Notes for Experienced RPG Players New to EVE: Difference between revisions

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.

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.

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.

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. '''<span style="color:yellow">There is no wrong way to progress</span>''' - 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.

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.