Oh what a noob I was....

It's almost two years since I started playing Eve and while I now have something of a reputation regarding my broad knowledge of the game, but it's not something that happened overnight and while I did a few things right I made a lot of 'mistakes'.

.When illectroculus was created it was primarily because there was a special offer on steam that gave me a 21 day free trial and I'd seen the tv ads which had been playing during battlestar gallactica. I'd previously tried a 14 day trial but had been too busy with the kids to take it beyond the basic tutorial, so I signed up for the extended trial.

Mistake #1 was doing this on the same day as Empyrean Age was released (I guess that's why CCP PR had gone on the marketing blitz with TV commercials), so I couldn't even login, and my first 24 hours of account time were essentially spent trying to get logged in, but I didn't yet understand the skill training system so I wasn't all mad about missing all that training time.
Lesson Learned: Patchday = Downtime, Have a long Skill training.

When I created my pilot I had no idea how the races or attributes worked, so I pretty much chose a race and bloodline entirely on being able to create an avatar that looked like my real self - so a Caldari Civre Male. And at the time I chose the 'Prospector' background, the first step on a career in mining and industry. Until Apocrypha was released almost a year later I had 'experts' with Caldari-Achura avatars telling me I'd made a huge mistake..... not so much any more.

Mistake #2 was when I took those 5 customizable attribute points I had and use them to balance out my starting stats, leaving myself with the 8,8,8,8,7 starting attributes that pilots start with these days.
Lesson Learned: Use evemon or other character planners.

Mistake #3 was after I'd run the noob mining tutorial and had a shiny new Bantam frigate. I looked for some new missions and found an agent in a nearby system who gave me my first level 1 mission - 'Worlds Collide'. I set my bantam up with a Civilian Afterburner, Civilian Shield booster and a 75mm Railgun loaded with 100 rounds of lead ammo. Shortly after arriving and trying to run between the gates I received my first lossmail, so I can forever see how much of a noob I was.
Lesson Learned: Even easy missions can't be done in a failfit mining frigate.

Mistake #4, was when I looked at bigger and better ships, I 'upgraded' to a Cormorant destroyer because I thought it would be a good mining platform, with a larger cargo bay and more turret slots for mining lasers. I completely failed to understand ship bonuses and didn't appreciate that the bantam did an awesome job at sucking down ore (actually bantams are good at sucking at everything). I mined in that cormorant for a long time before I upgraded to an Osprey.
Lesson Learned: Ships have bonuses, learn to use them.

Mistake #5, was when I started training railgun skills to make that cormorant a decent mission runner. I ignored any missile training, after all, the ships I'd used were all turret based - the Ibis, Bantam, Cormorant, Osprey. I didn't train any missile skills seriously for a long time.
Lesson Learned: Missiles are a lot easier than guns.

Mistake #6, was buying a Ferox long before I was able to fly it with any serious ability, I tried a couple of level 2 missions in it and found that my Cormorant was vastly more effective (duh!). I still didn't have any drone skills so I was shooting at frigates with medium guns and the one missile launcher I'd put on to fill out that last slot. The Ferox got left in storage for a while....
Lesson Learned: Using a ship is not the same as being able to fly the ship.

Mistake #7, was using Giant Secure cans for mining without anchoring them first, which meant that another pilot came along in a hauler and stole my ore. So I used my Osprey's missile launcher to shoot at his badger and he warped off because I didn't have a warp disruptor. Figuring that I getter grab my ore I flew back to station and grabbed my badger and warped back to my cans, and to his Kestrel, which did in fact have a warp disruptor. The single gun on my badger didn't help me one bit. However, I did switch into a cormorant and come back with guns blazing, this time the fight went my w ay very quickly and he warped off to station, I gave chase and managed to kill his kestrel as he was waiting for his aggression timer to expire. So, my first PVP loss and kill happened, and I realised that PVP was thrilling in a way that I'd been missing.
Lesson Learned: Anchor Cans, PVP is exciting.

Mistake #8, having figured out how agents worked I'd been progressing up the corporate ladder and was running level 2 missions using my Cormorant, which was now quite capable of sniping those pesky pith pirates. I felt I could take on anything in this, and when I got offered 'Recon (1/3)', for the first time I felt my trusty destroyer would have no problem killing the rats for bonus points. It of course failed badly and taught me to read mission instructions with greater care. For good measure I also apparently had a mixed gun type setup and a Connections skillbook in in my cargo? At least I had the right kind of shield hardener for dealing with Guristas, I was clearly getting a little smarter. But for extra stupidiity points I still lost another couple of ships failing to run between gates and instead waited until downtime to let the enemies reset. I also remember running the toxic cloud in Recon 3/3 using the ferox with shield and armor tank, just for good measure.
Lesson Learned: Keep mission objectives in mind. Destroyers have paper thin tanks.

Mistake #9, the corp I'd join had had a couple of war decs already but I'd failed to have any direct contact with any of the aggressors, so when another came along it was business as usual. Business clearly being moving an empty hauler from my base in Lonetrek down to the new base in Tash-Murkon. The hauler was cheap, but the implants from the pod set me back 50million. Doh!
Lesson Learned: Autopilot during wardecs is a bad idea.

Mistake #10, took a short cut through lowsec in my Ferox, lost it to a gatecamp. I had a full rack of warp core stabs... in my hold.
Lesson Learned: never be in too much of a rush.

Now, around this time I thought I might take some time off... say in november, I had heard about ghost training, and decided I could get Battleship V training before my account was suspended. It wasn't really a mistake so much as it was a case of unfortunate timing when CCP nerfed the ghost training days after I'd hatched this plan. I had Caldari battleship 3 by this point, and access to s ome level 4 agents, so I saved up and moved from a Ferox to a Rokh, not the best mission battleship by any means but it taught me the usefulness of drones, and how to warp around grid and snipe targets. So not really a mistake, but it highlights how I managed to become a railgun focussed Caldari pilot, the Ibis really needs to have missile hardpoints.

Mistake #11, I'd been moving some stuff back and forth between 0.0 and hi-sec and wanted a better hauler, I realised I had the pre-reqs for the Transport Ships skillbook that would let m e fly blockade runn ers. This was pre-Quantum Rise so they just had higher agility ad built in warp core strength. Nonetheless, I trained the skill, bought a Crane in Jita and then realised I needed to also have Caldari Industrial V to fly it. The upside was that the change to Blockade runners was announced soon afterwards and I was able to sell my ship for 150% of the price I paid for it when QR launched.
Lesson Learned: Some ships have multiple Pre-Requisites.

Mistake #12, lost a hulk mining inside a mission in lowsec, I still hadn't learned about probes or directional scan. I did a lot of AFK mining in a hulk and realised I was getting some nice drops from the pirate rats, so I figured the drops in lowsec would be more profitable. It worked for a couple of days, then I got scanned down....
Lesson Learned: 'Safe Spots' needs to be in quotes.

Mistake #13, undocked from a station in a covert ops when war targets were camping the station. Even frigates align time is long enough for an enemy to lock you when you're not turning from a standing start.
Lesson Learned: Instawarp bookmarks are a lifesaver.

Mistake #14, Jumped into a wormhole, watched exit collapse, ended up scanning a route back to normal space 30 jumps deep inside the drone regions.
Lession Learned: It's not just other players who you shouldn't trust.

Mistake #15, went on a roam with some very expensive faction & t2 battleships, I was the sole tackler in the fleet flying a raptor. I had a friend in fleet who would apply remote sensor boosters to help me lock targets. I missed several easy kills because I had autolock turned on and kept locking and scramming my friend while the red escaped.
Lesson Learned: Disable autolock... always.



Final Mistake Writing this.
No lesson learned here.