The Skill Queue

One thing I find incredibly annoying lately is keeping the skill queue updated. I've been playing less lately but with an even dozen accounts it seems like almost every day at least 3-4 characters need their skill queues updated.

It's a hassle, especially when a character is at the point where all the skills he needs to train next take around a day to train (15 hours, 1 day 20 hours and the like). I can't just not log in for several days because I need to update skill queues nearly every day.

Less annoying but still not fun is when you have a character on a very long skill train (a month or more). You don't have to worry about it for a long time but eventually you will need to update the queue on a specific day which may not fit your schedule by the time it finally rolls around.

I have to wonder why the skill queue has that hard 24 hour limit.

Maybe CCP intentionally wants skill training to be a PITA and force us to log on more often. No doubt it helps make the logon and concurrency numbers look better too.

Or maybe it's about not wanting us to be able put years worth of skills into the queue and not logon at all again until the training is finished.

Whatever the reason, it doesn't matter, 24 hours is too short. Why not change it to be more user friendly?

I'd like to see it change to allow more than a single skill go beyond 24 hours. If they really want to keep the total number of skills in the queue down they could always do something like this.

1. You can always put at least 5 skills in the queue no matter how much time they take.
2. Once there are 5 skills in the queue you can only add another skill as long as the total training time is under 24 hours.

That'd keep things sort of like they are yet be far more flexible for when we need some time away from the game, whether it be just to take a break, go on vacation, a work deployment or whatever.

Addendum

Caedes came up with a great idea in comments.

Your skill queue should be as long as you subbed for the game. Sub for year fill it up, or 1 month. So whatever you have left on your sub should be your skill queue. You played for the time mone as well be able to use it.

I should also add my suggestion doesn't have to be 5 skills, 4, 3 or even 2 would be better than now. I picked 5 because that would help with the most annoying times, when you need to train a bunch of skills that take around 1 day each. But 5 might be too much for really long train time skills. 2 wouldn't help very much with the ~1 day skills but it'd still be better than nothing and it'd be great for the really long trains.

In that case maybe my ideas combined with Caedes' would work better. Allow up to 5 skills (or 2, 3, 4, w/e is deemed appropriate) regardless of how long the total train time is but only if your subscription time is long enough to still be active when the last skill starts.

For that matter even just allowing 2 skills in the queue would be nice. That way you could slap a 1 day 5 hour skill (or an even longer one) into the queue that you really need/want to train next, back it up with a long train time skill and take off for a week (on vacation, working out of town or w/e). When you come back the skill you really wanted to train would be finished and you wouldn't have lost most of a week's worth of training time in the process either.

Training Report - December 2013

Training report for 02 Dec 2013

First some numbers:

12 Accounts
30 Characters

27 Traders (19 finished training trade skills, 8 in various stages of training)
21 (out of 23 total) Empire regions covered by traders

5 Covert Ops pilots
15 Blockade Runner pilots (more in training)
2 Tengu pilots
1 Recon pilot
1 Rattlesnake pilot
30 Vigil pilots =)

16 PLEX per month (12 subscriptions with 4 accounts dual training)

I work a mix of regional and station trading with a fair bit of hauling and courier contracts between regions. I'm always moving up market (dropping cheaper items and replacing them with more expensive items).

I train my traders for 305 orders with the following trade skills: Trade V, Retail V, Wholesale V, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Daytrading V, Marketing V, Procurement IV, Visibility IV and Contracting IV (6,716,785 SP). I consider them to be "finished" training trade skills at that point.

I've been cutting back on the number of accounts dual training (for a while I had 9 dual training) while building up wallet balances, escrow cash and inventory on the newer traders.

Account 1

dual training active

3 fully trained traders, all flying Blockade Runners, covering Essence, Tash-Murkon and Verge Vendor Regions.

Future plans: Continue training navigation, capacitor, shield and fitting skills higher on all three characters for another month or two. Possibly train Industry skills or Covert Ops after that.

Account 2

The traders of Amarr, Dodixie and Rens. All characters on this account are finished training trade skills. Two are Covert Ops pilots, all three are Blockade Runner Pilots.

Future plans: Remain in the Int/Mem remap and continue training support skills on all 3 characters. In particular, Capacitor, Navigation, Engineering and Shield skills. Will probably train one into Industry eventually.

Account 3

Lonetrek Regional Trader - Finished training Trade skills. Covert Ops and Blockade runner pilot. Not currently training.

Jita Station Trader #2 -  Finished training skills. Does nothing but trade officer/deadspace/faction mods. Not currently training.

New Trader - Newer trader, about halfway through training Trade skills. Has 128 orders with all money skills (Accounting, Broker Relations and Margin Trading) at V. Currently training Wholesale V.

Future plans: Continue training trade skills on the new trader. Will train Blockade Runners next after Trade skills are done.

Account 4

Jita Station Trader #1 - Finished training trade skills. Does nothing but station trade skill-books. This is the only character that still deals in very many items in the 1-10 million ISK range. Not currently training.

Exploration / Scout / Scanning pilot - Flies Covert Ops (Buzzard), Recon (Falcon), Tengu and is working towards Black Ops. Has Astrometrics V, all the rest of the astrometrics skills at IV and most shield, navigation, fitting, EW and exploration skills at IV or V. I don't plan on doing any serious trading on this character. He has 29 order slots, more than enough to buy things he needs and that's it. Currently training Jump Drive Calibration V. Might train a few more Int/Mem skills yet but he's getting close to remapping Per/Wil to start training Missiles, Battleship and Black Ops skills.

Future plans: Finish up Int/Mem skills, remap Per/wil  and train for Black Ops battleships and Missile skills. Will eventually start a new character on this account. The Jita trader will probably eventually train Blockade Runners too.

Account 5

Dual training active

My Main - Covert Ops, Tengu, Rattlesnake pilot with all racial Battlecruiser and Destroyer skills at V. Concentrating mainly on Per/Wil combat skills, with particular focus on missile skills (nearly 11 mil SP in missiles). 125 orders, Wholesale IV, Accounting IV, Broker Relations IV, Margin Trading IV and all of the "remote order" trade skills at IV. He hasn't been involved much in trade for some time now.

Currently training Heavy Assault Missiles V

Orvolle Trader - Will be finished training Trade skills tomorrow. Currently training Visilbility IV. Will remap Int/Mem and start training Blockade Runners next

Future plans: My main is finally nearly finished training Missile skills now (nearly 11 million SP in missiles). He can use T2 Light, Heavy, Cruise and Torpedo launchers now and will have Heavy Assaults in a few more days. I hate flying slow ships so battleships are low priority for me but I'll probably get Black Ops eventually. I might go for Recon Cruisers, HACs, Interdictors and HICs too. He'll be staying in the Per/Wil remap for a while yet and will get at least some Gunnery skills to IV or V before remapping. The Orvolle trader will start training Blockade runners tomorrow, once he has Blockade Runners I'll probably start a 3rd character on this account.

Account 6

Hek Station Trader - Finished training Trade skills. Covert Ops and Blockade Runner pilot. Not currently training.

Jita trader #4 - Finished training Trade skills. Handles the Jita implants market and dabbles a little in other markets. Not currently training.

New Trader - Just started actively trading in Devoid. Has all money skills at V and is currently training Retail V.

Future plans: Finish training trade skills on the new trader, then train him into Blockade Runners. Eventually get BRs on the Jita trader too.

Accounts 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

accounts 7 and 9 have dual training active

Six accounts I started just before the news about dual training broke. They're all traders following the same training plan with the first two a day ahead of the next two and the last two roughly a week behind that.

All six are finished training trade skills and fly Blockade Runners now. Several still need another 2-3 weeks training to get Navigation, Engineering and Shield skills up to where I want them at.

All 6 accounts also have 2nd characters in various stages of training Trade skills. All but one of the characters on these accounts are following the same skill plan of training Trade skills (along with a few days worth of basic flying skills) first, then Blockade Runners and finally topping up Int/Mem support skills.

One character is following pretty much the same training plan, only training Block Runners and Int/Mem skills *before Trade skills for a change. That was actually a mistake, I accidentally remapped Int/Mem instead of Cha/Mem as intended but oh well whatever, I'd been thinking about trying that for a while anyhow. In some ways it makes a lot of sense, especially if I start basing more traders out of low and/or null.

Training Report - October 2013

Training report for 02 Oct 2013

First some numbers:

12 Accounts
23 Characters

21 Traders (17 finished training trade skills, 4 in various stages of training)
18 (out of 23 total) Empire regions covered by traders

5 Covert Ops pilots
6 Blockade Runner pilots (7 more coming in under 3 weeks)
2 Tengu pilots
1 Recon pilot
1 Rattlesnake pilot
23 Vigil pilots =)

16 PLEX/mo (4 accounts dual training)

I work a mix of regional and station trading with a fair bit of hauling and courier contracts between regions. I've dropped nearly everything worth under 5 million and most under 10 million on all but one of my traders though there are a few cheap items I still buy on some characters (mostly high volume items I use myself).

I train my traders for 305 orders with the following trade skills: Trade V, Retail V, Wholesale V, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Daytrading V, Marketing V, Procurement IV, Visibility IV and Contracting IV. I consider them to be "finished" training trade skills at that point.

Some traders in smaller regions stop training Daytrading and Marketing at IV instead of V since that's all they need to cover the entire region (in fact a few of the smallest regions can be fully covered with III).

I'm cutting back on the number of accounts dual training (for a while I had 9 dual training) while slowly building up wallet balances and escrow cash on the newest traders.

Account 1

dual training active

Essence (Renyn) Regional Trader - Fully trained trader, blockade runner pilot. Not currently training.

Tash-Murkon (TM Prime) Regional Trader - Fully trained trader, currently training blockade runners.

Verge Vendor (Alentene) Regional Trader - Nearly finished training trade skills. Just needs to finish up Marketing, Daytrading, Procurement and Visibility. Currently training Marketing V.

Future plans: Finish training trade skills on Allentene, then remap Int/Mem and train Blockade Runners + support skills on Allentene too. Keep dual training active another month to finish training blockade runners + support skills on Tash-Murkon.

Account 2

The traders of Amarr, Dodixie and Rens. All characters on this account are finished training trade skills. Two are Covert Ops pilots, all three are Blockade Runner Pilots.

Amarr Station Trader - 305 orders (maxed),  Currently not training.

Dodixie Station Trader - 305 orders (maxed). Cov Ops pilot.

Rens Station Trader - 305 orders (maxed). Cov Ops pilot. Currently training Int/Mem support skills.

Future plans: Remain in the Int/Mem remap and continue training support skills on all 3 characters. In particular, Navigation, Engineering and Shield skills. Maybe train one into Industry eventually.

Account 3

Lonetrek Regional Trader - Finished training Trade skills. Covert Ops and Blockade runner pilot. Not currently training.

Jita Station Trader #2 -  Finished training skills. Does nothing but trade officer/deadspace/faction mods. Not currently training.

New Trader - Brand new trader, just started training less than a week ago. Has trained basic nav/shield/fitting skills and remapped Char/Mem. Currently training basic trade skills.

Future plans: Continue training trade skills on the new trader for the next 3 months. Once she has at least Margin Trading V, Accounting V and Wholesale IV pick a home for her and start actually trading.

Account 4

Jita Station Trader #1 - Finished training trade skills. Does nothing but station trade skill-books. This is the only character that still deals in very many items in the 1-10 million ISK range. Not currently training.

Exploration / Scout / Scanning pilot - Flies Covert Ops (Buzzard), Recon (Falcon), Tengu and is training Int/Mem support/scanning/exploration skills. Has Astrometrics V, all the rest of the astrometrics skills at IV and most shield, navigation, fitting, EW and exploration skills at IV or V. I don't plan on doing any serious trading on this character. He has 29 order slots, more than enough to buy things he needs and that's it. Currently training Jump Drive Operation V. It's a long ways off yet but eventually he'll fly Black Ops.

Future plans: Continue training Int/Mem skills on the exploration/scout/scanning character. Long term this character will eventually remap Per/Wil to train Black Ops battleships and Missile skills. Will probably eventually start a new character on this account too.

Account 5

Dual training active

My Main - Covert Ops, Tengu, Rattlesnake pilot with all racial Battlecruiser and Destroyer skills at V. All by himself on his own account and concentrating mainly on Per/Wil combat skills, with particular focus on missile skills (nearly 10 mil SP in missiles now). 125 orders, Wholesale IV, Accounting IV, Broker Relations IV, Margin Trading IV and all of the "remote order" trade skills at IV. He hasn't been involved much in trade for some time now.

Currently training Combat Drone Operation V

Orvolle Trader - Relatively new trader, not doing a whole lot yet. Currently training Wholesale V.

Future plans: My main is finally nearly finished training Missile skills now (almost 10 million SP in missiles). He can use T2 Heavy, Cruise and Torpedo launchers. I hate flying slow ships so battleships are low priority for me but Rattlesnakes interest me and I'll probably eventually get Black Ops. I might go for Recon Cruisers, HACs, Interdictors and HICs too. He'll be staying in the Per/Wil remap for a long time yet and will probably get a bunch of Gunnery skills to IV or V too. The new trader has another couple months of trade skills training to go and will likely train blockade runners after trade skills are done.

Account 6

Hek Station Trader - Finished training Trade skills. Covert Ops and Blockade Runner pilot. Not currently training.

Jita trader #4 - Almost finished training Trade skills. Handles the Jita implants market and dabbles a little in other markets. Currently training Marketing V.

Future plans: Finish training Marketing V and Daytrading V on Jita. Then start up a new trader up on this account.

Accounts 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Six accounts I started just before the news about dual training broke. They're all traders following the same training plan with the first two a day ahead of the next two and the last two roughly a week behind that.

Five of them started out as secondary traders handling lower priced items in 5 different regions but I gave up on that plan (it was just too much work for the returns involved) and moved them all to new regions. It's far less work now and the returns are much better too.

All six are finished training trade skills, have remapped Int/Mem and are training for Blockade runners now. They'll all be able to fly Blockade Runners in 3 weeks or less. Once they can fly Blockade Runners they'll each spend another 2-3 weeks training Navigation, Engineering and Shield skills up to where I want them at.

In addition I've activated dual training on two of these accounts and started up yet another two new traders. As the original characters finish training Blockade Runners + support skills I'll start up new characters on the other 4 accounts too.

New Business Plan

It took some experimentation (a lot of trial and error) but my routines, methods, quickbar lists and prices have been slowly tweaked and polished to work efficiently in smaller, less populated regions away from the main hubs too.

Naturally I started thinking about expanding to other regions further out from the heart of empire space.

After perusing Ombey's maps late one night very early one morning and taking a good look at travel routes, choke-points, hi to low/null gates, regional gates and such I found several locations that seem to have a lot of potential as spots for expansion.

Initially I was planning on starting another 3 month expansion plan for another 6 new trade alts. The first expansion is practically finished now so I was going to keep the accounts active and train up another 6 new trade alts to expand into new regions with.

I had it all planned out, I even started dual training new alts on 2 of the accounts.

Three Month Expansion Plan - Part 1

I started a 3 month business expansion training plan a few months back. It's almost finished now and I meant to post about it sooner but somehow I never got around to finishing the post until now.

The original plan was to make 6 new accounts and train up 6 or 7 new characters for 3 months (closer to 4 months actually, but it'd only take 3 PLEX), then transfer most of characters to consolidate accounts and reduce monthly PLEX costs thereafter.

3 Plex = 90 days + 21 day trial = 111 days, learning the full training plan takes about 110 days (with +4 implants and Charisma 30, Memory 24 remap).

I recently (like last night) changed my mind and decided to keep all the accounts active. I'm going to start another 3 month expansion plan with 6 more new traders instead. Look for another post about that soon.

All characters at the very least learned Margin Trading V, Retail V and had started learning Wholesale before beginning to do any trading.

Margin Trading

IMO, the most important trade skill for serious traders is Margin Trading, that's why it's the first skill my traders train to V now. I used to train Retail V and Wholesale IV before Margin Trading V when I was training my first few traders.

Margin Trading is simply amazing for buyers, it allows you to leverage your ISK to place more and bigger buy orders, enabling you to buy a lot more stuff.

It may seem counter-intuitive but I believe it's even more important for new players short on cash than it is for alts of established players who already have plenty of cash. If you have 70 mil ISK it's very well worth spending 35 mil on Margin Trading. It doesn't take very long at all to get Margin Trading high enough to more than double your buying power, so spending half (or even a bit more) of your cash to get the skill is definitely worthwhile.

Of course if you never use buy orders you don't need Margin Trading at all. But if you use buy orders much, it's huge! Train it to V ASAP!

Training Another Trade Alt

I sent my "spare" Jita trader off to reopen shop in Clellinon with a different trading strategy a while back. That's working out extremely well especially during the recent Fountain war. Just imagine my surprise when several fairly pricey stacks of faction mods (with 10-20 mods/stack) all sold within hours of posting. =)

Then I decided I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I missed my "spare" trader on Jita and wanted him back so I started training yet another new character to add to my growing army of trade alts.

I made a new character on the main's account and sent him 600 million, enough to buy a PLEX, a bunch of skill-books, a clone, a couple implants, and still have some left over.

I used the PLEX to activate dual training and started training.

Training Report - May 2013

Training report for all my characters dated 03 May 2013

I've worked regional trade back into my trading strategy and cut a bunch of low value items that just aren't worth the time it takes to work them anymore. I've gotten remote order skills to at least IV on all traders now (except the newest traders of course) and have been placing a mix of both station and regional orders on many of them. I've also either already gotten or am working on getting Daytrading V and Marketing V on most of them.

I'll be starting up 6 or 7 new accounts over the next little while. Each account will have one new trader on it. They'll all train hard for about 3 months, then I'll transfer most of them to other accounts to reduce monthly plex needs. Two of the new accounts were started earlier tonight, hopefully I'll find the time to get the rest done within a few days.

Of the new traders one will go to each of Amarr, Dodixie, Hek and Rens so I'll have 2 traders on each of those hubs. One for skill books and one for mods and implants. Another place might get a 2nd trader too. It'll take a month or so before the new traders are ready to start taking over skill-books and over 3 months before they're fully trained.

The remaining 2-3 new traders will go to secondary hubs I don't currently have traders on. They'll probably be primarily sellers, not buyers.

Though I don't list it below, all of my characters (even the non traders) have Contracting II or III. I only use contracts for transferring items between characters and moving items between regions/stations (courier contracts). None of my characters have Corporation Contracting and they don't need it since they're all in NPC corporations.

Account 1

Couster Regional Trader - 269 orders, Tycoon IV, Accounting IV, Broker Relations IV, Margin Trading V and all remote order skills at IV. Currently training Accounting V.

Tash Murkon Regional Trader - 269 orders, Tycoon IV, Accounting V, Broker Relations IV, Margin Trading V and all remote order skills at IV.

Jita Station Trader #3 - 125 orders, Wholesale IV, Broker Relations IV, Accounting IV, Margin Trading V, DayTrading IV and Marketing IV. Buys inexpensive modules (T2 and meta 4) mostly for my own use. Finished training for now.

Future plans: Get Accounting V on Couster, then get Broker Relations V, Tycoon V and Trade V on both Tash-Murkon and Couster. Then remap Int/Mem and work on flying support skills (mainly Navigation, Engineering and Electronics skills) for both characters. Will probably train both characters into Covert Ops eventually and might train one into Blockade Runners.

The Jita trader will be fine with the skills she has for now.

Account 2

The traders of Amarr, Dodixie and Rens. All characters on this account have 305 market orders. With the exception of Dodixie (who has nearly a week to go for Marketing V) they also have Trade V, Retail V, Wholesale V, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Marketing V, Daytrading V, Procurement IV, Visibility IV and Contracting III.

Amarr Station Trader - 305 orders (maxed),  Finished training trade skills.

Dodixie Station Trader - 305 orders (maxed). Currently training Marketing V.

Rens Station Trader - 305 orders (maxed). Finished training trade skills.

Unless one of these characters moves to another station in low/nul they'll never need to train Procurement V or Visibility V. If they don't join a corporation they won't need more contracts either.

Future plans: I intend to train all three into Covert Ops and remap Int/Mem for support skills training next. I might train one into something besides Trade (Industry maybe) before getting Cov Ops though.

Account 3

Lonetrek Regional Trader - 305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Marketing V, Daytrading V and all other remote order skills at IV. Finished training trade skills and remapped Int/Mem. Currently training Covert Ops and Int/Mem support skills.

Jita Station Trader #2 -  305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Marketing V, Daytrading V and all other remote skills at IV. Does nothing but trade officer/deadspace/faction mods. Recently turned the implant business over to a new character.

Future plans: Get Covert Ops and continue training Int/Mem support skills on Lonetrek. Weapon skills don't matter, he's a trader not a fighter. Once he has Cov Ops (less than a month away), I might start training a new trader on this account.

Account 4

Jita Station Trader #1 - 305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V and all remote order skills at IV. Does nothing but station trade skill-books. Finished training trade skills.

Exploration / Scout / Scanning pilot - Flies Covert Ops (Buzzards) and is training Int/Mem support/scanning/exploration skills. Has all Astrometric skills at IV, most shield, navigation, fitting and exploration skills at IV or V. I don't plan on doing any serious trading on this character. He has 29 order slots, more than enough to buy things he needs and that's it. Currently training Evasive Maneuvering V.

Future plans: Continue training Int/Mem skills on the exploration/scout/scanning character. Long term this character will continue following the Covert Ops line into Recon cruisers and eventually Black Ops battleships. Will eventually start a new character on this account or transfer a fully trained trader to it.

Account 5

My Main - On his own account (no more sharing the training queue) and concentrating mainly on Per/Wil combat skills, with particular focus on missile skills. 125 orders, Wholesale IV, Accounting IV, Broker Relations IV, Margin Trading IV and all of the "remote order" trade skills at IV. He hasn't been heavily involved in trade for some time now but does a little low maintenance trading (mostly selling) in various places. Currently training Missile Projection V.

Future plans: My main is concentrating on getting more missile skills to V. Other high priority skills are Caldari Cruisers V, Strategic Cruisers (Tengu), Recon and maybe Black Ops eventually. I hate flying slow ships so battleships are low priority but at some point he'll get Caldari Battleships IV and Gallente Battleships 1 - IV (for Rattlesnakes) too. He'll be staying in the Per/Wil remap for a long time yet and will probably get a bunch of basic Gunnery skills to IV or V too. I'll probably eventually transfer a couple other characters to this account (ones that are finished training for good).

Account 6

Hek Station Trader - 305 orders, Tycoon V, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Daytrading V and all other remote order skills at IV.

Jita trader #4 - 125 orders, Wholesale IV, Broker Relations IV, Accounting IV, Margin Trading V.  Daytrading III, Marketing III. He's taken over the Jita implants market from the Jita mods trader who used to handle both implants and mods. This allows me to cover the mods market much more thoroughly than before. With a few more weeks training this character will be able to cover implants much better too. Currently training Accounting V.

Future plans: Train trade skills on the implants trader to Tycoon IV, get Marketing V on Hek and then get Covert Ops on Hek. After that get Tycoon V and Trade V on the implants trader or maybe start a new character on this account.

Account 7

Amarr Trader #2 - New character just started training. Currently training Cybernetics IV.

Once he finishes training Cybernetics IV he'll remap Charisma/Memory and plug in +4 Charisma, Memory and Willpower implants to speed up training. He (and all the other new traders) will need about 3 months training to get the minimum skills I want them to have before transferring to consolidate accounts and reduce plex needs.

At minimum they'll all get 269 orders with Tycoon IV, Accounting V, Broker Relations V, Margin Trading V, Marketing IV, Daytrading IV and Contracting III.

Once the new traders are done training trade skills two of them will transfer to this account, the other new traders will transfer to open character slots on older accounts and the rest of the new accounts will be allowed to expire... Unless I decide to use them to train capital pilots or something.

Account 8

Dodixie Trader #2 - Same as the character on account 7 above. Will transfer to another account when finished.

20 Milllion SP

My main broke 20 million skill points late last month. 20 million is supposed to be some kind of milestone so I figured a post was called for upon my first character reaching the milestone.

Mox started out as mostly a trader but now he's a pilot flying mainly Stealth Bombers and before that Drakes, hence the heavy investment in Spaceship Command and Missile skills.

Right now he's training Drone Interfacing V with another 16 days to go. He'll likely get Vs in Missile Projection, Rapid Launch and Target Navigation Prediction next. After that it'll be Caldari Cruisers V, Recon and Strategic Cruisers. At some point he'll probably grab Caldari Battleships IV, Gallante Cruisers IV, Gallante Battleships I - IV and Cruise Missiles IV too though those aren't very high priority.

Trading for New Players

New players start out nearly broke and often have trouble making ISK at first. One million ISK is next to nothing once you've been playing for a while but it can seem like an awful lot to new players. Trading is the best way for new players to turn a little ISK into a lot of ISK.

Experienced players usually tell new players to mine, rat, salvage or grind missions to make ISK. The problem with those methods is they all scale mostly with time. You need time for skills training and rep grinding before you start making decent ISK. You need better ships, weapons, fittings, etc., which not only take time but cost more ISK.

If they do mention Trading, about all they say is "Buy low, sell high" or "undercut by 0.01 ISK to maximize profits".

Most players seem to think buy low sell high means insanely low buy prices and ridiculously high buy prices. It even works if you don't mind babysitting your orders for hours at a time and updating them every 5 minutes like a machine... The perfect strat for no-lifers and bots.

For the rest of us who don't want to spend all our game time camping the market about all 0.01 undercuts do is ensure our stuff doesn't sell. Using 0.01 cuts just plays into the hands of the no-lifers and bots. If you only undercut them by 0.01 they'll gladly undercut you right back by 0.01 ISK  (usually within seconds) and keep doing it forever. What works best for me is updating orders once or twice a day with cuts around 10% of the difference between the highest buy order and the lowest sell order.

The no-lifers and bots will sometimes leave large cuts be especially if your orders are only for singles or doubles and not large stacks. Even if they keep undercutting for a while yet, after a few days of big cuts profit margins will usually be slim enough most of the bots drop out and go looking for bigger profits elsewhere.

Trade mostly scales with how much ISK you invest in the market. The more you invest, the more you make. If you make 10% a day, your money doubles every 7-8 days. You'll make more ISK (a LOT more) selling several per day at 5-10% profit than selling 1 a month at 100% profit.

My own personal experience was it took me less than a week to make my first 500 million from scratch. After that my money doubled every 10 days (very consistently) until I hit about 25 billion. Then it slowed down, mostly because it was starting to take too much time updating all orders on all characters every day.

For a little while I just updated about half my orders every day but that was taking too much time too so I switched from regional trading to straight station trading on most characters. Not long after that most of my traders got Wholesale V and Tycoon IV, more than doubling the number of orders. Between all my traders I had over 2000 orders and updating all of them was taking too much time too so I changed my routine again.

Now I run 2 regional (10 jump buy order) traders and 6 station traders with 2 inactive traders (my main and the least trained trade alt). On average I'll update sell orders on about half the characters most days. Buy orders get updated more sporadically, anything I have in stock gets updated at the same time as sell orders, the rest only gets updated once or twice a week.

My next time saving step will probably be to go back to lowball lower priced regional (only 10 or 20 jump though) buy orders on most characters. A lot less work on a daily basis and less total profit but far larger profit margins per item.

Contracting (other than using contracts to move items between characters) is beyond the scope of this article.

Skill Mapping

Your basic attributes (Charisma, Intelligence, Memory, Willpower, Perception) can be remapped taking points out of some areas and putting them into other areas to optimize training time for specific skill sets. Attribute remaps shouldn't be done lightly, you only get one per year, plus two bonus remaps.

IMO you should only remap if either:

1) It's the main character on the account, you have a long term plan and will be staying in the remap for at least 6 months (preferably even longer), or

2) It's an alt (not the main character on the account), you'll be in the remap for a few months to get a specific set of skills trained (Trade skills for example) and won't be doing any further training that'll require another remap for a long time (ideally not until after the yearly remap cooldown resets).

For accounts with 3 alts that all share training queue time roughly equally there is no real main character. In that case I spend 4 months on each alt training skills. By the time they all finish training a year has passed and they all have another yearly remap.

For brand new players on their very first eve online characters I recommend you DO NOT REMAP until you've been playing for at least 3 months. You'll probably wind up training a lot of different things in the first few months so a remap really won't help very much anyhow. It's more likely blowing remaps early will actually slow down your training over the long run because later you won't have a remap available when you could really use one. Also, while you might think you want to train one way at first, by the time you're 3 months in and know more about the game, you'll probably have completely different plans than you had in the beginning.

Save those remaps until you're certain you'll make good use of them!

It's always a good idea to train Cybernetics before anything else so you can use attribute implants to speed up the rest of your training a bit more. If the remap has fewer combined points in Intelligence and Memory than your current attributes then train Cybernetics before remapping, otherwise remap first and then train Cybernetics to save a little more time. Cybernetics I allows you to use +3 attribute implants, IV is necessary for +4 implants and V for +5 implants. For most characters I or IV is all you want, V takes a long time to train and probably isn't worth it for most alts.

Since we're talking about trade skills here we'll be remapping Charisma/Memory. That's marginally better for training Cybernetics than the default attributes new characters start out with so you'll want to remap first and then train Cybernetics.

For trade skills the attributes used are Charisma, Memory and Willpower. The best remap is Charisma/Memory so that's what we'll use here.

You could cut another 5 days off this plan by using 2 remaps (more on this later) but IMO it's not worth blowing a bonus remap just to save 5 more days on a relatively short skill plan. If you do so you'll probably regret it later when you need to train something else and could really use another remap. Saving that remap for later can easily save you 40 or 50 days per year on long skill plans.

Skill Training Plan

Based on my own experience training trade skills on 10 characters this is what I feel is the best training plan for trade skills.

You could shave another 5 days off the plan by using 2 remaps, Willpower/Charisma  to train all the skills with willpower as the primary attribute to V first and then Charisma/Memory for all the rest, but there are a couple problems with that. First, I don't think it's worth blowing a remap just to save 5 days and second, the character becomes a useful trader with a well rounded basic skill set quite a bit sooner following this plan.

Remap Charisma 27, Memory 21 and start training:

Cybernetics I

plug in +3 Charisma, Memory and Willpower implants. On a brand new character you might want to consider a Cerebral Accelerator too (+3 to all 5 attributes for 35 days) if you can afford it.

Train in the following order:

Social I
Contracting I (requires Social I)
Trade I - IV
Retail I - IV (requires Trade II)
Accounting I - IV (requires Trade IV)
Margin Trading I - IV (requires Accounting IV)
Broker Relations I - IV (requires Trade II)

Retail V
Marketing I - II (requires Trade II)
Wholesale I - IV (requires Marketing II and Retail V)

Margin Trading V

Marketing III - IV
Wholesale V
Tycoon I - IV (requires Wholesale V and Marketing IV)

Acounting V
Broker Relations V

That'll give you 269 active orders with all money skills maxed. If you don't need or want the entire plan  I've put breaks in the list at the most sensible points to stop training at. If you want the maximum possible number of active orders (305) then train:

Tycoon V
Trade V

If you want/need remote order skills too then train the following (anytime after Margin Trading IV):

Daytrading I - IV (requires Trade IV)
Marketing I - IV (requires Trade II)
Procurement I - IV (requires Marketing II)
Visibility I - IV (requires Procurement IV)

That'll give you 20 jump range on all remote order skills. If you want/need full regional range on remote skills then train your remote skills to V (preferably after Tycoon IV):

Daytrading V
Marketing V
Procurement V
Visibility V


TLDR version: Trading is one of the most profitable professions in Eve with low entry requirements making it ideal for new players. 0.01 ISK cuts are for no-lifers and bots. If you're not a no-lifer or bot don't play their game, all that'll do is ensure your stuff sells very poorly if at all.

Skill Planning for Traders

There are a total of 13 trade skills,  7 of which I consider important primary skills and 6 that I consider less important secondary skills.

The primary skills are order skills that increase the number of market orders you can place and money skills that affect costs. Trade, Retail, Wholesale and Tycoon are the order skills, Accounting, Broker Relations and Margin Trading are the money skills.

The secondary skills affect remote orders or contracting. They can be useful or not depending on your particular market strategy. These skills are Contracting, Corporation Contracting, Daytrading, Marketing, Procurement and Visibility.

I'm going to assume the reader already knows what the different trade skills are, what they do and how to use them. I won't be describing trading or the skills involved in great detail because that's already been done very well many times before. For anyone who needs those details here's a link to a good article on Trade skills.

Regional Trading vs Station Trading

Before deciding what skills to get and what order to train them in you should decide on a trading strategy first. There are many subtly different trading strats you could use but generally speaking there are 2 main types of trading strategy, Regional Trading and Station Trading.

Station Trading is buying and selling on a single station with no travel involved. Your trader just sits in a station (usually one of the main trade hubs) buying things and posting them for resale on the same station at a profit. He never needs to undock. Your buy orders are limited to being filled on the station you're at. Profit margins tend to be lower than with regional trading but once you find the right price points volume can be very good.

Regional Trading involves a lot of travel, flying to pickup filled buy orders on one station and hauling them somewhere else for resale (typically the main trade hub in the same region). Your buy orders can be filled on many stations within the region, whether it's every station in the entire region or just those within a certain number of jumps. Profit margins tend to be higher but all the traveling takes more time. The bigger you get the more time it takes.

If you're going to do Regional Trading secondary skills can be handy, especially Daytrading and Marketing. I find these two skills particularly useful for reselling items that were sold to me in or behind major gatecamps in low/null where it may not be worth the trouble of transporting the items out. Marketing allows you to post sell orders without traveling to the station the items are on and Daytrading lets you modify orders remotely.

If you're just going to do Station Trading you don't need any secondary skills other than Marketing and you only need Marketing because it's a requirement for other skills.

As the first commenter mentioned Daytrading is also very useful for updating orders while away from the station doing something else like traveling, mining or ratting. Not a must have skill but certainly very convenient. It's great for Regional Traders and characters who do more than just trade. I used it a lot when I was doing mostly Regional Trading. Being able to update orders while flying around in space picking up goods cut the time it took to go through my whole routine nearly in half.

The 5 main trade hubs roughly in order of market size are Jita (by far the largest), Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek.

Most players will do best starting a trading career with Regional Trading. Only move into straight Station Trading once you have some experience playing the markets and a good amount of capital to play with... Or when you find yourself spending too much time hauling all the stuff you're buying around.

Basic Trader

For players who just want good basic trade skills I recommend the following skills.

Trade IV
Retail IV (requires Trade II)
Accounting IV (requires Trade IV)
Broker Relations IV (requires Trade II)
Margin Trading IV (requires Accounting IV)

Regional Traders will probably also want Daytrading IV and Marketing II or III. That'll let you place sell orders from 5 or 10 jumps away and modify all orders (both buy and sell) from 20 jumps away.

These skills give you 53 market orders (out of 305 maximum possible) with lower sales taxes and broker fees. Margin Trading could be considered optional for more casual traders. If you always have plenty of cash on hand you don't need it. If you keep running short of cash when entering buy orders you do need it.

Note: Most players will also want to get Contracting I (requires Social I), it makes moving items between characters a whole lot simpler but it isn't absolutely necessary to play the market.

Serious Trader

For the serious trader who wants more diversification, higher volume and needs to shave costs even further.

Retail V

Marketing II (requires Trade II)
Wholesale IV (requires Retail V and Marketing II)
Accounting V

Margin Trading V

Broker Relations IV
Trade IV
Daytrading IV (for Regional Traders only, requires Trade IV)

These skills give you 125 market orders, lower costs a bit more and stretch your investment capital even further. What order you train the skills in depends on how you want to grow your business. You can diversify into more varied items with more active orders, you can lower costs and stretch your investment capital further, or you can do both.

To get more orders Retail V and Wholesale IV are the skills you want. To lower costs you want Accounting V and to stretch your capital further, Margin Trading V.

Personally I'd recommend getting Retail V, Marketing II, Wholesale IV, Margin Trading V and Accounting V in that order. If stretching your capital is more important to you than getting more orders, get Margin Trading V first. I wouldn't bother with Broker Relations V until after you already have all the other trade skills you intend to get.

On most of my traders I actually trained Tycoon IV before Margin Trading V. Having gotten Margin Trading V first on the last couple characters I feel it works a lot better for me and my trading strategy with that training order. On the next trader I'll probably get Margin Trading V before Accounting V. In fact, I'm considering leaving Accounting V until after both Margin Trading V and Tycoon IV.

Master Trader

This is where I consider a character "finished" training trade skills.

Wholesale V
Marketing IV
Tycoon IV (requires Wholesale V and Marketing IV)
Broker Relations V

Acounting V
Margin Trading V
Trade IV
Retail V
Daytrading IV (for regional traders only)

That'll give you 269 active orders with all money skills maxed, able to place sell orders and modify all orders from 20 jumps away.

Additional Notes

There are still more skills you could learn or train further but do you really need them?

If you're a station trader you don't need remote order skills.

Even if you do need remote order skills who really needs Procurement and Visibility anyhow? Maybe a handful of players working unusual market strategies deep in enemy space.

You could always get another 36 active orders by maxing Trade and Tycoon too but is that really worth nearly a month of skills training time? Eventually sure, but most of us can probably find better things to do with a month of training for the immediately foreseeable future.