Revelations Tutorial – Part I

As part of the Revelations expansion content, CCP has implemented a new in-game tutorial for EVE Online.

Since I wrote about my experiences in the previous EVE Online tutorial back in September 2006, I thought I would give the new version a try.

To do this I created a new, 14 Day trial account.  I did not want to do anything that might mess up the training plan for my main character… my only character, actually, the whole “only one character can be training at a time per account” thing putting the kibosh on my usual alt-itis.  And I was also reading something about effective 2-boxing in EVE Online and well… you know… if I get to that, I’ll let you know.

Anyway, I went Caldari again, choosing the Achura blood line this time with business as my career, Stargazers as my ancestry, and Entrepreneur as a specialization.  The effects of all of thse choices were explained during character creation.  Of course, I promptly forgot the details.  All I know is that if I end up playing this guy, he’ll be Mr. Trade and Industry.

Good News First

The tutorial is now much more straight forward initially.  You start in space, in your Ibis, and in a very short time you are blowing things up.  Aura, the tutorial guide, shows you some very basic ship controls, then tells you to lock onto a target and blow it up.  Booyah!

Gone is the warning that you should set aside three hours to go through the entire tutorial.  And a good thing too.  Instead, the tutorial is broken up into sections, and the initial segment with most of the very basic information can be run through comfortably in 30 minutes or less.

You are also alone in an instanced star system while doing the tutorial.  This solves the dreaded “missing pirates” problem that I experienced the first time around.  It also solves the problem of a couple dozen Ibis frigates flailing around together in Kisigo.  Space is all your own.  You can kill your targets, look through their wrecks, mine your ore, run your first missions, and generally figure out what is going on in peace.

Of course, I’ve played even to… well… at least the advanced noob level, so I wasn’t as likely to get caught up in real issues.  Still, I did learn a few things running through the tutorial, though it is hard to tell which of them were things I forgot over the last six months and which were part of the Revelations upgrade.

I finished up the basic tutorial with a knowledge of basic ship functions, basic navigation operations, and basic station activities.  There were advanced topics to cover in the tutorial, but it happened to be dinner time, so I left the tutorial at the end of the basic step.

All in all, a nice introduction to the game.  There were, however, some small issues.

Lock On!

One of the first things you get to do is shoot up a hostile ship.  And the first thing that Aura tells you to do is “lock on” to the target.

Unfortunately, unless you happened to wander pretty far from your starting point in the direction of your target, you will not be able to “lock on” as you will be well outside of the targeting range of your Ibis frigate.

Now, of course, I knew enough to approach the ship and wait until “lock on” was available, but somebody completely new to the game might not figure out why they do not see the command.

Warp Or Jump Nitpick

As you progress through the tutorial, you get to an agent who sends you to another star system to deliver a package. (Your first FedEx run!)

When you finish your jump to the destination system (Malkalen), you get the following message:

This confused me a little bit.  I thought warping, and the warp drive, was something you used inside a system and that jumping, via the jump gate, was the proper term for travel between systems.  Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but it would be nice to get terminology right for new players.

Echoes of Aura

This one is an annoyance more than anything, but it could lead to confusion if somebody isn’t paying attention.  Every time you make a transition in game that loads you into a new area, such as when you dock with a station, leave a station, or jump to a new star system, Aura repeats the last set of instructions.

Unfortunately, the last set of instructions are always to dock with a station, leave a station, or jump to a new star system, so Aura is always telling you to do what you have just done.  While somebody is unlikely to get confused about being told to dock again, when you have spent the time to warp, maneuver, then jump to a new star system, you might mistake the repeated instruction for a new one and try to jump again.

Next Agent Please

When I finished up the first stage of the tutorial, Aura told me that the current agent, Insen Bara at Amsen IV, Moon 1 – Science and Trade Institute School, would direct me to another agent.  However, when I came back to the game after dinner, Insen Bara told me that I had to finish the tutorial before he would send me to the next agent.

I tried doing the last steps of the basic tutorial, but Insen would not budge.  Then I ran through the rest of the tutorials, albeit at lightning speed, but this did not change Insen’s mind.

In the end, I got fed up.  I could not get Insen to direct me to the next agent.  So I flew off to my first destination in “real” space, the School of Applied Knowledge at Todaki VI, Moon 1.  I wanted to buy a couple of the learning skills.

When I got there, I found two agents available to me there, one of which was Abishi Tian who, it appears, is the agent to whom Insen Bara should have directed me.  Lucky me!

Abishi has a series of 10 introductory missions which I have not yet completed.  Going through those will be the Part II portion of this post.

Conclusion

The new tutorial is, in my opinion, certainly much improved over the previous one.  It managed to avoid the hiccups I encountered previously while only adding a couple of new ones.

I am concerned about the issue of being unable to get Insen Bara to direct me to the next agent.  It is quite likely that I messed up the tutorial somehow and caused the situation, but I do not know how I did it and I could not figure out how to get past it.  Only luck let me end up finding the right agent on my own.