Skills and learning: Difference between revisions

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.

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.

 

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).

=== Acquiring ===

{{hatnote|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. And more skills can be acquired by reaching goals on the [[AIR Career Program]].

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.

Some skillbooks are not directly injectable or seeded onto the market. Instead, they are acquired through the [[loyalty point store]]s of NPC corporations or from [[exploration]] sites. These tend to be more advanced skills, such as {{Sk|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.

=== Injecting ===

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.

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.

 

 

Note: As of 23 July 2024 {{Clonestate|Omega}} subscribers can get 15,000 skillpoints for free weekly in the [[New Eden Store]]. The offer refreshes at [[downtime]] on Tuesday<ref>Patch notes: [https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/patch-notes-version-22-01 Version 22.01] Release 2024-07-23.1</ref>.

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

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 {{Sk|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, {{Sk|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. {{Sk|Amarr Titan}}, for example, has a x16 training multiplier -- you need to accumulate 4,096,000 SP to train it to V.

Every skill has a primary and a secondary attribute: {{Sk|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:

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 {{clonestate|omega}}) 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:

If you want to know your exact Skillpoint rate, you can use [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J5gnQVuXL8F1b7z7TZtZ5qmLOKC8Ym8cZonSMoUMTqg/copy this calculator].

* '''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).

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.

{{Sk|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!

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

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 {{Sk|Minmatar Frigate|V}}, {{Sk|Mechanics|V}} and {{Sk|Power Grid Management|V}}. Similarly, on the way to deploying Tech 2 Hobgoblin drones you would need to train {{Sk|Light Drone Operation|V}} and {{Sk|Drones|V}}.

Some skills are worth training to V because of a combination of several of the above reasons. {{Sk|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.

The +1/2/3 implants are relatively cheap and you only need to train {{Sk|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 mission]]s 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 [[The +3 Implants Program|Implant Program]] to buy significantly discounted +3 implants.

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.

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.

{{important note box

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

}}

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 are consumed like [[Medical boosters|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.

* 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.

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.

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.

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 {{Sk|Caldari Cruiser|III}}, {{Sk|Caldari Battlecruiser|I}}, {{Sk|Missile Launcher Operation|III}} and {{Sk|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 {{Sk|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.

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.  

#* 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.

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 [[Magic 14]] article lists fourteen fundamental skills which apply to every single ship that a player can pilot in EVE

* [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J5gnQVuXL8F1b7z7TZtZ5qmLOKC8Ym8cZonSMoUMTqg/copy SP Rate Calculator] (Google Spreadsheet)