EVE Online is a very strange game that I've played off and on, from when I was probably too young to be playing EVE to now. I recently got back into it, and I had an idea.

EVE is a very... economic game. There's an elaborate in-game market; almost everything you can obtain is bought from other players, manufactured by them using resources bought from other players, who mined or salvaged it using equipment they bought from this same market... I'm not a big fan of money, but it's a fun game mechanic and this elaborate system is genuinely impressive.

But I started wondering, how far could I get if I interact with absolutely none of that? If I avoided interacting with other players in any way, buying nothing from the market and treating this like a singleplayer game. NPC stations sell manufacturing blueprints and skillbooks to use them, and that's in theory all I need. In theory.

Setting Up

A 3D-rendered human in front of a spacey background. They have visor sunglasses on. — Character customization in EVE is disappointingly human. At least I get cool sunglasses!

I already have a character I want to use for this, but I've also already played them the normal way a bit and progressed through part of the game I think will be interesting in this challenge run. I've saved a few million ISK, and I have a few ships already. So, I'll need to "reset" them.

With some of that saved money, I bought a cargo container, basically an inventory folder if I leave it in a station.

With everything in there, I still *possess* it, but it's clear it's not part of this little game.

A grid of several inventory items, ranging from scrap metal to entire spaceship hulls. — My modest belongings.

The container is cheap, and I still have a lot of my saved money left over, so I'll just send that to another character of mine— minus ten thousand credits, the truly insignificant starting money if you make a new character.

With that, I (notionally) own almost nothing: Only a pocketful of change, and my capsule, the flying brain-case that I plug into different ship hulls to fly them.

A shiny black metal pod floating in a space station hangar. Part of a holographic advertisement for something that's apparently 'in bulk' is visible in the background. — I much prefer to think of myself as a funny little space-orb robot than the human pilot, although I do enjoy the lore of humans semi-permanently installing themselves in spaceships like this.

There's only one thing left to do before I start. Right now I'm in a star system called Dodixie, a major trade hub in Gallente space. It feels wrong to live in a trade hub when I'm playing like this, so I'm going to amble around the stargates for a bit, and stop when I get somewhere a little more solitary.