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 has the potential to 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 207.5% 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 = 107.5% of account cost. Skill farming with 2 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 = 110.6% 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 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 helpful 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.

‘Farm’ skill

Decide which skill you’ll train to farm its skill points. Look for a skill your ‘farm’ character will never use that requires at least 8 days to train (to generate the 0.5M skill points necessary to fill an extractor). There’s no maximum training time, but you’ll only be able to harvest its skill points after you’ve finished training the skill. So, if the skill requires 30 days to train, you can harvest every 30 days or more. The table at the end of this article lists some skills with long training times (>31 days to train all 5 levels). Select one that matches your desired harvest frequency and doesn’t require that you train too many prerequisites. Try starting with the Armor, Engineering, and Shields categories.

You can also farm a group of skills, which lets you harvest less frequently, but slightly complicates extracting and reloading your skill queue. If you do so, all skills in the group should have the same primary and secondary attributes for maximum efficiency.

As an example, for my ‘farm’ skill I chose Capital Capacitor Emission Systems in the Engineering category. This character will never fly capital ships, the skill book is inexpensive, and I only had to train 4 levels of Capacitor Emission Systems to meet its prerequisites. Their attributes match, so I can use my remap and enhancers early to accelerate training the prerequisites. Training time for all 5 levels of my ‘farm’ skill is almost 40 days (256,000 base skill points x skill multiplier of 10 ÷ 64,800 maximum skill points per day = 39.5 days), so I only have to jump to my ‘market’ clone and harvest once a month or so. If I can’t log on for a couple of days, no worries. Moving that single skill into extractors is quick and easy, as is reloading my skill queue. In total, I invest maybe 1 day of game time per month to pay for my account!

Once you’ve trained the helpful skills, purchase and inject the necessary skill books for your chosen ‘farm’ skill and its prerequisites. Train the prerequisites.

Market

Use a market tool such as Evernus to select the preferred market you’ll use to sell your injectors. You’re looking for a market with a steady trade in them (volume >15 or so per month), good prices, and low taxes and fees. Likely this will be one of the trade hubs, but don’t discount the smaller markets, particularly in NPC nullsec. Find the market that offers the greatest potential profit margin by starting with the average buy price for a large skill injector at that market over the past year or so. (You’re in skill farming for the long haul, not to make a quick buck.) Subtract that market’s sales tax (5% at NPC markets, as low as 0.1% at a POS where you have good standing) and broker fee. The broker fee is charged when you place any market order. It starts at 5% but can be reduced by the Broker Relations skill, and by your standing with the market owner’s faction and corporation as detailed here.

Deduct the average sell price for a replacement extractor at that market, and the result is a good estimate of the average profit you can expect per large injector there. Repeat this calculation for 5 small injectors.

Look at sales volumes, too. Competition is good, and you don’t want to hold up your training queue waiting for extractors to arrive. Your injectors aren’t earning anything if they’re sitting in escrow waiting for buyers.

As with any other commodity, it’s possible to find a corporation that will purchase some (or all!) of your injectors at a fixed price to guarantee their supply. You’ll probably have to give a little on the price, but you’ll have a definite buyer at a definite price. With a little luck, you might also negotiate PLEX, a clone, or replacement extractors into the deal. However, the cautions in POSs apply. Start with your own corporation, other corporations in your alliance, and characters that regularly purchase quantities of injectors.

As an example, below is an excerpt from the spreadsheet I use for my market searches. Obviously, it’s incomplete and out of date, but it should give you an idea of how to conduct your own search. All prices and volumes were obtained using Evernus, though that software is no longer supported.