by So, you wanna be a solo pilot? People often ask me for advice on starting out as a solo pilot. There is a lot of material online about solo PvP ship fittings, tactics, strategies, etc. which you will learn in time and then continue to hone and develop with every PvP encounter. The place I always start, though, is with developing the solo PvP mindset. In order to become a good solo pilot, you have to learn to think like a hunter who only cares about the kill.
Repeat after me, “If I want to be a solo pilot, I will die…a lot.” Repeat it again. A little louder for those in the back. Especially at the beginning, when you are first learning the ropes as a solo pilot, you are going to die. Even when you have been doing it for years and have hundreds or even thousands of solo kills under your belt, you will still find new and stupid ways to die. I do it all the time. Sometimes the other pilot is just better than you, or has a better fit. Often they will have implants or boosters. Other times you will take what you think is a 1v1 fight, only to get jumped by the other pilot’s fleet or other random pilots. Occasionally you will make a piloting error like burning out your modules or getting too close or too far from your prey or using the wrong ammo type. It happens to the best solo pilots in the game, so just accept dying as the price you pay for this playstyle.
Too many people in Eve are too worried about their Killboard stats. The best thing you can do when starting out as a solo pilot is to close the ZKillboard tab on your browser and don’t even look at it. You don’t want to see all that red anyway, and that’s not got going to help you get better. Eventually, you will start getting more kills than deaths, but that takes a while. So don’t focus on your stats, focus on the process of improvement.
So what should you do? First, buy yourself 100 frigates and move them or pay someone to move them for you to a Lowsec Faction Warfare system. I’m partial to Rifters and Kestrels, but pick a ship that you like and a fit that you can fly for 10 – 15 million ISK and write that amount off as a loss. Once you have accepted that those ships are already lost, then each death hurts less. Undock and try to find 1v1 fights typically inside Faction Warfare plexes. If you are not familiar with the Faction Warfare mechanics, Eve University has a good article that explains how they work. You will likely lose 10, 15, 20 times in a row before getting your first solo kill. That’s normal, just make sure that you learn something from every encounter.
If you are able to record your fights, go back and watch them to see what you could have done differently. You can even start a conversation with the other pilot and ask them for advice on what you did wrong or how you can improve. Most solo pilots in Eve are happy to share their thoughts with you. Keep dying and learning, and eventually you will get that first solo kill. There is nothing quite like the first one, but learn from the wins too. Before long people will be asking you for advice, and you will be well on your way as a solo pilot in Eve Online!
