Skill Discussions

So I've been asked many times by people in corp what to train. Often times they are newbros with 1-3mil SP, I've accumulated at max 19mil SP but siting at 17.5mil right now (lost a clone non upgraded very embarrassing and all that). Well once you have the basic skills Engineering, Electronics & Mechanics to V where do you go from there?

My advice to them (and you of course) is when you don't know what to train, train everything. I made a skill plan which I will be uploading when I'm off work that maps out getting all the starting skills to level 3, then getting skills you unlock to level 3 then skills after that to level 3 and so on and so forth.

EVE today is about cross training especially if you live in Nullsec like my corp does. We take the newest players in EVE stick them in a frigate and tell them "Here is a slasher, you see that ship? Orbit that ship keep it from running away until its dead, oh you died? Here is some more ISK go buy another slasher. Oh you got some SP, great job here is a destroyer now you can kill stuff with us."

This obviously is a very rough example but it gets the point across. I like telling new players to get everything they can to level 3 when they're still finding their way. You will have a much greater range of options open to you and will be able to do more things. Start from the bottom and work your way up, train the skills that take you the least amount of time first and work up from there. You will slowly get used to longer and longer training times as you run out of 5 minute skills, then out of 10 minute etc.

Once you get all the skills you can to 3 you should be able to fly and fit all frigates and destroyers at least somewhat effectively in PvP. From there decide what race you want to fly and get its frigate and weapon type to level IV. This will unlock the larger weapons and you can start specializing into something you like. By this time you should've already gotten some experience in flying a rage of ships in different situations so you should know what you like doing. However what I did was train all races and weapons types to level IV right away.

That way I could jump into and fit everything up to cruisers by the time I got 4mil SP which is about 2 3/4 months if you optimize your attributes. Once you reach that point you should know what skills affect what and how to fit a ship without using fitting mods, what ships are meant for what roles etc. I would stay at cruisers for awhile BUT I would train at least one race's Tier 3 battlecruiser with its weapon type, also keep in mind what Rats you live by as this will determine what ship is most effective against them. This will allow you to do anomaly ratting with long range weapons. Yes I know its not the best ISK/hr and you will have to warp out sometimes if you get a bad spawn but at least you have some way of making money in the meantime.

So to bring out the main points, Train all skills you can to level 3, train either one or all factions cruisers followed by more training to level 3 of the new skills you unlock, train one race's tier 3 battlecruiser depending on rats to make money then specialize.

One final note, the core certificates. Get the Core Competency Basic ASAP followed by the Standard as your skills provide, it provides a great skill base for flying literally any non-capital ship in the game and is a must before you think of PvPing in Battlecruisers and up.

This is fine if you are not sure what you are doing and only have one character. It is a decent way to explore EVE's ships to find a playstyle you enjoy which fits into your corporation. I did it when I started out many years ago.