Skills and learning
This is a guide to learning in-game skills. It explains the mechanics that govern skill training, and makes some suggestions for training strategies. If you want detailed coverage of individual skills, you can start here. This page will occasionally refer to Evemon, a widely-used third-party program which lets you track and plan your character's training, and you can learn more about Evemon here.
How Skill Training Works
(overview)
The Basics
To learn a skill, you need the relevant skillbook. If you did the starter missions from the tutorial agents (and if you didn't, they're highly recommended) you will have been given some useful skillbooks.
The main way to acquire other new skillbooks is from the market. You can browse the available skillbooks under 'Skills' in the Browse tab, or just search for a particular skill. Currently most skillbooks are sold by NPC corporations for a fixed price -- this is effectively CCP seeding them on the market.
The NPC sell orders are easily spotted: they have a uniform price and they have nearly a year's worth of time listed in the 'Expires In' column. (The maximum amount of time a player can put a sell order up for, by contrast, is 90 days.)
You may see player sell orders for NPC seeded skillbooks too. If they're below the NPC price they're probably selling off books they bought in error; if they're above the NPC price they're probably hoping to trick someone into buying. Make sure you check the NPC price before buying an NPC-seeded skill from a player!
Some skillbooks are not directly seeded onto the market. Instead they're acquired through the Loyalty Point stores of NPC corporations or from exploration sites. These tend to be more advanced skills, such as Small AC Specialization, which lets you use T2 small autocannon. 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 for you to get these skills any other way, you may find that buying them from players selling them on the regular market is your simplest option.
(skillbooks: link to reimbursement programme; injecting/beginning learning; controlling the queue; medical clone)
Training Time
(Primary and secondary attributes and their effect on SP/time; learning skills; implants (link implants page) and remaps; Rank/training time multiplier)
Training Strategies
(Subtitles to follow)
(Observations: diminishing returns: implications, 'blackmail' prerequisite skills.)
(most efficient way to learn learning skills; make sure you have/are learning enough other skills to have fun if this is your first and primary character though)
(Focusing your training on particular roles/ships/fits/occupations)
(Using remaps effectively)
(Example long-term goals)
See Also
- The general skills page for information on particular skills
- The support skills page for a discussion of particular skillsets
