This article should cover most aspects of the skill training system in EVE.

Training skills

Skill training concept

EVE has a unique approach to character advancement. Your account has the ability to train one character at a time no matter whether you're online or not, so if you start a training session before you go to sleep it will continue its advancement in real time while you are sleeping.

This bonus comes at the cost of only being able to train one character at a time per account.

To start training skills select the Character sheet in top left corner of the game menu and select the skill you want to train.

Skill points

The skill points needed to train the skill are governed by the rank of the skill in question. A skill's rank is simply an indicator of how difficult it is to train - that is, how many points it will require to reach each level. For instance, a rank 1 skill has the following point requirements:

• level 1 - 250
• level 2 - 1414
• level 3 - 8000
• level 4 - 45255
• level 5 - 256000

For a rank 2 skill, these numbers are multiplied by 2; for a rank 3 skill, they're multiplied by 3; and so on. A skill's rank never changes.

The level of a particular skill does change, and indicates how far you have trained it. All skills have a maximum of five levels. The bonus of a skill is not applied until you have finished a whole level; there are no partial bonuses for having trained halfway towards the next one. Note that if you are killed in the game, and your skillpoints have reached a level where they are not covered by the Basic Clone, points may be subtracted from your character sheet. You will get an evemail notifying you of this.

Training time

Your attributes govern the time you need to train a single skill level. The basic formula looks something like this: Points per minute = (primary attribute + secondary attribute/2) x (1 + 0.02 x Learning skill level) where "primary" and "secondary" attributes are the attribute values used by the skill you're training. You can check on those by looking up the skill's information page (the blue "i" icon, accessible either through your own character sheet, or by looking up the skill on the station markets).

Rookies and skill training

Newly created characters will train skills 100% faster up until they have reached 1.6 million skill points. The first skill that will train past 1.6 million skill points will not receive the training speed bonus.

Learning skill bug

If you're going to be using the above formula, keep in mind that there does exist a display bug related to the Learning skill itself. The skill boosts your attribute values by a certain percentage, as shown in the above formula. However, if your attribute values are high enough they may be incorrectly displayed as having one point more than they actually do. This is due to rounding issues in the attribute display, and has no effect on your training. If your calculations from the above formula aren't working out, and you have the Learning skill at level 3 or more, try lowering the point value for one or both of the attributes you're using for your calculations.

The "time remaining" display

This is calculated on the client - your computer - and is just an indicator. If there are any problems, with lag, character sheet displays, etc., this display may show abnormal values. They are usually corrected when you do something to refresh the character sheet, such as switching to another skill. Seeing odd time values in this display does not indicate that any time has been or is being lost in your training. It simply means that the "time remaining" estimate had started using incorrect values, and has now refreshed itself.

Skill training history

You can view your skill training history through the history tab on your character sheet under skills for few weeks back in time.

The skill training queue.

The skill training queue is a tool for players to manage the training of shorter skills over the course of a day. Previously, you had to micromanage the skills. Nowadays, getting up in the middle of the night to change your skill is now history.

Accessing the training queue.

You access the skill training queue by clicking on the open training queue button on your character sheet.

Adding skills to the training queue.

You can add skills to the skill training queue by dragging the skill from the left side of the window to the right side.

The skill will be added to the end of your queue.

You can add additional skills to the queue by simply repeating this process. If you wish to add another level of the same skill, simply drag it to the right hand side again.

Once you are done setting up your skill training queue press Apply and skill training will start.

Adding skill books to the training queue.

You can add a skill book directly to your training queue simply by dragging the skill book over the right side of the training queue window like any other skill. If your queue is full, the skill will be added to your skills known with zero skill points so you can start training it at your leisure.

Skill training information.

On your character sheet, the skill categories which have skills in the queue are marked as such. The category which has the currently actively training skill is marked in yellow. Skill levels in the training queue are marked with a blue box.

Training queue restrictions!

• You may at most have 50 skills queued up for training at any given time.
• You may only have skills queued up that can start within 24 hours.