Buying Success

A member of our corporation was selling some of his Eve characters this week, which got me thinking about the whole topic of buying and selling characters for isk.

The sandbox nature of Eve means that there isn't really any end-game content or goal. There isn't a steady progression through different occupations. Characters don't start out as miners, then move into missions, go through lowsec and finally end up in nullsec wars. Instead, there is a freedom to flit from one type of activity to another as we see fit.

But there is a type of barrier to this behaviour. The barrier is how you have spent your skillpoints. Jumping from mining straight into PvP is not normally possible without a certain amount of training. This barrier also exists within professions, for example it's not always possible to jump straight from providing logistics support to flying an ECM ship. Of course training is equal to time, so this barrier becomes an amount of time.

For some activities this time barrier might be short. It might take a new character a number of weeks until they can do level four missions. But if you want to fly a carrier and get involved in nullsec wars then you can be faced with training time measured in years!

I imagine you know where my thoughts are heading; why not cut a large amount of training time by buying a character instead?

If it's an approach you have never considered before then I would highly recommend doing it. Although payng billions of isk for a character sounds a lot, remember that, unlike a ship or module, a character cannot be destroyed. Your investment will retain its value. If the skill-set of your new character isn't all you had hoped for then you alwys have the option of re-selling.

Another good reason to buy a character is to get yourself an isk machine. The Mittani recently wrote an excellent article suggesting that we should measure profit in Eve by 'isk per effort required' rather than 'isk per hour'. He also came up with some excellent suggestions for occupations that maximise profit and minimise effort. Buying a character that could ice mine or breeze through level four missions with drones, would easily pay for itself in the long run.

So whether you have a long-term dream that could be made a reality quicker, or whether you need a passive isk-machine to fund your account - consider buying a character!

For all the technical information you need on selling or buying characters visit the Character Bazaar.

Maybe you'll end up in the same bizarre position that I am in; my PvP 'alt' character has more skillpoints than my 'main' character that I started playing Eve with!