2. Click quickly through the race, ancestry, and gender options to get to the Attributes panel. Read the details on the Attributes panel carefully because they explain what each Attribute does and give you the ability to select Ancestry and Bloodline with confidence.
3. I recommend a final Perception >= 12 and Intelligence >= 8. I also caution against attributes below 5 (except perhaps Charisma), but the new character creation gives you the information to make attribute decisions yourself. When in doubt, go for balance.
4. Mouse over the skill list in the bottom of the character creation to get tool tip descriptions of each skill you have. Your specialization grants you most of your skills, but choosing a specialization takes you to your portrait so you can't review your choices. Choose a specialization and click next, then go back from the portrait screen to see what skills you have chosen. The skills that say V are at maximum level, so these are your most important skills.
That's all you really need to know. Try doing the tutorial in chunks rather than attempting to blow through the whole thing in one sitting. It's more of a reference work.
There are 4 races, with 3 careers, and 2 specializations, for a grand total of 24 different starting skillsets. Your bloodline, attributes, and ancestry only affect your training time, not your effectiveness.
Race Breakdown (in alphabetical order)
Amarr- characteristic of having great tanks. As you might expect, many of their ships are not well-regarded in PvP combat. Still, there are options for the dedicated Amarr PvPer, but it's not as straightforward as the other races. Some of the easiest PvE content because the damage tanking is straightforward.
Caldari - most popular race. Specializes in missiles and railguns for long range engagements. Not the most damage, but a real threat in PvE or PvP. Also lots of debuff options.
Gallente- highest damage ships. Tends towards close range setups, but some ships can pump out the dps at long range, too. Lots of options for the Elite-style trader, too. They have some nasty solo PvP setups.
Minmater- my personal fave. I've read dedicated 20M+ skillpoint Minmater pilots describe Minmater as "Eve on Hard mode." Emphasis on speed and flexibility. Usually ship setups are not very effective without IVs or Vs in the relevant skills. They have the best skirmish ships and invite creative ship fittings. Minmater pilots tend to be PvP pilots. The missions and asteroid belt PvE for Minmater can be a real bitch to tank.
Edit: after thinking a lot more on the differences between the races, I decided this is a better breakdown than the above:
Amarr- good battleships for large gangs. good recons for solo.
Caldari - two good fleet BS. good recons for large gangs. Raven is the most popular ship as it can be set up for long range PvE bombardment or short range BS gang PvP.
Gallente- best solo ships, highest damage ships. Megathron is probably the best all around BS.
Minmater- best small gang ships. Worst BS.
Career and specialization breakdown
Military - do you want to shoot things?
- Soldier - all around good combat character
- Special Ops - generally a PvP focused character
- Entrepreneur - you are a space trader like in Elite
- Executive Commander - you are a space bard
- Prospector - bore yourself through mining
- Engineer - bore yourself through production and crafting
The other Military specialization is the Special Ops. The skills Special Ops give your character are race dependent. Here they are, in order of decreasing utility:
Special Ops
- Gallente: Gives you Drones V and good drone skills. Sets you up to train Drone Interfacing right away, which means you will be doing awesome short range damage in a Vexor cruiser. Good for PvP or PvE in my estimation and a strong alternative to the Soldier option. Particularly nice when you have assistance in getting into a cruiser as soon as possible.
- Caldari: Gives you Missile Bombardment V, increasing your range by quite a lot. You'll be able to breeze through a lot of early PvE by being too far away to get hit for substantial damage. Also useful for certain frigate PvP setups with rockets, but you'll need quite a few more skills to get into those setups.
- Minmater: Gives you Afterburners V and Navigation V. These are speed skills. Buy Micro Warp Drive I and train High Speed Maneuvering I to go very fast. Get into a Rifter and you have a hell of a low sp pirate PvP character. Be aware that a lot of people you attack will have Small Turrets V and Gunnery V. Consider finding a friend.
- Amarr: Gives you Energy Systems Operation V (bonus to capacitor) and a long list of IV skills, including Energy Emission Systems. This is definitely a PvP directed skill setup, but unfortunately small nosferatus and energy neutralizers are heavily outclassed by their medium variants. I can see a duraMaller cruiser setup being helped out by this skillset, but the old faithful bleeder Punisher would probably do better with a Soldier's skills.
The Industrial career can choose between being a Prospector (mining) or a Engineer (research). Neither is good for someone new to Eve. They make good alts. I believe the Entrepreneur is better suited for people who like crafters as primary characters than either Industralist specialization. As a Prospector, you will be able to fly a mining frigate and get raw materials to produce items. As an Engineer you can produce items and perform research on your blueprints. As an Entrepreneur, you can use your starting trade skills to build up an isk base to buy raw materials and already researched blueprints. While you do that, train the skills to produce items efficiently. Once you have produced items, the Entrepreneur will find it easier to sell them with his high number of market orders.
The new character creation has a great description of what each attribute means. Here's the quick attribute breakdown, in order of importance for a new player.
Attribute Breakdown
Perception- without a high perception, you will want to shoot yourself training for high level ships and guns/missiles. Skills requiring perception frequently improve your offense.
Intelligence- lots of the nifty ship roles require Intelligence to train for them. Skills requiring intelligence frequently improve your combat survivability.
Memory- needed for drone skills and for learning skills.
Willpower- secondary attribute on lots of primary perception skills. Helps on gang skills.
Charisma- influence on NPCs for trading and mission running. Helps on high level gang skills and player corporation skills.
Miscellaneous hints:
You probably want to choose attributes, choose an ancestry, and then go back and change your attributes to adjust for the bonuses your bloodline does or does not give you.
Make alts. The trader and miner alts are quite useful now out of the box to support a combat character.
Make alts. Try a Soldier in several different races to experiment with different ships, or a Solder and a Special Ops of the same race to give you a flavor for different ship setups.
Race, Career, and Specialization only give you skills. Ancestry, Attributes, and Bloodline only change your attributes. They don't affect each other.
If you want to play with unconventional ship setups, you can still be a Soldier and train up the required skills yourself. Just because you start out using a cookie-cutter template doesn't mean you are locked into a path. You'll get a lot of options with a background of great damage per second.
Turrets represent generic offense, both short and long range.
Drones are close range offense.
Missiles are long range.
Electronic warfare, weapon disruption, propulsion jamming, and energy emission systems all give you secondary offensive options in the form of debuffs.
Shield and armor related skills (including repair systems) are not healer skills; they are critical skills for combat characters, improving your effective hitpoints and survivability (like equipping armor in a fantasy MMORPG).
Navigation skills improve your speed, influencing travel time and at high levels can reduce the damage you take (like dodging in a fantasy MMORPG).
The "healer" equivalent is called Remote Armor Repair or Shield Emission Systems and is not widely used.
Spaceship command and ship selection (including frigate and cruiser skills) will also greatly influence what you are capable of doing.
