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| ==Characters in EVE do not level. There is no level cap.== | | ==Characters in EVE do not level. There is no level cap.== |
| You do not play to gain "experience" and "level up". Instead, without actually playing, you learn new [[Basic_Skills|skills]] – by putting the ones you want to learn into a training queue (which continues to run even when you are logged out) – and you play to improve your ability to use the skills you have already learned. (This is unusual, so to repeat: No amount of PVP or the killing of NPC pirates will help your character advance; you can only advance by clicking on the "[[Skills_Training_101#Skills.2C_categories.2C_and_skill_points|Training Queue]]" button on your character screen and putting some skills into the queue.) ([[#Characters_do_not_level_in_EVE._There_is_no_level_cap.|MORE]])
| | Characters in EVE do not gain "experience" or "level up" through normal play. Instead, characters passively accumulate skill points (SP) which represent progress toward learning [[Skills and Learning|skills]. Characters accumulate skill points even when you are not logged in, so skill progress in EVE is almost entirely determined by a character's age. |
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| You play to improve your ability to use your skills. And you gain new skills by "training" them. There are a LOT of skills, and you can only train one at a time. Each level of each skill takes a fixed amount of time to learn, and this means that all characters in EVE learn new skills at the same rate. This makes your choice of skills, and [[Skill#How_Many_Levels.3F|skill levels]], a key factor in developing your character.
| | Skill progress is handled by populating the Training Queue which, as its name suggests, allows you to set a number of skills to train in sequence. Upon reaching the requisite number of skill points, that skill will advance to the next level and your character will receive the benefits of the new level. Only one skill can be trained at a time, so players will need to plan ahead to ensure that they train the correct skills for what they want to accomplish in EVE. |
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| | Levels do exist in EVE, in the form of skill levels. Each skill can be trained to a maximum of level V. The number of skill points required to advance to the next skill level increases exponentially, but the benefits from each level increase linearly. This leads to what is known in EVE as the "'''80/20 Rule'''": characters get 80% of a skill's benefit (level IV) in 20% of the time (that it would take to train all the way to level V). Most skill levels only involve a few percentage points, so the gap between an older character with a skill at level V and a new character with that same skill at level IV is not nearly as large as in other games, and "catching up" is fairly quick. |
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| Just to give a taste of the breadth of the skill set: each of the four racial factions has [[Template:ShipsMatrix|six levels of ships]] (frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battle cruisers, battleships, and capital ships), and each level requires a basic "spaceship" skill. Since there are five levels to every skill, this means you need to acquire 4 factions x 6 ship types x 5 skill levels = 120 skill levels to maximize your skill at piloting all the basic faction ships. And that's just the racial factions ... the Pirate factions have their own ship categories, as do various other NPC groups. And within each faction there are special "advanced" ships that have their own required skills.
| | Even given this rule, however, it's important for players to have an idea of what they would like to do in EVE to plan their skill training. Training the necessary {{sk|Spaceship Command}} skills is only the first step toward piloting a given ship. All ships require various support skills which maximize their effectiveness, and training all of these skills even to level IV can be a significant time commitment. |
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| In addition there are numerous categories of equipment that also fit on the ships ... scanners, afterburners, drones, and the like. And there are four kinds of weapons systems (solid projectile, missile, charged projectile and ray beam). The weapons systems come in small, medium and large, and each has its own set of skills. Most combat ships can use more than one type.
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| This makes the process of "[[Fitting_Modules_and_Rigs_Guide|fitting]]" a ship ... or choosing the weapons and other gear for a particular craft ... very complicated. You will spend more time getting your ships ready to fight than you ever did building a gear set in any other RPG. The results can be very satisfying, though, because with so many options, you get to design a ship that best fits your abilities and style of play.
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| But that only describes ships and their gear. There are more skill sets available in Mining, Scanning, Navigation, Industry, Science, Leadership and other non-combat activities. The time varies for different skills, but generally, the first level of a skill takes a few minutes to learn, the second level about an half an hour, and the third some number of hours. It can take from a few hours to a few weeks to learn the fourth and fifth levels of a skill. The good news is that training continues while you are logged off ... but even so, it takes years to learn everything the game has to offer.
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| On the other hand, since there is no level cap, you will not run out of things to do. And, since there is no rush to level up, you can take your time to master one particular set of skills before moving on to the next. Or, you can train a variety of lower level skills and work your way up multiple paths. EVE is very flexible in that regard. (Many players train to Level III in skills they need, Level IV in skills they use a lot, and only go to Level V if there is a pressing need ... like a prerequisite to a higher skill, for example.)
| | With all that being said, because there is no limit to the number of skill points a character can accumulate, you will probably never run out of skills to train or new things to try. There is no wrong way to progress: there is no rush to gain skill points, so you can either take your time to master one particular set of skills before moving on to the next, or you can train a variety of lower level skills and work your way up multiple paths. EVE is very flexible in that regard. |
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| '''THE BOTTOM LINE:''' Don't run around chasing points or items. Decide what you want your character to DO (combat, exploration, mining, industry) and focus on learning the skills you need to continually improve your results. Choose your ships, gear, missions and so on to support your choice of "career". [[#Characters_in_EVE_do_not_level._There_is_no_level_cap.|(BACK)]] | | There is a method of skipping ahead in a character's skill training: skill injectors. Skill injectors can be purchased with in-game currency (ISK) to add a large amount of skill points to a character all at once. Because it is possible to quickly obtain large amounts of ISK by purchasing Pilot's License Extensions (PLEX) with real money and selling them in-game, some players use their real-life wealth to jump-start their character's progression. This only results in a character having more skill points than their age would suggest; it does not necessarily make them more of a threat, because a new player has not yet had time to develop their own skills to match their character's capabilities. |
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| ==Improving your character's skills will change the power of your gear.== | | ==Improving your character's skills will change the power of your gear.== |
