Last Updated on 2022-01-01 by Kshal Aideron
Skill points, or commonly referred to as SP among Eve pilots, are what you use to get new skills for your Eve Online character(s). This guide will go over how skill points work and ways to earn more.
Everyone “Earns” Skill Points by Training Skills
Unlike other MMO’s or even single player games, you don’t earn experience or skill points by going out and killing things. Eve Online takes a vastly different approach and instead you earn skill points by training skills. What this means is, as long as you have skills in your skill queue, you’re “earning” skill points.
Breakdown of Earning Skill Points by Training:
- putting skills in the skill queue
- being in the game isn’t required
- don’t have to actively play your character
Now, there is one thing you should be aware of. While you can have 3 characters on an account, only 1 of the three can be training skills at a time. Unless you buy something called a MCT or multi character training. You can either buy this in the Eve Store directly, or buy a certificate in game for isk.
Earning Skill Points Faster
There are 3 ways you can earn skill points faster in game.
- Have an Omega account
- Use a cerebral accelerator
- Use training implants in a training clone
Omega Account: I’ve talked a bit about Alpha vs. Omega, but I’ll repeat myself with a few Omega specific facts. An Omega account is the Eve Online paid subscription. You can pay with either real life money (via credit card) or you can earn enough isk in game to buy 30 days of Omega for 500 plex.
Besides having no skill, ship, or mission level limits, one big advantage of Omega is it trains skills twice as fast as Alpha.
Cerebral Accelerator: I’ve also gone over Cerebral Accelerators in the past. When the accelerator is consumed, your character’s attributes are boosted. This means you’ll train skills faster than normal. You do get some free accelerators from time to time. You can also buy them in packages you can buy for real life money. Make sure you check out the linked article so you can make sure to get the most of your accelerator.
Training clone: By putting attribute enhancing implants in your clone’s head, you’ll be able to increase your character’s attributes and train skills a little faster than normal. The better the implant, the higher the attribute, the faster you train a skill.
There is a slight downside of using a training clone. If you forget about the implants and go out and get your pod blown up (podded), you’ll lose those implants. This is where the Cerebral Accelerator is slightly superior. You can blow up your pod 100x while it’s running and not lose it.
Using Skill Injectors to Increase SP
Now, unlike earning SP by having skills in the queue, you can also buy skill point injectors. Injectors give you a certain amount of unused SP to buy skills outright (if you have enough SP that is).
How to Get a Skill Injector: simply go and purchase a skill injector on the market for isk and inject it into your character!
The More SP a Character Has, the Less SP an Injector Gives: one caveat to watch out for is the fact that there are diminishing returns on skill injectors. If we look at a large skill injector that gives 500,000 skill points…
- 5 million SP or less – character will get the full 500,000 (100%)
- 5-50 million SP – character will get 400,000 (80%)
- 50-80 million SP – character will get 300,000 (60%)
- 80 million+ SP – character will get 150,000 30%)
As you can see, skill injectors really benefit less experienced characters vs. characters that have been around and gotten a lot of skill points.
Please note that unused skill points DO count against you. So if you’ve earned your 150k SP bonus for logging in as Omega and haven’t redeemed it yet, are about to go into a level of SP that gets you less for an injection… inject first then redeem your skill points.
Is Injecting Skill Points Worth It? This really is a whole new article because my personal answer is “it depends”.
Bonus Skill Points
From time to time, CCP will give us bonus skill points. Here’s some of the ways they’re handed out:
- Log in Reward: after you log in for so many days, you can earn SP that you can redeem in game.
- Skilling Spree: from time to time there will be a skilling spree in game. Kill X amount of rats and get skill points. It goes from 1 rat for 2,500 skill points to 15 for 25,000. This is completely random.
- Event Log in Rewards: occasionally there are events held like Gallente Federation Day or the Crimson Harvest that will hand out bonus SP for logging in over the course of so many days.
SP as Part of Bought Packages
And last, but not least, there are skill points that come as part of packages from the Eve Online Store that can be purchased with real money.
For example, the Bronze Starter Pack currently gives you 100,000 SP for $9.99 while the Gold Starter Pack gives you 500,000 for $49.99. These skill points can be redeemed in game and go straight into your unused skill queue. Unlike injectors, you get the full amount that you purchased. Note that these packages are one time purchases.
Are these packages worth it? They can be if you have the money to spare. If your character already has a lot of skill points, since there are no diminishing returns, the 1.5 million SP Training Boost Bundle is REALLY worth it as is the packages that give 250 to 500 million SP. They also give Omega time, ship skins, and other little odds and ends sometimes.
