For Eve players who haven't tried it, null sec seems like the Great Adventure, the Final Frontier, the harshest, most storied and most epic playground of this vast sandbox.
Once you've experienced nullsec you realise that all that is true while it is simultaneously true that it is a hotbed of angry egotists, with leaders making pointless decisions that make a ton of work for line members and falling out with people over the most ridiculous things.
Say one thing for nullsec, say that it's a rich experience.
As a nullsec veteran I'd say this as my most important single piece of advice: go there to make friends. Nullsec is social and everyone who lives there lives there by the consent of other people. A setup like Provibloc which is militarily weak has survived a decade because they're a class act and everyone likes them, and all their neighbours like going there and shooting them. In nullsec we roam the people we like and conquer the people we hate.
My next piece of advice is: Pack Light. I'm not necessarily saying you'll lose all your space but it's very important to be able to move quickly and not too onerously. Your own alliance or coalition is quite likely to ask people to redeploy then a month later change their mind and ask you to go back. To your leaders you are chess pieces to be deployed against opponents. One of my friends burned out over this, it was simply too much of a pain to move his billions of isks of ships to NOL when he joined us, to HED when we deployed there and back to NOL when we reset HBC.
Equally when you start pvping start light. Vigils, Mauluses, Celestises, Blackbirds, T1 Cruiser logis are very strong cheap ships useful on every fleet so start with them rather than immediately welping (losing) a Rokh.
The next thing which comes as a shock is that most people don't defend their territory. Roaming gangs and stealth bombers roam and hunt and your veteran pvpers are likely to be in enemy territory roaming or afk cloaking. The mechanics encourage people to seek pvp in hostile space.
Now I'm not saying don't hunt down intrusions, just explaining that most people won't do it. (I actually love home defence and it will be the topic of tomorrow's post).
Next you should start to learn the nullsec politics. Some of these sites make pretty horrible reading but the only way to draw a picture of what's going on is to read the spin from both sides.
Your corporation's and alliance's forum/jabber
If you don't know what's going on in your own community you deserve to be kicked back to high sec and probably will be.
http://themittani.com/
Well written articles but with a strong pro-CFC bias
http://evenews24.com/
Generally less well-written articles with a strong anti-CFC bias.
http://www.kugutsumen.com/forumdisplay.php?6-EVE-Online-Uncensored
A playground and boasting pits for most of the serious English-speaking nullsec players, particularly the FCs. It's pay-to-post now so if you don't already have an account just lurk. In fact even if you have an account best not to stick your head up over the trench-top as they're thin skinned here and itching for fights/victims.
http://shitonkugu.blogspot.co.uk/
The podcast of the Kugu crowd. Surprisingly engaging, they talk a lot better than they post. NSFW.
OK that's a lot to take in - is it worth all the effort? My answer - hell yeah!
Say one thing about nullsec, say it's an absolute blast!
