Skill Discussions

Get Cyb 5 going and get +5s in ASAP (if you can't afford a full set, get just the two for whatever things you plan to train first; for example, started a new character with emphases on Intel and Memory so I can both get Cybernetics up to V ASAP, and after that I'm going to train all my engineering and electronics skills). You only have the Accelerator for 35 days, so take advantage of it as much as you can. If you have the money, buy +4s while Cybernetics V trains (saves you a few days). Unlike Learning Skills, you are not limited in benefits (IE you won't necessarily want to spec your character to favor intel and memory like before when you wanted to fast-track Learning skills (although this will improve Cybernetics' training speed)), but you will want to stick with some given set of primary and secondary attributes, again to take advantage of the bonus as much as possible given that its time limited.

This, of course, assumes you have an alt that can afford to feed you enough ISK to buy two Improved implants, or you are willing to buy a GTC and sell PLEX on the market.

Yes, they are Implants (separate from Boosters, which the CA is) that you plug in for a stat bonus (be it attributes or game stats, IE better navigation, weapon damage increase, etc.) And they are INCREDIBLY expensive, for a new character (although an established player (even carebear/PVE) could make this money quickly, just by making 10mil ISK per Vanguard in Incursions, a couple hours and you have 100mil+).

Not that I support pay2win, but consider buying PLEX with real-life money (buy a GTC, convert the code to PLEX, and sell it on the in-game market) to get implants. While they aren't necessary, they help immensely, especially later in the game; to get an idea, get EveMon (if you haven't already), follow the instructions to add your character's API, make out a skill plan, then use the "Implant Calculator" on the plan window and increase your attributes. You'll find they radically reduce training time.

That said, you probably don't want to sit in a station training skills if you're new, so my advice is to just do whatever you want, and not worry too much about min/maxing. Train up some ship skills, get good gun skills, become a miner, do whatever you enjoy doing. Just keep that skill queue full.

I believe the Memory implant is a "Memory Augmentation" (search for it in market), whereas the Intelligence implant is a "Cybernetic Subprocessor" (again, search for it). Each costs about 100million ISK, last I checked.

You should be able to make a bit more by converting the GTC to PLEX and then selling it, it's worth something like 430million in-game and you get two PLEXes out of one GTC. You will want to make sure, before doing the conversion you are in the Jita system, moon 4, station 4 (Caldari Navy Assembly Plant), this is EVE's primary trade hub and typically has the best prices both for selling and buying most things other than skillbooks.

Not true. The CA adds +3 to all attributes, there is no training speed bonus in and of itself. That the attributes modify the training speed is obvious, but that doesn't mean it's a "flat bonus". Indeed, since attributes contribute less and less towards training speed with every point (so I observed while trying to calculate the effects the CA would have on my new alt with +5s in), you could argue that adding implants at all is not worthwhile while the CA is active (as you pay exponentially more for diminishing returns on training speed); I just believe that, to take advantage of this rather generous boost to attributes, you should maximize the time you have with it. After that, of course, do whatever sets your heart aflutter.

Just FYI, we have requested that CCP includes a value in CharacterSheet API that will indicate if the character has any special bonus applied to its attributes. They responded that they will try to ninja include this in the winter expansion.

On behalf of the
EVEMon Dev Team