In all role-playing games there is a system that limits the actions your character can do and govern how well your character can perform those actions. Generally they are called skills. EVE is no different. You need to have a skill in order to perform any given function in EVE. Do you want to pilot frigates (a small all-around ship)? You need a frigate skill. Do you want to shoot guns from your frigate? You need the gunnery skill. Add better shields? You need the shield upgrades skill. You get the picture.

Similarly, each skill you posess is going to be at a given level from 1-5. Level 1 is “beginner” and level 5 is “expert”. I put those words in quotes because, unlike most role-playing games, skill proficiency gives linear bonuses rather than exponential ones. For example, take Joe Starbuckle, a character with level 4 gunnery skill. Each level of gunnery skill gives a 2% bonus to a gun turret’s rate of fire. Say he is facing May LightBringer who has level (or lvl) 5 gunnery skill. She will only be 2% faster than he is, assuming they are firing the same type of gun.

You can increase your skill level by training a skill. To do that you right click on the skill and select “train skill”. The game tells you how long it will take in real-time days, hours, minutes, seconds, and a timer and progress bar will show underneath the skill on your character sheet. The time required to gain another level is dependent on a formula using the primary and secondary attribute of the skill, the current level of the skill, and multiplied by the skill’s rank. Say for example I have lvl3 gunnery and lvl3 electronics, both rank 1 skills and assume both are based on the intelligence (primary) and perception (secondary) attributes. It will take just as long to train gunnery to lvl4 as it does to train electronics to lvl4. However, say I have the skill of ECM (electronics counter measures) lvl3, which is a rank 2 skill that also depends on intelligence and perception. It will take twice as long for me to train ECM to lvl4 as it does to train gunnery lvl4. This is how the EVE developers differentiate the skill training time, separating the more complex skills from the ones that are easier to learn – because the formula never changes and is never random. So just think of rank as a time multiplier.

But wait! you say. How do I get the points needed to train these skills? Don’t I need to kill the EVE equivalent of 7 racoons before I can train a skill?

To which I say – No! Skill training is only limited by the duration in real-time that it takes to train the skill and the fact that you can only train 1 skill at a time. In fact it is possible to just sit in the station and do nothing but train all your skills all year long if you wanted to.

So why wouldn’t you? What’s to stop someone from just training the skills that they started with during character creation and THEN going out into space and wreaking havoc?

Because for starters, the newbie ship with basic weapons that they give you is not very good. You’ll want to earn money to buy better weapons and add-ons and eventually buy a better ship. Making money means you have to leave the station and mine, haul trade goods or do missions offered by NPC agents. Not only that, soon you’ll be eying better weapons and add-ons, or bigger ships. And dollars to donuts your starting character does not start out with the “pilot battleship” or “fire cruise missle” skills. So yes Virginia you have to go out into space and earn money to buy skill books as well. These skill books give you the ability to learn new skills, always starting out at level 1.

The other wrinkle is that, while bonuses for skill levels are linear, the training time to progress to the next level is exponential. So say it takes 15 minutes to train a new skill to level 1. It would then take (on average) about 1 hour 30 minutes to train to level 2, 6 hours to level 3, 1 day 11 hours to level 4, and 15 days to level 5. And that is with good primary and secondary attributes – good being about 10 points each.

So why even train to lvl5 or even lvl4? Heck, why not keep them all at lvl1?

Because higher skills may have lower skills and skill levels as a prerequisite. For example, everyone starts out with the basic knowledge to pilot their faction’s frigate – a faction being a race or more technically a “side” that one can join. Lets say you chose the Caldari race. You can be guaranteed starting out with Caldari frigate 1 and Spaceship command 1 at the very minimum. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to pilot any ship at all.

Say you want to fly Caldari cruisers. To do that you need the Caldari Cruiser skill. But, before you can learn that you need to train your current skills to Caldari Frigate 4 and Spaceship Command 3. What about piloting a Caldari Battleship? You’d need a Caldari Battleship skill for that. But in order to train that skill you need Caldari Cruiser 4 and Spaceship Command 4. And a Caldari Carrier? Well, you need:

Caldari Battleship 5, Spaceship Command 5, Advanced Spaceship Command 5, Drones 5, Drone interfacing 5, Capital Ships 3.

And lets not even go into skills needed for manufacturing things like ships and items. That’s a different career path entirely. I’m not sure I even want to go there, as there is so much to do just flying around, fighting, and mining.