you the basic understanding of what you are going to want in one.
First the armor tank. Armor tanks want an Armor Repairer, and a couple modules to increase resistance. If you only have Hull Upgrades II or III this will mean using Energize Adaptive Nano Membranes. They give less of a resistance bonus then Armor Hardeners but on the plus side they don't have to be turned on and therfore do not take capacitor.
Now, if you happen to have Hull Upgrades IV then you will want Hardeners. But since they only increase resistance to 1 type of damage rather then all you will have to use the hardeners that are specific to the enemy you are fighting, you can find the list of what damage types are done by what factions in just about every other persons bio but for the heck of it I'll include it at the end of this section.
If you have left over slots you can either add more resistance by adding another membrane or hardener, or you could use a Damage Control Unit. Or, you can put on some mods that increase your damage.
In the mid slots you will probably have an Afterburner in the first one and possibly a webifier then you will want cap chargers in the rest.
High slots can be whatever you want. Just make sure to stick with the weapons you get a bonus for. i.e. if you are Amarr don't be using Hybrid Weapons and so on.
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Master Entreri
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Posted - 2007.11.20 16:23:00 -
[9]
Now for the shield tank.
Ok, you obviously want a shield booster. Now if you have the needed skills perhaps a shield extender, but surely you'll want shield hardeners to increase your resistances. Basically a shield version of the armor tank there. Now in the low slots you will probably need things that increase your cap charge since you cant use Cap Chargers. So this will require you to have the right skills to use things like "Local Power Plant Managers" and such in your low slots.
Hardeners to use Angel: All Amarr Navy: EM/Thermal Gurista, Mordus, Gallente: Kinetic/Thermal Blood: EM/Thermal Sansha: EM/Thermal Serpentis: Kinetic/Thermal Mercenary: EM/Thermal/ (Kinetik missiles) Caldary navy: Kinetic/Thermal Khanid: EM/Thermal Zazzmatazz : all types of dmg Mordus: Kinetic/thermal Rogue Pirate: EM/Explosive/Kinetic Odamian: Kin/therm
Damage types to use Angel: EM(shields) Explosive(Armor), or thermal all round Amarr Navy: EM (shield) Explosive(Armor) Mordus: EM (shield) Explosive(Armor) Gurista: EM(shields) Explosive(Armor), Thermal/Kinetic all round Blood: Thermal (em thrown into the mix too) Sansha: EM and if that don't whoop em, try thermal Serpentis: Thermal Mercenary: Explosives Caldary Navy: Explosives (Kine/Therm) Khanid: EM(shields) Explosive(Armor) Zazzmatazz: EM(shield)/Explosive(Armor) Rogue Pirate: EM(shield)/Explosive(Armor) Odamian: EM(shield)/Explosive(Armor)
Anyway, That is my guide. I hope this has helped you start your character out on the right track.
Fly Safe, Master Entreri
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NightF0x
Gallente Chicken Coup Raiders
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Posted - 2007.11.20 17:34:00 -
[10]
a little suggestion...you want to make a nice New Player Guide? Please put it into Word/OpenDocument/Notepad/PDF...anything other than straight on the forum. For starters it is extremely difficult to print. It's is also hard to read. By putting it in another document you can edit it easily, print it, read it easier and email it if you wanted to. Just a suggestion
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Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.20 17:36:00 -
[11]
You mean attach a txt file?
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NightF0x
Gallente Chicken Coup Raiders
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Posted - 2007.11.20 17:39:00 -
[12]
No I mean make a Word document (using Microsoft Office) or another word processor and then host it on a site then link to that.
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Chipchop Chip
Minmatar Republic University
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Posted - 2007.11.20 17:39:00 -
[13]
As someone who just started playing a few days ago, there are some great tips in here. Thanks for all the hard work! 
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Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.20 17:42:00 -
[14]
Glad it was of some help Chip. And Thanks for the advice Fox, I will look into that asap.
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RainbowRandolph
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Posted - 2007.11.20 18:26:00 -
[15]
Awesome Awesome Job! Most Concise and non-Jargon plauged post for newbs ever!
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Zeonos
Amarr Fairtrade Syndicate
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Posted - 2007.11.20 21:10:00 -
[16]
awesome job. infact, so awesome that i would gladly host it for you for free, unlimited bandwith, images, section links and more. just let me know, and we will work it out.
Look I Hijacked a sig!! -Kaemonn <3 Kaemonn -Zeonos A sunset with Kaemonn... how nice... -Wachtmeister In Eve-Online Forum Hijack Signature! -Ivan K This space is reserved for moderator hijacking, Need more colors! Red & Yellow & Pink & Green, Orange & Purple & ME! - Deckard My yellow pwns Deckard's fruity rainbow thingie anyday. BRING IT BABY! -Hango Black and pink 4tw however gold pwns -Eldo
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Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.21 02:43:00 -
[17]
:-) Thank you! I'm really glad that you like my guide. And as far as your offer to host it, thank you again, I think I may take you up on that offer. :-)
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Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.21 15:52:00 -
[18]
Send me an evemail or a convo in game sometime.
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Zeonos
Amarr Fairtrade Syndicate
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Posted - 2007.11.21 16:24:00 -
[19]
i will, as soon as i see you online, ill be on in a few hours. around 19 eve time.
Look I Hijacked a sig!! -Kaemonn <3 Kaemonn -Zeonos A sunset with Kaemonn... how nice... -Wachtmeister In Eve-Online Forum Hijack Signature! -Ivan K This space is reserved for moderator hijacking, Need more colors! Red & Yellow & Pink & Green, Orange & Purple & ME! - Deckard My yellow pwns Deckard's fruity rainbow thingie anyday. BRING IT BABY! -Hango Black and pink 4tw however gold pwns -Eldo
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Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.22 18:41:00 -
[20]
bump
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Vivian Porter
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Posted - 2007.11.22 19:29:00 -
[21]
Your third section seems to have been truncated, ending on the word "bra" when obviously "brainer" was meant. I've no idea how much of it was truncated though.
and ... nice guide.
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Ard UnjiiGo
The Bastards
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Posted - 2007.11.22 20:39:00 -
[22]
Very nice overall. Well done. Only feedback is that some of the advice concerning low-sec is not the soundest in my opinion or experience. Particularly the bit about taking cruisers to start. Take frigs to start trying out low-sec. A low-skilled cruiser, BC or BS pilot is a sweet target and has a lower chance of getting through gate camps or station camps and are more expensive to lose. Give frigs a shot at first and be prepared to lose some. MY .02 isk. If you want more of my .02 isk concerning the low-sec portions of the guide just give a holler. Kinda surprised some vets haven't sopken up on some of it tbh (only 4 months here myself so still a rookie but have been living and loving low-sec since day 2 - all in frigs ).
"the Yarr is strong with this one" -Azirapheal |

Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.22 23:36:00 -
[23]
Thank you Vivian, I did actually notice that and I think its the only thing that was cut off but I'll fix it, thanks for pointing it out.
Ard, I see what you are saying and I do partially agree, but also on the other hand I wasnt saying that a new player should run off into low sec as soon as they get a Cruiser. Which is why I also mentioned "Some experience playing under your belt".
But as I said, I do see what you are saying and it would probably be good to mension that it would probably be good to use a frigate for a while, at least till you are used to the area.
So as soon as I get home I will edit it to reflect those thoughts. Again thank you both for your help :)
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Sakura Nihil
Stimulus
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Posted - 2007.11.23 11:40:00 -
[24]
Bumpage.
Say no to knee-jerk additions and nerfs, mmkay? |

Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.24 01:57:00 -
[25]
bump
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Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.25 01:52:00 -
[26]
bump bump
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Lucius Dracus
Amarr Imperial Academy
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Posted - 2007.11.25 04:16:00 -
[27]
Nice work.
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Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.25 18:15:00 -
[28]
Guide has been edited to reflect the above changes.
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Master Entreri
The Dead Parrot Shoppe Inc. Brutally Clever Empire
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Posted - 2007.11.26 16:26:00 -
[29]
Bump
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Nihlus garrus
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Posted - 2007.11.26 18:38:00 -
[30]
Hey thanks man, yesterday i started my second char cause i was kinda lost with my first char. Made a mimnatar brutor now, soldier. And this guide gives me a pretty good layout for what to do next!
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