Skills guide

The pain was doubly difficult for Renund to take. Sure, he had a brand new body, and his memories were intact, but damn! The loss of his Command Cruiser was a heavy financial burden to pay. The double came from the annoying synthesized voice that insisted he pay another 20 million ISK to update his clone for a “future emergency”. It galled him. He winced harder when he remembered the expensive implants in his last head that were now so much space dust.

EVE takes an approach to character skill growth that remains distinctive among MMOs. Training in real time, even when not actively played, pilots can gain new skills and abilities in just a few minutes or several weeks depending on the complexity of the ability being learned.

Skill advancement is essential to a pilot's progress in EVE - the more you progress in an area, the easier it is to reach your goals within the game.

Training Skills

When a new pilot is created, he starts with some basic skills. Utilize skill training to take those basic skills to the next level. Open your character sheet at the top of the Neocom and go to the Skills section. Right-click on the skill you want to train and select Train to Level X.

Skills continue training even when you are logged off. As a result, it is a good idea to train short skills while you are playing and longer ones when you log off. If you want to switch skills, you can do so by starting another skill training. The points gained on the previous skill will not be lost, but you don't benefit from the training until the level is fully completed.

You can only train one character per account and one skill per character at a time.

Skill Requirements

To determine which skills you need to train for a particular item, right click on it, choose “Show Info”, and go to the “Prerequisites” tab. Both primary and secondary Skill sets need to be trained. A green checkmark indicates that the minimum requirements are met, a red X means that the skill has not yet been trained at all, and a yellow circle means that you have learned some level of the skill but to do not yet meet the required skill level.

It is advisable to train Skills further than the minimum requirement to use an item, since you get more efficient per level trained. Bonuses from higher levels of Skill training can be seen in the Description tab of either the item you train for or the Skill itself.

Skills Settings

On the Character Sheet's Skills area is the Settings tab. The settings provide different options for displaying your pilot's skills list.

Only Show my Current Skills only displays skills that you have learned or have started to learn.

Only Show Skills that I can Currently Train displays both skills that you have trained to any level or partial level. In addition it displays all skills that you meet the prerequisites to train even if you do not yet have the skill book for it. This is a useful when you are looking for new skills to train so you can plan ahead for what skill books to purchase without having to view the prerequisites for each individual skill.

Show All Skills displays all the skills available in game. Some skills display with a green check mark and others with a red cross in your character sheet. The green check mark indicates that you have the prerequisites to train the skill. The red cross shows that there are still some skills you have to train before being able to acquire this particular skill.

Highlight Partially Trained Skills displays in yellow any skills that have been partially trained in a level, but that level has not yet completed.

Only Toggle One Skill Group at a Time will only allow one category listing to be viewed at a time. For example if you are viewing gunnery skills and then click on the Navigation category to view those skills, the Gunnery category will close.

Skill Books

The skills that you don't already have in your character sheet will have to be bought from the market. They are sold by NPC Corporations, and are also re-sold by players. Sometimes skill books are also loot drops or rewards on missions. Some race specific skills are only sold in the space of that particular faction, and when they are sold (usually by a player) outside the area, they are often more expensive. Therefore, if you need a Gallente skill, for example, it is advisable to check how much it is being sold for in Gallente space.

The first level of any skill is the only level that requires a skill book. Effectively, the skill book unlocks that skill, providing access to all levels of that skill. That is to say, once you purchase and use a skill book, you will never need to purchase or use that skill book again.

Some skills can't be trained on trial accounts. Those skills are marked in the Description tab of the info on the skill book.

Skill Points

There is no skill point cap in Eve. Some pilots are over 100 million skill points and climbing! It is possible to max out all the skills in a certain category, but it is highly unlikely that you will ever run out of skills or skill levels to train.

Skill Points and Being Podded

It is important that your pilot always be fitted with a clone that will cover your skill points. If you happen to get podded, that is your pod is destroyed, and you do not have the proper clone then you will lose 5% of the difference between the Clone you have and the skill points trained. These points will be taken from the category you have trained the most.

It is not necessary to buy a clone that is significantly larger than the points you have. So if you have 1,200,000 points you don't have to buy a clone that can hold 10,000,000 skill points. However, make sure to purchase a clone that has room to train into.

In the event of getting podded, you will be returned to your basic clone with 900,000 points. You'll want to update your clone right away. If you live in an insecure area such as 0.0, then it is advisable to have your home set to a station with a medical facility, even if this means some traveling. This way there is no danger of being podded a second time before you get the chance to update your clone.

Updating and moving clones is conducted in a medical facility, which can be found in many stations.

Skill Category Highlights

Corporation Management is especially useful for CEOs of a Corporation. Here you also find the skill "Anchoring", which is needed to anchor secure containers and player-owned structures in space.

Drones skills allow you to use drones as well as makes them more durable, powerful and faster. This category also allows you to train to use specialized or advanced drones.

Electronics skills mostly deal with electronic warfare capabilities. The skill Electronics increases your CPU output on a ship. Here you also find the skills for targeting range and to increase the number of targets you can lock.

Engineering has skills to improve shield performance and capacitor output as well as the Skill called "Engineering", which increases the powergrid output on your ship.

Gunnery skills improve various aspects of turrets and also those that let you use more specialized turrets. Some skills here only influence a particular type of turret (like Small Energy Turret) and others help with all sorts of turrets (like Motion Prediction). The Weapon Upgrades and Advanced Weapon Upgrades skills also affect missiles and smartbombs.

Industry skills help you with mining, manufacturing, and refining ore and ice.

Leadership Skills give bonuses to combat and mining in fleets.

Mechanic skills deal with armor and improve some aspects of a ship's structure. They also provide the capability to manufacture and fit rigs.

Missile skills give you the ability to use missile launchers and improve their various aspects.

Navigation skills deal with the speed and agility of your ship, as well as giving you the ability to use propulsion modules and jump drives.

Science skills are needed for the hacking and archaeology careers. Here you also find Skills for T2 production, using R&D agents, and probe usage.

Social skills deal with your relationship with NPCs, regulating your standings and the rate at which you gain standings and loyalty points. Diplomacy can also help you when bad standings cause NPCs to shoot at you, making travel easier in their space.

Spaceship Command skills let you use different ships and also give bonuses for them. For ship-class skills (e.g. Amarr Frigate) the precise bonuses you get depend on the ship.

The Trade category contains skills that help you with market and contract transactions, such as increasing range of how far away you can be and still manage orders, lowering charges and increasing the number of orders you can have open.

Skills and Attributes

These are the main attributes associated with each category of your skill tree.

Corporation Management: (Memory / Charisma)

Drones: (Memory / Perception)

Electronics: (Intelligence / Memory)

Engineering: (Intelligence / Memory)

Gunnery: (Perception / Willpower)

Industry: (Memory / Intelligence)

Leadership: (Charisma / Willpower)

Mechanic: (Intelligence / Memory)

Missile: (Perception / Willpower)

Navigation: (Intelligence / Perception)

Science: (Intelligence / Memory)

Social: (Charisma / Intelligence)

Spaceship Command: (Perception / Willpower)

Subsystems: (Intelligence / Perception)

Trade: (Charisma / Willpower)

Which Skills to Train for Your Career

Many rookie pilots know that they want to get into a particular career such as mining or fighting, but they aren't quite sure just how to go about it. From a skill training perspective the following are suggestions are what to train to help get you started.

General Skills All Pilots Should Train:

Energy Management, Energy Systems Operation, Engineering, Electronics, Spaceship Command, Navigation, Warp Drive Operation, Trade, Social.

Skills for Miners:

Mining, Refining, Drones, Mining Drone Operation, Refinery Efficiency, The Industrial ship skill for your race, Science, Astrogeology, Mining Barge, Exhumers.

Skills for Industrialists:

Industry, Production Efficiency, Metallurgy, Mass Production, Laboratory Operation, Research, Research Project Management

Skills for combat pilots:

Amarr Ships: Small Energy Turret, Repair Systems, Controlled Burst, Gunnery, Energy Systems Operation, Hull Upgrades, Motion Prediction, Sharpshooter, Rapid Firing, Missile Launcher Operation, Long Range Targeting
Caldari Ships: Missile Launcher Operation, Small Hybrid Turret, Standard Missiles, Rockets, Gunnery, Shield Operation, Shield Management, Long Range Targeting, Sharpshooter, Motion Prediction, Rapid Firing, Controlled Burst
Gallente Ships: Small Hybrid Turret, Gunnery, Drones, Scout Drone Operation, Repair Systems, Hull Upgrades, Controlled Burst, Sharpshooter, Motion Prediction, Long Range Targeting, Rapid Firing
Minmatar Ships: Small Projectile Turret, Gunnery, Motion Prediction, Rapid Firing, Sharpshooter, Shield Operation, Shield Management, Missile Launcher Operation, Standard Missiles, Rockets, Long Range Targeting

Historical note: Learning skills

If you're not interested in history, feel free to skip this section.

Prior to Incursion there were 11 skills in the Learning group, each level of which increased one of the 5 attributes by 1 per level, except Learning itself, which multiplied them all by 5% per level. There were two tiers of these skills, the higher one becoming accessible at level 4 of the lower one. The skills were:

Learning
Analytical Mind and Logic (Intelligence)
Spatial Awareness and Clarity (Perception)
Empathy and Presence (Charisma)
Iron Will and Focus (Willpower)
Instant Recall and Eidetic Memory (Memory)

New players hated them because the need to train them made for a slow start to the EVE experience -- it was advisable to train them early to maximise their effect, but in the meantime you weren't training fun stuff like, say, Small Projectile Turret V. In Apocrypha the New Player Experience was extensively overhauled, with new characters receiving only 50k SP compared to the approximately 800k previously, but with a bunch of free skill books from the revamped tutorial missions. This was paired with a 100% skill training speed until the character reached 1.6m SP. Apocrypha also removed the link between attributes and character bloodline, replacing it with neural remapping which gave 4 base points in each attribute and 19 free points to allocate at will among the attributes (changeable once a year). (Apocrypha also introduced the much-welcomed skill queue. These are just a few of the very good reasons why Apocrypha is generally considered Eve's best ever expansion.)

So you could now create a character and get training in for some pretty good stuff straight away, stuff you actually want to train, and pick the bloodline you thought looked or sounded cool rather than the one that gave you the best advantage in game -- something that, as a newbie, you weren't really equipped to know anyway. But... you still felt the need to train learning skills, even before the 1.6m SP threshold kicked in. People continued to hate the learning skills.

With the release of Incursion, CCP removed the entire Learning group. Characters who had trained learning skills (almost all) received a number of free skill points equal to the skill points they had invested in learning skills. Players could (and still can, where there are any left) allocate these free points to any injected skill they liked. The associated skill books were also removed from the game, being reimbursed at their NPC sell order value or replaced with copies of the Pax Amarria.

At the same time, all characters had all their base attributes raised to 17 -- exactly as if they'd trained all learning skills to 5 (except rounded up).

Finally, to compensate for the huge boost in training speed that 55 learning skill levels' worth of attribute points represents, the 100% training speed bonus was removed. This was at least partly to prevent existing players from training alts to reasonable competence in absurdly short times (the example given being that of a Drake pilot with all recommended certificates in ten days).

For the original announcement, see CCP Greyscale's DevBlog : Learning skills are going away. For players' reaction to the changes, see the old forum thread Learning Skill Removal FAQ.

(Footnote: Amusingly, Entity's collection shows a list of new objects obviously based on the old learning skills, but in inverted commas, e.g. 'Analytical Mind'. The description is: "This is part of a set of debunked CONCORD self-help books that used to be very popular among capsuleers until independent researchers proved conclusively that they were largely rubbish.")

Implants

Implants come in many different flavors, but the one thing that attribute enhancers have in common is that they do just that, they boost your attributes. Implants can't be taken out without being destroyed and if you are podded, then they are lost also. In order to be able to plug-in implants, you have to train the Cybernetics skill. Only one implant can be plugged into each of the ten slots available in your character's head at one time.

Jumps clones protect your implants from loss when going into danger. Jump clones let you jump across the universe once in 24 hours. Only you jump between clones. No ships, no assets, and no implants travel with you. After 24 hours, you can jump back into the original clone with the implants. One has to be in the clone with the installed implants in order to benefit from them.

To obtain jump clones, you or your corporation need to have standings of 8.0 or higher with the owner of the station where you want to install a clone (NPC or player). You also need to have trained the skill Infomorph Psychology.

When using jump clones, do NOT jump from a station where you already have a clone. If you do so, your oldest clone will be deleted along with any implants installed in it. This is because you would leave your former body there, and you can only have one clone in a station at a time.

Implant bonuses range from +1 to +5 attribute points per implant. Some of the better implants give additional bonuses besides increased skill training. Implants can be bought on the market, on contract, or are given out by agents as mission or loyalty point rewards. Some implants can also be found in wrecks as loot drops.

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