Improvise!

You may soon come up to a brick wall in your progress in EVE, probably brought upon by the bane of all new players and new corporations: the griefer.

Yes, EVE is full of them, and sadly, is a way of life, but at least there are ways to combat such. One is to fight them by using hit-and-run tactics. Small groups of frigates can weaken, and even destroy, larger ships if they work together. Other ways is to ask help from neighbors. Who knows, the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" saying may come true for you.

Other ways to combat the griefer involve jumping back to an NPC corp temporarily till they get bored and move on. Whist cowardly, as long as you keep playing and having fun, they lose.

On the flipside, lets say you may be having trouble with your current ship skill set as of now, and are having trouble making ends meet. Why not try something new? One great thing about EVE is that it allows for experimentation with a ship and whatever modules you can fit on it to get the desired effect. Whilst it may be downright embarrasing to show your layout to veterans who know the basics of each ship, you may end up with a setup that would work. Most veteran players expect certain things from ships they can see, just because they know how each would fit, and how each would behave when fitted in such a way. Having out-of-the-box setups can confuse potential opponents and give you that extra edge you need to win a fight.

Dont be afraid to try something new in EVE. Whilst many are afraid of change (just go look on the forums at the many whines of the past changes to EVE), its change that brings about life and evolution in EVE, and keeps it fresh for all.

Patience is a Virtue

By this point some players would be skilling up their way into bigger, better ships with better support skills, or working on learning skills here and there. You'd probably are starting to feel the effects of having multiple-day skills to train to get to lvl4, right.

This is why most people leave it at lvl4, and only hit lvl5 for some skills if they're a prerequisite to something they like. The gap between lvl4-lvl5 is often weeks, especially for bigger skills in rank, like, Battleship lvl5 for example, which is easily a month.

EVE rewards patience and smart gameplay. If you plan your skill training alongside how you want to progress in the game, and just have fun while waiting, you'd find yourself in that shiny new battleship and not lose it 5 seconds out the gate to some belt rat because you didnt have your support skills up.

There are many logical paths to take when skilling up for items. Take time to use the very-useful skill planner EVEMon and combine it with the "show info" command ingame for skills, modules, charges/ammo, and ships by checking their required skills.

EVEMon also suggests learning skills to speed up learning times. Take this into consideration, but dont go all-learning right out the gate. Getting all the basics to lvl5 and the advanceds to lvl4 will take 2 months roughly. Thats something you dont want to be sitting around doing practically nothing for the next two months, right?

Just take it slow, and take it easy, and you'll end up at your goal no matter how you do things. As they say, "Patience is a Virtue."

Account Security

Of course, once you're quite deep in the game, you'd probably have items and assets that people would love to have, or just steal for more isk. Account hacking, whilst rare for EVE, happens, and when it does, happens really badly for the victim.

You can do things to help against the likelyhood of such horrible activities happening on your account. Of course this wont stop any determined real hacker, but as long as you make it really hard to any aspirant delinquents, you can make them turn away.

A couple of tips include:

1. Working on a clean PC. Keep your PC clean via using continually-updated anti-virus programs, anti-spy/adware programs like Spybot-S&D, periodical anti-viral scans via multiple on-line scanners (to make sure nothing slips by your anti-virus).
2. Creating a password that is secure. Passwords connected to real life references like family name, birthday, friend's name, significant other's credit card number, etc are horribly bad. Anyone who knows you could just put two and two together and figure it out quickly, let alone a determined hacker just studying you as a potential target. Good advice in creating a strong password is including small, and capital letters, with numbers in and around. If you're really mad about password security, use GRC's "Perfect Password" page. Whilst rather overkill, some people do swear by them especially for other more important accounts, like online bank accounts, etc.
3. Learn about general PC security. Gibson Research Corporation's website on PC security is a good source to work off on, but do take time to branch out and figure out what else could help you in terms of securing your PC.
4. NEVER give away your user/pass to anyone, even CCP. CCP will NEVER ask for your password. They've got a database to look your username up if they ask for it at least. If you really doubt a possible email from CCP, you can always email them and ask for confirmation.
5. When using third-party programs for corp communication like Trillian, Teamspeak, Ventrillo, NEVER use the same user/pass that you use in EVE-Online on these programs. Use completely different user/pass for them, and if possible, just use a screen name connected to your ingame character, not your EVE Online user/pass.

Lastly, I'd recommend taking all this in with a grain of salt. You dont want to go so over-kill that you cant play EVE because you've cut off access to EVE's common connection points/ports. Being aware is half the battle, taking some steps to protecting your PC not only helps you in being secure about EVE play, but general online use as well.

Indepth Guides to Character Creation.

Just to help in case you're still lost in terms of character creation, I've found a couple of videos and links that should help you along.

First off, the videos.

This EVE Online Character Creation tutorial on Youtube can help you in case you have questions in regards to what attributes affect what, and where. Though the speaker has trouble at certain portions, it does achieve its goal.

WANG Character Creation 101 is also a good video to look up on. It refers a lot to Goonswarm's public wiki for information, of which includes the Recommended Base Stat Builds, and the Character Portrait guide.

I have to note that the Recommended Base Stat Builds are very specialized, and often have lower-than-average attributes in important places, like memory and willpower. Still, they score higher in intelligence and preception, which are primaries for many skills. Its often better to leave memory/willpower at least 7, and make intelligence/preception a bit lower than what the linked guide says. It'll help once you're branching out into other skill trees that require a bit more in memory/willpower, due to them becoming primaries, like, for example, tech 2 ship skills or industry.

Note: Goonswarm is a large player alliance that is part of a larger group of alliances fighting a long-standing war. Their reputation with the playerbase and CCP in general is of general dislike, due to their known actions in the past. This doesnt mean they're all bad, just that everyone's bad in one way or another. Goonswarm just made it more apparent about themselves.

Honorable Mention: Day of Darkness

Dire Lauthris, an ingame character, has just created what I believe is a masterpeice of video craftsmanship. Its based off on a well-known EVE Chronicle depicting the beginning of the enslavement of the Mimmatar to the Amarr, entitled Day of Darkness.

Dire Lauthris has done justice to the backstory, and then some.

This video is epic. Nuff said.

Watch it in Youtube. I'd recommend getting the high-quality version from EVE-Files however. Way better that way.

Breaks and Goals

Of course, things change over time, and you may find yourself in a situation that you need to take a break from EVE. This is normal for older EVE players who already have stable bases to work off on, or have connections in the game with other players as well. Taking time off is a normal thing, especially when real life matters come into play.

For this, the general advice is to set a very long skill training (the most common would be Battleship lvl5, of which takes 30-45 days depending upon attributes), and at least check in once that set skill finishes, and set another long one, or start playing again.

Now if you're already feeling burnt out 3 months into EVE, there's a problem. I'd strongly suggest you take a look at your goals in the game. Take time to re-examine them, and see whats wrong. Normally by this point, you should be in a corp and be in lowsec/0.0 if you're a combat person, or mining with the corp if you're on the less pewpew of things.

Looking up your goals you set for yourself time and again is always the best way to play EVE. EVE can look endless if you take it all in, and can scare you, but always go down to the details of "what should I be doing next week? Should I get the BPO into this station for my corp? Should I start skilling for this module that can help us?". I always looked at what could help me in combat, and when I had time away from that, looked at what else I could enjoy, like when if I'm too busy/too stressed from RL matters to shoot stuff, I could go mining, or move stuff for the corporation (meaning I have to train for transport ships), etc etc.

For someone still young in EVE, think of what could benefit yourself in terms of your chosen profession, and how it will affect your corp. Will training for cruisers help if you'll still need time to train for proper tanking, weapons, and support skills for it? Will training for mining help the corp when they need more combat support?

Examining your goals in EVE helps a lot in enjoying it all the more. You make the fun for yourself in EVE, and if it isnt fun for now, or when you need to take a break because of something else, at least you can pop a long skill and come back later.

EVE's golden rules

Akita T has made a post that everyone, veteran or newbie, should see. Like in real life, there are certain "golden" rules you never should break in EVE, lest you suffer the consequences of your misguided actions.

Some of these are common sense to the majority of EVE players, learning them through the trials of playing the game.

Oh one last thing: EVE is harsh. Indeed I may start sounding like a broken skipping recording, but it goes without saying. Its the truth, and many often go into emo-rages when things dont go their way in the game.

Its a multiplayer game, everyone doesnt get their way, only compromises and consequences.