Thanks to Havoc, it’s a great time to return to EVE Online - a game that can boast longevity like few others. It’s a testament to the game, players, and developers that lapsed players can - and do - return after hiatuses of years, even decades. If that’s you, then you won’t be surprised to know that much has changed in those years. Empires have risen and fallen, monarchs have been slain, and power has passed through a thousand pairs of hands - and that’s before we even get onto the new ships, systems, features, communities, UI, nerfs, and buffs.
But if you’re mulling a return, don’t be daunted by all that. Others have caught up, and so can you - and they’re here on Just About EVE to help you out.
EVEIL, one of our community members, was one of those lapsed players. Here’s what they had to say about their deeply enjoyable if sometimes perplexing return to New Eden:
“I and probably many others returned to EVE during the lockdowns of 2020. I never would have imagined that - as a proud introvert - I would one day find myself craving human interaction. My salvation came in the form of EVE, where shooting spaceships piloted by other nerds thankfully scratched that itch, allowing me to skulk back into blissful isolation.
“But things had changed. Ten years had passed since I had last logged in. Why did I have two marauders in a backwater station throwing up fitting errors? Why did I have a cargo container stacked full of corpses? Some mysteries are thankfully lost to time.”
Our Just About EVE Online community contains some true veterans; some of whom have stuck with the game for both of its decades. We can’t think of anyone better to advise players hoping to make a comeback. So we asked, and here is their compiled and curated advice.
Start over
As well as submissions from our bounty, we’ve included snippets of a conversation initiated by Rushlock - one of those aforementioned veterans - on the same topic. While he’s streaming, lapsed players often ask Rushlock how they should get back into the game. Almost without exception, his answer is “start a new character on a new account”.
To many, this is shocking advice. “They gasp at the idea of not using all those Skill Points (SP) on their old account.” But for Rushlock, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives.
More often than not, returning players log in to old characters and get overwhelmed by their assets being inaccessible, scattered, or hard to retrieve. Their old accounts become nothing more than a list of chores. Rather than restarting your gameplay with a headache, returning players are better off “focusing on fun rather than chores”. In Rushlock’s experience, starting a new character increases the chances of returning players sticking around.
And what about all that lost SP and ISK? The ISK isn’t a concern; it’s transferable without penalty. And the SP aren’t going anywhere. You don’t need to forget about your old characters, but you also don’t need to rush back to them. Once you’ve resettled into the game, “your old account becomes an asset, something to look forward to rather than a headache waiting to happen.”
Play free
If you’re starting a new account, there’s no need to rush into an Omega subscription. Players that stopped playing before 2016 may not even be aware that EVE now has a free-to-play Alpha option. There are restrictions on Alpha accounts, such as the inability to fly some fancy Omega ships, but as Rushlock notes, rusty players should probably be flying rusty ships:
“Ships are ammo. You’re rusty; fly cheap stuff until you remember how to play. Having access to your higher-end ships upon return usually leads to you losing them quickly and quitting again.”
Use a referral code
If you’re exploring EVE content creator communities, it won’t take you long to stumble across a referral link for free SP. As both Rushlock and Swagger Olacar point out, claiming it is an open goal. It’s designed to give new and returning players some leeway to rediscover their fun per hour. Returning players can get one million SP to get back into the game. It’s an extra incentive to get a new account, although there are also returning SP boosts for reactivating old accounts. Why not do both?
Go slow
Return to your comfort zone but don't get stuck there. That’s the lesson from our resident EVE comeback kid, EVEIL:
“Much like riding a bike, you never forget how to navigate EVE and its multitude of menus. The changes took some getting used to, sure. But I eased myself back in by trying activities that still felt familiar, proved useful, and acted as stepping stones to newer content. Soon, I was exploring the Triglavian Invasion and Abyssal Deadspace, experimenting with station trading, and venturing into J-space in search of data and relic sites.
“All that is to say: returning to EVE can be daunting. Start small. Start familiar. Slowly branch out your activities, but do be sure to branch out. EVE has so much to offer, and doing the same things you did last time you played is a recipe for another hiatus.”
Rediscover your fun
Those aforementioned hourly fun rates should be your next priority. Simply put: if you enjoy your return to EVE, it’s more likely to be a success. So concentrate on the fun stuff. Here’s Rushlock:
“Rediscover your fun in EVE. Get your feet back under you, without urgency or concern for Omega or ISK. Find an activity you enjoy. Check out various streams for ideas. Find people you enjoy playing with.”
AIR Career Program
Brother Grimoire recommends a relatively recent addition to EVE that was added to help new and returning players enjoy themselves while they find their feet: the AIR Career Program. It was introduced in June 2022 and offers four rewarded paths which tackle core systems and gameplay styles: Soldier of Fortune, Enforcer, Explorer, and Industrialist. We recently ran a poll to see which career path our community favoured:
You can find some more opinions in the submissions to this bounty.
NERDS!
No, we’re not being rude - Rushlock highlights the dawn of NERDS, or the New Eden Retail Delivery Service, an organisation that will now deliver your shopping right to you so you don’t have to trek to Jita (and for the record, we all fly our nerd flags high here at Just About anyway). Other missile delivery services are also available; check out this list of the best roleplayed communities for another great option.
Check your old fittings
If you’ve been away for any length of time, you won’t be surprised to learn that the meta has changed. When EVEIL returned, they could still fit out a ship, “but had no idea if the resulting stats were any good”. Using EVE Workbench was a “lifesaver” for community fits.
“After a while, I felt comfortable enough to tweak the fits to better suit my needs. Now I can confidently fit my ship from scratch.”
We don’t have space to run you through every meta change in EVE’s twenty-year history, but greybill has provided a few key changes that you should be aware of:
ECM (electronic countermeasures) changed “big time” in 2018; “since then, jamming ships or drones can be locked by the ships they’re jamming, allowing the jammed targets to fight back.”
2018 also saw big changes to nullification and warp core stabilisers, which are now active modules. You can’t just sit around; you have to click them to activate them. Haulers can fit nullifier modules now too. Plus, shuttles are now nullified, which according to Greybill makes them “the most cost-effective way to travel from A to B”.
A year later, cynos had a major rework. There are now “big restrictions on which ships are able to fit cynosural field generators”. You can find more info on those changes here.
Greybill signs off with a “TL;DR: double-check your old fittings”. But for those of you for whom this was more of a RI;NLE (read it; not long enough), we’re going to instead point you towards a comprehensive, rapid-fire breakdown of EVE’s changes from Ashterothi. Here’s a breakdown of the key changes covered in the video:
Changes to the markets, including fixes to incrementally undercutting
CCP’s focus on making trade essential via resource distribution and building materials - “They completely changed the DNA of the rocks”
New ores in border systems
The ships that can now compress different resources while mining, saving you the risks and effort of continually jetcanning
Crystals, mining waste, and yield updates as well as their implications for the lucrativeness of industry
Changes to the value of sites and how it’s no longer true that relic sites are always better than data sites
That Ventures can now huff gas, and how that’s made gas harvesting the most lucrative activity for Alpha players
The introduction of and generous updates to daily reward tracks, which now allow players to snag OP boosters and desirable skins from bygone events
More detail on greybill’s point about passive interdiction nullification being replaced by an active module
Upwell structures and their reinforcement timers
Potential lost assets, particularly when trying to retrieve assets from Nullsec
The Agency - “your go-to source for finding information about where things are in-game”
How the introduction of Pochven has changed the geography of EVE
Heraldry, Paragon points, Project Discovery, Triglavians, mutaplasmids, and more
Hopefully you’ve found this advice useful. We ran this bounty just before Havoc’s release, but by searching ‘Havoc’ at Just About EVE Online, you’ll find plenty of info on EVE’s latest expansion too. We’ll leave you with some words from Rushlock:
“Consider this guide, and hopefully suggest it the next time you run into a returning player.”
Some text has been amended for brevity. You can find the original wording at the bounty post.
Image credit: Razorien on Flickr
Created at . Page last updated at .
