What is ISK?

Interstellar Kredit or ISK is the in-game currency and life blood of EVE. It is what you use to buy everything, from a piece of scrap metal to the largest of ships. Unlike most other MMOs, in which the majority of in-game items are purchased via NPCs, the economy of EVE is entirely player driven. When the economy of a game is dominated by NPC vendors, your access to gear or equipment can be very restrictive. Often the only way to get a better piece of gear faster is to grind the same task over and over again, thereby taking the fun out of it. The cost of gear is often much more expensive to offset for players with lots of time to spend in the game.

Every gameplay item in EVE can be produced by the players and then sold and bought by players using ISKs. Just as in real life, when there are two people selling the same item, one is going to sell it for less in the hopes of selling it faster. And when you have thousands of players selling the same item, it creates an economy that is very fluid and diverse in both offerings and prices. This allows you to control your access to better ships and equipment in EVE. The amount of ISK you have is the only limiting factor to what you can do in EVE. There is no limit to the amount of ISK you can make in EVE, if you read this book.

I'm the richest capsuleer in EVE; now what?

With the untold billions you have amassed, with the help of this book, the whole of New Eden is yours. You can choose to become a collector and own every item in EVE. You can establish an economic or military empire that spans vast regions of space. You can become the financier of a war between the capsuleers of EVE on a scale never seen before, or you can become a hermit and rent out a remote system in some corner of the universe and live out your remaining days in prosperity. The choice is yours and yours alone.

In most other MMOs, once you have amassed such wealth, it often means there is nothing left to do, because you have already done everything multiple times in order to get the best gear possible. And now that you have all the best gear, there is nothing left to do. But in EVE, just like in real life, when you gain this level of wealth, it only makes things more enjoyable and fun. You are able to take risks and do things that you would never have dared to before. When you have funds to replace any ship, any piece of equipment, there are no limits on what you can do or try.

How to play EVE for free!

EVE is such an awesome game, what could be better than playing EVE for years to come? How about playing EVE for free for years to come? With this book and a little help from CCP Games, you can do just that.

Just before the Christmas holiday of 2008, CCP Games announced the addition of the 30-Day Pilot License Extension or PLEX program for EVE. Each PLEX, as shown in the following screenshot, allows you to extend your EVE subscription by 30 days:

You are able to use real money to purchase a PLEX, which will be added to your in-game inventory. You would then choose to use that PLEX for yourself and extend your subscription, basically buying another month of game time, or selling it for ISK. So with your new found wealth, you can stock up on PLEXs and continue to enjoy EVE without paying for another subscription ever again. I will show you how to buy a PLEX in Chapter 6, Playing the Market.

As for the writing of this guide, the median pricing for one PLEX is just below 500 million ISK, meaning six billion ISK would allow you to play an entire year for free! While this might seem impossible if you are only making a couple million ISKs a day, with the help of this book, you can make hundreds of million ISKs a day. So, in a few days you can play for another month for free. What's even better is that in less than two months you can play EVE for the rest of the year for free.