It is highy recommended that you take the time to do the tutorial before playing. After the initial tutorial missions, you are pretty much on your own to find your place and to grow your character however you like. But, the initial tutorial missions are essential for your success and will guide you through the basic processes of mining and refining ore, interacting with corporate agents, and acquiring your first safe and supervised taste of ship-to-ship combat. You will also need the tutorial to learn how to utilize the interstellar market, purchase and install ship upgrades, and perhaps most importantly, earn enough money to upgrade your vessel.

Loosing ships, items, and getting "podded", are all a part of EVE Online. However, there are several ways to potential losses. You would be surprised to know how many cases there are in which Eve Online players could have avoided big losses by just using simple ingame features and being a bit more careful. Here is a list of useful tips and tricks that can help to keep your clone contract unused.

• Don't play the game AFK (Away From Keyboard). This game is not designed with this kind of playing style in mind and you should NEVER consider your ship and character safe while being away from your computer.

• Enter space with security status below 0.5 at your own risk. You can NEVER expect to be safe in unsecured space regardless of sentry guns, CONCORD presence, and such.

• Insure all ships you are using, especially the expensive ones. Since the time of an insurance contract was changed to 12 weeks, it makes sense to buy the most expensive "platinum" type of insurance, at least for those who play quite frequently.

• Don't expect CONCORD to keep you immune to attacks or ship losses. Like in the real world, law enforcers often arrive too late at the scene of the crime, and even though they able to punish the criminal, they can't always prevent the crime.

• Don't rely on Sentry Guns to keep you a 100% safe. Especially not when traveling in unsecured space. There are several tactical ways to avoid sentry gun fire, which are NOT considered to be an exploit.

• Use map filters such as "ships destroyed in the last hour" to spot possible player pirate camps and other dangerous areas.

• Use the local chat channel to see what's happening within the system when you have just jumped in.

• Use Warp Core Stabilizers to avoid being warp jammed. The more, the merrier. When you are warp scrambled you are not dead yet. You can still escape by moving away from the spot if they didn't webify you. For this, double click on empty space.

• Use the auto-scanner and set it to alert you when anyone in scanning range is a potential threat to you.

• Keep an eye on local; if people warp jam your ship, offer to pay them to stay alive - sometimes it works and any chance is better than the alternative.

• Even in low security space, some stations have sentry guns, so if things get desperate its better to retreat to a station with sentry guns than a Jump Gate that doesn't have any.

• The safest locations in low security space are in the middle of nowhere. If all gates are being monitored and there are no Stations with Sentry guns to retreat to, bookmark a few locations while in warp, and then warp back to one of your bookmarks. Sit it out there but be ready to warp to another of the bookmarks if anyone finds you.

• If you are mining in low security space, align your ship with your warp out destination, this saves you time turning your ship when you need to make a fast getaway. Handy if you are in a battleship with a turning circle like a brick on ice.

• When cloaked and stationary at a hostile gate, hit MWD (microwarp drive) set to manual for a 10 second burn; by the time you come uncloaked and hit your destination, the last bit of MWD will spin you around and get you into warp a lot faster.

• To make a good safe spot, click on "add bookmark" in your places folder while in warp, then find that bookmark before you come out of warp and go to it. Find another spot off that track to warp to and do the bookmark thing again .This will place you between 3 points and make you very hard to find.

• Keep your clones up to date!

• Ensure that your autopilot is always set with a location in a different system. That way you can get to Warp (and away from danger) very quickly by just clicking the engage Autopilot button.

• TREAT EVERYONE AS HOSTILE unless you know otherwise, i.e. if you don't know someone as a friend or acquaintance assume they are planning to kill you and watch them at all times.

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About The EVE Online Skill System:

So like, little odd isn't it?
To most people that have played other MMOG's, one of the biggest differences that you will encounter is the way that EVE's skill system functions - players advance in a totally different way to the way in which you'd advance in say, World Of Warcraft. There is no system where you get experience points for slaying a wild beast of some form, it is all totally time based.

Uh, doesn't that mean that veteran players will always have an advantage over me?
Well, yes and no. Someone that has been playing longer than you will, in general, have more skill points overall than you. However, because of the way the skills in EVE work, each level of a skill takes a lot longer than the previous level to train. Whilst level four of a skill may take one and a half days to train, level five would take well over seven days - for just a five percent increase. So, with five million skill points you can be nearly as effective as someone with twenty million skill points.

In addition to this, if you train up to do a certain thing, rather than everything in general, you are more than likely to be as good as almost all veterans at it fairly quickly.

But... What do skills do exactly?
Skills increase almost every aspect of your ability to use items, fly ships, manufacture items, everything! For instance, the skill 'Navigation' will provide you with a 5% bonus to speed per level.

Level One: 1.05x Multiplier on the velocity of all ships.
Level Two: 1.10x Multiplier on the velocity of all ships.
Level Three: 1.15x Multiplier on the velocity of all ships.
Level Four: 1.20x Multiplier on the velocity of all ships.
Level Five: 1.25x Multiplier on the velocity of all ships.

Other skills provide all sorts of advantages - bonuses to each aspect of turrets - damage, rate of fire, tracking speed, range - to reducing the capacitor use of some of your modules.

Almost all ships and items require skills to operate or fit.

When you view a ship or item that you want to fly or use - the 'Req. Skills' tab will show you what skills you need. Red represents skills that you do not yet have, and green represents what you already have. Also, all ships except shuttles have bonuses that increase the ship's ability to do certain things, based upon your skill level. These are listed in the 'Description' tab.

And where do these 'Attributes' and 'Learning skills' come in?
Your attributes determine how long it takes to train skills. If you take a look at the attributes tab on the information for each skill, you will see a 'Primary Attribute' and 'Secondary Attribute'. There is a simple way to work out the number of skillpoints per minute you will gain when training a skill - you take the secondary attribute, half it and add it to the primary attribute. So in this case it would be: 19 willpower divided by two equals 9.5, add 16 perception = 25.5 skillpoints per minute.

Learning skills increase your attributes. There are two sets of them - learning skills, and advanced learning skills. Each learning skill except 'Learning' gives you one more point in its relevant attribute, and learning increases your attributes by 2% per level. The advanced learning skills do the same again for each of your separate attributes.

So how should I start out, and what skills should I train first? I want to be a pirate!
My personal recommendation is that if you want to go into being a pirate, or combat pilot, to start off - start with a fairly well rounded character edging towards perception and intelligence. During character creation get your perception, intelligence, willpower and memory as high as possible, with any spare points you have going into perception and intelligence.

A small list of essential skills that you'll need to start off with:

Racial Frigate III (Racial = whichever race you are). Depending on what race you are, you will want frigate level three so that you can use your race's best combat frigate - the best for pirating in my opinion for each race are Kestrel, Incursus, Punisher, Rifter.
Propulsion Jamming I: This will allow you to use warp scramblers, which prevent your target from warping away, and stasis webifiers, which reduce your opponent's speed substantially.
Energy Grid Upgrades II: This will allow you to use capacitor power relays and capacitor rechargers, which are essential in your early stages so that you can keep enough capacitor to keep your weapons and warp scramblers running.
Engineering III, Electronics III: These increase the amount of powergrid and CPU all of your ship's have, thus allowing you to fit better modules, and more of them!
Energy Systems Operation III, Energy Management II: These are also needed for your ship to have enough capacitor to fight. Each level of energy systems operation will reduce your ship's capacitor recharge rate by 5%, and each level of energy management will increase the overall capacitor size of your ship.
Afterburner I: This will allow you to fit afterburners, which will make your ship go a lot faster. Later on, if you have Afterburner and Navigation IV, you will be able to use MicroWarpDrives, which will make your frigate go very fast!
Only If Caldari or flying a Kestrel (or other missile frigate): Missile Launcher Operation II, Standard Missiles I, Rockets I. This will let you use missile launchers, standard missiles and rockets.
Well, that’s the basic skills you'll need. That will let you fly your race's best combat frigate, prevent your targets from running away, and be fast enough to catch them!

Ok, but what if I want to build things, and mine?
In that case, you will want to focus almost solely on intelligence and memory. Start off however provides you with the highest total of intelligence and memory, and then put two points into intelligence and three into memory.

Again, a list of some essential skills that you will want:

Racial Destroyer I: This will enable to use a destroyer. They have more turret hardpoints and CPU, so you will be able to fit more mining lasers. Also, they have a larger cargohold to store ore than frigates.
Electronics III/IV: The higher the better really - this skill increases the amount of CPU you have. And the more CPU you have the more mining lasers you will be able to fit on that destroyer!
Mining: This is basic - every level of this will increase your mining yield by 5% per level. The higher it is, the more ore you will extract each cycle of your mining lasers.
Astrogeology: Does the same as Mining, but you need level four mining and science to start training it. Not really essential, but go for it if you can - every little helps!
Industry III: If you didn't start with this skill, then you'll need it for production. Level one will allow you to build things using factories, and every level will reduce the time it takes to build things by 4%. Level three allows you to train other skills with other bonuses.
Mass Production II: Each level of this allows you to operate another factory. Without this skill, you can only use one - at level two you'd be able to use three factories.
Production Efficiency III: Each level of this reduces the mineral cost of anything you want to build by 4%. Level three is a good level to have this at to begin with.