Skills and learning

	EVE University offers a class on:
Skill Planning (CORE class)

Skills in EVE govern the abilities of your character. They determine which ships you can fly, what modules you can use, the effectiveness with which you can use those ships/modules, and much more. This is a guide to learning those in-game skills, explaining the mechanics that govern skill training, and making suggestions for training strategies.

Overview

Skills are a significant part of what defines a character and what they can do. If you want to fly a ship, use modules on that ship, mine, trade, and so much more, you will need to have trained specific skills for that. Additionally, training skills improve your performance (your ships will fly faster, your guns will do more damage, you will pay lower taxes, and so on). Some skills affect multiple areas of the game, but most are specialized. This has two major effects:

• It does not take too much time to become proficient in one area of the game (say, flying missile frigates), as a finite number of skills improve your performance in that particular area. This also means that young characters (who have not been playing for as long) can quickly "catch up" to older characters in specific areas of the game.
• Conversely, it takes much more time to become proficient in many (or even all) areas of the game; training every skill in the game to the maximum level would take around two decades of continuous training. In other words, older characters will be proficient in more areas of the game when compared with younger characters.

Fortunately, skills are cumulative, and once you have invested time (skill points) into a skill you will never lose them (unless you choose to extract them using a Skill Extractor). This means that you can continuously improve your character's proficiency in one or several areas of the game, depending on your goals. The unique skill system of EVE Online allows you to train skills in real time, even when logged off. You should always have a skill in training.

As of 10 July 2023 there were 466 different skills in EVE, with a total of 2,211x training time multiplier, and a total of 566,016,000 skill points. Every  Omega clone character can potentially learn every skill, but it would take over 23 years of skill training even with 32 points at all attributes, or 3,462 Large Skill Injectors, to achieve.

New skills have been added since, so the above numbers are no longer correct.

Alpha clone characters are limited to 172 different skills and a total of 20,443,992 skill points, while they also have extra restrictions of skill levels they can reach on each skill. Additionally, Alpha clone characters will have their training queue disabled once their trained skills plus their unallocated skill points reached 5,000,000 skill points, they cannot unpause it to train more skills, but still can apply unallocated skill points to skills. Alpha clone characters are also able to use a Daily Alpha Injector that gives 50,000 skills points.

It would be easy to get lost, but thankfully skills are divided into groups:

Category	Description
Armor	Skills to improve your ship's armor
Corporation Management	Skills to create and manage player-run corporations
Drones	Skills to use and improve any drones that you use
Electronic Systems	Skills relating to electronic warfare
Engineering	Skills to improve your ship's CPU, powergrid, capacitor, and to perform capacitor warfare
Fleet Support	Skills to form fleets with other players, and to make Command Bursts more powerful
Gunnery	Skills to use and improve turret-based weapons
Missiles	Skills to use and improve missile-based weapons
Navigation	Skills to make your ship faster and more agile, and to use propulsion modules
Neural Enhancement	Skills related to using implants, jump clones and medical boosters
Planet Management	Skills related to Planetary Industry
Production	Skills needed to manufacture modules, ships, and more
Resource Processing	Skills needed to mine raw materials, refine them, and salvage components from destroyed ships
Rigging	Skills to make rigs fit to your ship more effective, and needed to manufacture rigs
Scanning	Skills needed to find objects in space using scan probes, and to hack into secure containers in exploration sites
Science	Skills related to research and invention
Shields	Skills to improve your ship's shields
Sequencing	Skills related to the creation, storage, and sale of player-made ship skins
Social	Skills to improve your standings with NPCs and to improve the rewards from running missions
Spaceship Command	Skills required to fly certain all classes of ship
Structure Management	Skills required to anchor and control various deployable structures, such as Upwell structures.
Subsystems	Skills required to use and improve the subsystems on Strategic Cruisers
Targeting	Skills to lock more targets, faster, and at longer ranges
Trade	Skills to improve trading on the EVE market

It would not be practical to go into detail describing all these skills on one page; there is therefore a separate page for each section of skills (linked above).

Recommended skills

New pilots might want to consider some of the following lists of skills:

• The Short Skill Plan: a quick route into basic functionality in a wide range of effective Tech 1 frigate, destroyer, and cruiser hulls
  • EVE University does not require any particular skill training pattern from its members, but the Short Skill Plan is designed in part to make a character ready to participate usefully in many types of University fleet
• Basic Skills: easily-accessible skills which can be quickly trained to medium levels
• Support Skills: not necessarily required for specific ships/equipment, but very helpful
• Fitting skills: make it easier to fit everything you need onto any ship
• The Pyramid Skill Plan: a way to conceive of and plan longer-term training and specialization once pilots have a clear sense of what they might want to do in New Eden

Be aware too of "The Magic 14", 14 skills which benefit any ship you fly. These are not a skill plan, but they are skills worth training to medium levels in the medium term, and to level V in the long term.

Skillbooks

To learn a skill (unless it's part of your starting skills), a pilot must acquire and inject the relevant skillbook.

Acquiring

If you are a member of EVE University, the Skillbook Program will reimburse the cost of any skill which is NPC-seeded and costs no more than 3.5 million ISK.

Pilots who completed the starter missions from the career agents will have already been given some useful skillbooks.

The main way to acquire other new skillbooks is from the market. Pilots can browse the available skillbooks under 'Skills' in the Browse tab, or just search for a particular skill. Most skillbooks are sold by NPC corporations for a fixed price.

The NPC sell orders can be distinguished in two ways: they have a uniform price, and they have nearly a year's worth of time listed in the 'Expires In' column. (The maximum amount of time a player can put a sell order up for, by contrast, is 90 days.)

Players also sometimes put up sell orders for NPC seeded skillbooks. If the order is priced below the NPC price, the player is probably selling off books they bought in error; if the order is above the NPC price, the player is probably hoping to trick someone into buying. It is good practice to check the NPC price before buying an NPC-seeded skill from a player sell order.

Some skillbooks are not directly injectable or seeded onto the market. Instead, they are acquired through the loyalty point stores of NPC corporations or from exploration sites. These tend to be more advanced skills, such as Precursor Frigate, which lets you pilot the Triglavian Damavik. Some players trade in these skills by finding them or buying them from LP stores where they have LP and then putting them up on the regular market for a profit. Depending on how hard it is to obtain these skills outside of the market, buying them from players selling them on the regular market can often be the simplest option.

Updates in 2019 opened up another way to acquire skillbooks. Any skillbook which is available via an NPC-seeded sell order can instead be purchased and immediately injected via the Character Sheet skill page. Injecting skills directly from the character skill interface can be done anywhere, and is thus a useful option for pilots living in wormholes and other logistically challenging places; to counterbalance this convenience, the price of taking this option is 30% higher than the standard NPC price, so pilots who can easily access NPC skill markets should continue to take that option if ISK is an issue.

Injecting

Once you have acquired a skillbook, you can "inject" a skillbook.

Right-clicking on a skill in a hangar or cargohold, also gives you an 'Inject skill' option. Injecting a skill shunts the skill from the skillbook into the Skills list on your Character Sheet (and destroys the skillbook), but doesn't actually start training -- effectively it stores the skill at 'level 0'.

Injecting is useful if you have bought a skill that you have the intent to train, but do not actually want to start training it right away or have yet to meet the requirements to train: once it's injected, you do not need to worry about keeping the skillbook with you, and there's no risk that you will lose the skillbook if you fly into dangerous space and lose your ship. The same is true and useful for jump clones -- you can jump to a clone in hisec or a trade hub, acquire and inject the skill there, and then (after the jumpclone waiting period) jump back to your main clone somewhere in more dangerous space, where you can train the skill at your leisure. Note that you can inject a skillbook without knowing all the prerequisites to actually start training the skill.

Training skills

You can train a skill by dragging and dropping it into the training queue, or by right-clicking on it in your Skills list. The first skill in your training queue is the one training at the moment, once fully trained the next one starts automatically training. Unallocated skill points (skill injectors, or AIR Daily Goals), can be applied to a skill in the training queue. Two options are possible :

• • To apply to a single skill, right click on a skill in the training queue and select "apply skill points".
  • To apply all your unallocated skill points to your training queue, click on the "+" button on the right side of the total training time.

Skill points can be applied to skills already partially trained or injected.

Note: As of 23 July 2024  Omega clone subscribers can get 15,000 skillpoints for free weekly in the New Eden Store. The offer refreshes at downtime on Tuesday.

Training Time Multipliers

So, how is the time it takes you to train a particular skill calculated? The number of skill points necessary to train a skill is determined by the skill's rank, also known as its training time multiplier, while the rate at which you get new skill points is determined by your attributes.

The base numbers of skill points (SP) required to train a skill with a training time multiplier of 1x (like Navigation, for example) go like this:

Skill Points

Level	Total SP	Level SP	Percentage
I	250	250	0.09765625%
II	1,414	1,164	0.4546875%
III	8,000	6,586	2.57265625%
IV	45,255	37,255	14.552734375%
V	256,000	210,745	82.322265625%

When training from one level to the next you start with the skill points you accumulated training the previous level - so, for example, if you start training Navigation IV, you will already have 8,000 SP in the skill and will need to train 37,255 more SP to move from III to IV.

If a skill has a training multiplier higher than 1, the number of SP required for each level is multiplied by that number. So, for example, Evasive Maneuvering has a training time multiplier of 2x, and you need to accumulate 500 SP (250 x 2) to train it to I, 2,828 SP to train it to II and so forth.

The better the benefits of a skill or the equipment it lets you use, the higher its training time multiplier, or 'rank' as it's sometimes called, tends to be. Amarr Titan, for example, has a x16 training multiplier -- you need to accumulate 4,096,000 SP to train it to V.

[math] \displaystyle \text{ SP } = 250 \times \text{ multiplier } \times \sqrt{ 32^{ ( \text{ level } - 1 ) } } [/math]

Attributes

Every EVE character has five attributes. These are:

• Intelligence
• Perception
• Charisma
• Willpower
• Memory

These attributes determine how quickly you train the various skills in the game. They do not influence anything else about your character. Since time is perhaps your most valuable asset in EVE, understanding attributes and optimizing them for your character's plans is absolutely vital. In order to view your attributes, open your character sheet and select "Attributes". The five attributes for your character will be listed there.

By default, your character has a score of 20 in all attributes (except Charisma, with a score of 19).

Effects on skill training

Every skill has a primary and a secondary attribute: Navigation, for example, lists Intelligence as its primary attribute and Perception as its secondary attribute. When you start training a skill, you can calculate the time needed (in minutes) thus:

[math] \displaystyle \text{ t } = \frac { \text{ SP needed } - \text{ Current SP } } { \text{ Primary Attribute } + ( \text{ Secondary Attribute } / 2 ) } [/math]

In general, the skillpoints accumulate at a rate equal to

 [Omega Clones] SP/minute =        Primary_Attribute + 0.50 × Secondary_Attribute
 [Alpha Clones] SP/minute = 0.50 × Primary_Attribute + 0.25 × Secondary_Attribute

It's not necessary to know the mathematics involved here, but the important thing to note is that your score for a skill's primary attribute will affect its training time twice as much as your score for its secondary attribute. You can find your attribute scores on your character sheet under Character -> Attributes.

A default character (assuming it is an  Omega clone) with no modification to their ability scores gains between 29 and 30 skill points per minute (1740 to 1800 SP per hour). If the character is an Alpha clone, they only gain half (15 points per minute) as many skill points. An Omega character with neural remap focused on specific skills and +5 implants (see details below) can have 32+26/2=45 skill points per minute, 2,700 SP/h, 64,800 SP/day, 1.944M SP/month (per 30 days). See the following table for a breakdown of major options:

Training Speed

Clone Type	Attributes		Implants	Skillpoints
	Primary	Secondary		per minute	per hour	per day	per 30 days
Alpha	20	20	None	15.00	900	21.60K	648.0K
Alpha	20	20	+3	17.25	1,035	24.84K	745.2K
Alpha	27	21	+3	21.00	1,260	30.24K	907.2K
Omega	20	20	None	30.00	1,800	43.20K	1.296M
Omega	20	20	+3	34.50	2,070	49.68K	1.49M
Omega	20	20	+5	37.50	2,250	54.00K	1.620M
Omega	27	21	+5	45.00	2,700	64.80K	1.944M

If you want to know your exact Skillpoint rate, you can use this calculator.

Each attribute is associated with skills for particular spheres of activity. Generally, the groups of skills are associated with particular attributes as follows - with some exceptions:

Skill Groups and Associated Attributes

Group (# of skills)	Attributes (Primary, Secondary)
Armor	Intelligence, Memory
Corporation Management	Memory, Charisma
Drones	Memory, Perception
Electronic Systems	Intelligence, Memory
Engineering	Intelligence, Memory / Perception, Willpower
Fleet Support	Charisma, Willpower
Gunnery	Perception, Willpower
Missiles	Perception, Willpower
Navigation	Intelligence, Perception / Intelligence, Memory
Neural Enhancement	Intelligence, Memory / Charisma, Willpower
Planet Management	Intelligence, Memory / Charisma, Intelligence
Production	Memory, Intelligence / Intelligence, Memory
Resource Processing	Memory, Intelligence / Intelligence, Memory
Rigging	Intelligence, Memory
Scanning	Intelligence, Memory
Science	Intelligence, Memory / Memory, Charisma
Sequencing	Charisma, Perception
Shields	Intelligence, Memory
Social	Charisma, Intelligence
Spaceship Command	Perception, Willpower (beginner) / Willpower, Perception (advanced)
Structure Management	Memory, Willpower / Memory, Charisma
Subsystems	Intelligence, Memory / Perception, Willpower
Targeting	Intelligence, Memory
Trade	Charisma, Memory / Willpower, Charisma / Charisma, Willpower

As a rough summary:

• Perception and Willpower are very important for combat pilots since they help you train skills that let you use better ships and weapons, and use your ships and weapons better.
• Memory and Intelligence are very important for industrialists, and still quite important for combat pilots (they are useful for drone skills, fitting skills and tanking skills).
• Charisma is important for traders and mission-runners, and anyone who's training in Leadership skills.

It should be obvious that raising your attribute scores, particularly for skill groups you intend to spend lots of time training, is a very good idea. Ways to do this are discussed later in this guide.

General training strategies

EVEMon

EVEMon is a third party software tool that allows you to make plans on your character's skill training (as well as monitor and plan many other things).

EVE-Skillplan

EVE-Skillplan is a web based and responsive skill planner to plan and share your training using your favorite devices - PC/Mac, tablet or smartphone.

Planning ahead

When you first start playing EVE, you may have little idea of what skills you will be needing next week, let alone next month. But after your first few weeks, you will start to form a picture in your mind of what sorts of things you want your character to be able to do, and consequently which skills you will need. The specific training strategies listed elsewhere in this guide work much better when used together with a long term strategy.

How many levels?

As you train higher and higher levels in a skill, you get less benefit for the time invested.

Surgical Strike, for example, gives you a 3% bonus to all turret damage per level - very useful for anyone who uses turrets as their primary weapon system - and has a 4x training time multiplier. You can get your first 3% bonus in a trivially short amount of time: even with basic attribute scores, training Surgical Strike to Level I takes 40 minutes or so. However, with the same basic attribute scores training Surgical Strike from Level IV to V would take nearly 25 days -- and you would still only get 3% more turret damage for your trouble!

For a new character, it is therefore often most efficient to train a useful skill that has a high training multiplier to III or IV and then move on rather than taking it to V straight away. As a rule of thumb, if you use a skill at all it's probably worth training it to III, and if you use a skill regularly it's worth training it to IV.

When your character is older you may well reach a point where you have fewer things you want or need to train - at this point, it may be worth revisiting some skills you left at IV and taking them to V.

There are, however, some skills which it's worth training to V quite early on in your capsuleer career. For combat pilots Navigation is one such because:

• it has a low training time multiplier (1x)
• it affects a very fundamental aspect of the performance of all of your ships (speed)
• with a substantial bonus (5%)

There are a number of other skills with a similar combination of quick training times and significant, widespread bonuses which are well worth training to V quite early.

Another class of skill which you may find yourself training to V are the so-called 'blackmail' skills which are prerequisites for particularly desirable equipment. On the way to training to fly the Wolf, for example, you would need to train Minmatar Frigate V, Mechanics V and Power Grid Management V. Similarly, on the way to deploying Tech 2 Hobgoblin drones you would need to train Light Drone Operation V and Drones V.

Some skills are worth training to V because of a combination of several of the above reasons. Drones V for example lets you use a full flight of five drones, which is useful on any ship with a drone bay of 25m3 or more - and it's a prerequisite for the excellent Tech 2 drones.

Boosting your Attributes

This section of this guide deals with strategies to help you train skills faster.

Effectively, all of the methods discussed below improve your training times by boosting your character's attributes. This boosting usually comes at a cost of something else; other attributes, money, or time.

Implants

Another way to increase your character's attributes is by plugging implants into your head. The first five numbered slots on your character sheet's Augmentations window are for attribute enhancers, implants which each give a bonus (from +1 to +5) to one of your five attributes. Unfortunately, if your pod is destroyed all your implants in the clone piloting it are destroyed as well.

The +1/2/3 implants are relatively cheap and you only need to train Cybernetics I to use them, so it's worth investing in these as soon as you can as, even with the smaller bonuses, they reduce training time by a significant amount. Storyline missions sometimes offer an implant as a reward so if you are running missions you may find yourself collecting some implants. Members of EVE University can also take advantage of the Implant Program to buy significantly discounted +3 implants.

Do note that there are also slot 1-5 implants (sometimes known as Pirate Implants) that also provide other bonuses, in addition, to attribute increases. While these are usually more expensive, do check the markets carefully, as sometimes some "Low-Grade" ones, which are +2 to an attribute, are occasionally less expensive than the equivalent +2 implant ("Limited <type> - Beta"). See the list here.

If you are podded any implants you are wearing will be destroyed - you can set up a jump clone with cheaper implants, or no implants at all, and jump into it when you want to PvP to lower the amount of ISK you're putting at risk.

Since the more powerful +4 and +5 implants can be quite expensive, particularly for a newer pilot, one common trick is to arrange your skill plan so that you're only training skills that rely on the same two attributes, and then only plug in attribute enhancers for those two attributes. This way you only have to pay for two implants rather than four or five.

The advantage of implants is that they require minimal training time (Cybernetics only), giving you an immediate boost to training time which can quickly add up to months of time saved. The disadvantage is their cost, coupled with the fact that they are lost if your pod is killed.

Neural remaps

Neural remapping does not let you boost your attributes overall, but it lets you take points away from one base attribute and add them to another. The remap interface can be accessed through the Attributes tab of your Character Sheet.

Remapping can have long-term consequences. Make sure you know what you're doing!

There are a number of rules governing remapping:

1. You start with a "normal" remap. The normal remap takes a year to replenish after use.
2. You start with two 'bonus' remaps. Bonus remaps are gone forever after use, they will never replenish!
3. If you have both normal and bonus remaps available then the normal remap will be used first.
4. Once you have used your normal remap and bonus remaps you must wait for the yearly timer to expire to remap again, so plan carefully!
5. You start with 20 points for Intelligence, Perception, Willpower and Memory; You start with 19 points for Charisma.
6. An attribute's base score may not be raised above 27 or lowered below 17.
7. Your total base attribute points are 99, and 14 of them can be remapped.
8. Any points taken off one attribute must be added to another -- your remaining unmapped points must be 0 when you finish remapping.

The common strategy for remapping is to put together a long-term skill plan that majors on skills that use a particular two attributes, and then remap so that you denude all your other attribute scores and pump up those two attributes.

If you create a long skill plan in EVEMon, you can use one of the options of its 'Attributes Optimizer' function (available via the Skill Planner) to calculate which arrangement of attributes would be best for the first year of your plan. However, if you're new to the game your future career plans are quite likely to change as you explore the game, so making a year long plan after a few weeks is not very realistic. Be frugal with your remaps for a little while until you get an idea of what you want to do.

Cerebral Accelerators

Main article: Medical boosters#Cerebral Accelerators

Cerebral accelerators are consumed like boosters and give temporary bonuses to all five of a character's attributes, speeding up their skill training time. These can be acquired through certain in-game events (like the Crimson Harvest) or by buying in the New Eden Store (NES). Accelerators acquired through in-game events can only be activated for a limited time (usually a little after the end of the in-game event), after which they will have no effect. Accelerators acquired through starter packs can only be used by characters younger than a certain age, limiting their use to brand-new characters. Accelerators bought in the NES are applied to the character when redeemed.

Name	Bonus	Duration	Total SP	Source
Basic 'Radiance' Cerebral Accelerator	+4	24 hours	8,640	Crimson Harvest
Potent 'Radiance' Cerebral Accelerator	+8		17,280
Blood Raider Cerebral Accelerator	+10		21,600
Advanced Blood Raider Cerebral Accelerator	+12		25,920
Extended 'Radiance' Cerebral Accelerator	+6	3 days	38,880
Copper Ouroboros Accelerator	+10	12 hours	10,800	Shadow of the Serpent
Silver Ouroboros Accelerator		3 days	64,800
Gold Ouroboros Accelerator		5 days	108,000
Compact Cerebral Accelerator	+9	14 days	272,160	Starter Packs
Standard Cerebral Accelerator	+3	35 days	226,800	Commissioned Officer Edition

The duration of boosters is extended if you have trained the Biology skill, by 20% per level trained; if you train Biology to level V, the duration of a booster is therefore doubled. For example, with Biology V trained, a Blood Raider Cerebral Accelerator will last 48 hours instead of the 24 shown in the table above.

Further suggestions

Appropriate remapping

Neural remapping is essential for mid- or long-term planning (compiling mid or long term skill plans can be made using external tools such as EVEMon) and can help you cut several days or weeks of the training time needed to finish such a plan. Please remember that a fresh character is given only two chances to remap and after you used both remap, the next remap will only be available after one year of playtime, so use them carefully.

As a note, new players are not recommended to use their second remap within their first weeks of playing, the reason for this is that most skill plans made by that time will change based on what you (will) know and learn during the time you spent playing EVE Online.

After you know what you are planning for, and can make at least a mid- or long-term plan for things you want to do in EVE (which would probably be a several months or a year skill plan), you can begin to calculate an appropriate remap for the plan, this can be done using the help of EVEMon's attribute optimizer or by common sense. You can try to experiment with changing the remaps on the EVEMon attribute simulator and see which skills are affected positively (trained quicker) and which skills will take longer to train using that remap, skills that took longer to train (because of a higher multiplier or if you are training these skills to higher levels) would be affected much more by appropriate remaps in the long term rather than skills in which can be trained quickly. Several things you need to know before you decide to remap your attributes (since later on, you will only have the chance to do this once a year):

• You know which attributes are important to any given skill categories (for example, Perception and Willpower are very important for combat pilots while Memory and Intelligence are very important for industrialists)
• You know what the skills are for a given role or category (for example, Battlecruiser skill is a combat oriented skill in which perception and willpower are important)
• You have at least a plan for what you will be doing in EVE for the next six months or a year and can plan it accordingly.
• You know that remaps can only be done once a year and that it will affect your training time greatly.
• You are sure that the plans you have made are suitable for what and how you want to play the game and it includes a majority of core skills needed to pilot the ships you want.

New player strategies

New players get 3 initial remaps to spend, one normal remap and 2 bonus remaps. This might sound like a lot, but that's still 4 months per remap, and that's assuming you do not want to keep a bonus remap for next year.

While making a skill plan in EVEMon and getting it to calculate your remaps for you sounds good in theory, a new player is still exploring the game and your interests will change as you discover new aspects. One strategy is to continue with the default remap which should be fine for a new player. Nonetheless, there are some fairly safe initial strategies to use.

At the beginning of the game, almost all players will need skills from:

• Navigation (Intelligence / Perception)
• Electronics, Engineering and Mechanics (Intelligence / Memory)
• Spaceship Command (Perception / Willpower)

Combat oriented pilots will also need:

• Gunnery and/or Missiles (Perception / Willpower)
• Drones (Memory / Perception)

Miners and Industrialists will need:

• Resource Processing, Science and Production (Intelligence / Memory)

Traders will need:

• Trade (Charisma / Willpower)

If you look at these skills you will see that two attributes crop up more than any others: Intelligence and Perception. Willpower and Memory are secondary attributes for several things (with the exception of Drones) and Charisma is not required for any major skill groups unless you are a trader. Note that Willpower is the primary attribute for several skills in the Spaceship Command tree, but only for advanced ship skills, which at this point you will be training rarely compared to the basic ship skills. As such, a good strategy is to keep your initial remap for a few weeks and train basic skills in all of the main skill groups you need, including Social and Trade. Unless you are going to be a hardcore trader (in which case stop reading here and consult a more detailed guide for traders), you should then spend a remap to place all of your attributes in Intelligence and Perception. More combat-oriented pilots should put a few more points into Perception and more industrial pilots should invest a little more in Intelligence. This remap should serve you well for most of your first year, at which point you should have seen enough of the game to reliably make your own long term skill plans.

Specialization

While training lots of skills to level III will give you many bonuses and a lot of options in a short time, being mediocre at many things is fun, but not very efficient. You can only have one ship in space at a time, so while being able to fly a Retriever and a Hurricane is nice, you can not mine and do level 3 missions at the same time, meaning that whichever you are currently doing you are not using a lot of your skill points. On the other hand, if you had focused fully on mining or combat, you could be flying a Hulk or a Maelstrom instead and making a lot more ISK at your chosen activity (at the expense of not being able to do the other at all). This principle also applies within professions - having mediocre skills in a Drake and Hurricane is nice, but you can only fly one at a time. Variety is the spice of life, and being able to play several aspects of the game makes it much more fun, but be aware that when joining a non-training corporation, they will probably want you to have a "specialization" of some sort, be it EWAR, damage dealing in a particular ship, logistics, mining or manufacturing.

Another aspect of specialization is training all of the skills to use a ship effectively and to high levels. Let's take the Drake for example. The minimum requirements to fly one and shoot missiles out of it is Caldari Cruiser III, Caldari Battlecruiser I, Missile Launcher Operation III and Heavy Missiles I. However, if you train only these skills and try to fly a Drake, it will perform abysmally. Many extra skills are required to fly a ship effectively, such as fitting and capacitor skills, tanking skills, weapon skills, drone skills, and the specific ship skill (in this case Caldari Battlecruiser). Even with all of these trained to level III, you will still frequently be beaten in PvP by a pilot who has properly specialized in the ship and trained these skills to IV or V, and trained for Tech 2 modules and weapons.

Ways to plan

Here are three ways to organize your skill training around a particular focus or goal. These are certainly not the only ways to plan skill training - they are offered here only as examples.

1. Training in short spurts designed to get the prerequisites to use a particular ship or module. These spurts are unlikely to ever be much more than a few weeks or a month long.
   • This method gives you the regular gratification of being able to use shinier stuff, but is probably an inefficient way to use your attributes and may miss important support skills that would make your ships and modules much more powerful.
2. Training in several-month-long stints designed to allow you to fly a particular ship or class of ships at peak or near peak performance, with all the relevant skills at IV or V. Several such stints can be combined to make a skill plan that lasts a year or more.
   • This method will make you a more reliable pilot but requires more patience and dedication, and research to find out which support skills you need.
3. Training in blocks each lasting a year or more, organized around the year-long time limit on neural remaps, and designed to eventually create a highly-skilled character.
   • So you might remap to boost Intelligence and Memory, then only train skills that rely on those two attributes for a year or more, before remapping to Perception and Willpower and focusing on skills that require those two attributes for another year.
   • This method uses your attributes very efficiently, resulting in an overall shorter training time. But it's also very boring since your character will probably be quite useless, with big holes in their skillsheet, for a year or more.

The first method is good for new players since it offers the interest of regularly being able to use new equipment. Avoiding long-term planning when you are new can actually be a good thing, since you may change your mind about your long-term career goals in EVE. Deciding that actually you want to be a small ship, Gallente-flying manufacturer, and explorer just after you have remapped for a two-year long Amarr-focused battleship fleet PvP skillplan is very inconvenient!

The second and third methods are more useful for older players who have a clear and fixed idea of what they want to do. The third method in particular is very boring and is best suited to alts which are being skilled for a specific purpose (such as piloting supercapital ships) or to older characters who already have a good grounding in support skills and skills that let you do entertaining things while you chew through a list of month-long level V trains.

See also

• The Support skills article for a discussion of particular skillsets
• The Skill trading article on the usage of skill injectors and extractors
• The Magic 14 article lists fourteen fundamental skills which apply to every single ship that a player can pilot in EVE
• SP Rate Calculator (Google Spreadsheet)
• E-Uni Skillbook Reimbursement Program