All About EVE Online

Training has gotten a lot easier in the latest update on EVE Online. Before you would start training a skill and when it ended start the next one, if you where online to do that. Otherwise when the training ended your character did nothing until you came back. And if EVE happened to be doing a update at the time that took longer than expected, well you just had to wait. Or if you where smart you changed training for one that would take a few days then either switched back when you got on next or just let it run. You don’t lose anything for interrupting skill training so its not a problem switching back and forth between skills.

Now we have the ‘Queue’. That means that if we have a bunch of small skills running from a few minutes to a few hours we can queue them up, as long as they will start in the next 24 hours. The last one can end well beyond 24 hours. And if I need to train something real quick I can just add it to the front of the queue. All praise the Queue.

While I am taking about training, for those that are new to EVE, I want to share a little tip with you. Open up you character sheet, and in the skill area select the ‘settings’ tab. Then select the following settings:

‘Only show my current skills’ – this only shows those skills that you have trained or started training, not all of the skills available or just the ones you have finished.

‘Highlight partially trained skills’ – this will turn those skills that have been interrupted yellow and you can find then easier when you want to restart them.

‘Only toggle on skill group at a time’ – well this one is up to you but I like this one because it just less confusing when going through my skills list.

And finally back in the ‘Skills’ tab, click ‘Open Training Queue’ select ‘My Skills’ from the drop down menu and uncheck the ‘Skills that Fit Within Queue’s Timeframe” box.

One last thing, a reminder to all, at the time of this post we are just a day out from an extended downtime. This is for a small patch that comes out from time to time so it’s a good idea to set up you skill queue for a few days worth of training. Time to set up those level 4 and 5 skills just in case.

I hope you found this helpful. Please subscribe to my blog for future posts and if you have any question be sure to comment and I will try and get back to you ASAP.

Until next time, Fly Safe

Reggi Mental

Character generation is a lot easier now in EVE Online. Before you had to pick one of four races, Amarr, Caldari, Gallete and Minmatar. Then choose your ancestry, bloodline and gender. Then one of 3 professions, Business, Military or Industrial. And those has 2 subdivisions, Standard and Elite. Along the way you had 5 “Attribute” points to place in Intelligence, Will power, Charisma, Memory, and Perception. Each of these changes had different skill sets and different bonuses, so you had to play around and try and find the right set of things to give you what you wanted. That of course was if you knew what you wanted. As a new player to EVE Online you did not know what to do. Which race should I pick? What skills do I need to do what? What did that skill do? These where the common questions every new play would ask. Of course you got to play with your appearance a bit and change the background and enter you characters name.

Now the new character generation is simpler. You still have to pick a race, ancestry, bloodline, and gender. You still get to play with your features and background. But the professions and extra attribute points are no more, at least not in the generation process. Now you get the chance to try each profession at the same solar system. You have 2 free attribute re-mappings to move points around. You also learn skills at an accelerated rate, up to a certain point. All these give you the chance to experiment and see where you want to go and what does everything do. You get the chance to play the game before really determining who you are.

As for any advice i can give you about the first few chooses (Race, Ancestry, Bloodline and gender), no one is better than another. Each race has their own version of each ship. They use their own type of weapons. They have their own history. And gender does not effect how well your ship performs or how much damage your weapons do (as you can see your attributes do not have things like dexterity or strength). So which every you choose will work. Granted once you get in you will run into other players who have their own biases and opinions, but there is no one better race.

As for profession, well you will get a chance to dabble into each one. I would say do each of the career based tutorial missions. You will get ships, weapons, ammo, equipment and skill books along the way. There will be a chance to do a Mission Arc at the end which will give you a good test of what you have learned and a chance to travel around. Maybe along the way you will find friends or a place you want to call home. Granted this last mission arc is a tough one and you will most likely need to ask for help, don’t be afraid to. EVE is loaded with both good and bad guys. You need to be alert but don’t be paranoid either. More often than not you will find good people who just want to help and have fun.

Ask others for help, either in doing a mission or about a piece of equipment or even how to do something. There are alot of people out there and I am sure you will find someone who will give you a hand. Remember we where all newbies at one point. And again this is why I am writing these articles too. I Have been playing EVE for almost 2 years now, and I am still learning stuff, but I also enjoy helping others. If you have any questions go ahead and make a comment, I will do my best to get an answer to you (and others) ASAP.

Until next time, Fly Safe

Reggi Mental

One of the most forgotten area when training a new character in EVE is the Learning Skills. These skills do really only one thing for the character, help learn skills. The speed at which you learn skills is determined by your attributes, the higher you attributes the faster you learn. Here is a brief run down of the learning skills and the attributes they affect.

First of lets talk about skills. Each skill has a primary and a secondary attribute associated with it. The higher those attributes the faster it is to learn that skill. When you start a new character you start off with a set number for each attribute (between 8 and 9). There are 3 ways to change these numbers.

• Remap your attributes
• Implants
• Learning skills

As a new character you get 2 free remapping of your attributes. This allows you to move a certain number of points from one attribute to another. After you use the free remaps any future remap will cost you 500k ISK and can only be done once a year.

Implants will allow you to add up to five points per attribute. The problem with these is the higher the implant the higher the cost, and if you are podded (killed and have to activate a clone) you will lose the implant. Also Implants can not be removed intact. This means that if you have a +3 implant and want to change it for a higher one, the +3 implant will be destroyed and you will not have the chance to save it or resell it. So trying to work your way up the implant ladder will get real expensive after awhile because you will lose the ISK from the previous implant.

Learning Skills allow you to add one point to an attribute per level. There are two levels to learning skills, Rank 1 and Rank 3. You must start with the Rank 1 skills first and get trained up to level 4 before you can start the Rank 3 version. This will give you a max of 10 points to add to an attribute (two skills per attribute, 5 levels per skill). The ’Learning Skills’ gives you a 2% bonus to all you attributes. Below is a chart of each attribute and which Learning Skill and which implant slot improves it.

• Intelligence – Slot 4 – Analytical Mind, Logic
• Perception   – Slot 1 – Spatial Awareness, Clarity
• Charisma     – Slot 5 -Empathy, Presence
• Willpower    - Slot 3 – Iron Will, Focus
• Memory       – Slot 2 – Instant Recall, Eidetic Memory

Intelligence and Memory will be the best ones to upgrade first, alternating between them and Learning and working your way up. As far as Implants my suggestion is to use the +1 limited ones until you are very comfortable in your skills of playing EVE. They are cheap and very very easy to get (almost impossible not to get sometimes).

A good order to the learning skills is get ‘Learning Skill’, ‘Analytical Mind’, and ‘Instant Recall’ up to lvl 3 each, then start the others and alternating them to get all the Rank 1 skills up to lvl 5.  You can interrupt skills if you need to learn something for a mission or piece of equipment and then go back to the learning skills. After you have all the Rank 1 skills up to lvl 5 you can start in on the Rank 3 skills and try for lvl 3 or 4. It may take two weeks to get all skill to this point but it will save you months in the long run.

I hope this helps you understand a bit more about learning skills and until next time, Fly Safe.