To alt or not to alt?

I’m a new player with just one character right now. I’ve been training skills that helped with the initial career arc and also the SoE epic arc, which I recently completed. Now I’ve been doing exploration in WH space and I’m enjoying it a lot (getting blown up a few times, lol). I want to keep doing exploration but I’d like to try some manufacturing and arbitrage, which also interest me. Clearly I will need to train very different skills to give this a go. Are there reasons to do this on an alt instead of my main character? From what I can tell I cannot be training both characters at the same time so I would have to stop training my main to train my alt. Which makes me wonder why I would want to do it on an alt instead of my main anyway. What are the advantages to doing this on an alt instead. If it matters I do have a single omega account. Thanks for any help.

Paying for an Omega alt is one way to do it. Nowadays it is probably better to use your IRL currency to buy plex and buy skill injectors, rather than paying for multiple subscriptions just to train skills.

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I’m and “old” player with only one character :wink:

Just train those other skills to level 3 which is a short train, and then try if you like it. Alts can be useful, but you also have to deal with redundancy and management effort, and training base skills again to make the alts useful. Also split personality, achievements split!?

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Not so, look at Multiple Character Training.

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In general, you will want additional characters on your account for background tasks since they can’t be logged in at the same time as your main. Things this type of ALT can do well are research, manufacturing, and PI. There is an initial investment in multiple character training but CCP offers promotions with free MCT a few times each year and, once trained, they can keep working in the background, providing additional income while your main is logged in doing whatever you enjoy most in the game.

There are other reasons for ALTs on different accounts so they can be logged in the same time as your main character - cyno alts and scouts are common. I frequently have 2 blockade runners on shopping trips and/or taking finished goods to market - it basically lets me get a lot more work done in the time I have available to play the game.

My recommendation is to focus on your main until you have a job for another character, plan their training and then wait for a 90 day subscription with free MCT promotion. As an example, you can train level 4 skills for PI in 2 weeks letting you establish 5 colonies. If all 3 characters on the account do that you can earn a few hundred million ISK/month for a fairly small investment in time.

Good luck.

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If you don’t have at least 50 alts, you’re playing EVE wrong

The rules of thumb are:

  • On any given account (which has three char slots each), only one of those chars should emphasize ship skills such as combat and exploration; the rest should only focus on passive income skills and possibly freight. If possible, a freight pilot should be skilled on a second account and not your first.
  • Multiple Pilot Training allows you to maximize the value of a single Omega account (especially where passive income generation skills are concerned), which is particularly important if you expect to play with fewer accounts (eg. just one). One Omega account where all three chars have maxed out their passive income capabilities may be more valuable than two Omega accounts where only one character each is developed (especially relative to the cost or effort in terms of ISK->PLEX or $$$ of maintaining Omega status on both accounts).
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I’m on an omega account so I will either add an alt on that account or not. I don’t want to pay for another omega account at this point unless it is cheaper than paying to train two characters at the same time on on one omega account. I’ll check into multiple character training. I could do that for a bit if I like the manufacturing side and want to do it enough that I need to seriously invest in training skills. Thanks for all the responses!

I think you will find that the Multiple Character Training is mostly pointless. The happiest Eve players are the ones that play with a single Omega account and make bonds with the other players.

Sure, if you want to the completely and totally disregard ability to maximize science/industry/reactions/marketing/planetary interaction/etc on all three characters. ‘Cause, y’ know, that’s not important at all for maximizing profits or your ability to contribute to your corp/alliance’s growth and operations :crazy_face:

You run your mouth a lot.

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you don’t need to train alts. I only had one character for 2 years, with very different skills trained on him. But having specialized alts is often more efficient:

  1. your main character might be kept busy somewhere which prevents you from doing anythg else. You are in a big bombers fleet or dreads fleet, waiting that the hunters catch somethg? you can do things (industry etc) on your alt
  2. the efficacy of skill injectors decrese when your sp total increases. So if you want a specialized alt (mining, industry etc), it will take less time for you to reach lvl 5 skills with an alt than injecting on your main
  3. your alts can be in different places, and spare you the time for traveling. You can do some explo far away but your industrialist alt can launch jobs somewhere else

Citation needed…

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In the past going with an alt to train just for industry and manufacturing as to not impact your other chars skilled time was a good idea.

With skill injectors the only reason to need an alt now is for Logistics support (RR/scouting), maybe additional dps. If you are able to convert the money you would be paying for the time to get the skills you need in a alt why not just invest it into plex and inject the skills you need?

And the guys are also correct… being in a proper corp means you have access to people that might have these skills for you already that you can make use of. :slight_smile: That is whatr corps are for. Which also means, they make the need for an alt redundant.

MPTCs are faaaaaaaar more economical in terms of SP/ISK than skill injectors are. Cheaper investment - not mutually exclusive either.

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My first Alt took a while, it started working when I needed a Wormhole character after one year. But as I tend to be a slow player… Just have fun! I know several players who started with me, got 4 Alts in Mining Barges after few weeks and were burned out after half a year or just lost their fun - kinda pity, but normal.

My first main is just a mess of skills, and later that said WH Alt became the first Char, while the former first char trained trading and other Highsec skills. Don’t worry about training anything wrong, this game is designed for the long run, and huge problems mitigate soon.

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