You can play EVE Online for decades and still discover new shortcuts. There are over a hundred potential keyboard bindings, after all. Unless you have a photographic memory, trying to set and memorise all of them is a losing game. And so we asked our community of EVE Online veterans for their top picks for the most useful keyboard shortcuts and explanations of how to use them.

It… it’s alive! No, not Frankenstein’s monster, this article you’re reading. Much like our EVE Online glossary, we’ll expand this guide following future keyboard shortcut bounties. The ultimate goal is to create a single, comprehensive cheat sheet containing all of EVE’s most helpful shortcuts. One guide to rule them all and in the darkness keybind them. Ahem.

We’ve also interspersed tips from Just About EVE community members throughout this article to help you make the most of the shortcuts.

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Combat

‘C’ + ‘left click’ to track an enemy. Submitted by Félicien Gonneaud (Félicien)

‘Q’ + ‘left click’ twice around your ship to define the point you wish your ship to go to. The first click is for the X and Y axes, the second is for the Z axis. Submitted by ProgramXVII (Félicien)

Top tip: This is especially useful for manual kiting in PvP.

‘E’ + ‘left click’ on a target (in space or on your overview) to keep at the range you have set. Submitted by EVEIL

‘W’ + ‘left click’ on a target (in space or on your overview) to keep at the range you have set while orbiting. Submitted by EVEILOnline

‘Q’ + ‘left click’ on a target (in space or on your overview) to approach the target. Submitted by EVEILOnline

Directional scanning

‘V’ to D-Scan. Submitted by JAKEL33T

Top tip: You can tell how experienced an EVE player is by how worn their ‘V’ key is.

‘V’ + ‘left click’ in the overview or in space to scan in that direction by an increment of five degrees. Submitted by JAKEL33T

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Drone control

‘F’ to engage drones. Submitted by EveOnlineTutorials

‘Shift’ + ‘Alt’ + ‘R’ to order drones to return and orbit. Submitted by EveOnlineTutorials

‘Shift’ + ‘R’ to order drones back to the drone bay. Submitted by EveOnlineTutorials

Messaging

The following keyboard shortcuts should work in chat, EVE Mail, or any other text entry field in EVE Online.

Top tip: The shortcuts below will also work for the Just About post editor. See, I told you so.

‘Ctrl’ + ‘B’ for bold. Submitted by Salartarium

‘Ctrl’ + ‘I’ for italics. Submitted by Salartarium

‘Ctrl + ‘U’ for underline. Submitted by Salartarium

Top tip: “Don’t forget to use all possible colours to make your EVE Mails really stand out.” - greybill

Disclaimer: Just About holds no accountability if your corpmates get annoyed by your headache-inducing multicoloured messaging.

Navigation and warping

‘Shift’ + ‘Alt’ + ‘X’ to show all moons as warpable icons in space. Submitted by @Amarlio

Top tip: “When jumping into a system with a gate camp, moons are often the best option due to how many of them there are - it makes it harder for people to find where you went. Using this shortcut will not only give you kiting and warping options, but it’ll give you better visuals on how big the system is.” - Amarlio

‘Ctrl’ + ‘B’ to set a bookmark. Submitted by FUN INC

Top tip: Use this shortcut when warping between celestials to secure yourself an aligned midsafe. By bookmarking aligned midsafes, you can also create unaligned safes.

‘Double-click’ a ship in space to head towards it. Submitted by Rixx Javix

Top tip: “This is a seemingly small thing with tremendous potential if you use it correctly. Not only can it quickly orient you in space, but it can also point your ship towards soon-to-be-cloaked ships that - you know - might need to be uncloaked shortly.” - Rixx Javix

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Probe scanning

‘B’ to probe-scan. Submitted by Jaques Ufaltred (Jaques)

Top tip: Related keybinds are left empty by default. Test out the most intuitive and helpful setup for you. Jaques’ personal recommendation is to set ‘G’ for decreasing probe radius and ‘H’ for increasing it. That way, players can just hit ‘G’ then ‘B’ to quickly pin down a signature.

‘Ctrl’ + ‘mouse wheel’ moves the probes to and from the centre. Submitted by Schadsquatch

‘Alt’ + ‘mouse wheel’ changes the scan size. Submitted by Schadsquatch

‘Double-click’ the probe scanning window to flip it by 90 degrees. Submitted by Schadsquatch

Top tip: “If you keep the probe-centering cube squarely facing yourself, things become super easy. You move it, you double click, then you move it again to exactly where you want it. This will work as long as you don’t rotate the FOV (field of vision) in the probe scanning window.” - Jaques

We hope that you find these EVE Online keyboard shortcuts helpful. Got a good one to share? You don’t have to wait until the next bounty, you can share it below.

Some text has been amended for brevity. You can find the original wording at the bounty post.

Image credit: Razorien on Flickr