Rookie Skill Training Bonus

My skills were around 800k by the time I even realised I was receiving a rookie training bonus. New players get a 100% bonus to training time until their total skills reach 1.6 million.

CCP Quote: “Newly created pilots will train skills 100% faster than older pilots, until they have reached 1.6 million skill points. The first skill that will train past 1.6 million skill points will not receive the training speed bonus.”

Up until that point my plan about what to train next had been pretty random. I hadn’t even noticed that some skills had training time penalties (that’s the x1, x2, x3 etc. you see in the descriptions). It’s a good idea to try and squeeze in the skills you most need before you hit the 1.6m point.

So for the first time I started to think about what I actually wanted to train and this meant thinking about what I ultimately wanted to do in EVE. I gave up on that quite quickly as I still didn’t have much idea of what I wanted to do.

Mining? Yea, its OK
Missioning? Yea, its OK
Exploration? Sounds interesting
Industry? Maybe
Pirating? No thanks, well maybe

I decided the best bet was to just training the learning skill (for now anyway). I followed this guide, although I didn’t follow the implants as that was too much to spend at this point in my career (I felt).

So my short term goal became training learning skills, mine and mission whilst I work out what I want to do. The missioning and mining lead to a desire for a few skills and so they got mixed in with the learning plan along the way. Evemon is a tool that helps you plan your training, I recommend you give it a try if you haven’t already.

I tried to squeeze in as many skills as I could before I hit the 1.6m barrier and so as time went on more of the higher level training skills fell off my hit list as I was increasingly doing shorter and shorter skills so I could get eth maximum benefit of the skill bonus.

Inevitable I eventually lost the bonus. But continued training learning skills as a priority. I quite enjoyed mining. Would I become a miner? That’s boring right? I actually started to like it, but would my interest still be there after I had maxed my mining abilities and wasn’t chasing a higher yield anymore?

Time would tell…