Learning Skills Guide
Hardin of Curatores Veritatis Alliance originally drafted this for the EVE online Beginners section on there site and it had over 5,000 reads there. As there is always new players joining the game I thought I would move this guide from the boards to a website. So it doesn't get lost and Hopefully people should find this guide a bit easier to find and find it useful...

If you do find the guide useful, don't be shy, shoot Hardin a Eve-Mail and say thanks. If you found it really useful fell free to donate a few eve ISK his way.

Learning Skills
1) When you create a character certain attributes are allocated to the character. These are:
Memory - Intelligence - Perception - Willpower - Charisma

2) These attributes are the most important factor in training skills. All skills have a primary and secondary attribute. If you have a high attribute that is the same as the primary attribute of the skill then the skill will train faster.

If you have a weak attribute in the primary attribute of the skill you wish to learn then the training time will be subsequently longer. The differences in your attributes can make SIGNIFICANT differences in the time it takes you to train a skill (especially the high ranking skills)

To check the primary and secondary attribute requirements of a skill then left click it in skills window (in your character sheet) and select the 'Attributes' tab... If you haven't trained the skill yet then you can use 'show info' on the skill booklet and it will also show you the primary and secondary attributes.

3) Obviously the attribute setup you get at creation will have a big influence on what skills you can train quickly. The attributes you get at start up will depend on the race, sub-race and then sub-sect you chose. Each race has two sub-races. For example Amarr has two sub-races - Ni Kunni and Pure Amarrians. Both sub-races have their own base starting attributes. But after you select your 'sub-race' you also get to chose a 'sub-sect' which again will impact on attributes.

Take Pure Amarrians for example. The basic stats for a 'pure' Amarrian are: 7 Intelligence, 3 Charisma, 4 Perception, 6 Memory & 10 Willpower. When you chose a Pure Amarrian character you are then presented with a choice of 'Liberal Holder', 'Wealthy Commoner' or 'Religious Reclaimer'. If you chose Liberal Holder you get +3 Charisma and +1 Willpower. If you chose 'Wealthy Commoner' you get +1 Charisma and +3 Memory. If you chose 'Religious Reclaimer' you get +4 Willpower.

During character creation you also get 5 attribute points to spend how you chose. However, you can only put a max of 3 points into any one attribute area. It is important (although not critical) that at this stage you have a vague idea of how you want your character to develop. If you simply want a research/science character who can max learning/science skills quickly then you should consider putting all your spare points into Intelligence and Memory. If you intend to be a hardcore PvPer it is worth putting some of those points into Perception (and maybe Willpower). If you want to be an all rounder then it maybe worth spreading them around (or using them to boost up attribute areas where, through your sub-race/sub-sect choices you are low). The only attribute I would HIGHLY recommend you do not spend your extra attribute points on would be Charisma.

Note: In the long run most people playing EVE end up doing a mixture of things. Unless you are 100% convinced that you wish to specialize it maybe be worthwhile to use your sub-race/sub-sect choices and your 5 spendable attribute points to bring Memory, Intelligence, Perception and Willpower to a reasonable balanced level.

If you want to play around with this EVE-I has a nice tool you can use to see what attributes you can have based on varying sub-race/sub-sect choices before spending your additional 5 attribute points. You can find it here: Starter Calculator

4) You are not stuck with the attributes you get at character creation. It is possible to improve on these by using Learning skills. There are eleven learning skills - two for each attribute, plus a general 'learning' skill which increases all attributes by approx 2% per level trained. If your basic Intelligence attribute is 20 for example the learning skill at level 5 will boost this to 22 (a 10% gain).

By using the attribute learning skills it is possible to increase your base attribute by up to 10 points each. If you are considering playing the game long term then the learning skills will save you lots and lots of time - allowing your character to progress much more quickly.

As mentioned above there are two 'attribute' skills for each attribute area.

The 'basic' attribute skills are:

Spatial Awareness - Perception
Iron Will - Willpower
Empathy - Charisma
Instant Recall - Memory
Analytical Mind - Intelligence

These five basic attribute skills are relatively cheap and a starter does not need any prerequisite skills in order to start training them. I would highly recommend that in order to progress the speed at which you learn that you bring all of these to at least level 4 as quickly as possible.

The 'advanced' attribute skills are:

Clarity - Perception
Focus - Willpower
Presence - Charisma
Eidetic Memory - Memory
Logic - Intelligence

The five advanced skills cost several million ISK each. In order to start training them you also need to have the 'basic' attribute skill at level 5 first. You CANNOT start training the advanced learning skills until you have the appropriate basic attribute skill at level 5.

5) Obviously training of the attribute skills also takes time. The primary attribute required for the 'basic' attribute skills is Memory and the Secondary is Intelligence.

Therefore if you train the Memory and Intelligence skills first it will save you time training the others. The Memory and Intelligence attributes play a role in the training of many useful skill classes so I would definitely recommend training them up to at least Level 4 ASAP..

If you are a real training fanatic and want to maximize the skill point gain for every second spent training then you may want to also consider training the basic intelligence and memory attribute skills to level 5 immediately and then train the 'advanced' memory and intelligence skill to level 4.

The following is a suggested training routine for a new character which will help you max your learning and attribute skills most quickly (it is based on a lot of maths & calculations which I won't repeat here)

Instant Recall - Level 1
Analytical Mind - Level 1
Learning - Level 1
Instant Recall - Level 2
Analytical Mind - Level 2
Learning - Level 2
Instant Recall - Level 3
Analytical Mind - Level 3
Learning - Level 3
Instant Recall - Level 4
Analytical Mind - Level 4
Learning - Level 4
Instant Recall - Level 5
Eidetic Memory - Level 1
Eidetic Memory - Level 2
Eidetic Memory - Level 3
Eidetic Memory - Level 4
Analytical Mind - Level 5
Logic - Level 1
Logic - Level 2
Logic - Level 3
Logic - Level 4
Learning - Level 5
then if you like eidetic memory 5 or logic 5 then get last one.

then train up other learn skill in what ever order you like.

By following this routine you will maximize your intelligence and memory attributes in the fastest way possible. This will then make the training of your other 'basic' attribute skills much faster. I do not at this stage recommend training the 'advanced' attribute skills to level 5. The time spent training them from level 4 to level 5 is huge and I do not think it can be recouped unless we are all still playing EVE in 3 years time ;-)

6) Implants can also boost your base attributes and save you significant training time.

For example I was training Surgical Strike Level 3 when I plugged in an implant which boosted the secondary attribute. This immediately saved me 6hrs on the total training time for the skill!

At the moment it is possible to get a variety of implants which boost the main attributes by +1 to +3 depending on the implant.

You can get implants for each of the five attribute areas. However you can only plug in one implant per attribute. Implants are destroyed if you try and remove them from your head...so once you have plugged it in it cannot be taken off and used by anyone else.

So say for example you have a +1 Intel implant in your head and then you plug in a +2 implant the +1 implant is destroyed.

Implants are also lost if you are podded - as your clone wakes up without them. Due to the high cost of implants it is a judgment call on whether you wish to fit them. If you conduct a lot of PvP and have a high likelihood of being podded then you may not wish to splash out on implants (unless you are super wealthy of course).

To be able to use implants you first need to have trained the 'CYBERNETICS' skill. (In order to train Cybernetics you need the Science skill at Level 3).

You can either obtain implants by doing agent missions (a lot of agent missions) or by buying them off the market from those who have already earned them.