The importance of alts

One of the many topics that gets mentioned to new players is that of setting up an alt, usually for the purpose of hauling various things from trade hubs such as Hek or Dodixie to deprive war targets of very easy and potentially valuable kills. But what else can you do with an alt and how much time should you invest in them?

Personally I was lucky as the other character on my account, who is now my alt, was geared towards mining and hauling for a small industry corp a few friends had started up. By the time of my application the character in question could fly Exhumers and an Orca giving me amazing flexibility when it came to hauling as well as funding my ongoing PVP operations. Now I wouldn't suggest everyone takes an alt to such a level as this guy was my only character for a few months and therefore has decent skills for what he needed to do.

That said I would suggest that if you are new to EVE that having an alt capable of hauling using a Tech 1 Industrial ship, such as the Iteron III or Badger II, and perhaps mining relatively safely using a Venture or perhaps a mining barge such as a Retriever or Procurer. By doing so you know that if your character needs urgent supplies in a target camped by war targets or feel like passively making some ISK by mining then you can do so without risking your E-Uni character or any other character whop may be in a similar situation of dealing with war targets under a corporation wide engagement policy.

At the moment I have set up Mia Sedgwick with a jump clone which acts as a training clone. this clone sits in a station in a starter system and trains at an optimal rate using +3 implants, as provided by the E-Uni Discount Implant Program, whilst the clone in Aldrat used for fleet action has +1 implants and is only used for the minimum period needed. This mean my alt can still be my main ISK maker for the time being until Mia is ready to run higher level missions and perhaps join the Incursion fleets (more on that another time though).

Beyond these two fairly basic skill paths what other things can you do, well as is the way with with EVE anything you want however I would caution against dedicating too much training time to such an alt as it could detract from your main characters skill progression quite badly. The idea with this kind of alt is to have a low skill point character who can do a role, or two, adequately whilst you get used to EVE and who could in the future be developed further.

By now you may asking, "so how long should I spend training this alt?" Well its tricky but if you use a starting character with no implants and don't use a remap you could have an effective hauler in less than 2 days, including fitting and basic tanking skills, or if you wanted to combine that with mining perhaps a week at most. In any case I'd strongly advise setting this alt up before applying to E-Uni as it will let you focus on your main without starting and stopping your training queues.