Overskilling, in a nutshell, means your experience is not high enough to support your awesomely high skill levels. You tend to end up Overskilled when you fight NPCs but you don’t complete the kill (so you don’t get any of the experience points).

When you are Overskilled, a small yellow “L” will appear next to the overskilled stat when your are viewing your “Stats” screen. It will disappear when you are no longer Overskilled in that particular skill.

Should you be Overskilled, then once a day, every day, each of those skills will drop a very small amount until eventually they are at a level that your experience can support. The amount they drop begins at something like 0.05 but increases a little at a time the further the skills are from the level which your experience can support.

There is a complex formula that you can use to calculate how much experience you need to ensure you don’t overskill, but the following chart shows the overskill limits visually and is certainly easier for those of us without a Maths degree!

Experience TA HA MA WE EN
25,000 35.27 45.27 35.27 23.27 18.27
50,000 38.55 48.55 38.55 26.55 21.55
75,000 41.83 51.83 41.83 29.82 24.82
100,000 45.10 55.10 45.10 33.10 28.10
150,000 51.65 61.65 51.65 39.65 34.65
200,000 58.20 68.20 58.20 46.20 41.20
250,000 64.75 74.75 64.75 52.75 47.75
260,000 65-ish 75-ish 65-ish 53-ish 48-ish
300,000 71.30 81.30 71.30 59.30 54.30
350,000 77.85 87.85 77.85 65.85 60.85
400,000 84.40 94.40 84.40 72.40 67.40
450,000 90.95 100.95 90.95 78.95 73.95
500,000 97.50 107.50 97.50 85.50 80.50
600,000 110.60 120.60 110.60 98.60 93.60
700,000 123.70 133.70 123.70 111.70 106.70
800,000 136.80 146.80 136.80 124.80 119.80
900,000 149.90 159.90 149.90 137.90 132.90
1,000,000 163.00 173.00 163.00 151.00 146.00

According to many, when you have attained 260,000 experience points (in the shaded line above) you are ready to start working on your Advanced Skills (where you swap some of your stats for Advanced Skill Points – ASPs).

Whether working on ASPs, or not – is it a problem to be Overskilled at all?

For the majority of day-to-day players, it is not going to affect you much at all. You will gain experience naturally by doing everything from jumping through a wormhole, buying something from a planet or even accepting a faction job. Eventually it will balance itself out.

There are a small number of hard-core extreme players that need to optimise everything they can in order to get the “best” or the “most” or to do it the “fastest”. These players would be shocked to discover you were considering skilling whilst overskilled.

If you are one of these “power” players, then you are advised to get your skills to the point where they are almost (but not quite) overskilled and then go and kill things to get experience. But you probably knew that already.

For the rest of us… my advice is simple. Just get on with playing the game and having a good time. It isn’t worth worrying about.