General things to know about EVE Online before beginning:

• EVE has no win conditions! play is varied and open-ended. avoid/mitigate stuff you dislike, pursue what you enjoy, and ignore naysayers
• EVE is unforgiving and deep. if you're easily upset by loss, can't laugh at yourself, or can't use a search engine, avoid it
• EVE is PvP-centric. anything can be destroyed if it's undocked, regardless of system security level ("High-Security" space is not a PvP-free zone)
  • you can be nonviolent and minimize your vulnerabilities, but you cannot entirely avoid the possibility of PvP; even the market is a form of PvP!
• losses in EVE, barring exploits or CCP errors, are permanent. CCP usually won't reimburse for ignorance of mechanics or for scams or treachery
  • if something seems too good to be true, it's almost certainly a scam. never accept a contract linked in Local chat or EVEmailed to you
    • on a related note: never pay a ransom in EVE for any reason (not for your tackled ship, not for ISK/assets lost to a scam, etc)

Specific suggestions for play, after you've created your first character:

1. do as much of the starting tutorial as you can, and perhaps the Career Agents' missions, too (they're of varying quality, but introduce you to many aspects of play)
   • note: the link above points to a subsection of a huge article; I wouldn't bother reading the whole thing. just find the nearest set of agents & run their missions
2. you can be a lone wolf if it suits you, but the best ship in EVE is friendship! here's CCP's guide to the in-game corporation finder, and here's reddit's EVE Jobs Board
   • generally, Null-Security alliances are diffuse & stratified whereas groups in other areas tend to be smaller and more tight-knit. groups operating in High-Security space are best avoided
     • I'd recommend Pandemic Horde if you're good at self-direction (and move into a non-THXFC corporation ASAP). try a group in Low-Security, Pochven, or wormholes if you want smaller scale
   • if you're moving from an established area of operations to any non-HS group, liquidate unnecessary assets and buy new gear at your new home
     • if you really must move stuff to your new home, use your group's logistics service(s) to move things for you. you're very likely to be killed en route if you don't know how to haul
   • leave your corporation if it's not fun & try another. note that it's possible to stay in the same alliance if you should want to; vast differences in corp culture may exist even within one alliance
   • if you don't know a word or phrase used in a fleet, the best thing to do is ask with your voice. if you can't or won't, then check EVE University's EVE Lexicon page
     • it may be intimidating, but voice chat lets other players respond without diverting visual attention; using your voice is more considerate than typing
       • any corporation/alliance worth joining will happily accept & help deaf players
3. if you don't find a niche you enjoy, ask other EVE players for help! if you do find a niche, try new things every so often anyway; EVE has loads of depth

A few broad tips:

• trust as few guides/tools/mentors as you can & test/validate if something's critical and uncertain. 3rd-party info/tooling (including my own) isn't necessarily correct or up-to-date
• seek out guides/tools/mentors and learn as much as possible from them. this contradicts the above, but the point is: other peoples' ideas/tools are constraints as much as catalysts
• don't fly what you can't afford to lose (i.e. it's almost always better to keep a buffer of ISK/assets in reserve rather than blowing everything on a ship just to lose it)
• think of ships as ammunition instead of as prizes to be cherished, and learn from losses instead of rueing them
  • oftentimes, if you send a (civil) message to your opponent/attacker, they'll teach you or point you to useful resources
• if you're making a big purchase, hover over the total cost and note that it's spelled out, e.g. 1.28 million or 4.56 billion (good mental check for if you're being scammed)
  • if you're unfamiliar with fair pricing, evaluators like Janice exist (beware: for low-volume items, evaluators are easily-gamed)
• block toxic players (right-click their name in chat & select "Block"). most EVE players are chill, but some act terribly. report egregious behavior to CCP
  • do not report people just for blowing you up or using rough language! "PvP everywhere" is fundamental to EVE Online, and learning to ignore shit-talking is a valuable life skill

EVE Online's essential knowledge:

• click to show/hide six topics which cover what I consider to be EVE's essentials. this is a lot of text, but I'd wish this was explained to me if I were starting now:

  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 has deployed a structure and can thus have war declared on itmost large player corportions and alliances always have war declared on them (and then be freely attacked in HS) by other player corporations, or
     2. a suicide ganker decided to kill you, either on a whim or because they stand to make a profit from your wreck after losing their ship
        • 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 cargo
          • 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
          • the Jita 4-4 CNAP trade hub stationPlanet 4 Moon 4 Caldari Navy Assembly Plant is especially dangergous due to its suicide gankers; make yourself some instant-dock and instant-undock bookmarks for it
  2. 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)
     • 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: 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
     • 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
     • instawarping ships 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
       • if you want to get into the weeds on this, click to show/hide more:

         • note: none of this pop-down section is neccessary or required for beginners! I provide this only to illustrate one of EVE's countless mechanics rabbit holes!
           • here is a partially-incorrect but nonetheless useful explanation of hyperlocking
           • 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
             • note: the cheapest subsecond ship & fit, a Hecate, still costs several hundred million ISK, so is not terribly appropriate for beginners
           • 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
     • on a related note: never use Autopilot unless you've made a sensible risk/reward calculation and are properly tanked for whatever you're moving
  3. warp disruption fields aka bubbles are player-generated spheres which prevent and intercept warps. they only work in LS (if incurred), NS, JS, and Pochven, 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
  4. there are various types of solar system in EVE, all with different mechanics:
     • Known Space (KS) aka New Eden is everything connected to the main stargate network. these systems are grouped into 66 regions and include the below 5 categories:
       • Empire Space, where every system and constellation has a name consisting of 1-3 words. Empire Space contains two categories of space:
         • High-Sec (HS, 1.0 to 0.5), where NPCs punish but do not prevent unsanctioned PvP by destroying offending ships and applying security status penalties to their pilots
           • note: certain HS systems may experience Insurgencies, and NPCs may no longer punish unsanctioned PvP there until the Insurgency ends
         • Low-Sec (LS, 0.4 to 0.1), where NPCs do not intervene in PvP but still apply security status penalties for it, which eventually impede travel in HS
           • note: some LS systems may experience Insurgencies, and interdiction bubbles (among other things) can possibly be used there until the Insurgency ends
       • Null-Sec (NS, 0.0) is outside Empire space and controlled by players but is still Known Space.any space which is connected to the main gate network most NS systems & constellations have a name of 5 letters/numbers & 1 dash
         • no security status penalties occur in NS, therefore it is a type of lawless space
       • Zarzakh is a unique single-system class of known lawless space where bubbles do not work
     • J-Space (JS) aka W-Space (WS) aka Anoikis is unknown lawless space accessible only via wormholes. it actually contains further sub-groupings which are detailed at the link
     • Pochven is a lawless region of 27 systemswhether Pochven is is known or unknown us ambiguous; I'll say neither accessible by wormholes and filaments which is connected in a loop by a separate network of stargates
  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 gatecamps, bubbles, and unwanted fights
  6. Pochven, Thera and Turnur are places with wormhole connections and/or filament access (explained below) which dramatically reduce travel times in EVE
     • here's EVE-Scout, which 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
       • Jita's 4-4 CNAP stationPlanet 4 Moon 4 Caldari Navy Assembly Plant is the main trade hub of EVE; others can be perused here, but they all pale in comparison to Jita and are dwindling with time