You know when you've transitioned from Noob to Serious player when you ......

[EdFred]

I think you're a "professional" when you pull off the fabled Eve surface return mission.

...from less than 50m MSL.

The first 8,000dV is easy.

[Jouni]

...from less than 50m MSL.

The first 8,000dV is easy.

Building a lander with enough TWR and 12000 m/s of delta-v is easy: just use 2 or 3 vertical stages and 9 pairs of asparagus boosters. The real challenges in an Eve landing are the following (in no particular order):

• Reaching Eve with the lander fully fueled.
  
• Surviving parachute deployment.
  
• Landing in one piece.
  
• Finding a suitably level landing zone.
  
• Ladder placement.
  
• Detaching parachutes and landing gear successfully.
  

0.23.5 made the first three a lot easier with stronger joints and bigger rockets.

[Thomas988]

When you regularly work on a Mun base and a Mun space station.