Microbits

A what bear? A “carebear” is a term used to refer (usually negatively) to players who don’t participate in PvP. Some people PvP from the beginning, but I don’t think most do.

People who don’t plan to be carebears for life have several PvP options open to them. In my opinion, the most rewarding is to find a good null sec alliance and move out there.

Null sec is perhaps one of the most unforgiving environments in EVE, second only to W space. Logically, it’s also has some of the best sources of income. Better asteroids, huge rats, plenty of anomalies (if your alliance owns an upgraded system). PvP usually isn’t a source of income unless you fly solo most of the time, so I wouldn’t really call it a source of income unless your corp pays you (do any?).

Before you even think about null sec, you should know why you want to go, and what the risks are. You’ll also need some specialized skills, and plenty of ISK. There are certain ships that you probably ignored in high sec, because they’re build for PvP. Since you’ll be flying them, you should have most of them trained before you move.

The stealth bomber is one of the most essential null sec ships. Just like it’s RL counterpart, it’s highly specialized (taking around 30d to train for) and expensive (ship + fitting can run up to 55 mil, and T2 insurance covers maybe 10% of the hull cost). Having the structural integrity of a wet rag, stealth bombers are cloaking glass super cannons. One of the major reasons for training for the SB is to be able to travel to unsafe space with a relative degree of safety. Since they can warp while cloaked, they are one of the safest ships to fly around null sec.

Being able to fly a SB also opens you up to fly covert ops, which are arguably the best scanning ships. If you don’t know what scanning is, you should learn, and train the requisite skills to level 3 at least.

Battlecruisers are one of the most common PvP ships. You should train T2 tanking and weapons for a BC that can either engage at long range, or deliver a withering amount of short range DPS. Different alliances have different fleet makeups. You should find out which ships the one you are joining uses, and train for them (this assumes you have selected a good alliance, which will be discussed in part 2).

Ideally, you should also train for an interceptor and / or an interdictor. Both are indispensable for null sec combat.

Next time, how to choose an alliance, what you should bring to null, and the mentality of null sec and PvP.