Because these casinos couldn't be attacked through in-game means, they had a clear advantage over EVE's conventional economic machines. Unsurprisingly, CCP later banned all forms of ISK gambling. Eve Online actually has two currencies, called Plex and ISK. Players can use ISK to purchase Plex, and one Plex is good for a month’s subscription to the game. But you can also purchase Plex from. The ISK for the lotteries is a maximum of 200 million every (roughly) three weeks per character. This isn't trillions of ISK, high roller, wallets bigger than half the game type scenario. If you ask me, IWI having more ISK than the rest of the game combined was a liability to the game itself. Disclosure: Eve-bet is an advertiser on my site (the image in the upper right corner). At no point have they asked for or I provided the content of any of my articles for review. The subject hasn't even been raised. I also have frequented multiple isk gambling sites in the past, and am generally an advocate of consensual gambling.

• 3Starting Character Skills and Attributes
• 4Developing a career plan: What will you be when you grow up?
  • 4.3Picking an ISK-earning specialty (or a few)

Welcome to EVE: Now get a job!

So, you've joined the wonderful world of EVE Online - congratulations! It doesn't take long for new players to realize that EVE does not present you with the keys to survival on a silver platter. After giving them a noob ship, a short tutorial, and some helpful starter missions, EVE kicks players into the harsh environment of space to fend for themselves. This is one of the aspects of the EVE sandbox that is both thrilling and frightening, at the same time.

One of the first lessons that every EVE pilot learns is: InterStellar Kredits (ISK) run the universe. Without money, you cannot buy ships, equipment, trade goods, and just about everything else one needs to thrive - or survive. In EVE, perhaps more than any other online multiplayer game, TANSTAAFL [1] ('There ain't no such thing as a free lunch').

So, one of the first questions that every new EVE player asks is: how do I make ISK? After some experience and education, that question generally becomes: how do I make the most ISK with the least effort in the shortest time?

Fortunately, there are many ways to earn ISK in EVE. This brief guide intends to describe some of the typical options that many EVE players pursue, and to provide some helpful guidance about which ISK-earning careers might be the best fit for your personality and playing style.

PLEX - a reason to earn ISK, or a quick way to get it

It is possible, through hard work and perseverance as described below, to earn enough ISK to remove the burden of purchasing your EVE subscription.

How can I do that, you ask? - PLEX.

PLEX can be purchased using ISK obtained in-game, and used to pay for 30 days of game time. How cool is that?

Sell Eve Online Isk

Be warned, however - The path to self-sustained gaming nirvana is not for everyone. As of the time of this writing, the market value of a PLEX was right around 600 million ISK. You may think that sounds like a huge number, and you would be right for thinking it. But it is by no means an unattainable sum. Once you've learned some of the techniques described below, you too could be one of the many players who let their EVE pay for itself.

Conversely, you can also purchase PLEX using real-world money, and sell it on the market for ISK. If that sounds like the ideal solution for you, congratulations, you can stop reading right here. The choice, as with everything in the sandbox, is entirely in your hands.

Starting Character Skills and Attributes

Few new EVE players consider the potential career implications of their racial, bloodline and ancestry selections when establishing their first character. Generally, they select what sounds like the most interesting or fun character background to play. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, however, as no in-game career choice is blocked to any racial faction (Amarr, Gallente, Minmatar or Caldari) or bloodline. Any character can learn any skill in the game.

Starting Skills

All new characters start with the same skill set.

Starting Attributes

All characters start with 20 points in each attribute except Charisma, which starts with 19.

(Note: In prior versions, starting attributes were dependent on the Race, Bloodline and Ancestry of the character.)

Attributes can be remapped, so this does not present a significant obstacle to optimizing your character for different careers.

Optimizing Skill and Attribute Development

After playing EVE for a while, many players establish an alternative character (generally known as an 'alt' in game parlance), either as one of the three available characters for any account, or as a new account. There are many advantages to having an alt character, or several alts, which we will explore further later.

A great utility for experimenting with different starting character races and bloodlines is EVEHQ [2], which contains a very useful Character Creation Tool. With EVEHQ, you can model your starting character, and then develop optimal skill training and/or attribute remapping plans, thus enabling your character to use the equipment or perform the tasks needed for your desired ISK-making activities in the shortest time.

Developing a career plan: What will you be when you grow up?

Do the starter career mission tracks

Once you've established your character or alt, you should play all five of the starter career mission tracks offered: industry, military, exploration, business, and advanced military. These career introduction missions dish out numerous additional skills for free, and each is nicely explained in practice - sometimes with special 'civilian' versions of the necessary module so you can try out the mechanic before training the skill needed for the real version of the module in question.

To access these career mission tracks, press the F12 key, then select 'Show Career Agents'. These introductory missions are entirely optional, but highly recommended because they provide essential skillbooks, ships, and some initial capital, with a relatively minor investment in time. The starter missions also teach you the basics of the principal career options for making money in EVE.

• Industry missions cover the basics of mining, refining and manufacturing of goods. Industrial tycoons can create enormous wealth in the EVE universe, but not without a lot of strong competition. Mining is a popular way to make money, too. But manufacturing tends not to generate any real profits until you have learned some highly advanced skills and invested heavily in blueprints. Planetary interaction requires a substantial initial investment, but can provide a steady stream of income to supplement your industial income.

• Business missions introduce players to EVE's open and comprehensive market system. With good trading skills, EVE players can earn substantial ISK without ever undocking from a station. You can also earn a good income from hauling goods between trade hubs, buying low in one location and then selling high in another. The business missions reward you with a basic industrial ship for free, and the starter systems offer a potential market opportunity for many goods that are in demand for new characters.

• Military missions cover the most obvious way of playing EVE - shooting stuff for loot and salvage. Initially, you have the skills to fly a frigate of your race.

• Exploration missions cover the discovery of valuable sites in EVE space - wormholes, deadspace pockets, and undiscovered archeology sites, among others. These missions show you how to use the scanner and probes, and how to identify and exploit the sites you discover.

• Advanced Military missions will introduce you to the finer details of EVE combat. These missions are more difficult than those of in the Military career track, and as a result, these should be taken after the other track is completed. This more advanced track will teach you how to assist others in order to overcome a threat, as well as the effects of the various weapon damage types. Once finished, you will have all the basic knowledge required to dive head first into the ever raging war between the factions of EVE Online.

After the five career introductions, each consisting of ten missions, you will be pointed towards the first epic mission arc of EVE, 'The Blood-Stained Stars'. While a definite challenge for a new player, this 50-mission arc provides some substantial rewards, and is worth finishing. The arc takes you all over the safe empire space and you can freely branch off to do other things, returning to the arc later as you choose. If you decide to pursue this arc, you should read the handy mission guide on our wiki: The Blood-Stained Stars.

Develop a career plan

Once you've been introduced to some of the basics of EVE, and have sampled the starter career mission tracks, you now know enough to begin optimizing your character for one or more ISK-making specialties. It's generally best, at least initially, to get very good at one kind of ISK-generating activity, rather than be not-so-great at a lot of different money-earning ventures. The essential steps for developing your ISK-earning career plan are as follows:

1. Create a concept in your mind of what you want to do in EVE. Don't limit yourself. Make this anything you can imagine, no matter how unlikely or outlandish.

2. Do some Level 1 (and later, more advanced level) missions until you have enough resources to begin doing what you thought of in Step 1.

3. Begin to execute your idea from Step 1.

4. If the idea isn't profitable enough by itself to sustain itself initially, supplement with occasional mission running.

5. Keep developing your idea, evolve it, and figure out ways to make it self-sustaining.

6. If your idea is ultimately not self-sustaining, think of a different concept, and go to Step 2.

Though this approach seems obvious, very few EVE players actually plan their character's career development in this way. Instead, they try everything that comes by, as it becomes available to them, which provides a lot of variety but not any development of expertise (except in a very long run). Or, they get in a rut and start doing the same thing over and over, and eventually lose interest. If mining isn't your thing, don't do it just to earn ISK - try something else. But first, think, develop a plan, start executing the plan, refine the plan as necessary, and then either build on the plan or start over. This approach will produce the best results - in EVE, or in real life!

Picking an ISK-earning specialty (or a few)

So, what are some ideas for making ISK in EVE? The huge sandbox of EVE provides many, many options, which you can see illustrated here:

In summary, some of the most common career options include:

Industrial Careers

Industrialists are people that specialize in making things, and moving them around, and earning ISK for their labors:

• Miner/Refiner – Perhaps the easiest and lowest risk way to make an honest wage in EVE, mining is simply extracting and selling ore or refined minerals. To be a miner, you only need some basic ship piloting skills, mining skills, refining skills, a suitable ship, and some mining lasers. Travel to one of the many asteroid belts in a system, point your lasers at a 'roid, gather ore, bring it to a station, refine it, sell it - then repeat. The upside to mining is that it produces a fairly predictable income stream, with little (but not zero) risk, especially in high security (0.5 and above) space. The main disadvantage is that mining can be highly repetitive and boring, as asteroids generally do not fight back! You also have to be on guard for can flippers and gankers - players that prey on miners, especially those that have gone 'AFK' (away from keyboard). The career path for a mining specialist is long - highly advanced miners using Tech 2 ships can easily generate 5-10 million in ISK with an hour or two of effort (depending on market prices and what is being mined). Well organized mining teams, with Orca support and skilled mining foremen, can produce even higher returns. Two absolutely essential guides for miners are Halada's Mining Guide[3][4], and the EVE University Co-Operative Mining manual[5].

• Planetary Industrialist - Added to EVE with the Tyrannis expansion, capsuleers can now extract planetary resources and produce commodities on all the worlds of New Eden. Pilots can run several planets at once, and with the right combination of planets, PI can be quite lucrative. The university has a utility that tracks PI commodity prices here[6].

• Hauler – Also a relatively low-risk way to earn ISK, haulers buy low in one location, and sell high in another. To become a hauler, you only need an industrial ship and suitable command skills. Moving goods around in high security space is fairly safe, but hauling in low sec or 0.0 can be extremely risky - and also extremely rewarding. Haulers can also execute player courier contracts on the open market. A low-risk hauler moving non-player corporation goods can earn about 3-5 million in ISK per hour [7] - executing courier contracts or moving goods in low-sec or null sec are potentially an order of magnitude more lucrative, if you don't lose your ship. The career for a hauler can be fairly long, starting with simple industrial ships, then eventually moving to blockade runners and huge freighters. A useful introductory guide for aspiring haulers can be found here:[8]. By the way, a miner/hauler combination can be an extremely powerful duo, and as a result, it's one of the most common main/alt character combos for players who can afford multiple in-game accounts.

• Manufacturer – Almost everything in the EVE universe - ships, modules, ammo, etc. - is created by players, for their own use, or more frequently, for sale to other players. Building items and charging for the value-add can be a very lucrative way to generate ISK. Unfortunately, this career option is one of the hardest to generate large amounts of ISK from, as it is extremely competitive. In addition, many miner/manufacturers undercharge because they do not include the value of the minerals they collected - they tend to think of ore they mined as 'free' - so, many common items have very low profit margins, if any at all. However, for those who develop a high degree of manufacturing skills, and who can amass sufficient capital to purchase blueprint originals (BPOs) for high-demand items, this can be a lucrative second career.[9]

• Researcher/Inventor – All advanced items in EVE, of the Tech 2 variety, are made possible by the efforts of players who conduct invention[10] on lower-tech items. The capabilities of Tech 2 items keep them in high demand, so invention can be a rewarding source of ISK. Through research, players can also improve the efficiency of blueprints. Because they improve production time and reduce manufacturing time, blueprints with higher efficiency are valuable to manufacturers - and therefore are another potential source of income.[11] Players can also work with dedicated research agents to 'farm' valuable datacores, used in invention - a form of passive income that can produce a reasonable stream of ISK over time.[12] To become a scientist/researcher/inventor, players must invest in science and related skills, and have access to a research facility.

Business Careers

While Industrialists specialize in making and moving things, Businesspeople earn ISK by investing capital, liquidity and talents in corporations, markets and infrastructure, and earning returns from their investment.

• Trader – The dynamic and comprehensive player-driven market in EVE provides multiple opportunities for players to earn ISK, without even owning a ship or leaving a station! By investing in trade skills, building up your standings with a owner of the station you plan to trade in, and with a bit of starting capital, players can purchase goods on the market, and then sell them at higher prices. By providing liquidity to the markets, traders can make a good return, although this requires some investigation of market opportunities and vigilance in monitoring your market orders. If you've ever fantasized about making it big as a Wall Street speculator, becoming an EVE trader might be for you. There are several good recorded classes on this topic in the UNI library.[13]

• Contractor - Many goods in New Eden can only be sold by contracts, and you can profit off these. People also put items in contracts to quickly sell them off, at a very cheap price. With some starting capital, and some investing in trade skills, you can look for great deals in contracts, and with careful monitoring of bids, you can flip those items you got for cheap on the open market.

• Corporate Executive – Become your own CEO! By developing Corporate Management skills, players can found their own corporations, recruit other players, and earn ISK from a salary drawn from taxes and fees. At a more advanced level, you can also create a player owned structure (POS) to host valuable research facilities, or you could join an alliance and negotiate to build a lucrative moon mining POS. Being a corporate CEO requires some very advanced skills, and a great amount of capital - either yours or someone else's - and so, this career option usually comes later in most players' EVE experience, if ever. But the entry requirements for starting an EVE corporation are quite low, and since non-player corporations (NPCs) now charge an 11% tax on bounties and mission rewards, starting a small corp of your own might be an attractive option.

• Recruiter - The lifeblood of corporations is literally in the people who join, but many corporations do a poor job of finding the kinds of players they need to thrive as a group. For this reason, you can rent yourself out as a recruiting agency, to search for and pre-qualify potential candidates for your client corporation. To do this requires no in-game skills at all, but you do need to know where to look and how to approach possible candidates. If you routinely peruse the various EVE online forums, or have developed a large network of in-game relationships, becoming a corporate recruiter might become a good source of ISK for you.

• Standings Pusher - Do you have high standings with a faction corporation? Those standings are valuable to player corporations, many of which will pay you for access to them. Mining corporations need high NPC standings for tax-free 'perfect' refining, for example. All corporations need some high standings for access to jump clone manufacturing. By focusing your mission-running on selected corporations and developing your social skills, you can then market your standings to the highest bidder.

Exploration Careers

Explorers are people that find things, and then make money on what they find. They come in a couple of varieties:

• Explorer/Hacker– Searching wormhole and hidden space for valuable sites, then selling the relics and information you discover, can be a very productive way to generate ISK - and a lot of fun, too. To become an explorer, players must invest in several specialty skills (Astrometrics, Archeology and Hacking), some dedicated equipment (probe launcher, codebreaker modules) and a suitable ship with bonuses for astrometric modules. You must also become an expert at probing[14].

• Salvager – EVE is a place of constant combat, and as a result, there are a lot of wrecked ships left behind after every battle. Finding, collecting and selling items from wrecks can be a great way for players to earn ISK.[15] Many items collected from wrecks are used to produce specialized rigs for ships, and so there is always a strong demand for these items. To become a successful salvager, players must develop salvaging skills (of course), and also sufficient command, electronics and engineering skills to use tractor beams and the salvager module. It is also useful to acquire a destroyer ship and convert it into a dedicated salvage vessel - with their large number of high slots and fairly large cargo bay, destroyers are perfect for this task. You can peruse asteroid belts for wrecks, of course, but the best way to earn a salvage income is to join a mission team and clean up any resulting wrecks, then split the resulting revenue with your teammates.

Military Careers

Military specialists earn their income from becoming very, very good at one thing: blowing stuff up. Since EVE is a universe populated by players interested in developing their power and influence, there is always a demand for military might.

• Mission Runner – One of the first ways that every player makes ISK in EVE is by executing assigned missions assigned by agents in non-player corporations, or by running through deadspace complexes[16]. Mission running is worthy of an extensive guide all by itself, so we won't belabor all aspects of this career option here. Suffice it to say that to earn real ISK as a mission-runner, players must invest in larger ships and develop the skills to fly them, so that they can earn access to higher level agents, higher level missions and the much higher levels of rewards that come with them. Invaluable resources for finding agents and missions include Grismar's Guide[17]. The UNI library also includes several very useful recorded classes on successful mission running.[18] There are also non-repeatable COSMOS missions, that give you modules worth hundreds of millions of ISK, but beware, they are harder than your average missions!

• Ratter – Hunting and killing NPC pirates (a.k.a. 'rats') can earn some ISK. But frankly, this is not the most lucrative way to earn money in EVE. Still, as a supplemental source of income, ratting can be fun, and a great way to refine some combat skills. To be a ratter, players only need to develop some combat skills and have a suitably outfitted fighting ship. High-sec rats are relatively easy to kill, and they spawn most frequently in asteroid belts - low-sec rats are a little tougher, but ratting in low-sec space is riskier because real-player pirates, who are infinitely more dangerous, also lurk there. Player beware!

• Mercenary – If you can develop very high levels of combat skills, you can make a decent living by hiring your guns out to corporations that can use you for fighting pirates or war targets. Mercenaries are typically hired by large corporations who want something done without their name being all over it. A mercenary could also be a hired guard for miners, an extra hand in a full scale war, or an escort through low sec areas, among other duties. If you are serious about being a mercenary, joining a dedicated mercenary corporation is a good idea, as the one thing you need more than anything else as a 'merc' is contacts. Be wary of courier assignments ending in low sec areas - they may actually be an ambush set up by a crafty pirate.

• Bounty Hunter – Many players that pursue outlaw careers (more on this later) have bounties assigned to them. Players can hunt down these characters using locator agents[19] and intelligence gathered from other players, and collect the bounties. While this sounds like an exciting career, it is really very difficult to execute. You must have extremely high combat skills, a powerful ship, and a lot of luck - you must also have the element of surprise. For this reason, bounty hunting, when it occurs, is usually a venture of opportunity, rather than of planning.

Outlaw Careers

In the EVE sandbox, there are people who play nice and pursue honorable careers - and then there are those who do not. Both styles of play are allowed. In fact, EVE is one place where crime does indeed pay - and pretty well, too.

• Can Flipper - perhaps the easiest entry-level way to get into a life of crime in EVE is to simply steal from miners who are 'jetcanning', where miners jettison their collected ore into unsecured cargo containers for later retrieval. Can flippers only have to get within 2,500 meters of a jetcan, then grab the contents. Miners are generally in weaker ships, with poor defenses and few weapons, and there is usually little they can do to stop this theft. Further, if the miner fights back, then the can flipper may simply destroy the miner, and then loot the poor victim.

• Pirate – Do you like the idea of combat for personal profit? Then the life of a pirate might be for you. Pirates specialize in player-versus-player (PvP) skills, so that they can attack and pillage players (mostly haulers) in low security space, or capture them and ransom their ship or pod for money.[20] Successful pirates must also have good scanning and probing skills, and the best ones hunt in packs. Joining a piracy corporation is therefore an attractive option for the aspiring space buccaneer.

• Scammer/Thief – If you have ever fantasized about being a high-stakes confidence man, EVE provides you with lots of options for becoming a professional scammer - tricking players into giving you ISK or luring them into traps for profit. Some of these scams are simple - mislabeling contracts on the market and selling items for far more then they are worth, for example. But some are far more elaborate and dangerous - issuing an attractive courier contract into low-sec or null-sec space, for example, for the sole purpose of tricking a hauler into an ambush. Another form of scam is the corporate raider, who gains entry into a corporation, earns a director level position, and then uses that position to steal everything - including the corporation itself!

• Assassin/Suicide Ganker - If you initiate an unprovoked attack on a ship in high-security space (0.5 or higher), then CONCORD will destroy your ship. But losing a ship might be a small price to pay if you pick the right target - a nice fat freighter or a faction ship laden with high priced modules, for example. By working with teammates, who can loot the victim after your suicide attack, you can earn enormous rewards. This comes at a cost to your security status and grants kill rights though, which may severely impact your ability to operate in highsec. A judicious ganker should be able to easily afford security tags, while an indiscriminate one may have to rat or live with the consequences. An excellent explanation of the dynamics of suicide ganking can be found in a recorded class in the UNI library, called 'The Dark Side of EVE'.[21]

• Drug Dealer - There are illegal substance abusers in the EVE universe - and this includes many pilots. Booster drugs can temporarily increase certain capabilities, and though illegal in Empire space, they are in demand. And where there are buyers, there is a market - one that a disreputable drug dealer can fill, and for decent profit, at moderate risk.

Metagame Careers

Most MMOs frown on providing out-of-game services for in-game payment. Allowing any exceptions is seen as a slippery slope that ends with real money trading of in-game currency. EVE Online broke this convention by allowing players to exchange a very specific list of things for ISK. These include forum signature art, graphic and website design, website hosting and teamspeak/Mumble server rental. If you have graphic artist talent, or technical support ability, you can earn ISK for your EVE characters by providing these services to other EVE players.

What are you waiting for?

This guide represents only some of the potential career options in EVE. To earn ISK, you don't have to be that smart - you only have to have a good imagination, and the will to use it. With more ISK, you can afford to do more things in the game, get those bigger ships and stronger modules, and have more fun! So, don't hesitate - finish your starter career missions, gather some initial capital, develop a career plan, and dive in!

Fly safe! o7

Additional resources

Recording of 'Intro to EVE Careers' class in the UNI recorded class library.

A very useful chart illustrating most of the EVE career options: EVE career chart.

Once players have completed the Tutorial they need to find their own way in New Eden. EVE is a sandbox and players will soon find they need to make their own entertainment and income. This brief guide intends to describe some of the typical options that many EVE players pursue, together with the likely income from them.

• 1Administrative and Meta Careers
• 2Business careers
• 3Combat careers
• 4Exploration careers
• 5Industrial careers
• 6Outlaw Careers

Administrative and Meta Careers

These careers involve either organising players or providing services for other players to assist them in playing the game.

Corporate Executive

Main article: Forming a Corporation

Corporations often need a lot of manpower to run successfully. People are need to advertise the corporation, recruit members, set policies, conduct diplomacy with other corporations, arrange logistics and ensure that everything runs smoothly. Available roles will depend on your corporation and their needs. Players can even start their own corporation, although this is often suited to more experienced players who are able to use their experience in game to build a successful corporation. Starting a corporation often requires a large amount of starting capital - more so if the corporation will own structures like Citadels or Engineering Complexes.

There is no such thing as an average income as it varies so widely depending on the size of the corporation and the taxes/fees charged

CSM member

Eve Online Isk Generator

EVE Online has a player-elected council known as the Council of Stellar Management (CSM), who provide feedback to CCP about the game and raises any concerns players have. New CSM members are elected once per year and attend meetings with CCP in Iceland as well as participating in online discussions about the direction of the game. They are required to sign a legal 'Non Disclosure Agreement' before they start their term as a CSM member.

CSM members are unpaid, but their real life expenses are reimbursed (e.g. travel expenses).

EVE journalist

There are many third party sites and podcasts dedicated to EVE Online. Many of them accept submissions and guest slots by players. This would particularly suit a player with good communication skills who has a unique perspective on the game. CCP also sometimes needs players to act as presenters for official events such as the Alliance Tournament and Fanfest.

Most of these opportunities will be unpaid.

Business careers

Business careers focus on moving and selling goods to make a profit. They make use of New Eden's player to player market.

Hauling

Main article: Hauling

Logistics is vital in EVE Online, and haulers move items from point A to point B. It can be profitable to buy items cheaply in one place and sell them elsewhere, where there is greater demand. Other players will also often pay well for the service of moving their items through 'courier contracts'. The skills required to fly a basic industrial ship are low, but the amount of cargo it can carry is fairly small and it is vulnerable to attack, particularly in lower security areas. Players can train to fly a range of specialised hauling ships to carry bigger loads or to haul in lower security space. There are entire corporations dedicated to fulfilling courier contracts for a price.

• Courier contracts: Approx 50 - 70 M ISK/hour
• Hauling goods for sale: <no data>

Skill Farming

Main article: Skill Farming

Skill farming is a career in EVE Online that uses a character to train skills solely to extract and sell their skill points, creating a passive income stream.

After initial preparations are completed, skill farming has the potential to return 3,044,511,048.17 ISK every 30 days (or 4,228,487.57 ISK per hour) on an investment of 1 day of game time.

Trading

Main article: Trading

EVE Online has a complex player-driven market, which is studied by students of economics. By investing their ISK correctly, players can make a profit from buying and selling goods. This requires some starting capital and a good grasp of supply and demand. Some traders focus on buying and selling goods in the same station, while some will buy items with a view to selling them elsewhere for a higher price. Trading can be very competitive, especially in high traffic areas such as Trade Hubs, which can drive down profits. However, if a player finds a suitable niche it can yield a high income.

Combat careers

Combat is something that us unavoidable in EVE Online. Many players thrive on honing their combat skills, either against other players or against NPCs.

Faction Warfare

Main article: Faction Warfare

In EVE lore there are four factions: Amarr, Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar. These factions are perpetually engaged in a struggle for power, and fight for control over certain areas of low security space. Players can join one of the factions and fight players from opposing factions in order to earn Loyalty Points and standings with their faction. Participating in faction warfare means that players can be attacked by members of their opposing faction anywhere, so it is a dedicated profession. Players are not restricted on which faction they join and can even join a different faction to their character's race, provided they have sufficient standings with that faction. There are many dedicated faction warfare corporations.

Incursions

Main article: Incursions

Incursions are high end PVE content, involving repelling NPC invaders as part of a fleet. Incursions appear in various systems around New Eden, so incursion runners tend to be nomadic and move from system to system following the incursion areas. Incursions are rewarded with ISK and Loyalty Points, though payouts are only made to a limited number of people on grid at the same time. For this reason, it is particularly important that each member of the fleet is effective in their role and so they tend to fly battleships and T2 logistics.

• Vanguards: 60 - 120 M ISK/hour
• Headquarters: 150 - 300 M ISK/hour (heavily influenced by fleet composition and CONCORD LP-conversion)
• Scouting or picketing: 30 - 60 M ISK/hour

Mission running

Main article: Missions

Missions are one-time jobs offered to players by NPC agents. There are various types of basic missions, including combat, mining and courier. There are also more advanced missions called COSMOS and Epic Arc missions. Completing a mission is rewarded with ISK, Loyalty Points and standings with the agent and NPC corporation involved. Some missions also give a time bonus and some give items also (particularly the Career Agents missions). There are various levels of missions, which are increasingly more difficult to complete. Level one missions are easy for Alpha Clones or very new players to complete, but the rewards are low. In contrast, level five missions only appear in low security space and can normally only be done as part of a fleet. Players will need high standing with agents to be able to request higher level missions.

• Level 1 missions: 1M per hour
• Level 2 missions: 2-4 M ISK per hour
• Level 3 missions: 5-10 M ISK per hour
• Level 4 missions: 30 - 200 M ISK per hour (very dependent on skills, fit, type of missions, LP conversion)

PvP

PvP is a fundamental part of EVE Online. Players can attack or be attacked by anyone at any time. Many player make PVP their main profession, and spend their time hunting for fights. PVP can be done either solo, in a small group or part of a huge fleet. It encompasses everything from frigate brawls to huge Titans. There are also various different roles players can fill, including tackler, damage dealer, scout, stealth bomber, EWAR pilot, logistics and fleet commander. To thrive in PVP players will benefit from a good tactical mind and a quick trigger finger, but it is easy to get into and can be done by Alpha Clones and very new players. Some players will go one step further and become a mercenary, who can be hired to do PVP for a price. Alternatively some players decide to become bounty hunters, and hunt down players who have an active bounty. Some players choose to become pirates, and hunt down their victims to either pillage their goods or demand a ransom for their ship or pod.

Ratting

As well as other players, New Eden is full of hostile NPCc which are known in short as 'rats'. These spawn at asteroid belts, in cosmic anomalies and at stargates. Destroying rats earns a ISK payment in return for the bounty, as well as any loot or salvage which is dropped in the wreck. Some rats drop items known as Security tags which can be valuable. Some tags can be used to increase a player's security status. The rewards vary depending on the security level of the system, but the income is normally not high enough to justify it as a sole career, it is often something use players use to supplement their income and boost their security status when needed.

• In High sec: 1-3 M ISK per hour
• In Low sec: 10-20 M ISK per hour
• In Null sec: 25+ M ISK per hour (depends on the security level: the lower security the harder rats the higher income)
• In Wormhole space:
  • C1 holes: 20-50 M ISK/hour
  • C2 holes: 20-50 M ISK/hour
  • C3 holes: 60-200 M ISK/hour
  • C4 holes: <no data>
  • C5 holes: 180-250 M ISK/hour
  • C6 holes: <no data>

Exploration careers

New Eden is vast and contains many secret sites with hidden valuables. Exploration is about tracking down those sites.

Exploration and hacking

Main article: Exploration

Players can use their onboard scanner together with a probe launcher to scan down Cosmic Anomalies and Cosmic Signatures. These will contain either groups of pirate NPCs, resources like gas clouds or asteroid belts, hackable containers with loot or wormholes. Hacking and archaeology involve a mini-game to break into the container. Lower security areas tend to yield the most valuable loot and resources, but players are vulnerable when doing exploration which is why it's best to use a ship that can cloak. Exploration is easy to get started with and can be a potentially lucrative source of income, especially for a new player. Wormhole sites are a more advanced form of exploration in more hostile space.

• In high-sec, low-sec and null-sec: up-to 1M per site
• Wormhole sites:
  • C1 holes: 20-50 M ISK/hour
  • C2 holes: 30-60 M ISK/hour
  • C3 holes: 100-200 M ISK/hour
  • C4 holes: <no data>
  • C5 holes: 50-150 M ISK/hour (Server Bank site only)
  • C6 holes: <no data>
• Ghost sites: 30-60 M ISK per site, reported cases with up to a few hundred million ISK per site

Salvaging

Main article: Salvaging

Each time a player or NPC ship explodes it drops a wreck. The wreck sometimes contains loot, but the wreck itself can also be salvaged for useful parts. Salvaging enable a player to collect those parts with a view to either selling them or processing them rigs for ships. Salvaging can be a profitable side career, normally alongside either mission running or PVP. Salvaging is quick to train into and can be done by a new player, often as part of a mission fleet. The salvage is normally split between the fleet members, so it can be a good income for relatively little effort. Players can use tractor beams to pull wrecks towards them for faster salvaging, and there a is even a specialised ship, the Noctis. Alternatively, players can use a Mobile Tractor Unit which collects the wrecks in one place.

Industrial careers

Industrial careers are focused on gathering resources and creating ships and items. This is often referred to in other games as 'crafting'.

Manufacturing

Main article: Manufacturing

Almost everything in New Eden is created by players. Blueprints can be used to produce items from minerals, which can either be refined or bought from the market. Manufacturers may create items for personal use, or to sell on the market for a profit. Although the basic skills required to manufacture items can be trained quickly, increased skills will greatly improve efficiency. Players need a base to start manufacturing, which could be an NPC station or a player owned structure such as an Engineering Complex. Manufacturing can yield a good income, but some items cost more to manufacture than they are worth so it is possible to make a loss also. It can also be highly competitive, driving down profits in high traffic areas. In addition to manufacturing, players can carry out invention to create more valuable T2 items, and conduct research to improve the efficiency of blueprints, making them more valuable. Players can work with dedicated research agents to obtain datacores, which can then be used in invention.

<no data>

Mining and refining

Main article: Mining

Asteroid belts spawn throughout New Eden and can be mined to extract ores. In addition to ores, players can use specialised equipment to mine ice from ice belts and harvest gas from gas clouds. The ore, ice and gas can either be sold in its raw form, or refined into minerals. In general rarer and more valuable resources are found in lower security space. Mining has a low entry barrier, though mining efficiency can be substantially improved by training the right skills and implants and using more advanced equipment and ships. Alpha clones can mine, although the only specialised mining ship they can use is the Venture. Players can mine either alone or as part of a mining fleet, and can produce a stable income stream. However, miners are always vulnerable to attacks by other players as well as can flippers, so it can be a risky profession, particularly in lower security areas.

• Mining Ore:
  • solo mining (no boosts): <no data>
  • fleet mining (with boosts) <no data>
• Harvesting Ice: <no data>
• Harvesting Gas in known-space: <no data>
• Harvesting Gas in wormholes:
  • low level gas sites (Barren, Minor, Ordinary, Sizeable, Token): 15-20 M ISK/hour
  • mid-level gas sites (Vital and Bountiful): up-to 30-40 M ISK/hour
  • high-level gas sites (Instrumental and Vital): up-to 50-70 M ISK/hour

Planetary interaction

Main article: Planetary Interaction

New Eden has thousands of planets, and players can establish a colony on a planet in order to produce resources. The resources (or 'commodities') which are produced can either be sold in their raw form, or combined with other commodities to make more complex products. Ultimately these can be used to make fuel and parts for structures, boosters and components. Planets in lower security areas tend to yield more valuable commodities. Planetary interaction has a low entry barrier, although through training skills players can increase the number of planets and the efficiency of their colony. Planetary interaction does not normally require much active management once the colony is established, and most players will use it as a passive supplement to their other income.

• High-sec planet: <no data>
• Low-sec planet: <no data>
• Null-sec planet: <no data>
• Wormhole planet: 4-6M per planet per day with daily monitoring

Outlaw Careers

Unlike many other games, being a criminal is a viable career option in EVE Online, and not against the EULA. Many players find that crime does pay, quite handsomely.

Can Flipping

Main article: Can flipping

Players can jettison items into space, creating a jetcan which can be opened not just by the player who created it, but by anyone. A common reason for players to do this is when they are mining, to store their ore for later retrieval. Some players use this as an opportunity to steal the ore inside the jetcan, which is known as 'can flipping'. Sometimes this is done purely for the goods inside, but it is often done to provoke the miner into trying to attack the person stealing their ore. This will set off a combat timer, allowing the 'can flipper' to switch into another ship and shoot the miner with no retaliation from CONCORD (since they are technically acting in self-defense from the point of view of the game).

Scamming or theft

Scamming others out of their ISK or luring them into traps can be an exciting way for some people to play the game. Such scams take many forms. Some of the most common are misleading contracts, selling goods for much more than they are worth, 'ISK doubling' scams, making players an offer that is too good to be true for the purpose of leading them into an ambush, requesting ISK in return for joining a corporation, infiltrating a corporation for the purposes of emptying their corporate resources. It will suit a certain kind of player who thrives on the chase and has the confidence and personal skills to pull it off. The income can potentially be huge, there have been some very high profile corporation thefts of many billions.

Nothing all the way up to many billions for a high profile corporation theft.

See also

• https://slides.eveuniversity.org/?slidesID=270 - Slides for the Introduction to EVE Careers class
• - A plan showing how different careers interact with each other
• https://content.eveonline.com/CareerGuide/EVECAREERSGUIDE.pdf - EON magazine's EVE careers guide (as per the Apocrypha expansion in 2009)