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So, you're starting to do missions. Here's some information on how they work and what they do for you (beyond the obvious of rewarding you with ISK).

As usual, if you see any inaccuracies or anything that should be added, please comment and I'll fix it. Please do ask any questions you might have.

What is a mission?
A mission is like a quest in other games. An NPC will ask you do something for him, and will reward you when you are done.

What kinds of missions are there?
The most common types of missions are Encounter, in which you go somewhere and fight some NPCs, and Courier, in which you must fly an object from your current location to another location. I've heard there is a third type, Mining, but I've never had one.

How do I get a mission?
To get a mission, you must talk to an agent, who will offer you a mission.

How do I find an agent?
The most straightforward way is to dock at a station and look on the "Agents" tab in the lower right of your screen. You may speak to (and get missions from) any agent who is listed under "Available to You." If an agent is listed under "Unavailable to You," that means he is of a higher level or quality than you can access.

Another way to find an agent is to search its corporation listing. All agents are members of the corporation which owns the station they are sitting in. To open a corporation listing, you can either, if you're sitting in a station, click the little blue 'i' button in the upper right, or, if you're not in a stating of the corporation you want, search for the corporation name in your "People and Places" box.

Once the corporation listing is open, you can look on the "Agents" tab to find agents of different types that are available to you.

What is agent level and quality?
Agent level is ranked 1 through 5, and describes how hard the missions he gives you are. Level 1 missions, for example, can be done using frigates or destroyers, while level 2 missions usually require a cruiser. Agent quality is ranked -19 through 19, and describes how well the agent will reward you. When you first start out, the agents will be level 1, and will have quality from -19 through about 3.

As you do more missions for an agent, your standing with him increases, and that number is added to his quality. Therefore, the more you do for an agent, the more he pays you. Your standing with that agent's corporation will also increase. As this number increases, agents of higher quality and higher level will become available to you.

How does the agent type matter?
The agent type determines the chances of him offering you combat or courier missions. For example, a "security" agent will tend to offer combat missions, while an "archives" agent will tend to offer you courier missions.

What are the rewards for a mission?
The agent will offer you a reward of ISK and loyalty points. In addition, if you complete the mission within a specified time period, he will give you an ISK bonus.

I get the ISK part, but what are loyalty points?
Loyalty points are simply another reward. They go into a pool of points associated with that corporation, meaning that loyalty points awarded by agents of the same corporation all go into the same pool, and you can redeem those points for prizes.

How can I see what missions I'm doing or offered?
These are listed in your journal.

Can I refuse a mission? Is there a penalty for doing so?
You can refuse a mission, and there might be a penalty for doing so. You can refuse one offered mission without penalty every four hours. If you refuse two missions within four hours, there is a small standings penalty.

You can also accept a mission, and then tell the agent that you don't want to (or aren't able to) do it, but this has a heavy standings penalty.

Mission offers and accepted missions have time limits (see below), and if you let the time run out, you are penalized as noted above.

Is there a time limit?
Yes. In the journal, each mission lists by when you must accept a "Not accepted" mission, or by when you must finish an "Accepted" mission.

Beyond giving me yummy ISK, why should I do missions?
Well, first, missions are a lot of fun. It's just one of the myriad things you can do in EVE. Missions also raise your standings with corporations, which affects things that you do when in their stations. For example, when you use their facilities to refine your ore, the corporation will take less of the minerals as its cut if it likes you.

The loyalty points are useful since you can buy things with them (what you can buy depends on the corporation). There are probably other hidden or situation-specific benefits. For example, if you befriend an R&D agent, you may be able to buy blueprints from him with loyalty points, and he may offer to do research with you to improve a blueprint or invent.

How can I see my standings?
On your character sheet, there is a panel called Standings. You can see your standings with each corporation and agent here.

How do I get better rewards?
The most obvious is to run missions for higher quality and higher level agents. A hidden way to earn better rewards is to befriend agents. Their standing towards you also affects their effective quality, meaning that the more they like you, the higher their quality and therefore the more they'll pay you.

There are also skills that affect the rewards.

* Social increases the amount of standings you get (for the agent and the corporation) when you do a mission
* Negotiation adds +5 per skill level to the quality of the agent,increasing the amount of ISK, LP, and standings per mission.
* Connections increases the agent's (and corporation's) standing towards you.

There are also a number of skills called Connections, such as Labor Connections and Military Connections, which increase the loyalty points you earn for running missions for agents of related types. These skill books, though, are obtained with loyalty points, and so require a lot of work (or huge piles of ISK) to obtain.

How do I advance to level 2 missions (and beyond)?
Keep running missions for the same corporation. Once you increase that corporation's standing to 2.0, it will start to offer level 2 missions. I don't know what the threshhold numbers are for higher level missions.

What is a storyline mission?
A storyline mission is a special mission offered to you by a storyline mission. You cannot access these agents normally; instead, when the game decides that you qualify for one, the agent will send you an EVEmail asking you to do a mission for him.

The actual mission varies, but the reward tends to include some ISK and an implant. (I've only done three, so I can't tell if this is always true.) The type of implant depends upon the corporation for which the mission is run. When the game decides that you qualify for a storyline mission, it chooses the closest one to you. You can normally see storyline agents in the "Not Available to You" list in a station, so if there is a particular agent/corporation you want to run a storyline mission for, do missions for agents near that agent.

How the game decides to give you a storyline mission seems to be unknown. I've seen one site say that you have to do sixteen missions for the same agent, but my first storyline mission came after doing three missions for one agent. My second came after running a total of six missions for four different agents, and my third came after 24 missions all over the place (and immediately after doing six missions for an agent I'd never met before).

How do I find more agents for the same corporation?
Please see the question above about "how do I find an agent."

There are two other missions that deserve separate mention.

Tutorial Mission
This mission should have been available to you at your starter location. (This might no longer be true, with the changes to tutorials with the recent Revelations 2 update.)

Mountains out of Molehills
This is a 10-part mission which introduces you to missions, combat, mining, research, invention, and manufacturing, and gives a rookie a nice boost in ISK. I definitely recommend this set of missions to any starting character, since its rewards also include a frigate, a frigate blueprint, a mining laser, and an implant.

The only problem is that it might be hard to find. My starter station, the School of Applied Knowledge in Todaki (Caldari), had the agent who offered it, but my husband's starter station, at Chaven (Amarr) didn't. (He flew up to Caldari space to do it for the free stuffies.)

Suggestion for the worlds collide mission. Use a fast frigate with afterburners, sheild booster and armour repairer attached. When you get to the first area of deadspace there will be two gates, its your choice which one you go through it doesnt really matter. To get to the gate before the rats get to you use your afterburner and crank your speed up to full, you should be able to get to the gate before the rats get to you.

When you get to the second deadspace area of either gate its a very hard battle because you are dropped right in the middle of them all. If you want to fight the crank your speed up to full put your after burner on. If you do it quick enough only a few enemies will have locked onto you and you will lead them away from the rest of them it will be easier to pick this group off, after you have dispatched this group if you sheild is down stop your ship and put your sheild booster on, if your armour has been damaged use your armour repairer. Wait til your back at 100% for everything and your capacitor is full or near full, you should be able to pick of the other small groups with little trouble, but be careful there is usually a single enemy ship which is hard to kill, so pick your targets carefully.

If you choose to run instead of fight in the second deadspace area then just crank up the speed and put your afterburner on and head straight for the gate, you should be able to get through it with little damage.

When you get to the third deadspace area you will once again be dropped into the middle of the enemies, so pick a direction crank the speed up and whack the afterburner on, again you should only have a few enemies locked onto you, so pick these guys off and recharge your sheild and armour if needed. When you get to this point the rest of the enemy ships are in small groups but tighter together then in the second deadspace zone. You have to kill all of these before you can rescue the crew you where sent to get. Most of these frigates are pretty easy to kill but if you are near being destroyed then retreat using the afterburner and speed and recharge your sheild and armour. Once you have killed all the rats then just go to the damaged ship, pick up the crew and then head back to your agents homestation to collect your reward.

Hope this helps ^_^

I have never done level 1 as a newbie but i have done some with an alt for standing grinding and have some tips :

1 - Speed is the key ! if you keep your speed high enough and your range to a fair ammount NPC ships won't even be able to hit you ! A named afterburner and some levels of navigation skills are definately not a bad investment !

2 - Use High-Tracking and longest range weapon possible or even better, missiles, the NPC ships aren't really tough so you want to be able to kill them as fast as possible

3 - for the missions such as break their will and worlds collide the key is to run !

a) Break Their will : cruise toward the repair station NO NPC WILL SPAWN UNTIL YOU ATTACK IT ! make sure you have high damage dealing weapons ,once you get at optimal range quickly align to something to warp to and give it all you got, destroy it and warp out without touching the hostile ships and complete mission. (it works for level 2 and 3 versions as well)

b) Worlds Collide : Speed for the first level, then second you need to kill all the hostile ships to look into the wreck.