One million
skill points, even mentioning the amount, a one with six zeros behind made my
eyes roll once more when i wrote this sentence.
It is, to
my knowledge, the biggest gift CCP ever offered to its playerbase and most likely a one off by
the studio. To put it back into context, there were two types of “skill points
gifts” CCP does during event periods :
- Cerebral boosters : such as the “men at arms” booster offered when you refer a friend. They allow to boost your attributes and increase your SP earned per hour. They would work like a drug, and as such, are affected by the Biology skill, which is why it is always advised to train biology V to make the best out of those.
- Raw skill points : the amounts vary widely, but those rewards would range from 20000 to 100000 skill points.
This is why
ONE MILLION skill points is a mind-boggling amount to me. A toon, reasonably
optimized to learn a certain set of skills (ship flight as an example) could
earn around 2500 SP per hour. Which means this one million gift sits at around
400 hours of “free” xp.
At the
current pace Skill injectors go, sitting at almost one billion per injector(24/05/2019),
this gift is at least worth 2 Billions isk. But in reality it is much more due
to the regressive nature of skill injectors : your return on interest lowers
with the amount of skill points you have.
For me, an
injector would offer 300 000 skill points, one million is equal to 3.33
skill injectors, so almost 3.4 billions.
Now that I
have explained how amazing I felt redeeming those precious skill points, the
question is : where to spend those ?
With only two
accounts, the task was relatively easy for me.
I trained accounting
and broker relations to level five on my Jita seller.When we look at their description, their effects look
unimpressive without context.
Let us talk about accounting first : how much does 10% reduction on a 2% taxes on sales mater anyway ? It’s 0,2%, it looks negligible.
Let us talk about accounting first : how much does 10% reduction on a 2% taxes on sales mater anyway ? It’s 0,2%, it looks negligible.
It is
everything but negligible when you check it with the long term in mind, especially as you
scale up your industry. Per month, I have a gross income of almost 20 billion isk, a
0,2% reduction in taxes is equal to almost 40 million per month.
If we take a pure mathematical approach, it would take me almost 100 months to get my “return on investment” and this very limited calculation does not take into account the potential inflation EVE is subject to.
If we take a pure mathematical approach, it would take me almost 100 months to get my “return on investment” and this very limited calculation does not take into account the potential inflation EVE is subject to.
The same calculation comes into play when we observe Broker Relations : you flat out remove 0,1% from the value of the sell orders you place per level.
For the
sake of argumentation I’ll say sell orders values are equal to the actual sale value (which
is a very plausible estimate if you are in a isk war situation : prices have a
very slim variation between the initial sell order and the actual sell price,
as negligible as a hundred isks. When we are talking about multimillion
transaction, it can be called negligible)
Here again, if we take my gross income of 20 billion isk : it shaves 20M of extra margin on our sale.
If I
cumulate both : I end up with a pretty nifty 60M isks saved that will go in my
pockets. It sure isn’t as flashy as saying “I’m training precursor cruiser V or a carrier skill to V”. Alas, taking everying into account, small additions cumulate into nifty sums
Furthermore, the road i have before me is long, getting a return on the initial 3.4B isk value will happen one day. In the end, it will slowly snowball and scale up as my industry plans scale up a level. As a bonus, it will profit me when i sell pretty much anything, if i want to dabble into market trading, the toon is ready, which is always an upside !
Furthermore, the road i have before me is long, getting a return on the initial 3.4B isk value will happen one day. In the end, it will slowly snowball and scale up as my industry plans scale up a level. As a bonus, it will profit me when i sell pretty much anything, if i want to dabble into market trading, the toon is ready, which is always an upside !
Talking
about scaling up : I invested the one million skill points received
on my alt account in mass production and advanced small ships production on my
alt account. This placed me 14 days ahead of my schedule when it comes to make
it ready to produce tech 3 destroyers. A surprise, but a welcome one for sure.
It is time
for me to consolidate assets and prepare isk in advance to buy everything
for the day it becomes ready to produce those precious jackdaws and hecate.
Doubling my production capacity will sure feel awesome. And it will make those
skill points invested in my trader pull their worth in isk in a shorter
period of time.
Wandering
thoughts :
One million
skill points gifted on all accounts ought to shake some parts of the game and
the market. Many will try new ships and the next weeks will most likely be
interesting to watch from the market side. I have a special interest on
triglavian market as their ships are the current hot stuff and new tech two
ships with yet unseen capacities are to be released.
We sure play in interesting times.
Until next time,
Produce well
