Tip #5: Skills

In addition to the skills required to fly your ship of choice, it's important to train the relevant support skills your ship fitting requires. While level 1 and 2 missions are relatively easy, level 3 and 4 missions will require careful consideration of your ship's tank and your support skills. There's no sense in rushing to get into a battleship to run level 4 missions unless you've got the skills to make good use of it. Armour tanking ships should have Hull Upgrades 4 to use tech II armour hardeners and repairers. Similarly, shield tanking ships should have tactical shield manipulation level 4 to use tech II active shield hardeners and all other shield skills should be trained up well. Gunnery or missile skills to improve damage are also important as they help speed up the mission-running process.

There are also a number of social skills designed specifically for mission-runners. Training Connections increases your effective standings with friendly corporations by 4% per level, Social increases standings gains by 5% per level and Negotiation increases agent pay by 5% per level. There's also a set of specialist agent skills, each of which increases agent loyalty point rewards by a further 5% per level. Each agent is affected by two of these specialist skills, adding up to a significant bonus in mission rewards when trained up. Details of which type of agent uses which specialist skills are available in this handy table on the official EVE Isk wiki.

Summary:

There's a lot more to missions than what I've been able to fit into this guide. While EVE Isk is most often lauded for its PvP and sandbox style gameplay, I recommend that everyone tries missions now and then. Using the information in this three part guide and the plethora of useful online resources available, it won't be long until you've mastered the art of mission-running in EVE Isk.