Update: this reward has now closed and its best submissions, all from expert players with hands-on experience, used to create curated content: EVE Online skills guide
Skills that pay the bills? As part of our ongoing preparation for our in-depth EVE beginners' guide, we want you to teach us all about skills, including: Skill Points, skill plans, skill training, skill books, skill multipliers, skill injectors and extractors, skill priorities, and how they all differ for Alpha and Omega players. We'll leave it to you to decide whether you want to give an introduction to all of them or a great explanation of just one or two.
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Submissions (17)
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lamdou1/23/2025
nice and fun game i love to play it everyday keep up i hope for more remprovments
yan574361/23/2025
Won$3
I believe that skills are the basis of the game, as they allow us to progress.
1 - Skill Points - SP: These are the game's progression “currency”, they are accumulated passively while you train skills in the Training Queue, even offline, each skill has a level (from level 1 to level 5). You can use Skill Injectors which provide skill points automatically, but they are limited throughout progression.
2 - Skill extractors and injectors: Injectors speed up skill advancement, while extractors allow you to remove SP from an area and reallocate them.
3 - Skill Plans: Basically, it's a roadmap that you'll follow in your evolutions in order to have a gameplay that best suits YOUR STYLE. I always like to do my best research on the internet, such as using the Skill Plan Manager.
4 - Support Skills: Players often neglect these skills, and I understand that they're not really a priority, but they end up improving efficiency and performance in any activity, such as missile damage.
5 - Skill training: After choosing the skill to be evolved, it will develop automatically over time.
6 - Skill Books: You need to buy the appropriate skill book for the skill you want to acquire, which will allow you to start developing it. You can buy them from NPCs and each one has the level you are looking for.
7 - Skill Boosters: These are temporary consumables that increase the speed at which you earn Skill Points (SP).
Luka Zaharin1/23/2025
Won$3
Skills are one of the core elements of Eve Online. There are dozens of guides explaining what skills you should train and with the newly added skillplans, you can easily transfer lists of useful skills among friends and groups. As a new player, it is important to focus on something you enjoy, but until you know what that is (run the career agents!) you should focus on the famous Magic 14.
The Magic 14 (https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/The_Magic_14) is a list of basic skills that profit any ship and playing preference. They will grant you additional fitting resources on your ships, give you more HP and make your ships faster and more agile. Until you know what to focus on, they are a great way to avoid wasting training time while still making sure you spend your points on something useful.
After discovering your (current) preferred playstyle, you should train for the ships you want to fly. Make sure you train the appropriate tank and weapons skills and do not forget the so called support skills. They do not give you access to new ships or modules, but greatly increase the efficiency of the modules you can use at that moment. For example, skills like Warhead Upgrades and Armor Plating give no active boost, but increase your dps and agility on every single ship that has missiles or armor plates equipped.
Many young players forget about support skills, but for reference, I want to share the story of an Osprey Navy Issue flown by my newbie friend. He had around 87 dps, but my missile focused main gained over 200dps with the exact same fit. Few ships and fits are as extreme as this example, but it clearly shows how much "unnecessary" skills can do. Also remember to level the ship skills up. In the case of the above, the Caldari Cruiser skill gives a 25% boost in kinetic missile dps, totalling 125% at CalCruiser V (yes I know, strange way of calculating but it's true).
Finally, while Omegas (paid account) should always skill something and prefer skilling anything to skilling nothing, Alphas should only train skills they need and heavily focus on a single task. Omegas cannot waste SP, but Alphas are limited to 5million gained on normal ways. They can still skill up higher, but only accumulate SP in events, daylies or from skillinjectors. As an Alpha, prefer taking a break to skilling a random skill. Worst case, both account types should finish the Magic 14 if no other skills seem relevant at that moment.
In the end, you should always remember to enjoy your time in New Eden and ask for help in the various chats if you do not know what to do. Eve is better with friends and many people like to help new players out!
Copy Pasta for your skillqueue, just copy and paste these into your game. They are not exactly the magic 14, but what I train my own alts with for my optimal fast development. Alphas should just go as far as they can. In no particular order:
