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Allow me to set the scene. You've installed EVE Online; you're on a 14 Day Trial or perhaps you actually own the game and decided to start afresh. Maybe you have dabbled in other aspects of EVE, but you haven't touched any of that "mission stuff". Well, then this article was written for you. It is by no means a definitive guide, but will hopefully provide you some insight into how mission running can benefit your character and your corporation and how to find an agent to get started.
Fresh, brand new and in some ways, overwhelmed by the enormity of the EVE Universe, all us newbies will encounter such problem regarding as How do you start off, What do we do? The in-game tutorial guides you through the basic principles of EVE and gifts you rudimentary control over the game interface but it doesn't tell you what to do afterwards. You may be left with a distinct sense that you lack an overbearing aim or a goal. There is no clear cut path, no levels to grind through. You are literally booted into the deep without apology or comment. Welcome to EVE Online.
The point of this callous 'dumping' is to give you the freedom to choose what to do. EVE is a game which requires you, the player, to have a goal and to set yourself tasks and objectives. So, this article is obviously assuming that you've grabbed a cup of coffee, tea, or in fact any other beverage, sat down and had a long hard think about where you want to head with your character and that you have thought about running missions as a means to grow your own ISK crop. So, the question is - why mission running? Why not mining? Why not manufacturing? What kind of missions? These are important questions, affected by multiple variables.
Firstly, character creation is an important process in the short term for an EVE Player. Aesthetics aside, the character creation process defines your starting skill set and starting attributes; so of course if you have started out as a research character and now suddenly want to jump into combat, you would subsequently have to learn the combat skills in order to do this. The lesson here is that it pays to have an idea of what you want to do from the get go in order to give yourself a head start in that direction. There are of course many varieties of missions such as research and development missions; courier missions; mining missions and of course kill missions, so it's not necessary to choose combat in order to excel in missions. However, for careers like mining the likelihood is that you will want to actually go out and mine ore and then refine or sell that ore rather than do missions involving small scale mining. Combat tends to be the most common mission type and is a primary focus for many combat players who do not have a foothold in mining or manufacturing.
Secondly, some players simply don't like the industrial side of EVE. There are definitely some people out there who are content to let others craft tools of destruction whilst they simply use them in order to get their hands very...very dirty. To put it simply - there are a lot of players, perhaps even like yourself who simply want to "blow stuff up". For these people, mission running is a welcome opportunity to unleash death upon their enemies and earn some ISK in the process.
The Benefits
Missions in EVE Online provide several benefits to a player. Primarily, they reward your actions with EVE ISK - garnered from bounty from NPC pirate kills and as a direct reward from handing the mission in. They also boost your standings with the particular corporation you have been working for. Whilst the benefits of ISK rewards are obvious, standings are less so and if you are anything like me, they may leave you confused as to their actual purpose.
At the simplest level, your standing with a corporation affects which agents you have access to. Missions range from Level 1 to Level 5, the higher your effective standing with a corporation, the higher the level of mission agents you can access. However standing affects a multitude of different things in EVE Online, such as access to Jump Clones - an advanced cloning technique used to cut out long distance travel; the ability to anchor player owned structures (also known as PoS's) inside high security space and, for those industrial minded players out there: standing affects the amount of minerals you lose in the refining process. Your standing also contributes to your own corporations overall standing, so you are not only helping yourself but also your entire corporation. So, missions are a key part of increasing your standing with your faction, and the corporations within that faction. An interesting note to make in this area is that if you have a high faction standing, for example a high standing with the Caldari State, then that automatically opens up higher level agents in every corporation within that faction. This enables you to start working for a corporation you might have never completed a mission for at a higher level. The lesson to be learnt here is that Faction standing is very useful!
