Skill Farming

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Overview

Skill farming is a style of game play in EVE Online that uses a character to train skills solely to extract and sell their skill points, creating a passive income stream.

After initial preparations are completed, skill farming can return 3,278.3M ISK every 30 days (or 4.6M ISK per hour) on an investment of 1 day of game time. An EVE account costs 500 PLEX for that time. At an exchange rate of 3.2M ISK per PLEX, that’s 1,580.1M ISK. Therefore, it’s possible to finance 207% of the cost of that account with the skill points farmed by a single character. Deduct the cost of the account and profit would be 1,698.2M ISK = 2.4M ISK per hour = 107% of account cost. Skill farming with two characters on the same account simultaneously requires the purchase of a Multiple Pilot Training Certificate for 485 PLEX. 30-day profit from both characters would then be 3,443.8M ISK = 2.4M ISK per hour per character = 111% of account cost.

Initial costs will range from 374.7M to 1,885.2M ISK (mostly for skill extractors), which will be returned in 3.4 to 17.3 days. The only ongoing costs are for replacement extractors. The helpful and prerequisite skills require about 2.6M skill points, which can take 39.5 days or more to train (depending on your attribute settings and on which you have already trained). Most are common market trading skills. Some travel is necessary to install jump clones, distribute attribute enhancers, and exploit market trends. Skill farming monopolizes the training queue on its account, but produces skill injectors which can be used by the other characters.

Skill farming for alpha clones is possible but pointless. 5.5M skill points are required to use a skill extractor, but alpha clones are limited to 5M free skill points. So, an alpha clone must consume a large skill injector in order to produce one. Alpha clones can only extract skills that require omega status (i.e., skills they can’t train in the first place), which limits their choice of a farm skill. Several of the helpful skills are unavailable to (or limited for) alpha clones, reducing their efficiency at skill farming. Therefore, this article assumes omega clone status.

Preparation

To develop your training plan, begin with any required trading skills. Add Cybernetics to unlock enhancers and Infomorph Psychology for jump clones. The key skills are listed below; I suggest training all to level V.

You might also consider the “Magic 14” and the skills necessary to fly an interceptor (or a similar slippery ship) to carry small cargos (like skill injectors) through risky areas. (And what areas in New Eden aren’t risky?) Skilled and fit to use the cloak trick, it can avoid most gate camps (though it will still be vulnerable to smart bombs and other area-of-effect weapons). I keep one with each of my jump clones.

Purchase and inject the necessary skill books (probably Accounting, Broker Relations, and Infomorph Psychology), either from the market or “on demand”. Then edit this list of the helpful skills. For example, you may find Trade V unnecessary. If so, delete those skills from the list (and don’t bother purchasing and injecting their skill books). Copy the edited list into your skill queue (using the menu button at the top left of the queue) and click “Start”. The EVE client will edit out the “* Remap” lines and the skills you’ve already trained.

Don’t remap yet. You’ll have to wait a year before you can remap again (unless you have bonus remaps available), and you may need to remap for your ‘farm’ skill.

Helpful skills for skill farming Italicized skills are included in starting skills
Category	Skill	Multi- plier	Cost (M ISK)	Primary Attribute	Secondary Attribute	Prerequisites	Benefit
Neural	Cybernetics	3	0.1	Intelligence	Memory	Science III	Simplified, +1 enhancer point per level, i.e., level 1 unlocks +1 enhancers, etc.
Neural	Infomorph Psychology	1	1.0	Charisma	Willpower	None	+1 jump clone per level.
Trade	Accounting	3	5.0	Charisma	Memory	Trade IV	-11% sales tax per level.
Trade	Broker Relations	2	0.1	Willpower	Charisma	Trade II	-0.3% broker fee rate per level.
Trade	Trade	1	0.0	Willpower	Charisma	None	+4 open market orders per level.