The sweaty palms, the rush of adrenaline, the thumping heart, and then, the sweet joy. You never forget your first. We asked Just About EVE Online to tell us the tale of their first ever PvP kill, and gosh, did they respond. In other MMOs, you might get your first PvP kill after a week. Not so in EVE. Many of these stories were a year or more in the making. For the master collection of true tales from everyone's favourite space opera MMO, check out EVE Online stories.

Fun note: This is the first curated article we’ve ever put live from our members’ bounty contributions, so thank you and congratulations to everyone who contributed. You’ve just made JA history.

Mercy and “The Shakes”

This must have been back in 2006 or thereabouts. I was in my brand new Thorax, with barely enough skills to fly it.

Back then, it was common to see people “jetcan” mining. People would mine until their cargo was full, jettison their ore into a canister and continue mining. They would do this until their jetcan was topped off, then swap ships to a hauler in order to retrieve their hard-earned ore. On paper it was an efficient way to mine.

I was patrolling the local asteroid belts in high security space, and found a lone Dominix mining away. These were different times, and it wasn’t unusual to see battleships like this doing work unbecoming of their station. My intention was to find a somewhat squishier target, but that voice in the back of my head whispered to me, “doooo iiiiit.”

I edged closer, taking a peek inside his jetcan. Almost full, he must have been mining for a while. Casually, I dropped my own jetcan and deposited all of his ore inside. This flagged me as suspect to him, meaning he could now freely attack me and get revenge. This of course was exactly what I wanted.

Sure enough, he recalled his mining drones, and replaced them with combat capable ones. The Dominix is known for its large drone bay. The drones swarmed me, battering my shields and then my armor. But, because he had now engaged me, I was free to shoot him in return. I activated my warp scrambler to ensure he couldn’t escape, then went to work on his drones.

What followed was a race to the death. If I couldn’t kill his drones faster than he could kill me, I was done for. Every drone I killed was swiftly replaced in what felt like an endless onslaught. Eventually, he stopped replacing the drones that I destroyed, and soon was left stranded in space with no means to attack me.

I then turned my guns onto the Dominix itself. A competently fit battleship should have been able to tank my cruiser, but I was in luck. His tank put up a token resistance, which just prolonged the inevitable. I felt some small amount of guilt as the pilot asked for mercy in the local chat, but by this point I had committed.

His armor was gone, and as the last of his structure was chipped away, a final “please” appeared in local chat.

As any EVE player can tell you, when you experience moments like this for the first time, the adrenaline hit can be intense. EVE players call this “The Shakes.”

I was hooked.

As told by EVEIL - original post

An easy target or an ingenious trap?

Disclaimer: This wasn’t my first documented kill, but certainly my first “I’m going out to kill something” attempt.

So after roaming hostile Null as an explorer, I developed the comfort level to begin hunting for a kill. I knew the space, I knew the likely actions and behaviors of the inhabitants, and now it was time to shoot something.

I don’t theory craft or fit ships, but thankfully FranktheBank loves doing it. He knows my character’s Skill Points, what I was wanting to do, and so he provided a fit. Frank also told me, “You aren’t going to kill a ratting VNI in this…”. So, of course that’s what I set out to do!

Heading into a pocket off the main travel route, I found a VNI Null rating - afk as it was proper for it to be in those days. I get the tackle and begin to shoot it…no response. Now, I thought, can I break it? Obviously I can’t see the fit yet, so I’m happy once the shields finally break from its typical speed tank and shield extender. The armor is going down smoothly, when suddenly it begins to actively armor rep at about 20%!

Luckily for me, it was too little, too late. But for a brief moment, I recall thinking that it was a great bait! But it seems that the pilot was indeed running a mix of speed tank, shield extender, and active armor repper. They had simply gone afk and returned too late to save it.

Killing a mostly afk ratting VNI isn’t a great accomplishment in PvP terms, but getting a kill with a fit that the creator said wouldn’t do the job felt great!

As told by Rushlock - original post

Juicy prey alone in space

My first solo kill was almost a year after starting to play.

I was living in Highsec, and we were at war with another corporation after a failed attempt to destroy a station. The situation was really discouraging, and in that battle, we lost fighting almost 10 vs 1. However, a couple of days later, I decided to go out and look for a solo, distracted pilot.

After searching for about an hour, I found my prey - a juicy miner, too greedy to leave and stop extracting resources. So, despite my fears of possible reinforcements, I decided to attack as quickly and forcefully as possible. Luckily, I managed to destroy it before they could call for help.

The adrenaline of the first time you achieve something like that is unforgettable, undoubtedly a formidable experience.

As told by orik Kado - original post

Pride and damage control

My first kill was a corp PvP training for newbies, just a little bit after I joined the corp 🙂It was back in 2013! Time flies! I remember recording myself, and proudly posting it to YouTube only to get roasted in the comments for not activating my Damage Control module (which was active at that time)!

As told by Hugo REGIBO - original post

Never underestimate a cunning newbie

When you are new to something, PVP in this instance, one is eager to get as many experiences as possible. More often than not, the first tries will definitely lead to failure, but exposition is for me the key to mastering any role in EVE.

I was looking into the realm of brawling with a Hecate (a Gallente Tier 3 Destroyer). Not exactly a high skill type of ship, just ram a target and hope that you’ll gun it down before he can kill you. No real tanking, just full DPS with very short range blasters. Given the simplicity of those tactics, it’s certain that there are a million ways to counter them. And such was the specialty of a very well known PVP streamer in the EVE Online community, then known as Sutonia (now CCP Kestrel), and member of We Form Volta, a highly respected and feared PvP alliance that naturally as a member of Winter Coallition I was then hostile to.

Anyway, It was relatively late for me, and suddenly Sutonia was reported in intel in his ship of choice - a Kestrel as always. I grabbed my Hecate knowing that he would take the fight. You see, Hecates are scary destroyers for any Tier 1 frigate but Sutonia was a very keen and well seasoned Kestrel pilot and was an expert in killing Hecates in cheap rocket hulls.

I encountered him at a gate at 0, his usual tactics rely on him pulling range from me before scramming me while staying outside blaster range aka “scram kiting”. I scrammed him knowing what he was up to and preloaded long range ammo, my corpmates were actually watching the stream thinking I would feed yet another Hecate to Sutonia. Because of how Hecates are made, they’re expected to always have preloaded short-ranged, high-DPS ammo instead of long range.

Once the fight started I overheated every single module in panic. I was determined to either burn my guns and die or heat until the kestrel was a killmail.

As told by Swagger Olacar - original post

High stakes at Jita’s sun

Listen, lemme tell ya this story that gave me shivers down my spine! My very first real (forget them ventures and explorers) solo kill happened during a live event for CSM 17. The host decided to set up a 1v1 showdown at Jita’s sun to settle the score between the 2nd and 3rd place contenders.

Now, at that time, I was a representative from Nullsec, standin' against THE representative from Wormhole space: the most dangerous folks in the game! I kept my cool and thought, "Alright, I know the Hookbill, but instead of going for shield, let’s switch to armor and use that extra mid slot. And since it’s a duel, no need for a scrambler, so let’s double web and ECM."

Mark came at me with a Maulus and his pesky dampener. That put him in the lead right at

the start as his drones tore through my shield. The host chimed in, "Well, this won’t be a long fight," as my shield started melting into armor. But that’s when the tables turned: all his drones ended up in my damped range. So, I began picking 'em off one by one while I was ECMing my secondary. With my cargo hold full of armor rep charges, I could keep going like this for quite some time.

When he was down to his last drone, I slingshotted myself close enough to his ship to finally target and double web him! That’s when things got spicy! I gotta tell ya, I’m still damn proud of that victory, mate!

I’m Sorry Eh!

As told by Ben Rush - original post

Accidents happen

My very first solo kill was at one of those pirate hangouts you used to get the location of in wrecks. I’d camp them in my Vexor with 13 drones, and farm pirates. One day, I realized one of the wrecks wasn’t an NPC. Oops.

As told by Melicien Tetro - original post

N.B. Some stories may have been slightly amended for grammar and brevity.