When following this guide you’ll almost always be wanting particular items from the market. The fastest way to find those items is use the search box. Copy the name of the item and paste it into the box to the left of the “Search” button, then click that button. A list of results (most likely with only a single item, but sometimes more) will appear beneath. Click the item in the result list to see where that item is available.
When viewing market listings for a particular item you will see two sections: Sellers and Buyers. We’re going to concentrate on the Sellers section for now because we want to buy items from those Sellers.
First of all: make sure your sellers are sorted by Price, ascending. This means that the price column should be the only column with an upwards-pointing triangle on the right side of it. Try clicking the price column header to change the sorting. Click the price column as many times as you need until it’s sorting properly. This is to make sure you’re not accidentally buying a highly overpriced version of the item just because it happens to be a system closer.
Sorting by price also helps you avoid a scam where someone lists an item for what seems to be a cheaper price, but actually has a few extra zeroes on the end - so you wind up paying 1 million isk instead of 1 thousand isk or similar.
Now, look through the list. The first column, Jumps, shows you how far you’ll need to go to pick up the item after buying it. When you buy an item, you buy it in the station where it was listed - not necessarily in your current station. So if the ‘Jumps’ column reads ‘5’, that means that after buying the item you’ll need to jump through 5 stargates to reach the system where you bought the item. If the jumps column says ‘System’ it means the item is located in your current system but a different station, and if it says ‘Station’ it means that it’s listed in the same station you’re currently in.
Next up is Quantity - displaying how many items are available via that seller. If you want to buy more, you’ll need to get them from multiple sellers.
The Price column lists the price per unit being offered; if the listed price is 100.00 ISK and you want to buy 50 of the item, you’ll wind up paying 5000 ISK total.
You can see exactly which station the items are listed from in the Location column. This is important - before buying items in another system, you’ll probably want to check to make sure you can get there without having to go through low-security space (0.4 and below). Otherwise you might get ganked on the way. You can right-click on a particular seller and choose Location -> Set Destination to a set an autopilot course to it, and then look at the colored dots that the autopilot shows you: if any of them are orange or red, don’t buy from there.
You can also click the gear icon at the top-right of the market window to set filters on the listings. For instance, you can uncheck the boxes for ‘Low Sec’ and ‘Null Sec’ to completely hide listings from lower security space.
For very cheap items, it’s often worth it to buy it closer to avoid having to make extra jumps. For more expensive items, going a few more jumps to get a better price may be worth the time.
Once you’ve chosen which seller you want to buy from, right-click the entry and choose ‘Buy’ which will pop up a window asking how many items you want to purchase. Type in the quantity (or stick with the default of 1) and press ‘Buy’. Once you’ve bought an item, it will show up in the Item Hangar of the station where you bought it. You will need to fly to that station (if not the one you’re currently in) and pick it up.
If you bought an item but can’t remember where, you can use the Assets window (Alt+T) to look through everything you own in EVE and find the station. Note however that the Assets window only updates every 5 minutes, so you may need to wait a few minutes for it to show up there.
Markets in EVE are on a per-region basis. This means that depending on where you are in the galaxy you’ll see different sets of sellers. In your starter system, there are likely to be market listings for the basic modules you’ll want. More advanced items, however, are unlikely to be available at a reasonable price. If you’re looking for a particular item and can’t find any sellers, you may need to go to a different region to find people listing it for sale. The next page will talk a bit about some of the ‘market hubs’ where you can buy almost anything. You can also use the player-run site EVEMarketer to check what prices are like across all of EVE.