Skill trading
Through the use of a Skill Extractor a player can extract a portion of their skills and put it into a Skill Injector which they can then use, give away or trade on the regular market. This new feature opened up new doors for people to adjust their characters:
- You can now remove unwanted skillpoints from skills you've trained in the past and either consume or sell the Skill Injector afterwards.
- You can now instantly improve your skills and break away from the previous limitations of having to either spend time training or purchase a character someone else has trained.
- You can now farm skillpoints and sell them on the market, much like people farm characters to sell on the Character Bazaar.
This was introduced to the game in February 2016, see the following devblogs and patch notes for more information:
- Exploring The Character Bazaar & Skill Trading (devblog back in October 2015)
- Skill trading in New Eden (devblog released in January 2016)
- Patch Notes for February 2016 Release
Lore
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SCC Authorizes Trading in Transneural Skill Extraction and Injection Products 2016-02-08 16:43 - By Lina Ambre |
| “ |
YULAI — Capsuleers are to be permitted to trade so-called "Skill Extractors" and "Skill Injectors" according to a market activity notification issued by the Secure Commerce Commission today. Trade in the transneural skill extraction and injection products – devices said to be capable of "reading out synaptic patterns and laying them down in new combinations with skillbook data" – is to be authorized and controlled from 9th February YC118, under the capsuleer support provisions of the Yulai Convention. Understood to be a development and refinement of neural interface and transneural scanning technologies used by capsuleers, the skill extraction and injection techniques have apparently been made available by the Society of Conscious Thought. In an appendix to the notification, the SCC confirmed that the technology has been extensively tested and used by the SoCT for some years as part of several special educational programs. As the SCC appendix notes: “One of the leading specialist education providers in New Eden, the Society of Conscious Thought has supplied ample data establishing the safety and reliability of this novel technique for learning pathway resolution and reassignment.” The SCC notice makes clear that the transneural skill extraction and injection technology is not authorized for sale to non-capsuleers due to the "destructive reading" method of the extraction device. The primary source for Skill Extractors will be the commissaries, trading under the name "New Eden Store", found in every space station's secured capsuleer zone. Since the demise of the Noble Exchange, following Noble Appliance's loss of the commissary contract after an SCC investigation into pricing manipulation, the New Eden Store brand has been operated by a board believed to include representatives of Cromeaux Inc., Genolution, Modern Finances and Khanid Innovation. In a development that may be related, the Scope has learned that representatives of Genolution, Impro and X-Sense were called to a meeting with the CONCORD Inner Circle this past week. There has been no official confirmation of this meeting by CONCORD despite repeated requests for comment. |
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Skill Extractors
It's a consumable item that removes skillpoints from your own character in order to create a new item called a Skill Injector and transfer the skillpoints into that item (the extractor itself is used up in the process). This allows you to sell or give away a portion of your skillpoints or simply redistribute skillpoints from one skill to another. There are diminishing returns as you get more and more skillpoints in total however, so keep that in mind.
Availability
You can purchase Skill Extractors from the New Eden Store (NES) with PLEX, alternatively with ISK if someone else has bought it from the store and put it up for sale on the regular market. While the PLEX cost is set by CCP in the store, the ISK price on the regular market will fluctuate based on supply and demand.
Extracting skills
Once you have a Skill Extractor you activate it and get a list of your skills, allowing you to pick and choose which skills you'll extract skillpoints from. This process will remove the skillpoints from that skill and they will be lost, dropping the skill down to a new level based on remaining skillpoints. The Skill Extractor is also consumed in the process, leaving behind a Skill Injector.
Limitations
- You need to be logged in through the fully supported game launcher to use Skill Extractors (this is to support, but doesn't require, two-factor authentication for skill trading).
- Need to be docked in a station, sitting in your pod.
- You need a minimum of 5,500,000 skillpoints to use an extractor (can't drop below 5 million skillpoints).
- A single extractor holds 500,000 skillpoints (500k) and the total worth of skillspoints for the skills you select must equal to or exceed this number in order to create a Skill Injector.
- You cannot extract skillpoints from a skill that is a prerequisite for another skill, so if you want to get rid of a whole chain of skills you'll need to extract the skills from the top down.
- If the account to be extracted from is in Alpha Clone State, characters may only extract skills requiring Omega Clone State.
- Certain skills cannot be removed, such as:
Skill Injectors
A skill injector is a consumable item that will give you anywhere from 150,000 to 500,000 unallocated skillpoints. These skillpoints can then be used to boost any of your existing skills or saved for later. The item is destroyed once used.
Availability
You can purchase and trade Skill Injectors on the regular market, just like any other item. Since the item is placed on the market by players for players, the price can and will fluctuate based on supply and demand.
Diminishing returns
Depending on your total amount of skillpoints, you receive more or less of the skillpoints stored in the Skill Injector when you use it.
- If you have less than 5 million skillpoints you gain the full 500,000 skillpoints (100% worth).
- If you have between 5 - 50 million skillpoints you gain 400,000 skillpoints (80% worth).
- If you have between 50 - 80 million skillpoints you gain 300,000 skillpoints (60% worth).
- If you have more than 80 million skillpoints you only gain 150,000 skillpoints (30% worth).
These brackets apply regardless of whether you're injecting your skill injectors one by one or all at once. So if you inject 10 skill injectors at 4,9 million skillpoints, the first one will give you 500k skillpoints as you have less than 5 million skillpoints, while the remaining 9 injectors will only give you 400k skillpoints worth since after the first skill injector you moved into the second 5 - 50 million bracket. As soon as an injector is used, its skillpoints are added to your character's total skillpoints (and displayed on your character sheet), even before you apply them to particular skills.
How much time does an injector buy me?
To put this into perspective, it might be good to know roughly how much time you're actually "saving" by purchasing a Skill Injector instead of just waiting for the skills to finish naturally.
| Total skillpoints | Default remap & no implants (training at 1,800 SP / hour) |
Default remap & +3 implants (training at 2,200 SP / hour) |
Perfect remap & +5 implants (training at 2,700 SP / hour) |
|---|---|---|---|
| < 5 million skillpoints (500k / injector) | 11 days and 14 hours | 9 days and 12 hours | 7 days and 18 hours |
| 5 - 50 million skillpoints (400k / injector) | 9 days and 7 hours | 7 days and 14 hours | 6 days and 5 hours |
| 50 - 80 million skillpoints (300k / injector) | 6 days and 23 hours | 5 days and 17 hours | 4 days and 16 hours |
| > 80 million skillpoints (150k / injector) | 3 days and 12 hours | 2 days and 21 hours | 2 days and 8 hours |
Miscellaneous Information
Small, Large, and Daily Alpha skill injectors are identical in functionality but come from different sources. As with the usual 
Alpha clone restrictions, up to the full Alpha-accessible skillset of 20m SP may be injected without being in Omega state. It does not matter whether skills past 5m SP (but under the total of 20m in the whole Alpha set that may be accessed) are acquired through injection, or time previously spent as an Omega.
Skill trading vs other options
Apart from the obvious choice of simply train the skills over time, you have a few other options to acquire extra skillpoints; Multiple Character Training using PLEX or purchase a character from the Character Bazaar. Each method will have different pros and cons, most noticeably regarding time and cost.
PLEX and multiple character training
Using a 30 Day Pilot's License Extension (PLEX) allows you to train another character on your account for 30 days (normally you can only train on one character at a time) or even use as gametime for another account to run and train on a separate account. Both of these options are limited to training other characters and cannot give your main character more skillpoints and it still requires time to train the skills at the usual pace.
Obviously this will not be an option if you're looking to improve your main characters, or any character you're already training with. But if you're looking to improve one of your secondary characters and cost is more of a factor than time, then this might be a good alternative.
To compare the cost of Skill Injectors vs PLEX you could for example calculate how many injectors worth of skillpoints your 30 day train will equate to:
| Total skillpoints [1] | 1,800 SP / hour [2] (1,296,000 skillpoints) |
2,200 SP / hour [3] (1,584,000 skillpoints) |
2,700 SP / hour [4] (1,944,000 skillpoints) |
|---|---|---|---|
| < 5 million skillpoints (500k / injector) | 2,6 injectors | 3,2 injectors | 3,9 injectors |
| 5 - 50 million skillpoints (400k / injector) | 3,3 injectors | 4 injectors | 4,9 injectors |
| 50 - 80 million skillpoints (300k / injector) | 4,4 injectors | 5,3 injectors | 6,5 injectors |
| > 80 million skillpoints (150k / injector) | 8,7 injectors | 10,6 injectors | 13 injectors |
- ^ The number of skillpoints you have on your character, see Diminishing returns above.
- ^ 1,800 skillpoints / hour is what you get with your default remap and no implants.
- ^ 2,200 skillpoints / hour is what you get if you use +3 attribute implants and have the appropriate neural remap.
- ^ 2,700 skillpoints / hour is what you get if you use +5 attribute implants (requires Cybernetics V) and have the appropriate neural remap.
Purchasing a character from the Character Bazaar
If you don't need the skills on an existing character and you have room for another character on your account (each account can hold three characters), you have the option of buying a new character from the Character Bazaar.
The comparable value of a character bought from the bazaar and the value of injectors to get the skills can't really be compared on total skillpoints of the character, as it might have skills trained that you don't need or benefit from. But if you consider the total amount of skillpoints of the skills you need, then compare the price of the character to the price of buying enough injectors to achieve the same result, you'll be able to gauge which is the cheapest.
You could also combine the Bazaar and injectors, by getting an undervalued character and "top it off" with injectors to make it more useful to yourself, or more desirable on the Bazaar if you intend to resell it.
Profitability of skill trading
Here are some common scenarios and the costs/profits involved. There are probably other scenarios as well that doesn't adhere to the examples mentioned above, so always do your research.
Using ISK to facilitate training and extracting
If you're buying PLEX to facilitate the training and then pay ISK to get the extractors from the market, then you'll be able to extract at least 3-4 injectors a month (at 2,700 skillpoints an hour you get 1,944,000 skillpoints in a month). So for that to be profitable, you'll need to sell the injectors at a price that's higher than your initial investment.
Using real money to gain ISK
If you're using real money to subscribe (in order to have an account to train on) and again real money to get extractors, you should compare the relative ISK per real world currency spent. If 4 injectors doesn't yield as much ISK as however many PLEX you get for the same price, you'd make more money simply selling PLEX straight up.
Active accounts that do not need training
If you're using the account anyway and for some reason have no need to train anything (the account might be filled with specific alts already trained for their purpose), you end up changing the dynamics for profitability. The ability to train in this scenario doesn't cost you more, you're already subscribing to use the account, so the above mentioned formula is changed to simply weighing the cost of extractors vs the profit of selling injectors.
Skill Trading between Alts - A Comparison
Another usage of Skill Injectors and Skill Extractors is for personal use to faster train a target character of your choice. In this article we will compare each strategy by its cost, in ISK and in Dollars. To achieve the goal of faster training, three meta-options are currently at your disposition:
- Buy skill injectors. This can be done by buying at the in game market price, in ISK.
- Training an alternative character on the same account as the target character. This can be done by buying Skill Extractors from the New Eden Store or the in game market. This strategy also require a Multiple Pilot Training Certificate, also buyable in the New Eden Store or the in game market.
- Training an alternative character on an alternative account. This can be done by buying Skill Extractors from the New Eden Store or the in game market. This strategy also require a PLEX (buyable with ISK or money) or a subscription for the activation of the account.
This gives us a total of 13 options, only three of them being ISK only and four being IRL currency only. The 6 remaining involve both ISK and Dollars. We are now going to compare each option, using the equations below, this equation should include the amount of money you are willing to invest and the skill training point time:
