Choices

A life of a capsuleer is shaped by his decisions. They start with the first click on the character selection screen and continue until the last "Warp-to" mash before being podkilled - then start again. The wealth of options is what makes the game so appealing to me - and to others, similarly spellbound by its intricacies.

I have decided to weigh in on the side of entropy. However, while dying is extremely simple in EVE Online, destroying others is much more difficult and there is much learning involved.

Learning in EVE comes with a steep price - especially learning how to solo PVP. A cheap, yet sturdy ship was needed. I settled on the Rifter - hailed as the best PVP frigate and with a lot of resources on fitting and flying one (I recommend Wensley's Rifter guide).

Minmatar Rifter

As I know that all of my initial ships will be lost, reasonable price is important, so I set up a trading alt in Jita and placed buy orders for 15 Rifters' worth of fittings. Incidentally, the ensuing game of "let's place my buy order 0.01 ISK above his" showed me how complex the market system in EVE really is and I'm still fiddling with the buy orders to get the implants and some of the fittings I need (T2 autocannons and artillery being especially tricky, it seems). Sneaking fittings into my low-sec base in a frigate will not be a problem. Getting the actual ships there, however, was - a packed Rifter takes up 2500 m3, and several trips in an Industrial would surely end badly. In the end, I remembered that every problem in EVE Online can be solved with money - a buy order for Rifters with an exorbitant price saw my ships arrive in a matter of days.

The matter of initial base was a complex decision, too. I know that after the security status drop, I will be barred from entering empire space. After nosing around low-sec for a few weeks (and seeing the carnage that is Sinq Laison/Heimatar low sec (check out Amamake stats), I decided on the Heimatar/The Forge/Metropolis low-sec patch and found a station with cloning facilities close to high-sec.

The final issue to be decided was the matter of jump clones. I've seen the value of learning implants, so I bought a set of +3s early on (+4 learning implants require Cybernetics 4, which I deemed too time consuming for the beginning - but will invest in them eventually). The loss of them would be a big blow - I prefer to lose ISK on ships. A jump clone with lesser implants would be preferable - but how to create one without grinding missions for a NPC corporation? The solution was fortunately very simple - Estel Arador's free jump clone service enables all capsuleers the ability to create jump clone in one of the many stations. I had my clone less than 24 hours later.

In less than I week, I'll see where my initial decisions will take me. I can't wait!