|
||
|
||
|
|
Learning Skills Guide |
| Hardin of Curatores Veritatis Alliance originally drafted this for the EVE Beginners section on there site and it had over 5,000 reads there. As there is always new players joining the game I thought I would move this guide from the boards to a website. So it doesn't get lost and Hopefully people should find this guide a bit easier to find and find it useful... If you do find the guide useful, don't be shy, shoot Hardin a Eve-Mail and say thanks. If you found it really useful fell free to donate a few ISK his way.
|
| Learning Skills |
1) When you create a character certain attributes
are allocated to the character. These are:
Memory - Intelligence - Perception - Willpower - Charisma 2) These attributes are the most important factor in training skills. All skills have a primary and secondary attribute. If you have a high attribute that is the same as the primary attribute of the skill then the skill will train faster. If you have a weak attribute in the primary attribute of the skill you wish to learn then the training time will be subsequently longer. The differences in your attributes can make SIGNIFICANT differences in the time it takes you to train a skill (especially the high ranking skills) To check the primary and secondary attribute requirements of a skill then left click it in skills window (in your character sheet) and select the 'Attributes' tab... If you haven't trained the skill yet then you can use 'show info' on the skill booklet and it will also show you the primary and secondary attributes. 3) Obviously the attribute setup you get at creation will have a big influence on what skills you can train quickly. The attributes you get at start up will depend on the race, sub-race and then sub-sect you chose. Each race has two sub-races. For example Amarr has two sub-races - Ni Kunni and Pure Amarrians. Both sub-races have their own base starting attributes. But after you select your 'sub-race' you also get to chose a 'sub-sect' which again will impact on attributes. Take Pure Amarrians for example. The basic stats for a 'pure' Amarrian are: 7 Intelligence, 3 Charisma, 4 Perception, 6 Memory & 10 Willpower. When you chose a Pure Amarrian character you are then presented with a choice of 'Liberal Holder', 'Wealthy Commoner' or 'Religious Reclaimer'. If you chose Liberal Holder you get +3 Charisma and +1 Willpower. If you chose 'Wealthy Commoner' you get +1 Charisma and +3 Memory. If you chose 'Religious Reclaimer' you get +4 Willpower. During character creation you also get 5 attribute points to spend how you chose. However, you can only put a max of 3 points into any one attribute area. It is important (although not critical) that at this stage you have a vague idea of how you want your character to develop. If you simply want a research/science character who can max learning/science skills quickly then you should consider putting all your spare points into Intelligence and Memory. If you intend to be a hardcore PvPer it is worth putting some of those points into Perception (and maybe Willpower). If you want to be an all rounder then it maybe worth spreading them around (or using them to boost up attribute areas where, through your sub-race/sub-sect choices you are low). The only attribute I would HIGHLY recommend you do not spend your extra attribute points on would be Charisma. Note: In the long run most people playing EVE end up doing a mixture of things. Unless you are 100% convinced that you wish to specialize it maybe be worthwhile to use your sub-race/sub-sect choices and your 5 spendable attribute points to bring Memory, Intelligence, Perception and Willpower to a reasonable balanced level. If you want to play around with this EVE-I has a nice tool you can use to see what attributes you can have based on varying sub-race/sub-sect choices before spending your additional 5 attribute points. You can find it here: Starter Calculator 4) You are not stuck with the attributes you get at character creation. It is possible to improve on these by using Learning skills. There are eleven learning skills - two for each attribute, plus a general 'learning' skill which increases all attributes by approx 2% per level trained. If your basic Intelligence attribute is 20 for example the learning skill at level 5 will boost this to 22 (a 10% gain). By using the attribute learning skills it is possible to increase your base attribute by up to 10 points each. If you are considering playing the game long term then the learning skills will save you lots and lots of time - allowing your character to progress much more quickly. As mentioned above there are two 'attribute' skills for each attribute area. The 'basic' attribute skills are: Spatial Awareness - Perception These five basic attribute skills are relatively cheap and a starter does not need any prerequisite skills in order to start training them. I would highly recommend that in order to progress the speed at which you learn that you bring all of these to at least level 4 as quickly as possible. The 'advanced' attribute skills are: Clarity - Perception The five advanced skills cost several million ISK each. In order to start training them you also need to have the 'basic' attribute skill at level 5 first. You CANNOT start training the advanced learning skills until you have the appropriate basic attribute skill at level 5. 5) Obviously training of the attribute skills also takes time. The primary attribute required for the 'basic' attribute skills is Memory and the Secondary is Intelligence. Therefore if you train the Memory and Intelligence skills first it will save you time training the others. The Memory and Intelligence attributes play a role in the training of many useful skill classes so I would definitely recommend training them up to at least Level 4 ASAP.. If you are a real training fanatic and want to maximize the skill point gain for every second spent training then you may want to also consider training the basic intelligence and memory attribute skills to level 5 immediately and then train the 'advanced' memory and intelligence skill to level 4. The following is a suggested training routine for a new character which will help you max your learning and attribute skills most quickly (it is based on a lot of maths & calculations which I won't repeat here) Instant Recall - Level 1 then train up other learn skill in what ever order you
like. By following this routine you will maximize your intelligence and memory attributes in the fastest way possible. This will then make the training of your other 'basic' attribute skills much faster. I do not at this stage recommend training the 'advanced' attribute skills to level 5. The time spent training them from level 4 to level 5 is huge and I do not think it can be recouped unless we are all still playing EVE in 3 years time ;-) 6) Implants can also boost your base attributes and save you significant training time. For example I was training Surgical Strike Level 3 when I plugged in an implant which boosted the secondary attribute. This immediately saved me 6hrs on the total training time for the skill! At the moment it is possible to get a variety of implants which boost the main attributes by +1 to +3 depending on the implant. You can get implants for each of the five attribute areas. However you can only plug in one implant per attribute. Implants are destroyed if you try and remove them from your head...so once you have plugged it in it cannot be taken off and used by anyone else. So say for example you have a +1 Intel implant in your head and then you plug in a +2 implant the +1 implant is destroyed. Implants are also lost if you are podded - as your clone wakes up without them. Due to the high cost of implants it is a judgment call on whether you wish to fit them. If you conduct a lot of PvP and have a high likelihood of being podded then you may not wish to splash out on implants (unless you are super wealthy of course). To be able to use implants you first need to have trained the 'CYBERNETICS' skill. (In order to train Cybernetics you need the Science skill at Level 3). You can either obtain implants by doing agent missions (a lot of agent missions) or by buying them off the market from those who have already earned them.
|
| General Tips |
|
1) Charisma is prolly the most useless attribute in the game at the moment. There are currently relatively few skills which depend on a Charisma as a primary learning attribute atm. (These are Social, Connections, Negotiations, Fast Talk, Diplomacy, Criminal Connections). Therefore unless you intend to be a dedicated agent runner (which requires the above skills) I would suggest that there is little point wasting too much time training Empathy/Presence or in starting a character with high initial Charisma. 2) Try and maximize your attributes in any areas where you will be doing lots of training. For example Navigation skills all have Intelligence as their primary attribute - so if you are about to embark on training all your Navigation skills to level 4/5 then boosting your Intelligence attribute will save you substantial amounts of time... In a similar way it maybe worth investing in a +3 implant in a particular attribute you think you will be doing a lot of training with. 3) As mentioned above the pure Learning skill will save you 2% on training time across all skill for each level. This is certainly worth training up to Level 4 for EVERYONE. There is a debate about the value of training it up to Level 5. It has been calculated that the additional 2% of savings to skill training will take 356 days to repay itself (as it takes over 6 days to train it up to level 5). 4) Please bear in mind that training all the Learning/Attribute skills does take time...so in the short term it can put you behind other players who train more practical skills. It is my view that investing in Learning skills early will pay off in the medium and long term but in the short run people starting at the same time may be able to out fly and out shoot you until you recap the time spent doing the intellectual stuff. As an experiment I created a character with high initial Memory & Intelligence. I have precisely followed the routine outlined above to minimize the learning period. Five weeks after creation the character had a staggering 1.2 million skill points - pretty much all in learning/attribute skills. While this character probably has a lot more skill points than most other characters created at the same time (and the gap will continue to widen) it could not fly anything bigger than a basic ship. If it wasn't for the 'support' it gets from my other accounts it would be seriously crippled in earning ISK (at least until it switches to more practical skills). In the long term a character which focuses on boosting attributes will eventually move ahead of its compatriots who did not invest this time. However you may not want to wait 6 weeks before you can start playing the game properly. Finding the balance is a personal choice... 5) I am sure most of you know but skills also have ranks. A rank 2 skill will take 2x as long to train as a rank 1 skill. A rank 5 skill will take 5x as long. Most of the basic skills in the game are rank 1 but there are higher rank skills (such as Drones Interfacing) that are rank 5. If you have bad attributes a skill such as this can take over 24 days to train from Level 4 to Level 5 - whereas the right attributes can knock days off this time. 6) This is a bit basic - but its amazing how this isn't obvious to many new players... If you go to your skills screen (on your character sheet - top left button on the left hand menu) you can see your total skills point total is in the top left. You can start training a skill by right clicking a particular skill and selecting 'Start Training' you should also see the time it will take for that skill to train to the next level. To train skills you do not already have you need to purchase 'skill' books. You can buy these in the 'starter' stations. You need to open the market screen (make sure it is set to 'This Station Only') and then you should see a 'skills' section. You can also obtain some skills from agents. Each skill has 5 levels. The training time increases each level. To train a Rank 1 skill to Level 1 may take 6 minutes. To train it from level 1 to level 2 may take 3hrs. To train it from level 2 to level 3 may take 12hrs. To train it from level 4 to level 5 may take 2 days and so on... 7) You should aim to have a skill training at all times. If a skill is due to complete in 2hrs and you know you are going to be away for 14 then before you go switch the training to another longer skill (you do not lose skill points if you do not cancel the training but simply start something else). Then when you get back home switch back to finish the original skill.
|
| Skill Groups and their primary and secondary attributes |
| Drones: Memory - Perception Electronics: Engineering: Gunnery: Industry: Leadership: Learning: Mechanic:
Navigation: Science: Social: Spaceship Command: Trade: --------------------------------------------------------- Memory is the primary attribute for: Drones, Industry and Learning Are an absolute must for miner and scientific types. Memory is a pretty crucial all round attribute. --------------------------------------------------------- Intelligence is the primary attribute for: Electronics, Engineering, Mechanic, Navigation & Science These are an absolute must for those who want to squeeze the absolute best performance from their ships and equipment. It is also a pretty crucial all round attribute. --------------------------------------------------------- Willpower is the primary attribute for: 'SOME' Gunnery + Leadership & Trade Hardcore specialist fighters only. While it is important to some skill
areas I would not classify Willpower as a must have attribute. Perception is the primary attribute for: Spaceship Command & Missiles & some important Gunnery skills Spaceship Command skills tend to be high rank (taking longer to learn) and are also must have skills for pretty much all types of characters (especially if you want the option to fly many different classes of ships). Perception is also the secondary skill for many skill groups. Like Intelligence and Memory I would classify Perception as a key attribute.
Charisma is the primary attribute for: Social These skills are all important to dedicated agent runners but unless you intend to train them all to Level 5 I think it would be a waste to sacrifice Int/Mem/Perc attribute points for the time saved by having a high Charisma.
|
|
©Online Game Commands - Eve Online |