There's a number of guides on how to make ISK, or how to pilot a ship, or how to do “X”. But I'd like to talk about how players can avoid death.

Considering dying is pretty normal in Eve, why am I making this guide? It's primarily to benefit new players. There are a LOT of ways you can die in Eve. Dying by itself isn't bad, but the feeling of dying due to mechanics or lack of game knowledge can be frustrating (it definitely was for me) because it feels as if you had no agency, no way to avoid death. And are now being punished by losing your ship that you had grinded so hard for.

This guide will attempt to be a compendium of all mechanics, tactics, and other “things” that could lead you to an untimely death. It is my hope that after reading this, you will be well equipped with the knowledge you need so that the next time you die, you understand why it happened, what your role in your death was, and are able to own up to your mistakes and accept responsibility for losing your ship.

First of all, I'm going to assume that you are a player who's actively trying to avoid death. You're not on Autopilot, you're actively D scanning and paying attention to your overview. The problem isn't you or lack of attention, but lack of knowledge of the threats that exist out there in New Eden.

You can imagine yourself, for the purposes of this guide, to be flying a reasonably fitted ship through Hisec, Lowsec, and Nullsec. Your only goal is to get from point A to point B in a safe and quick manner.

Here are all the ways your enemy can catch and kill you.

After reading everything above, you're probably thinking “Well, what if I was in a cloaky ship? That means I'm safe right? How could a determined opponent still catch and kill me?”

Let's go over that now

Even if you successfully bring up your cloak, a warp bubble will prevent you from warping off. But, you may be thinking, so what? Im safe, they can't see me, I'll just slowboat out of the bubble and carry on my way. Unfortunately…

You cannot bring up your cloak when being targeted. If you don't start your cloak swiftly, with minimal delay between losing your gate cloak, you will not be able to cloak at all and can be run down by tackle.

In addition to the mechanics and tactics above, living in nullsec poses it's own challenges.