Eve Online has an insane number of skills to train. It can be often hard to work out what to train next. What even is the Magic 14? Should you even get it? When Should you Get it?

Like many things in Eve Online players try to work out the best approach for doing certain things. That even comes to skill training. The Magic 14 is simply skills that have some kind of effect on just about every ship in the game. From the starter rookie ship up to capital ships.

That also means they are high-value skills. Once you train that skill you now get the benefit of that skill in some way or a matter for the rest of the time you play Eve Online. That is quite a benefit if you ask me.

Some of these skills are even requirements for getting other skills in the Magic 14. As I have them all shown above. Notice how some had to be trained to level 2 or even three. The great thing is that it takes under 1 day's worth of training on an Alpha Character just to get all these started.

For new or returning players who don’t know where to find the skills tab, it’s quite easy. There is a button right under your character’s icon on the upper far left. If you have no skills training, it will show a paused symbol of II and if it’s training it will show a semi-completed circle with the current progress of the skill in training. From there you just need to click on the skill catalog.

As far as the kind of player who should focus on training the Magic 14. I’d say those who perform PvE or PvP content in combat ships. While you might think that is a strange way to word things. There are ways of doing both kinds of activities without ships and even non-combat activities in ships.

Spaceship Command

As far as the actual 14 skills themselves here they are. Spaceship Command. No matter what ship you will fly in Eve Online they all will require some level of this skill. With the more advanced ships requiring high levels.

Engineering

Next up you have your engineering skills. These help you fit better modules onto your ship or increase how well your capacitor performs. Things like CPU Management and Power Grind Management increase those stats when trying to fit a ship. Meanwhile, Capacitor Systems Operations and Capacitor Management make it, so you don’t run out of cap so quickly. Oh, the painfully early days of not having enough capacitor to jump certain ships in large systems from one end to another without the ship having to stop to recharge.

Navigation

This gets us into Navigation. You have things like Navigation that increase movement speed. Drive Operations that will surely help fix that issue of running out of capacity. Along with Evasive Maneuvering that makes you turn faster.

Shields And Armor

Next up depending on the classic ship you plan to fly you might choose to prioritize one over the other in the short term but getting both in the long term. I’m talking about Shields and Armor. If you are flying Caldari or Minmator you are going to want to get those shield skills. If you are flying Amarr or Gallente you will want those armor skills. While there will be expectations to the rule these are the general guidelines for Shield Mangement, Shield Operations, Hull Upgrades, and Mechanics skills.

Targeting

While early on so many other skills are more helpful. At some point, you will also want to level up the Targeting skills as well. A skill like Signature Analysis will speed up locking speed. Meanwhile, Long Range Targeting increases how far out you can lock a target.

When To Get These Skills

I feel those who try and force players to go right for level 5 of all Magic 14 skills tend to cause the same issue as we had back in the old days. You feel like you are stuck in a frigate forever. The truth of the matter is some even many players have been playing for years who still don’t have level 5 in all the Magic 14 skills.

As far as I'm concerned. A player should try and find a ship they enjoy flying to the point they can start to master things. I feel a good point for that is either a tier 2 frigate or a cruiser. This starts giving you a few options of things you can enjoy the game before you start focusing on other things.

Next comes the debate of how high to even level the skills up in the first place. Like a lot of things getting a skill to level 4 in general is good enough in the short term. The amount of time to train skills that high is also not horrible. One day however getting the Magic 14 is going to be some kind of goal most have.

However, if you are starting as an Alpha and don’t plan on becoming an Omega till you hit the 5 million skill point cap. Some of these skills you can only train to level 3. I also find that is exactly a good starting point for most.

On an Alpha account, it takes just under 8 days to train the Magic 14 to level 3. Some of these skills you will discover on a fresh account are already trained for you. Saving you some time and making things a little easier for you. So, getting the Magic 14 to level 3 within your first 2 months of playing Eve Online is quite a reasonable goal to have.

Now the good news is if you have yet to use someone recruit a friend link. I have my link at the bottom of this post. It will get you 1 million skill points which will more than cover getting you to level 3 in the Magic 14 and help you get into some of the smaller ships that many including myself flew around for quite some time.

Getting just to level 3 in these skills I find is a perfect balance between allowing a new player to train for some activities they want to get started in. While also giving them some guidance on setting themselves up for a successful future.

To know if a certain level of a skill requires being an Omega or even the entire skill itself. You will see a yellow box indicating what levels require Omega. As we can see Shield Management level 5 requires Omega.

When it comes to training these to level 4 I'd say have that done around the four-to-six-month mark. Some of the skills can’t be trained to level 4 on an Alpha. Also, note if you are playing on an Omega, it’s not going to take 44d 11h to train them all to level 4 it will take around half that time. So it’s not that bad for how long you have played to demote some of that time into getting the Magic 14 to level 4.

Many players will choose for quite some time to let most of the Magic 14 skills remain at level 4. Depending on the kind of ships you end up flying and your fitting needs among other things. You will start to find benefits to leveling certain skills to level 5 or others.

As for getting all 14 to level 5 that will take some time. This was shown on an Alpha account that can’t train all of these skills in the first place to level 5. It would take 251 days and 11 hours. While it’s half that time on an Omega you can start to see that is quite the undertaking.

Final Thoughts

Having these skills to at least level 4 makes most ships quite powerful and will even solve many short-term issues of trying to fit certain popular community builds. Beyond level 4 it ends up becoming down to the player which ones they want to invest nearly sometimes half a month into getting that final level. While an extra 2-5% here or there might not sound like a lot. It all adds up in the end.

While one could just as easily turn the Magic 14 into say the Magic 16 or even higher. These are the skills players are talking about when they say the Magic 14. Where some are better than others and can even be a bit depending in their value depending on the ship you are flying. They all at least have some kind of impact that will carry with you almost no matter what you end up flying.

Information

New to Eve Online or a returning player? Use my recruit a friend referral link and get 1 million skill points on signing up or logging into your Eve Online account (can only be claimed once per account). Disclosure: I might receive in-game rewards.

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Online.