First Things First

The very first thing to do is to make sure to complete all the tutorial mission arcs, they'll earn you some decent cash, a number of ships, a bunch of stuff, and teach you how to play the game. Follow the in-game tutorials as well, they’ll prevent you from making any silly mistakes.

Tools: Bigger is Better

Once you done the tutorials, grab the following absolutely essential tools:

* Maps to plan out where to go http://www.ombeve.co.uk/
* EVEMon to plan out your characters http://evemon.battleclinic.com/
* EFT to plan out your ships http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard...hreadID=548883

Make the Most of Your Time

EVEMon will help you plan out a character so that you don’t waste time training skills you don’t need. Here’s one way to work it out (not the best):

* Open EVEMon and import your character by following the instructions in EVEMon
* Start a new training plan and go to the ‘Ship Browser’ tab
* Have a look around at the ships available and decide on what you’d like to fly
* Click on the ‘Battleclinic Loadouts’ link and then double click on the highest ‘Rating’ loadout
* Click on the ‘Discuss this loadout’ link and have a read of the web page that pops up
* If you like the look of the plan carry on, otherwise go back to the loadout browser
* Click on the ‘Get EVEMon Skillplan’ link and download the file
* Select the Plans > Manage item from the EVEMon menu
* Select the File > Load Plan from File menu item in the Open Plan window
* Or skip the trip to the website and click on the 'Add All to Plan' button in the loadout browser
* Review and add additional skills as desired

Maximise Your Learning

It’s worth maximising on your learning skills early on, open a new skill plan in EVEMon, go to the ‘Skill Browser’ tab and expand the Learning item.

You should train each of the skills with a (1) next to them to level IV, then train each of the skills with a (3) next to them to level III. EVEMon will advise you if you need to train specific learning skills higher than this.

To really make a difference train Cybernetics to I and get a set of +3 ‘basic’ implants.

Maximise Your Earnings

There’s a number of ways to earn ISK in EVE Online even if you only start out with a little.

* Mining is easy but boring and only becomes profitable after a fair amount of training, there’s a very good guide here: http://www.eve-guides.com/mining/index.php
* Piracy is entertaining but not always profitable, there’s a good guide here: http://eve-stuff.co.uk/resources/piracy.pdf

Working the market is time consuming but can provide you with a decent in-game income. The basics go like this:

* Select an item you want to trade from the market and ‘View Detail’
* You will see a list of buyers and sellers, organise the lists so that the cheapest seller and the highest buyer are at the top of their respective lists
* If there is a profit to be made because the seller is selling for less than the buyer is buying then buy from the seller
* Grab an Industrial ship and move the goods from the seller’s location to the buyer’s location
* Sell the goods to the buyer

Obviously there is a lot of additional work required to make a regular decent profit but that is the gist of the technique.

Real Money Trading

If you find yourself short of in-game spending power EVE Online has a legitimate means of real money trading. You need to buy a game time card from one of the many sites out there that sell them and then redeem it to create an in-game item called PLEX; PLEX can be sold for ISK.

The EVE forums also have a place for trading timecodes and characters:

* Timecode Bazaar http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard...annelID=544711
* Character Bazaar http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard...annelID=734105

As ever, beware of scams!

Forums

Some of the worst player behaviour can be found on the EVE Online forums, if you're feeling brave go have a look as it is possible to find out useful information: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp