The New Edener

Skills. You need them to do anything and everything in EVE. But what are they? Which should you train? Read on for an introduction to skills.

What are they?

Skills are objects that enable you to do a number of things in EVE. If you want to pilot a battleship you will need a certain number of skills to allow you to do so. Just about everything you can do in EVE requires some sort of skill.

How do you acquire them?

To learn a skill, you will need a skill book. Skill books teach your avatar whatever skill they contain. Usually, you will buy skill books off the market, you may also acquire skill books through missions, the LP store, or looting if you’re lucky.

Acquiring the skill book is only half the battle, once you have your skill book you will need to train the skill. Skills have a level attached to them, the level goes from 0 meaning the skill was just injected, and hasn’t trained yet, to 5, meaning the skill is trained fully.

The Anatomy of a Skill

Each skill have a number of attributes attached to it. First, you will have your description, giving you a basic overview of what the skill does. Next you have the attributes, attributes will list the primary and secondary character attributes that effect the training of this skill, the attribute modifier of the skill, the training time multiplier, the skill level, and finally the skill points.

The primary and secondary attributes are very important in training time. Basically, you can have a number of attributes attached to a skill: intelligence, charisma, willpower, memory, and perception. Generally, each attribute will apply to a certain skill set, intelligence is generally used in science related things, memory for industry, willpower for social, trade, leadership and spaceship command, charisma in trade, leadership, and corporation management, and finally perception for spaceship command.

The higher values you have for the primary / secondary attributes on a skill, the less time it will take to train that skill. How can you increase these values? There is a special set of skills called “Learning” skills, these skills will give you a single attribute point per level. Each attribute has 2 skills, each level giving 1 attribute point, meaning you can get up to 10 additional points per attribute if you train all your learning skills to level 5. You can also use implants to increase attribute numbers, but implants will not be discussed in this guide. You can also use neural remaps to reallocate your starting attribute points, however, this is permanent and can only be done once per year, hold the initial remap you get when you first make your character.

Next on the list you will find the attribute modifier attribute. I know this may be a bit confusing, but this attribute has nothing to do with the attributes discussed above…rather this attribute simply tells you what this skill will change. Some skill will have raw % changes on damage output, shield levels or things of that nature. For instance, the “Cruise Missiles” skill increases the damage of cruise missiles by 5%, this is listed in the description and the attribute tab.

After the attribute modifier, you will find the training time multiplier. Basically, the higher this number is, the more time the upper levels of the skill will take.

The next attribute listed will be the level of the skill, this just tells you what level that skill is currently trained to.

Finally, the skill points attribute. Each skill has a number of skill points that you must train before you will achieve a new level in that particular skill. Higher tier skills will have vastly larger numbers of required skill points to achieve level 5. Training time is calculated using skill points. Based on your attributes, you will gain a certain number of skill points per hour. The higher the attributes for that skill, the more skill points per hour you will earn, and subsequently, the quicker that skill will train.

Skill points also act as a kind of “overall level” for characters in EVE. As you play, you will accrue larger numbers of skill points (the total can be seen next to your portrait in the character sheet). The higher your overall skill points, the more effective you are thought to be, assuming you didn’t deviate from your focus career path.

What should I train?

This is always a popular question among newer players, unfortunately, there is not a particular universal skill path, it all depends on what you want to do. Here are some basic guidelines:

1. What do I want to do? - Before you go training into any particular skill path, it is always a good idea to figure out exactly what you want to do. Do you want to PvP? Mine? Manufacture? Each career has corresponding skills.
2. Support first! - One of the biggest mistakes I see people making is training the spaceship command skills before they train the support skills to fly the ship effectively. Trust me, I was a noob once, and I really, really wanted the biggest baddest ship available, however, this is simply not an effective path. Train your support skills first, otherwise you’ll lose that big beautiful ship in a matter of minutes.
3. Learning, Learning, Learning - Although learning skills don’t help you very much at the beginning, but as you get more into a specialized skill path, higher tiers of skills will require a very long time to train, sometimes in the area of a month. Having your learning skills trained will greatly reduce training time in the long term.

Certificates

A couple patches back (with Quantum Rise) CCP introduced certificates. These can be viewed by going to your character sheet, and clicking certificates. Certificates act as a kind of guide for newer players. If you know what ship you would like the pilot, you can go to the “Recommended” tab on the ships information page (right click on the item > show info) and see what certificates are required to fly this ship effectively. You can click on the information button to the right of each certificate to see what skills you need to obtain to earn that certificate.

The Training Queue

Another very useful feature that CCP implemented recently, with the Apocrypha patch, is the training queue. This can be used to queue up a number of skills to continue training after you log off. To add a skill to the training queue, go to your character sheet, go to skills, go to the skill you want to add to the queue, right click on it and select “Add to Queue”. Once a skill is added to the queue, it will automatically begin training after your current skill is finished training. Be sure to always keep your queue full! You don’t want to miss out on training time!

The only limitation with the training queue is the time frame it lets you queue up. You can add any number of skills to the queue, but after the total queue training time goes beyond 24 hours, you will be unable to add anymore skills. To work around this, put skills that only require a small amount of time at the top of the queue until its almost full, and then put a skill that will take a longer time at the very end of the queue. This will allow you to queue up for several days if you know you won’t be around.

Conclusion

Skill training is the “level” of your character in this game. Keeping a full queue and having a skill training at all times will ensure your progression, even while not playing.

Goldraptor Misc., Tools, Tutorials guide, skill faq, skills, tutorial