EVE Online's essential knowledge:

1. if unprepared, you can be tackledprevented from warping and destroyed anywhere in EVE. you usually won't be killed in High Security space, but you can be, for two reasons:
   1. you joined a player-run corporationa formal group of players, like a guild or clan in traditional MMOs or alliancea formal group of corporations which can have war declared on itcorporations can have war declared on them if they have anchored a structure, e.g. Astrahus or Player-Owned Customs Office
      
      war-declarations are quite common in EVE by other groups (and can thus be freely attacked by them in HS for the war's duration), or
   2. a suicide ganker decided to kill you, either on a whim or because they could profit from your wreck after losing their ship(s)
      • if you must play in HS, reconsider your motivations and play elsewhere. if you insist,
        click to show/hide info about mitigating gank risk

        • to be unenticing to the profiteering suicide gankers, you should have about 1 thousand EHPEffective Hitpoints, i.e. [shield + armor + structure HP] x [combined average of each layer's resistance] for every 3 million ISK worth of stuff you have fitted to your ship and in its holds/bays
          • check EHP in the fitting window (Alt + F, then click SIMULATE) or out-of game with pyfa (shown here). check the value of the fit & cargo with the Janice junk evaluator
            • if you're fitting to avoid HS ganks, you generally want an omnitanka fit which makes resistances to EVE's four damage types as even as possible (within ~20%), since gankers can scan your fit and attack your lowest resistance
        • mitigate the risk of the whim-based ganks by:
          1. paying attention. gankers usually use the same characters repeatedly and commonly fly Catalysts, Thrashers, Taloses, Tornados or Stealth Bombers (not an exhaustive list)
          2. keeping a cushion of ISK/assets in reserve
          3. praying to Bob
          4. staying docked or never playing (seriously: if you can't prepare for random losses or you're paralyzed by the possibility, either take up station trading or don't play)
          5. avoiding common ganking locations with wormholes or by paying pros
             • common ganking locations & methods of bypassing them are in separate sections farther below
2. PvP is a more ubiquitous outside High Security space since it doesn't require players to declare war or factor the loss of their ships into the equation
3. you'll avoid the majority of tacklers in High and Low Security space if your ship enters warp in under 2 seconds from a full stopa ship which does this is said to instawarp. anything up to 1.99 s works. check this in the fitting window (Alt + F) or in pyfa (available here)
   • having any velocity at all can change how long your ship takes to enter warp; this includes the velocity your ship is given when it undocks
     • if your velocity is directed within ~15 degrees of your warp destination, you'll enter warp instantly if the velocity is 75% or more of the ship's current maximum velocity
       • note that ships in EVE have inertia, so changing pre-existing velocity is not instantaneous. this may seem obvious, but just consider it in light of the point directly above
       • active (cycling) propulsion modules increase a ship's max velocity; you must be at 75% of current max velocity to warp, whatever that may be when you initiate it
         • this fact combined with the activatable/deactivable nature of propulsion modules allows for interesting & useful maneuvers like the cloak + MWD trick
   • the direction a ship's 3d model is facing has no effect on warp timing. the belief that it does is a very common delusion about EVE mechanics despite it being trivially easy to test & disprove
     • read here about trainable skills and modules which affect time to warp. capsulesthe egg-shaped pod in which your pilot's body rides and shuttles always instawarp from a dead stop regardless of skill level
       • several frigates and destroyers and a handful of larger hulls can be fit to instawarp, but this depends on the hull, its fitting, and the pilot's learned skills and implants
   • instawarping fits can be caught by specialist tacklersknown as hyper- or ultralockers, but they're rare enough that you shouldn't worry about them unless you're moving billions of ISK worth of stuff
     • click to show/hide a section which gets into the weeds on this. it isn't essential stuff; I provide it to illustrate one of EVE's many rabbit holes

       • here is a page about subsecond fits which can reliably escape hyperlockers
         • but only if warping from under gate cloak or if warping to a properly-made instant-undock bookmark
       • and here is a partially-incorrect but nonetheless useful explanation of hyperlocking
       • and here is evidence that subsecond ships can be caught by hyperlockers if they undock and stop their ship before warping away: 2014, 2022, discussion
         • the actual underlying mechanics involved here have never been fully explained anywhere, tmk
           • this microcosm of hyperlocking is EVE in a nutshell; it's full of niches in which knowledge of mechanics is incomplete, fuzzy, or not widely-understood
4. warp disruption fields AKA bubbles are player-generated spheres which prevent and intercept warps. they only work in NS, JS, Pochven and active-Insurgency LS, all of which are explained below
   • bubbles don't affect shuttles, can be temporarily bypassed by select ships which can fit nullifiers, and can sometimes be avoided (i.e. moved around) with tactical bookmarks
5. dscanning allows you to tell if other ships or objects of interest are within 14.3 AU of your location. habitualize its use to avoid tackle and unwanted fights
6. never use Autopilot unless you've made a sensible risk/reward calculation and are properly tanked for whatever you're moving

1. know the difference between stations, structures, and POS. using those terms interchangeably is asking for trouble
2. the main trade hub of EVE, the Jita Planet IV Moon 4 station, is the most dangerous location in EVE, and stations/gates generally are unsafe even in HS
   • buy/make and habitualize the use of instadock and insta-undock bookmarks at all stations you frequent. it's also wise to habitually use perch BMs at all gates outside HS (also described at /bm)
3. there are various types of planetary system in EVE, all with different mechanics (this was mostly covered in the E-Uni article on system security, but I want to reward it here for clarity):
   • Known Space (KS) AKA New Eden is every system connected to the main stargate network. there are 66 regions of Known Space in these categories:
     • Empire AKA lawful space, where every system is controlled by NPCs and all systems and constellations have a name of 1-3 words. Empire Space contains two subcategories:
       • High-Sec (HS, 1.0 to 0.5), where NPCs do not prevent unsanctioned PvP but do punish it by destroying offending ships and applying security status penalties to their pilots
         • note: some HS systems can temporarily host Insurgencies, during which time unsanctioned PvP may go unpunished (pod-killing & criminal-aiding is still punished, but nothing else)
       • Low-Sec (LS, 0.4 to 0.1), where NPCs do not intervene in PvP but still apply security status penalties for it
         • gates and stations have automated gun emplacements which do respond to certain types of PvP in their vicinity
         • some LS systems may temporarily host Insurgencies, during which bubbles (among other things) can possibly be used there
     • Null-Sec (NS, 0.0) is outside Empire space and controlled by NPCs or by players, but it is still Known Spaceany space connected to the main gate network
       • no security status penalties occur in NS, therefore it is a type of lawless space, and bubbles and bombs can always be used there
     • Zarzakh is a unique single-system class of known space. it is (as of February 15th, 2026) the only lawless space where bubbles and bombs cannot be used
   • J-Space (JS) AKA W-Space (WS) AKA Anoikis is unknownnot connected to the main gate network lawless space accessible only via wormholes. it actually contains further sub-groupings which are detailed at the link
     • Thera and the 5 Drifter systems don't really belong to JS proper for various reasons, but I list them here because they, too, are lawless and mainly accessed via wormholes
   • Pochven is a lawless region of 27 systemswhether Pochven is is known or unknown
     us ambiguous; I'd say it's neither accessible by wormholes and filaments which is connected in a loop by a separate network of stargates
4. Local Chat in Drifter space, JS, Pochven, Thera and Zarzakh is in delayed mode, i.e. it only shows present pilots in the Member List if they post a message
   • by contrast, it always shows present pilots in HS, LS and NS
5. if you're not wisely avoiding HS and having more fun elsewhere, here's a list of suicide ganker haunts
   • also, don't let my curmudgeonly opinions prevent you from exploring HS if you want to. I recommend against it, though
     • perhaps counter-intuitively, it's generally much easier & safer to make reliable ISK and good useful connections/friendships in any other space, especially if you're inexperienced
6. commonly-gatecamped systems outside of HS: Ahbazon, Rancer, Tama, Thera (wormholes), Turnur (wormholes). this not an exhaustive list
   • EVE Gatecamp Check lets you check systems/routes for recent kills. note: you may be unlucky enough to be a gatecamp's first recent kill, so don't take it as gospel
7. wormholes and/or filaments can dramatically reduce travel times in EVE. WARNING: bubbles work JS/NS/Pochven/Thera, and Turnur is LS which can host Insurgencies
   • here is my primer on wormholes. if you have time, patience, and a scanning character, you can often find shortcuts around ganking zones with direct HS-to-HS wormholes
     • on a related note, Exploration is easy to learn, cheap to start, and very lucrative, especially in sovereign nullsec alliance space which can be modified for more & better PvE sites
       • also, if you have the gumption to explore in JS with no Local, you'll either flounce out or you'll learn to be sneaky, wary, and sly, all traits which will serve you well in EVE
   • EVE-Scout publicly maps Thera and Turnur connections (how to access their bookmarks), and here's my guide on using Pochven filaments to quickly get back to Jita