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! avoid it if you're easily upset by loss, can't laugh at yourself, or can't seek help via a search engine and/or other players
• 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 mostly PvP
• losses in EVE are permanent, barring exploits or errors from CCPCrowd Control Productions, the producers of EVE Online. you usually won't be reimbursed for ignorance of mechanics or for scams or treachery
  • if something seems too good to be true, it's likely a scam. never accept a contract linked in Local chat or EVEmailed to you
    • also, never pay a ransom in EVE for any reason
• a character's Empire, Bloodline and Education are inconsequential except in one way, detailed below; any character can go anywhere or fly any ship (if they learn the required skills)
  • the one meaningful difference between Empires is that all Caldari characters start & respawn very near Jita, the game's main trade hub; this is much more convenient than the other three

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. lone wolves can get along fine, but most of aspects of EVE are improved by cooperation
   • formal groups of players in EVE are corporations, and formal groups of corps are alliances. both are frequently referred to by their shortened names called tickers
     • here are some ways to find a corporation that suits you:
       • the official EVE Online Discord
         • a link straight to the "looking-for-corp" thread there
       • CCP's guide to the in-game corporation finder
       • reddit's EVE Jobs Board
     • click to show/hide four specific recommendations based on your personality/preferences:

       1. if you're OK navigating a huge, dispersed, complicated assortment of corps and/or being a cog, at least for a while:
          • I'd recommend a starter corporation in a big nullsec bloc. Pandemic Horde Inc. > KarmaFleet > Brave Newbies Inc.
            • you can also skip the starter corps and go straight into an established one, but the benefit of PH Inc. specifically is minimal hoops to jump through
              • a huge part of EVE is espionage, and most corps aside from PH Inc. want ongoing access to all your characters' ESI data to screen out spies
                • since PH Inc. doesn't require ESIs, it is barred from certain bits of its alliance's territory (you can join a corp with tighter OPSEC if you want that access)
       2. if you want smaller-scale stuff and a more tight-knit group right from the start, try a group in Faction Warfare lowsec, Pochven, or wormholes
          • Faction Warfare is an especially good choice if you want to get straight into PvP. T Sky's FW/Frigate Yearbook is a great resource for the meta (link to find the most recent one)
       3. if you want smaller-scale plus an environment 100% designed for teaching new players various aspects of play, consider EVE University
          • tmk, the big nullblocs have largely either caught up to or surpassed Eve-Uni as educators, but they're still probably worth at least checking out
       4. avoid High-Sec groups, generally
          • I'm perhaps unfairly biased against HS, so do your own investigating, but in my experience, the dynamics & opportunities elsewhere are much nicer
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. leave your corporation if it's not fun & try another

A few broad tips:

• if you ever acquire PLEX, Skill Injectors, Skill Extractors, or Skin licenses, read the top of this page about what you should never do with them
• 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
  • to reiterate: search engines are your friend! YouTube has plenty of guides if you prefer videos (but check dates and take everything with a grain of salt)
• don't fly what you can't replace (this isn't a hard & fast rule, but it's generally better to keep a buffer of ISK/assets instead of pouring everything into one hull & fit which you'll eventually lose)
• 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:

• here are 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 dangerous 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
     • two related noes:
       1. never use Autopilot unless you've made a sensible risk/reward calculation and are properly tanked for whatever you're moving
       2. many believe otherwise, but pointing your ship's 3D model toward a preferred warp destination then coming to a stop does not decrease how long it takes to enter warp to said destination
          • if your ship is currently at a dead stop, these are the only things affecting how long it'll take to enter warp in any direction
            • if you're not changing any of the things in the above link, the only way to decrease your TTW is to have velocity within 15 degrees of where you want to warp
  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 dscanning 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