What skills should a new character take?

Alverant

Thanks to all the help here, I'm going to give Eve Online a try. (Probably this weekend so I can catch day off for Memorial Day.) Beforehand I'll read the player's guide (man is it BIG) and be ready. I have one more question.



What skills should a beginning character take? I know a big part of the answer depends on what sort of character you want to play, but I figure there are some skills every character should have. For instance I understand there is a skill that lets you learn other skills faster. If true, then it should be a top priority to learn.



That being said I want to take the role of a miner/manufacturer and should have the skills to go from materials still in the asteroid to something sold in a shop and used by another player.



(The problem I found with the EO players guide is that it says things like, "the first thing you should do" or "make it a top priority" way too often. You can only do one thing first and if you have so much being a top priority, then the notion of top priority looses meaning.)



Thank you

Nicoli

Well either of the industrial skill sets Prospector are pretty good though they are designed with a non trial account in mind so if you just plan on trying a game I would go for a soldiering role first and stick with the racial mining frigates and cruisers. For that you'd want the Military/Special Forces branch.



Now if you plan on sticking with the game and going the industrial route i would recreate a industry character  under prospector and work towards mining barges and the racial industrial ship for transport, which are untrainable on a trial account. That will cover the mining aspect which will build alot of your initial assets till your able to start the production of items. At which point you want to work up to the production effeciency skill to 4 or 5 to get the most out of what you mine on the production time.



Thats about as far as I want to go in before you get some in game experience other wise I'll fear I may get into things you really don't need to know yet.

Cillasi

One thing you have to understand about Eve Online is that you can't do everything as a newbie.  The necessary skills and expense can be prohibitive.  So, while you may want some high level base mining skills, you want to leave the manufacturing-related skills till later simply because blueprints cost so much and so does factory time.

The Learning skills help you to learn other skills faster.  It makes a very big difference, so you should buy and train all the basic skills to Level 5.  What I did was put on a long skill to train when I was logged off for the day.  Those level 5 skills can take days, if not weeks, to train.  You're always going to reach a point when you have to stop and train something, so might as well be able to train it in the shortest amount of time possible. 

When creating your first character, you'll want to be sure (s)he has some ship and weapon skills along with mining so you can protect yourself as well as make some money.

Nicoli

DO NOT TRAIN ANY LEARNING SKILLS ON A TRIAL ACCOUNT



I normally hate the all caps bit but the emphsis must be added. Those skills are long term benefits during a 14 day trial account they are a waste of precious skill training time. If you like the game enough use programs like EVEmon to determine when it is benifical on a goal by goal basis.

Alverant

Originally posted by Nicoli

DO NOT TRAIN ANY LEARNING SKILLS ON A TRIAL ACCOUNT



I normally hate the all caps bit but the emphsis must be added. Those skills are long term benefits during a 14 day trial account they are a waste of precious skill training time. If you like the game enough use programs like EVEmon to determine when it is benifical on a goal by goal basis.

Maybe there's something I'm not getting, but can't I move a character from a trial account to a paid account? What happens to the character I made during the trial when the trial runs out? What sort of restrictions are placed on trial accounts?



Also where/what is Evemon?



Thanks for the answers. We have the same attitude about caps, don't use them unless you REALLY mean it.

Moobkrad

Originally posted by Alverant

Originally posted by Nicoli

DO NOT TRAIN ANY LEARNING SKILLS ON A TRIAL ACCOUNT



I normally hate the all caps bit but the emphsis must be added. Those skills are long term benefits during a 14 day trial account they are a waste of precious skill training time. If you like the game enough use programs like EVEmon to determine when it is benifical on a goal by goal basis.

Maybe there's something I'm not getting, but can't I move a character from a trial account to a paid account? What happens to the character I made during the trial when the trial runs out? What sort of restrictions are placed on trial accounts?



Also where/what is Evemon?



Thanks for the answers. We have the same attitude about caps, don't use them unless you REALLY mean it. Yes you can move your trial account into a paid account.



Here is Evemon

Nicoli

Originally posted by Alverant

Originally posted by Nicoli

DO NOT TRAIN ANY LEARNING SKILLS ON A TRIAL ACCOUNT



I normally hate the all caps bit but the emphsis must be added. Those skills are long term benefits during a 14 day trial account they are a waste of precious skill training time. If you like the game enough use programs like EVEmon to determine when it is benifical on a goal by goal basis.

Maybe there's something I'm not getting, but can't I move a character from a trial account to a paid account? What happens to the character I made during the trial when the trial runs out? What sort of restrictions are placed on trial accounts?



Also where/what is Evemon?



Thanks for the answers. We have the same attitude about caps, don't use them unless you REALLY mean it. Trial accounts have some limitations on skills, off the top of my head are the industrial ships, mining barges, and Battleship skills at least.  If you do turn your account over to regular you can keep your character. Though for the industrial route the 2 ships ships your really want to use the industrials and mining barges are of course not trainable. While the combat path can get you close to the easily trainable mining cruisers, the mining paths can put you alot closer ot the barges but farther from combat ships. i'd suggest trying the game with a combat character, gives you access to a large section of the game to try different stuff out. if you want to stick to industrial consider rerolling with the prospector starting skill set. Will probably put you closer to the industrial side then continuing with the ciombayt character.



As for EVEmon its located at evemon.battleclinc.com don't worry about it asking for account information. Its open sourced and checked by the community for keyloggers constantly. A large section of the EVE devs use the program, and have even modified several of the server systems to make it work better.

Beatnik59

Making the most of skill training as a new pilot starts before you even select skills to train.  This is where your attributes come into play.  Depending on your race and path, you'll get a certain fixed attribute score.  You'll also have five attribute points to spread across the attributes you wish.

The reason attributes are important is because they determine how rapid you can learn various skills.  Now for an industrialist/miner character, the most important skills in those areas calculate the completion time based upon points in memory and intelligence, so you might want to stack those attributes as high as possible.

Now there are eleven learning skills, and ten of them are there only to raise your five attributes.  By raising your attributes, you'll reduce the amount of time necessary to train skills.  The eleventh is the general "learning" skill, which will reduce the time necessary to train any by increasing the attribute values needed up to 10% (at learning level 5).  Be warned though.  If you plan on maxing out all eleven learning skills right off the bat, then it will be a long road ahead (months), with very minimal skills in which to earn the ISK necessary to purchase the advanced learning skills.  I did it on my last character, but only because I had an alt that I could play in the meantime to buy the skillbooks, and relieve my boredom.

Here are the skills I would venture to say are the "must haves" for any character in EVE, regardless of profession.  I say this because these skills are necessary as prerequisites for most other skills in the game.  Luckily, they require short training times:

Mechanic (to level 5 as soon as possible)

Electronics (to level 5 as soon as possible)

Engineering (to level 5 as soon as possible)

Energy Grid Upgrades (train as needed)

Energy Management (train as needed)

Targeting (to be trained as your most advanced ship's max targeting number requires)

Long Range Targeting (train as needed)

Signature Analysis (train as needed)

Electronics Upgrades (train as needed)

Shield Operation (for Caldari)

Shield Management (for Caldari)

Shield Upgrades (for Caldari)

(your race here) Frigate (to level 3 at least)

Small (your race's preferred turret type) Turret (as high as possible, as soon as possible)

Gunnery (as high as possible, as soon as possible)

Science (to Level 3, for Cybernetics)

Cybenetics (for implant use/train as needed)

Spaceship Command (to level 3 at least)

Missile Launcher Operation (train as needed.  Essential for Caldari)

Drones (train as needed.  Essential for Gallente)

Anchoring (to level 1)

Navigation (to level 2)

Warp Drive Operation (level 1)

Propulsion Jamming (level 1)

Hull Upgrades (train as needed.  Caldari need it less than most)

Repair Systems (train as needed. Caldari need it less than most)