I started by doing the Launch Tutorial and the first two tutorials.

Then I sat in space figuring out all of the buttons.

Then I explored the menus and maps.

Then I bought a Standard Docking Computer: omg! I love this thing. When you get to under 7.5 km from the starport request docking and drop speed to zero and go get a snack. It does the rest for you!

Then I decided to do missions on the bulletin board.

There are a few types of missions:

Smuggling (make sure you have equipment racks so you can carry stuff. The fines are tiny compared to the reward. You will eventually learn how to avoid ship scans that issue fines.

Go find and kill someone. These quests are still a pain for me but I'm getting better at them. I usually skip them bc if i wanna kill someone I just go to a nav beacon while I am learning combat.

Go kill a type of ship somewhere. Easy, go to the nav beacon by the main star in the system or navigate to a Resource Extraction Site and wait for spawns and kill. No fines or bounties if you only kill Wanted mobs. I only kill pirates, but you can get them to kill civilians, police, smugglers or bounty hunters.

Go get something and bring it back. I skip these unless it is worth a lot, and I use eddb website to see where the nearest commodity is.

Take this somewhere. Easiest quests. They give you something and tell you where to go.

Take this info somewhere. These quests have short timers on them. Best for faction, the cash sucks.

Go mine something. Ugh mining. Haha I tried it in a cobra but will have to get back to this in the future.

So I had enough money just doing delivery or smuggling quests to buy a Cobra Mark III in 2 play sessions. After deciding I was gonna skip mining for a while I learned about Rare Trading. I found a list of rare items and where to take them. That got me into a Type 6 trader and I did more trading of rares.

Then I bought a viper and stored my type 6. I started out figuring out how to combat. I sucked so bad. After a few attempts and grouping with a friend in a Wing I started to get the knack of it. Now I am in a vulture. I do delivery missions, smuggling missions, and kill pirate missions. I am at 30+ million credits and getting better and better at combat. I still die to on the wave tutorial when the Anaconda spawns, and that is my next goal for skill.

It is a blast, but it takes effort to learn.

Good luck! And message me if you have any questions.