The Eve Tutorial Tutorial, Part 1

February 9, 2014 Colin Play

I wanted to do something more practical as a followup to my recent Eve for Noobs posting, so as an experiment I’m going to create a new character and run through the game’s tutorial with an eye towards explaining in more detail what the game does not, or perhaps simply rewording where I feel the game is more confusing than it ought to be. I intend to document everything I’m doing that could potentially be useful, at least the first time I do it. I’m also going to assume that the game’s options are already setup, per my earlier suggestions, and that Sarah’s Overview Pack is installed.

I’m beginning this trek on February 9th, 2014, in Rubicon 1.1.6.

01: Introduction

Having created my new Gallente (Intaki/Reborn) capsuleer, Theila Kernn, I’m dropped into the game at the Federal Navy Academy in the Duripant system (Crux constellation, Essence region). I immediately receive my first tutorial prompt from Aura, entitled “In Your Own Time”. This just provides a quick overview of what I should expect from the tutorial, so I click “Next” through the three pages of text, the last of which touches on chat channels, so let’s look at that in more detail.

By default you are placed in Rookie Help, which can get a bit loud at times. I’d also recommend joining the E-UNI channel, which can be found under the “Help” category of Chat Channels, which can in turn be accessed from the “Chat” button, located at the top of your Neocom, along the left side of the screen.

By default your chat windows are stacked. That is, they dock together into a single window with tabs to switch between them, similar to a web browser. Each channel also includes some settings accessible just below its tab while you have it selected. I personally like to decrease the font size slightly, set it to show text only, highlight my messages, and unless it’s an important chat channel I turn the tab blink off. I also prefer the compact member list, so that I can see more members without having to scroll. I also resize the chat entry area, and the member list, to maximize the amount of text being displayed.

Another change I make right away is to drag the Local chat tab away from the window so that it sits in its own window. I then shrink it horizontally because all I really care about is the member list, not what they’re saying, stretch it out vertically so that I can see as many people as once, and position my other chat window next to it so that I can see both at once. Lastly, I pin both windows (small circle button at the top-right of each window) so that they become transparent and immovable. Why do I do this? Local is especially useful because it tells you exactly who else is in the same solar system as you. If you are engaged in PVP, in low- or null-sec space, engaged in a corporation war or Faction Warfare, or simply want to keep an eye on flagged players who might attack you the Local window is basically your first line of defense. Just keep in mind that there is no Local in wormholes. Did none of that make sense? Don’t worry, it will soon.

02: The Pilot Certification Course

We’re ready for our first Mission! Missions are gathered from Agents, who are typically located in Stations. So while docked at the Federal Navy Academy station I click the “Agents” tab of the Station Services window, find Aura, and click the speech bubble next to her to initiate a conversation. Note that you can also right-click on her and choose “Start Conversation”.

Now that I’m presented with the Agent Conversation window and I’ve clicked “Next” I’m told to accept the mission, but let’s hold on just a moment. First off, I don’t want to accept a mission without reading more about it. Within the conversation window I can read the story narrative for the mission along the left, and a rundown of the mission’s mechanics — the objective, location, and rewards — along the right. I also notice that next to my agent’s name in the Station Services window sits a bit of yellow text reading “Offered”, indicating that I’ve requested a mission from this agent but have not yet accepted. Once I click the “Accept” button I see that this text is updated to a green “Accepted” and the buttons in the conversation window change, providing me options to “Complete Mission” and “Quit Mission”.

Before we click the “Next” button we’ve noticed that the tutorial text also mentions some other menus, including our Journal. It just so happens that this is one of two buttons flashing in my Neocom right now, so let’s click it and see what it’s all about. Well, for now it looks pretty empty, with the only interesting bits being my current Mission. The useful bit here is that I can right-click or double-click it to view the mission details, should I forget what’s going on. You might also notice that an “Agent Missions” overlay appeared at the top-left of the screen, with my current mission, Covering the Basics listed under it. Using the overlay options up here is a great way to get at essential info quickly while avoiding cluttering the screen with more windows. I’d definitely suggest playing using the overlays. It’s also worth mentioning that the tutorial missions are technically part of an Epic Mission Arc and are listed as such in the Journal, if you are curious to review your overall progress.

I’ll also quickly take a look at the other blinking button on my Neocom, People & Places, and find that my agents are automatically being stored here so that I can return to them later. Pretty handy.

Now let’s do some flying! “Next”.

I won’t spend any time on the capsule/pod vs. ship vs. clone concept right now, as I touched on it previously, so I’ll follow the instructions to undock in my pod, which takes a few seconds.

03: Camera Movement

Now that I’m in space my Station Services window is gone, replaced with my Overview, and I have some sort of complex circular doodad sitting at the bottom of the screen… But ignore that so that we can learn about camera controls!

At the center of the screen I see my pod floating away from the station. Relative to other spaceships, the pod is tiny, so I follow the instructions to look around (spotting a nearby moon) and zoom out for a better big-picture view of my pod and the Federal Navy Academy I am slowly leaving behind.

04: Getting Your Bearings

Ah okay, now we get to figure out what’s up with this new Overview window. Despite the dismissal provided by the tutorial, this is the most important tool for flying around in space and it deserves some added attention.

First of all, similar to the Local chat window, we want it big enough to see lots of stuff nearby, so unpin it and drag it out a ways. At this point, if we hadn’t already installed Sarah’s Overview Pack I’d go ahead and take care of that, which provides me with five tabs already setup, each with different filters for what will be displayed in our Overview. By default I’m on the “main” tab, which we’ll be using for most of our flight time, however it’s currently set to the “normal pvp” profile. I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping to avoid PVP while completing the tutorial. Right-click the tab (where it says “main”), choose “Load Overview Profile”, and select “normal pve”. You should see more items listed in your Overview, including other players’ ships who also happen to be new players in the default corporation with you, appearing with blue backs and green icons. Much better.

Now I want to make some tweaks to what information is shown in the overview, so I click the horizontal bars at the very top-left of the Overview window and select “Open Overview Settings”. Click on the “Columns” tab, where we can toggle specific columns within the Overview as well as reorder them. This is really personal preference, as not everyone uses all of the info here, but what I like to see is: Icon, Tag, Distance, Name, Type, Corporation, Alliance, Angular Velocity, and Transversal Velocity. We’ll go into the details of why these are useful later on. Once my columns are set I click the “Distance” column header to ensure that all objects are displayed in order of closest to farthest. Finally, I resize the columns within my Overview so everything displays nice, make some final adjustments to the Overview size, and pin it in place. Because I like a good symmetrical feeling I unpin the Selected Item window, stretch it out to match the Overview, and pin it back in place.

I’ve been floating here in space for quite some time, so I jump on the “Next” button.

Let’s take a closer look at the Selected Item window by clicking on the Federal Navy Academy in our Overview (it will have a square for an icon, representing a station). Hovering over each button in the Selected Item window will provide a sense of what your available actions are. Click and hold on the station in the Overview, or in space, and you’ll see the same options available in the radial menu, which is a nice alternative method of interactions. You might notice some keyboard shortcuts listed for some (but not all!) of the buttons in the Selected Item window; note that the Overview or Selected Item window needs to have focus in order for these to work (which can make them frustratingly difficult to use at times). By the way, the interactions available to you will change depending on the object you have selected.

Clicking “Next” provides some more details on the Overview’s icons, conveniently echoed in space as brackets, highlighting what are likely the four most important object types. While on the subject of brackets it’s worth noting that the objects you have filtered to display in your Overview may be different from those set to display as brackets in space. I find it’s best to rely on the overview as much as possible to be sure that you don’t miss anything, but I also find the Overview to be more organized.

Now we’ll actually fly somewhere. The tutorial text explains warping to the mission encounter using the overlay at the top-left, which is my preferred method. However, know that you can also achieve this by right-clicking anywhere in open space, clicking the sun icon to the left of your System Info overlay at the top-left of the screen, or by right-clicking the location (appearing as an orange link) within the actual mission details. While we’re on the topic, should I ever get lost flying around in the solar system I know I can always use this technique to warp back to a known location — such as my mission encounter, the station where my agent is waiting, or a stargate (which we’ll be seeing soon).

Warping is how your ship covers large distances. While warping you are invincible and, typically, when you exit warp you are invincible for a short period of time. In order to warp, however, your ship must first align. For your ship to align it must be facing the direction of your destination and it must be traveling at at least 75% of its maximum velocity. These actions are accomplished for you automatically when you choose to warp, and likely won’t even be noticed while traveling in your (fast and nimble) pod. In a bigger ship, however, it may take valuable seconds to properly align, during which time you are vulnerable to enemy attack. Compounding this, if you are blocked by nearby structures or asteroids, your ship may have a very difficult time aligning successfully, and you may end up needing to fly manually to break free of the obstacles before warping. In order to prepare oneself for the eventual need to quickly warp away from a location ships can be aligned ahead of time, making the process of entering warp fairly instantaneous.

05: Basic Commands

Since we’ve already covered the radial menu above, let’s look at our display while warping. At the bottom of the screen we’ll see the “WARP DRIVE ACTIVE” callout, along with our destination. Directly below that we’ll see the current distance. Watching the distance count down we can touch on two aspects of Eve: The game updates in 1 second intervals (which is why you see the distance updated once a second), and the game’s distances are denoted in kilometers, or km. Larger distances are displayed as astronomical units, or AU, at approximately 150,000,000 km to 1 AU. That’s some science for you.

Each ship has a unique Warp Speed defining how many AU it can travel each second while in warp. You can see this, along with many, many more interesting statistics, in your ships info window by right-clicking on that funny complex-looking round thing at the bottom of the screen, or on your ship in space, or by clicking and holding on your ship in space to display the radial menu and selecting “Show Info”. There, now we’ve gone full circle and touched back on the radial menu again. “Next”!

06: Ship Movement

No more fooling around, we’re finally getting a big-boy ship. More or less.

Remember when we said your available interactions may change depending on what you’ve got selected? Here’s a great example. Click your new rookie ship, in my case a Gallente Velator, and take a look at the Selected Item window to spot a “Board Ship” button. There’s not a whole bunch else to do here at the moment, other than become mesmerized by the warming lull of the blinking beacon (you did spot while keeping tabs on your Overview, right?), so let’s hop in our new ship. “One small step for man…”

Now this is a bit more exciting! Normally I’d suggest taking a look at our new ship’s info, so that we know a little bit about what we’re flying, but we can do that in a few minutes. Let’s go ahead and track down the Acceleration Gate, which acts as a one-way “door” that will propel your ship to a specific location in space (typically the next “room” of a “dungeon”, only in space), and activate it. Hey look! There’s another example of a unique interaction only available on certain selected objects.  😉

The space rave that’s started playing over my Velator’s sound system alerts me to the fact that I’ve entered the mission encounter, after having warped through the Acceleration Gate. Thankfully my Overview shows no “red crosses”, which would otherwise indicate enemy NPC pirates (or “rats”) eager for my blood. Using the radial menu (or Selected Item window) I choose to approach the awaiting Cargo Rig. As a side note, the “Approach” command is available on nearby objects, but is replaced by the “Align to” command for objects in the distance so that you can be prepared to warp out.

07: Looting

Now we get our payout for flying out here in our shiny new ship (unless you are Minmatar, in which case your ship is rusty). Once you are within 2500m of a lootable object you will be able to invoke the “Open Cargo” command on it from the radial menu. Likewise, if you drift farther than 2500m from the object you will no longer be able to access its cargohold and loot therein.

Opening the Cargo Rig’s cargohold your Inventory window will be displayed, which provides access to all available inventory storage. Currently this includes your ship cargohold, your ship’s drone bay, and the Cargo Rig itself. If you were docked at a station your Inventory window would show the items and ships you have stored at the station. It is a useful window to have around, as you can not only see all of your immediately accessible items, but you can move them about directly within the window. Clicking the “Loot All” button will remove the Freedom of Operation License from the Cargo Rig and place it in your ship’s cargohold, which could also be done simply by dragging the item itself onto your ship’s cargohold (currently displayed as “Theila Kernn’s Velator (Velator)” in my Inventory window).

I have the Inventory window set to be shown using keyboard shortcut Alt-C (which I believe is the default), and I use it often. I also keep it positioned and pinned in a tidy fashion up against my Overview. You’ll notice that the items displayed in the Inventory window can be filtered to show only certain types of objects, which can come in handy once you are carrying around ammo for your weapons as well as loot from wrecks. Similar to your Overview, you can sort the items contained within your Inventory by clicking on the column headers (I like to sort by Group). You can also change the type of list displayed from Icons, to Details, to List (my personal favorite).

While we’re on the topic of looting, I like to setup one of my Overview tabs specifically for the task. Here’s what I’ve done:

1. Click tab 4 of the Overview to select it as the active tab.
2. Right-click on the tab and choose “Load Overview Profile > pve: mining”.
3. Open you Overview settings.
4. Click on the “Filters” tab.
5. Right-click “Asteroids” and choose “Deselect All”.
6. Expand the “Celestial” folder and deselect “Asteroid Belt”, “Covert Beacon”, “Stargate”, “Sun”, “Warpgate”, and “Wormhole”.
7. Then select “Audit Log Secure Container”, “Biomass”, and “Wreck”.
8. Expand the “Deployable” folder and select “Mobile Depot”, “Mobile Siphon Unit”, and “Mobile Tractor Unit”.
9. Expand the “Drone” folder and deselect “Mining Drone”.
10. Expand the “NPC” folder and deselect “Mission NPC”.
11. Right-click “Planetary Interaction” and choose “Deselect All”.
12. Right-click “Station” and choose “Deselect All”.
13. Click the horizontal bars at the very top-left of the Overview window and choose “Save Current Type Selection As…”.
14. Provide a name, such as “PVE Looting” and click “OK”.

When you’re ready to move on, click back to your “main” Overview tab and click “Next” in the tutorial window.

08: Mission 1 Complete

Return to your agent’s station, either from the Overview as suggested by the tutorial, or using the Agent Missions overlay at the top-left. I prefer the latter because I don’t need to remember which station I want — something that will matter more as you explore into multi-station solar systems.

Once docked start a conversation with your agent and click “Complete Mission”. You’ll be rewarded per the mission details — in this case you’ll receive your first skill book. You may notice that your Journal is blinking once again and if you investigate you’ll find that the mission you have just completed is removed, and a new mission is listed as “Offered”.

Congratulations! You’ve just completed a basic mission, earned yourself a ship and a new skill book, and have laid the groundwork of a core understanding of the game’s mechanics, proving you are ready for your next challenge. Of course, we haven’t shot at anything yet, but I’m betting that’s coming up real soon…

Stay tuned for part 2 of the Tutorial Tutorial. Fly safe!

Eve Online, Tutorial

Eve for Noobs, Part 1 The Eve Tutorial Tutorial, Part 2