EVE Online Correspondent - Character Creation Guide
MMORPG.com EVE Online Correspondent Richard Morris writes this quick and easy guide to character creation in CCP's space-based sandbox.
In terms of character creation, there are so many variables that you have to consider in all MMOs, but EVE seems to have the most in my experience. From the beginning of character creation to in action game-play there are hundreds of variables that could change the outcome of any battle. Starting off in character creation there are two variables that will depict how you will play the rest of the game. Attributes and skills. It is crucial that you choose carefully and without mistakes. You have to take into consideration what exactly it is you want to do in the world of EVE. So, let's begin!
Attributes:
Attributes are one of many important factors in the game; they affect every single thing you do. Sometimes it might be indirectly, but they do. They are responsible for the time it takes for you to learn skills. These skills dictate how, what, when, and why you can or can't use a certain items, ships, implants, devices and so on. As a result, this makes attributes an important factor inside this game.
To kick it off, we will start with which attributes are most important for what you might want to do. For instance, if you want to be a master pilot, you should look into Willpower and Perception. For someone who wants to hack, manufacture, or even simply be able to operate high tech things you might want to consider Intelligence and Memory. If you want to mine and sell for a great deal of cash Charisma and Memory might serve you well).
;)
The main importance for attributes is to help you learn new skills. Learning new skills will make you a more formidable foe anywhere. Skills will have a training time multiplier. This is a multiplier that will increase the time spent training if the correct amount of primary and secondary attributes are not present. What this means is for every attribute point you do not have, it will add to the amount of time it takes to learn a skill. For example, if I have 0 Intelligence and 0 Memory, a skill with those primary/secondary attributes will take a long time to learn. By increasing those attributes, you can ultimately decrease the time it takes to conquer the game by half a year or perhaps more!
There are a number of ways to increase attribute points. One most people should be familiar with is the Learning skill. This increases all attributes by 2% per rank and takes about 7 days (depending on your attributes) to master. Since it has 5 ranks that's a total of 10%. It seems substantial to me. But wait, there is more. Implants to the brain also help for attributes. Though they require skills to place, once they make it inside your skull, you wont regret it. But a word of caution, implants are considered expensive and they require a large amount of skill to place inside your head. So, do not go spend all your ISK on implants, more-so since if you get pod killed you won't get them back. You could though, go buy a few books and learn some attributes. The beginner ones are rather inexpensive and give 1 attribute per rank. The other ones are extremely expensive and they yield 1 per rank. A bit pricey I will admit, but worth it in the long run.
Skills:
Skills can do nearly anything aside from flying your ship for you (autopilot will do that for you, ha). Skills are what dictate what you can operate, how you operate, and what bonuses you get from skills. It is really simple. You learn a skill from a book or you start with it in the beginning of the game and you get a benefit. The only thing restricting you from learning every single skill is the amount of time it takes to learn said skill. Each skill requires an amount of points to be gained over time in order to be learned and ranked up. You start with about 800,000 skill points to 900,000 and you earn more and more progressively. These skill points are very important to progressing. They should be watched all the time and insured with a clone.
As I have said before, attributes and skills go hand-in-hand. To learn skills faster you must have both primary attributes and secondary attributes as high as you can get them. This will decrease the time it takes to learn the skill.
Skills have 5 ranks. These ranks take longer to learn and provide more benefits. Simply put the higher rank you want to learn the longer it will take and the better the benefits. Not only this but you will be able to operate different modules or ships. For instance, say you learned the skill Calidari Frigate rank one. You are now able to operate a ship related to that skill.
;)
Though skills are fine and dandy once you learn them, losing them is not very fun. To protect yourself from losing skills, clones are there for purchase. These clones protect the amount of skill points gained once pod-killed. So, if you get attacked by a pirate and die you will have a clone there to save your skills from being punted.
Suggestions with skill monitoring:
Now I have been around MMOs for quite a bit. I always look for many things to help myself from forgetting about things. EVEmon is a program that will monitor your characters on all accounts and give details on skills and a few other things that will help a sprouting player or even a veteran eve player. It tells you when skills are done upgrading for all characters even if you are offline. This is a must for all players and can be found at http://evemon.battleclinic.com/ .
Conclusion:
Both skills and attributes contribute to overall game-play. When focused on, they can make you a deadly player. Whether it is in the market, facing NPCs, or even other players. Though there are other aspects to consider, these two key features in the game that I briefly covered will ensure that you be able to utilize all you can. Until I create a specific guide, you will have to wait for my next article! 'Till then, see you later and happy hunting!
As a player of EVE-Online, I noticed a few things I found incorrect in your article.
Skill Rank:
You wrote - "This is a multiplier that will increase the time spent training if the correct amount of primary and secondary attributes are not present. What this means is for every attribute point you do not have, it will add to the amount of time it takes to learn a skill."
This looks like you are saying that having higher attributes decreases the Skill Rank Multiplier.
Not quite correct. The Skill Rank Multiplies the total number of skill points required to gain a level as compared to a Rank 1 skill. For example to go from level 0 to level I on a Rank 1 Skill requires 250 Skill points, for a Rank 2 it requires 500 Skill points, Rank 3 750 Skill points, etc.
As for how long it will take you to go from one level to the next, you need to figure out the following.
( SP_Needed - Current_SP ) / ( Pri_Attrib + ( Sec_Attrib / 2 ) )
This will give you the number of minutes it will take to train a particular skill.
Having Higher attributes does not decrease the number of skill points required, it just increases the rate at which you gain skill points, thus decreasing the time required.
And this Example:
"For example, if I have 0 Intelligence and 0 Memory, a skill with those primary/secondary attributes will take a long time to learn."
While this situation is actually imposable in the game itself, if you really had a Zero in both required attributes, the time required to gain a level would be infinite as you would be gaining 0 Skill points per minute.
Those interested can find more info in this EVE-Online Thread
Also the article talks about the Learning skill but completely disregards the other LEARNING skills that increase your indivual stats by 1 point per level which is a MUCH faster way of decreasing your training time.
I've played EVE, nowdays I can't because I'm under Linux with an ATI card, and that means trouble in games. I agree with the previous two posts, there are several things left out of this, although we should note is not a guide on leveling, but on character creation.
As such I would have expected some information on the general type of ships/specializations that define how you start playing the game, for example, caldari affinity for missiles, or even the main differences between the ships they use, as some, for example, favor shields while others favor hull. This is the type of info seriously missing from this article, as this could help to easen the burden of choices one is presented at start. It would also help people to get a character they feel confortable playing with.
As a general leveling guide, it has errors and omissions as pointed. Also it lacks depth. In explaining rank benefits, it says rank I of caldari frigate operation lets you pilot that ship. It doens't explain, however, how do rank II and up modify that. It also doens't explain the existance of a skill tree that makes you learn some skills to unlock others.
Overall, a real bad done ......guide?
I saw another inacurate article on EVE a few days ago and am wondering if this is to become a pattern? I note the advert for "Game Correspondents, Writers, Moderators" but I would expect some sort of quality control.
It can take a while to get a firm grasp on even the basics of the EVE universe but everyone goes through character creation so the author cant be excused for such a bad article on the subject.
The main issue is the article tries to go deep into the importance of attribute and skill selection during the creation process but fails in this as well as failing to cover how the different steps of the process effect these things.
The article faills absolutely to provide any sort of 'guide' to character creation.
So, this was a non-guide guide?
Not entirely accurate, but not exactly off the mark either; there are some errors, and you could have pointed out the different starting skillsets you get from different career choices, which are quite important for the early game.
On errors (listed on order of appearance)
1) On Implants: "The other ones are extremely expensive and they yield 1 per rank" - either a typo or outright error on forming the sentence.
2) "Simply put the higher rank you want to learn the longer it will take and the better the benefits." - Higher rank does not confer increasing benefits. It simply confers increased training time, and points to the location of the skill on the 'skill tree'. First branch skills are rank 1, third branch up are rank 3, and so on. In addition, the 'lower-rank' skills are most often requirements for many higher-rank skills.
On other discrepancies:
You mention clones, but do not say where they can be bought, or how. You also mention losing skills, but do not tell us how and how much you lose (5% sp off your highest skill) when podded.
The attributes part should at least reference other Learning skills, as well as completely revise the 'implants' section. Remember you require a skill, Cybernetics, to fit implants.
Good job for mentioning EVEMon, it's a tool every newcomer to the game should learn to use.
Well despite what the critics say above, it is a good generic discussion of starting out in Eve except that it is more a brief introduction to Eve rather than a discussion of character creation. I am going to suppose th author was restricted with word count restraints and that is always a problem when discussing Eve.
Brief and Eve do not go together. It is a very complex game and those that don't have the fortitude to spend a lot of time reading before they attempt to play it, generally get a bad impression of the game. The tutorial is a good and is a must. I see players all the time asking silly questions that are covered well in the tutorial. Don't bother to play the game if you can't take the tutorial.