Fractured Skies lands on 10 November with new battlecruisers, and this site has covered the expansion’s ships in detail (Fractured Skies adds new ships). Not the question a new player asks. The question is smaller and more stubborn: what do I actually do in the first thirty days, and which of these one-way doors are real?
This piece answers only that, from the studio’s own support documentation. EVE is run by Fenris Creations, whose history page notes the company “has mostly operated under the name CCP Games,” so the help-centre text below is first-party rather than a fan wiki’s reading of it. Where the documentation does not print a number, this article does not either: there is no ISK-per-hour figure here.
What this covers: the first thirty days in EVE Online — where a new character starts, which skill-queue decisions are genuinely permanent, how the four career paths pay, and exactly what Omega gates. Why it matters: most of what feels irreversible in EVE is not, and the two decisions that are hard to undo are easy to miss in the first week, when you have the least context to judge them. Who should care: anyone with a free client installed and no plan, and returning players whose knowledge predates the current starter space.
At a glance: what the free account can and cannot do
The clone state is not a choice; it follows the account. Characters on an account with active game time get Omega, and “Alpha state will be given to all characters on any account without game time.” The differences that matter in month one:
| Alpha (free) | Omega (game time active) | |
|---|---|---|
| Training speed | Base rate, pausing at 5M skill points | Double the Alpha rate |
| Skill ceiling | Alpha skills, “worth about 20M Skillpoints overall” | Unlimited |
| Ships | T1 frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships, haulers, one mining frigatefrigate. A player-built warship used to protect naval trade routes from pirates. (not Triglavian) | All ships |
| Missions | Up to level 3 | All missions |
| Ice mining | Not available | Available |
| Safety setting | Green and yellow only | Green, yellow and red |
| Clients | One Alpha client at a time | Multiple Omega accounts, if no Alpha is in use |
| Industry tax | Additional 2% on industry and science jobs | Standard taxes |
| Planetary Interaction | Can import, cannot export | All export methods |
Two footnotes. Alpha training does not stop dead: further skill points can be added to Alpha skills through Daily Alpha Injectors, which the extractor article describes as adding 50,000 unallocated skill points once a day for Alpha characters. Second, lapse is not loss. Skills trained beyond the Alpha set “will become inactive on the next log in” and come back when game time returns.
Where you actually start now
Everyone starts in the same place. Per the Exordium article, “All new characters begin in Exordium after completing the AIR New Player Experience” — a contrast with the older arrangement, where rookies were scattered across high security space by empire and school choice.
Exordium is a 53-system region run by CONCORD with AIR Laboratories. Its hub, Manifest, holds the AIR Trade Center and sits “within four jumps of every other system” — worth internalising before you buy anything. New characters are sorted into one of twelve starter systems by current load, no longer split by factionfaction. An in-game group or nation players can align with or fight against, with its own goals and reputation system..
What Exordium removes is most of the risk:
| Rule | Effect |
|---|---|
| Starter Space security tier (1.0) | All PvP prohibited, enforced by game mechanics |
| Safety setting | Locked to green; cannot be changed |
| Duels, war declarations, faction warfare | Do not apply |
| Player structures and deployables | Cannot be anchored or dropped |
| PvE content | Rookie-appropriate only: anomalies, low-level missions, career agents, an Epic Arc, homefront ops, daily goals, freelance jobs |
It also removes most of the profit. Mission rewards and NPC bounties take a 20% “safety tax” on top of normal rates, industry jobs 5%, non-instant market orders 5%. Ore is Tier 0 only, reprocessing yield is 40% against 50% at high-security stations, and mining output is “roughly half of standard highsec.” Treat the region as a classroom with a deliberately poor wage.
The skill queue: four decisions, two hard to undo
Skill training runs in real time and does not need you logged in; up to 150 skills can sit in the queue. For an Alpha the rate is documented as 0.5 * (Primary Attribute + (Secondary Attribute/2)) = SP per minute, and Omega doubles it. Two attributes drive each skill, which is why the queue is a planning problem rather than a clicking problem.
Four things in the early game look permanent. Two of them are, and one cannot be undone at all.
| Decision | What the documentation says | Reversible? |
|---|---|---|
| Neural remap | After a timed remap, “it will only be available again after a year has passed,” unless bonus remaps are available | Irreversible for a year |
| Skill extraction | 5.5M SP minimum to extract, 500,000 SP removed per extractor, and “Customer Support is unable to reverse extraction” | Irreversible |
| Skill plan or queue choices | Up to ten personal plans, up to five milestones each; plans can be shared and copied | Fully reversible |
| Upgrading to Omega | “Effective immediately,” no relog; lapsing reverts to Alpha with trained skills inactive | Fully reversible |
The neural remap is the one to be careful with, and the article says so plainly: “Players should be especially careful to ensure any attribute change they perform is correct as they may be unable to change the assigned attributes until the next remap becomes available.” When a bonus remap and a timed remap are both available, the game uses the timed one first, so the careful reading is worth the minute it takes.
Extraction is the only hard stop. It needs 5.5 million skill points before the button exists, so it cannot bite a new character — and the injector you get back pays less than you took out depending on your total skill points: 500,000 unallocated below 5 million, 400,000 between 5 and 50 million, 300,000 between 50 and 80 million, and 150,000 at 80 million or above.
Everything else is softer than it feels. Certified skill plans designed by EVE Academy exist for the Explorer, Enforcer, Industrialist and Soldier of Fortune paths, plus faction-specific variants. Only one goal is tracked at a time in the AIR Career Program, but “any progress made towards goals you are not currently tracking will still count.” Expert Systems even let players “rent skills for a specific task for a week.” None of that is a commitment.
How the four career paths pay
The AIR Career Program splits the game into four paths, and the documentation names what sits in each:
| Path | Documented contents | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Explorer | Navigation, scanning, hacking, Project Discovery | Site loot and ISK from exploration |
| Industrialist | Mining, manufacturing, salvaging, trading | Ore and minerals, then market income |
| Enforcer | PvE combat, missions, Abyssal Deadspace | Bounties, mission rewards and Loyalty Points |
| Soldier of Fortune | PvP combat and support, faction warfare | Loyalty Points from militia work |
Two caveats. Alpha characters can claim only the lower of the two Career Program reward tracks — Omega accounts claim both — so the free path pays less at each milestone. And the four daily goals rotate one per path, with a static fifth (“take three jumps”) every day; completing any two earns 10,000 skill points, and two-goal days advance a monthly track at 3, 6, 9 and 12 days. Missed days are not lost, because participation need not be consecutive.
On currency, the documentation is specific about what each activity generates and silent on what it is worth, and this article keeps that shape. Loyalty Points come from missions, faction warfare and incursions and are spent in corporation LP stores on faction ships, modules, implants, blueprint copies and cosmetics. Evermarks are Paragon’s loyalty currency and buy cosmetic emblems and SKINR nanocoatings — a reward, not an income. ISK is everything else, and the Wallet window tells you where yours came from: it breaks 30-day income down by source. That is how to find out what your first month earns, because no publisher document states a rate.
Soldiering is the path with the least obvious entry. Freelance Jobs are posted by corporations to any capsuleer, visible through the Opportunities window within five jumps, and a character with default skills can hold three at once — eleven at Freelancing level 5. Payment is an ISK entitlement you claim in that window, not an automatic deposit.
What Omega actually gates, and what it costs
Omega is not a different game; it is the same queue with the ceiling removed. Its two structural gates, as opposed to skill gates, are ice mining — Alpha characters cannot do it at all — and the client limit: a logged-in Alpha client blocks any other client, “independent of whether they are Omega or Alpha at the time,” so a second account is impossible while the first is in Alpha.
Pricing is published in USD on a 30-day billing cycle, discounted by term:
| Plan | Total | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| 1 month | $19.99 | $19.99 |
| 2 months | $35.98 | $17.99 |
| 3 months | $47.98 | $15.99 |
| 6 months | $86.95 | $14.49 |
| 12 months | $149.90 | $12.49 |
| 24 months | $270.99 | $11.29 |
There is a second route. PLEX is a premium currency that “can be purchased with real money from the EVE Online store or for ISK on the player market,” and it upgrades an account from Alpha to Omega. That is the mechanism behind every “EVE is free if you grind” claim, and the documentation stops short of an exchange rate, because the price “fluctuates based on supply and demand across New Eden.” Do not budget month one around it; treat any PLEX price you read as a snapshot.
The tax case for leaving Exordium
Leaving is right at some point, and the documentation gives the arithmetic rather than a recommendation. Inside the starter region you pay 20% extra on mission rewards and bounties, get 40% reprocessing against 50%, mine at roughly half rate, and can only touch the lowest Tier 0 ores and abyssal filaments. Outside it, you get full rates — and full exposure.
The exposure is best described by CONCORD’s own article on 0.5 to 1.0 security space: the police “do not have a mandate to protect attacked players,” and “CONCORD should therefore be regarded as a force of retribution, not one of protection.” High security is where aggression is punished afterwards, not where it is prevented. That is the difference between month one in Exordium and month one anywhere else.
Risk you can take, and the one place you cannot leave
Most early content is survivable. Homefront Operations are group sites found through the Opportunities window, and their sting is explicit: unlike most sites, “Homefront Operations can be lost if your team fails to meet its set objective.” That is a failed objective, not a lost pod.
Abyssal Deadspace is the exception, and the documentation is blunt. A single cruiser can enter on a filament, or a fleet of up to three frigates or two destroyers. Filaments run from Tranquil to Cataclysmic, and “any destruction of the capsuleers ship within an Abyssal Deadspace will always destroy the capsule as well.” The only exits are the Origin Gate in the third pocket or the destruction of the ship. If you try the Abyss in week one, use the tier the starter region permits and count the ship as spent.
One timing cost worth knowing: an Epic Arc is replayable and branching, but “completing all missions of an Epic Arc, or cancelling a mission or mission offer during the Epic Arc will end the mission arc, incurring a 3 month waiting time.”
A thirty-day route
Days 1–7. Stay in Exordium. Do the Career Program’s opening goals for all four paths rather than committing to one, because tracking a goal never blocks progress on another. Claim the two-goal daily whenever you log in for the 10,000 skill points, and join the Rookie Help channel — the welcome article points at it, along with a corporation recruitment tool you can filter to “New-Pilot Friendly.”
Days 8–14. Pick one path and load its certified skill plan, plus the faction variant that matches your ships. Buy skill books from the plan window rather than guessing; missing ones are flagged with a red icon. Use the Agency window to find activities, rather than waiting for a prompt.
Days 15–21. Leave the starter region with a ship you can afford to lose, and buy it twice. Run level 1 and 2 missions or a Venture in a mining belt — the mining article names the Venture as the first ORE hull and the entry point to barges, exhumers and expedition frigates — and check the Wallet’s 30-day breakdown weekly rather than trusting a guide’s rate.
Days 22–30. Decide about Omega with evidence: whether you log in enough to justify $19.99, how close the 5M Alpha pause is, and which activities you actually enjoyed. Apply to a corporation in your time zone. Consider a neural remap only once you know which two attributes your path trains most; you get one, then a year.
Do not extract, do not remap on a guess, and do not treat a PLEX price as a plan.
What this guide does not claim
The documentation publishes no ISK-per-hour figures, so none appear here, and the PLEX-to-ISK rate is not quoted. No corporation, fit or ship is recommended: none of that is documented in first-party material at this level of detail. This advice is written against the help-centre pages at their own “Updated” stamps — the most recent being 6 October 2026 for ISK and PLEX — and against the game as it stands before Fractured Skies arrives on 10 November. Expansion changes to starter space could date the first section; re-read the Exordium page after launch, not this article.