New Character Creation Guide - The long version
By Akita T
1. Introduction
One thing you should always remember: it DOES NOT matter what race, bloodline and ancestry you pick, you can end up training the same things everybody else can train.
Given enough time, you can even train each and every skill in the game to level 5... well, it will take a couple of decades to do it, but you get the idea.
The only difference between characters (other than the portrait) is HOW FAST you train those skills.
The formula is pretty simple: every minute, you get a certain amount of skillpoints equal to "primary" attribute score plus half of "secondary" attribute score.
So, for example, if you train a skill that has Perception primary and Willpower secondary (most ship and weapon skills have that combination), and if your character has currently 16.50 PER and 11.00 WIL, you will be getting 22 SP per minute (or 1320 SP per hour, or 31680 SP per day).
Every character starts with 39 "base" attribute points, 34 of which are determined by race, bloodline and ancestry, while the other 5 can be manually distributed (no more than 3 of the 5 points on a single attribute though).
The average BASE attribute value is therefore 39/5=7.8
Recently, you also get "free learning skills" depending on school picked (military, bussiness or industry), with one L4 and one L2 "+1 per level attribute boosting" skill already trained, on top of some levels in "learning" (+2% to all attributes per level).
AT MOST, with all basic and advanced learning skills trained up to L5 (takes a very long time), and with +5 implants plugged in (very expensive to get, also need L5 in Cybernetics to use), you can get +15 to each base attribute, for a total of 39+5*15=114 attribute points, and with L5 learning it's 114*1.1=125.4 total maximum possible attribute sum.
The "maximum" average is therefore (7.8+15)*1.1=25.08
NOTE: In-game, an attribute value of (for instance) 20.90 is still DISPLAYED as "20", even if the influence on training is almost the same as having a "true" value of 21.
2. What race/bloodline/ancestry should I pick ?
First of all, you have to consider the following fact:
you CAN NOT change your choice once you created your character.
Even if you change the portrait, it NEEDS to be of the same bloodline and gender as the initially chosen character.
So, for instance, even if you are attracted by the Caldari Achura attributes, the male Achura portraits are probably the ugliest-looking ones around. Some people actually refuse to create an Achura character because of that (true story).
Also, the "roleplay" element is pretty important, so you might want a certain race, or even a certain bloodline for RP reasons rather than aesthetic or practical ones.
Considering the learning skills level the playing field pretty much in the long run, you might consider picking a "suboptimal" character of your desired race/bloodline simply because you like the way they look or just love their background story.
You will probably have a much tougher start and a slower overall progress, but at least you won't hate your own in-game face.
This guide will let you quickly browse through various stats, so you can make an informed guess with minimal effort as to what bloodline best accomodates not only your "need for effectiveness" but also visual appeal and even roleplay elements.
The final choice is yours, and if you really, really want to pick the worst possible long-term combo just because you love the face/story, it's your right to do so.
Realistically speaking, long-term, you will only be about 20% behind the rest that picked "the best combo", so it's not a disaster.
3. So is there such a thing as a "good" and "bad" pick ?
The long version involves lengthy talks about specialized characters and limited training time, a discution that mainly concerns alts (secondary/alternate characters, built for specific purposes). Also, such "alts" will usually rely on funding from the "main" in the early days, so it's even less of an issue for them.
The short version (so, for genuine new players) is YES, there is such a thing as "good" vs "bad" choices.
The reason is pretty simple, actually.
A "primary" (or sole) character will grow and become self-sustainable in a reasonable timespan only if you have a reasonably well-rounded selection of skills.
You can't trade without ISK reserves, you need to run missions or mine to acquire ISK in the early days, you also need to devote as much as possible time to perfecting the learning skills.
Well, at least once you have enough skills done to cover your "moneymaking" needs, that is... DO NOT start training advanced learnings or something like that before you have a decent capital aquiring method, or else you will suffer.
Basically, you need a decent starter attribute spread that will not stiffle your later growth, while still providing you with a decent amount of "oomph" in the early phase.
You will want to get as little charisma as possible, because there's simply not much to train (and especially not to L5) that requires charisma (neither as primary nor as secondary) early on.
The next attribute you shouldn't care too much about is willpower. Willpower is a secondary attribute in spaceship command and weapon skills, so you should only minimize it (if at all possible) when you have a very high perception.
Memory is not only a secondary attribute in support skills, but also primary in the basic learnings and drones (alongside, you guessed it, perception).
Intelligence is also a very important attribute, primary in all support skills and science, and secondary in basic learning.
So your "attribute importance order" is:
PER >= INT >= MEM >= WIL >>> CHA
4. The tables, the raw figures, the math behind it.
I have created a (rather objective, even if not obvious at first sight) "overall score" for each of the 36 possible ancestry choices, based on the discussed issues.
The exact formula used is rather irrelevant, but for the reference, it is :
((10*per+9*int+5*mem+4*wil+cha)*(2*per+2*int+mem-cha)-3114)/652.1
A score of "8" vs a score of "1" does NOT mean the choice is eight times better, it's only a relative indication of "versatility" and "ease of use", on a scale of 10 (most versatile) to 0 (least versatile).
P.S. Due to constant questions about this listing above, clearning up a few confusions...
The above list covers "versatility".
Versatility does NOT mean "this is the best character you can pick".
It only means "this is the LEAST BAD character you can pick OVERALL if you have no idea what you'll be doing".
It's a table made for the persons who never played EVE before, who have no clue what to pick for their first character, and even less of a clue about what they'll want to do later on in the game.
Yes, it could mean that if you do pick the most extreme and unlikely job, this "overall least worst" choice could mean you actually got one of the worst choices, so it's not a win/win situation.
HOWEVER
If you KNOW EXACTLY what you want to be or do, and you have your skillplan mapped out for years to come, then this table above is useless to you.
What you want to do instead is get EVE-HQ, plug in that skillplan, and let the program pick the best race/bloodline/school and even the custom skillpoint distribution for you (it actually calculates just about every combination, but you sort by completion time and pick one of those with the lowest optimal completion times).
5. So what does that mean and what should I do ?
Basically, go from top to bottom of this list and pick the highest on the list that appeals to you.
Then, distribute the 5 "custom" points either to alleviate some problems in certain departments (depends a lot on your initial bloodline/ancestry choice).
Or, you can simply boost perception, intelligence and even memory : 3P/2I, 2P/2I/1M and even 3I/2M are very popular choices regardless of bloodline.
Once "in", train whatever helps you make ISK faster, MAKE some ISK fast, then buy the remaining learning skills (you only have 3 of the 6 basics, and you could already train one advanced, but it costs 4.5 mil ISK, money better spent on a cruiser in the first days).
Train all learning skills to L2, the very least, in the first day. Try to get most (if not all) of them to L3 in the first 2-3 days.
Getting L3 science and then L1 cybernetics, plugging in a set of (cheap) +1 implants is also a very good idea.
REMEMBER to train whatever you NEED first, and NOT the full learning skilltree.
For your first two-three weeks, getting a bunch of profession-related skills up to speed is a lot more important.
It will seriously hamper your progress in the long run if you fail to "make ISK" and focus on "getting the learnings done".
ONLY train the learning skills first if you already have a "main" account and this one is your secondary.
In this case, getting (via funding from main) a set of +3 implants and all L4 basic/L3 advanced learnings is mandatory as soon as possible.
After that, it's really your choice, but that's already a lot of attribute points within less than two weeks (normally).
6. Final words of wisdom ?
In this forum, you also have a pretty good outlook on how the starting skills get distributed between the races and schools.
Starter skillpack comparation thread
Only the RACE and the "profession" matters.
Bloodline and ancestry don't influence the starter skillpack, only the attributes you use to furter train/refine your choices.
You might want to get EVE-Mon downloaded, installed and configured once you created your character.
Just make sure you download it from THEIR site and not any 3rd party mirror, as you really don't want to end up with any keyloggers or trojans.
As for the "is it safe to use EVE-Mon" question, it has been repeatedly answered on these forums, even by devs.
Their reply: "we use it ourselves a lot".
If you're really paranoid (and have a bit of a programming bone in you), you can download the source code, check it, and build it yourself.
Oh, and as they always say... whenever you don't know when you're coming back online, ALWAYS set a long skill training.
Better train bits and pieces of a not-so-urgent L5 skill than miss several minutes, hours or even days of training time.
As skill training progress is not lost, you'll thank me later when " battleship L5 training complete" finally comes into EVE-Mail a lot sooner as expected/planned.
7. A FEW (LATE) WORDS ABOUT EVE-HQ
What is and where to get EVE-HQ ?
Forum thread - explains what it is, what it can do, etc.
Their downloads page - if you think you already know what it is, just download it directly.
How to use EVE-HQ to get your optimal character build for a certain skillplan ?
First, make sure you have it downloaded, installed, working properly, etc.
I had no trouble doing any of that, but if you do, ask in their forum thread or something like that.
Open up the "Character Creation" plug-in (hopefully you got that too already).
Go under "Character Goal Seek" and fill in your desired skillplan (might take a while, make sure you got them all). It automatically fills in prerequisites, so if you know you don't want any of the prerequisites trained higher, don't bother.
The most IMPORTANT thing now is the "allow attribute variations" checkbox.
Leaving this box unchecked (default) means all characters get +1 in each custom skillpoint.
You still get the best choice (race/bloodline/job) without it selected, but you don't know what the optimal custom attributes would be.
However, it calculates a LOT faster... on very, VERY long skill plans, with this checkbox selected, you could be waiting for HOURS (yes, hours, not minutes) before a result comes in.
On short skillplans however, it's not a problem, you might get a result in seconds.
NOTE : the times you get under "Optimal Queue Time" are implantless times, for all characters.
Obviously, if you train cybernetics and plug in some implants, the times will go down... but overall, the order will remain the same between characters.
A very short example, say you want the fastest way to a Gallente mothership alt (just the bare minimum needed to board it, not actually fly it properly) : only add "Gallente Carrier III" to the list.
Since this is a relatively short plan (not extremely short, but short enough so I'm not afraid I'll have to wait for hours), I'll also "allow attribute variations"... and then click "SEEK GOAL".
After you click, get away from the machine and let the calculations run. A progress bar will slowly fill up (if you have am extremely long plan, it could be minutes before the first bar fill shows up, so be patient). In my case (the above example), the first bar showed up in a couple of seconds.
About 15 minutes later (yeah, I told you the "allow attribute variations" makes it take a much longer time... and I don't have an extremely fast machine either), I'm presented with the results list.
Clicking on the "opt queue time" header orders it by completion time : SCREENSHOT .
"Std queue time" would be the skillplan WITHOUT any aditional learnings. Of course, nobody in their right mind would use that, but who knows.
Doing the same thing without attribute variations yields results in about 40 seconds (yeah, seconds, not 15 minutes), and the results are not THAT different : SCREENSHOT .
Also, you can easily decide where the custom points should go to without having to resort to the long search, just by looking at the next few best options.
1. Introduction
One thing you should always remember: it DOES NOT matter what race, bloodline and ancestry you pick, you can end up training the same things everybody else can train.
Given enough time, you can even train each and every skill in the game to level 5... well, it will take a couple of decades to do it, but you get the idea.
The only difference between characters (other than the portrait) is HOW FAST you train those skills.
The formula is pretty simple: every minute, you get a certain amount of skillpoints equal to "primary" attribute score plus half of "secondary" attribute score.
So, for example, if you train a skill that has Perception primary and Willpower secondary (most ship and weapon skills have that combination), and if your character has currently 16.50 PER and 11.00 WIL, you will be getting 22 SP per minute (or 1320 SP per hour, or 31680 SP per day).
Every character starts with 39 "base" attribute points, 34 of which are determined by race, bloodline and ancestry, while the other 5 can be manually distributed (no more than 3 of the 5 points on a single attribute though).
The average BASE attribute value is therefore 39/5=7.8
Recently, you also get "free learning skills" depending on school picked (military, bussiness or industry), with one L4 and one L2 "+1 per level attribute boosting" skill already trained, on top of some levels in "learning" (+2% to all attributes per level).
AT MOST, with all basic and advanced learning skills trained up to L5 (takes a very long time), and with +5 implants plugged in (very expensive to get, also need L5 in Cybernetics to use), you can get +15 to each base attribute, for a total of 39+5*15=114 attribute points, and with L5 learning it's 114*1.1=125.4 total maximum possible attribute sum.
The "maximum" average is therefore (7.8+15)*1.1=25.08
NOTE: In-game, an attribute value of (for instance) 20.90 is still DISPLAYED as "20", even if the influence on training is almost the same as having a "true" value of 21.
2. What race/bloodline/ancestry should I pick ?
First of all, you have to consider the following fact:
you CAN NOT change your choice once you created your character.
Even if you change the portrait, it NEEDS to be of the same bloodline and gender as the initially chosen character.
So, for instance, even if you are attracted by the Caldari Achura attributes, the male Achura portraits are probably the ugliest-looking ones around. Some people actually refuse to create an Achura character because of that (true story).
Also, the "roleplay" element is pretty important, so you might want a certain race, or even a certain bloodline for RP reasons rather than aesthetic or practical ones.
Considering the learning skills level the playing field pretty much in the long run, you might consider picking a "suboptimal" character of your desired race/bloodline simply because you like the way they look or just love their background story.
You will probably have a much tougher start and a slower overall progress, but at least you won't hate your own in-game face.
This guide will let you quickly browse through various stats, so you can make an informed guess with minimal effort as to what bloodline best accomodates not only your "need for effectiveness" but also visual appeal and even roleplay elements.
The final choice is yours, and if you really, really want to pick the worst possible long-term combo just because you love the face/story, it's your right to do so.
Realistically speaking, long-term, you will only be about 20% behind the rest that picked "the best combo", so it's not a disaster.
3. So is there such a thing as a "good" and "bad" pick ?
The long version involves lengthy talks about specialized characters and limited training time, a discution that mainly concerns alts (secondary/alternate characters, built for specific purposes). Also, such "alts" will usually rely on funding from the "main" in the early days, so it's even less of an issue for them.
The short version (so, for genuine new players) is YES, there is such a thing as "good" vs "bad" choices.
The reason is pretty simple, actually.
A "primary" (or sole) character will grow and become self-sustainable in a reasonable timespan only if you have a reasonably well-rounded selection of skills.
You can't trade without ISK reserves, you need to run missions or mine to acquire ISK in the early days, you also need to devote as much as possible time to perfecting the learning skills.
Well, at least once you have enough skills done to cover your "moneymaking" needs, that is... DO NOT start training advanced learnings or something like that before you have a decent capital aquiring method, or else you will suffer.
Basically, you need a decent starter attribute spread that will not stiffle your later growth, while still providing you with a decent amount of "oomph" in the early phase.
You will want to get as little charisma as possible, because there's simply not much to train (and especially not to L5) that requires charisma (neither as primary nor as secondary) early on.
The next attribute you shouldn't care too much about is willpower. Willpower is a secondary attribute in spaceship command and weapon skills, so you should only minimize it (if at all possible) when you have a very high perception.
Memory is not only a secondary attribute in support skills, but also primary in the basic learnings and drones (alongside, you guessed it, perception).
Intelligence is also a very important attribute, primary in all support skills and science, and secondary in basic learning.
So your "attribute importance order" is:
PER >= INT >= MEM >= WIL >>> CHA
4. The tables, the raw figures, the math behind it.
I have created a (rather objective, even if not obvious at first sight) "overall score" for each of the 36 possible ancestry choices, based on the discussed issues.
The exact formula used is rather irrelevant, but for the reference, it is :
((10*per+9*int+5*mem+4*wil+cha)*(2*per+2*int+mem-cha)-3114)/652.1
A score of "8" vs a score of "1" does NOT mean the choice is eight times better, it's only a relative indication of "versatility" and "ease of use", on a scale of 10 (most versatile) to 0 (least versatile).
| race | bloodline | ancestry | PER | INT | MEM | WIL | CHA | OVERALL |
| | | | | | | | | |
| Caldari | achura | invent | 7 | 12 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 10.0 |
| Caldari | achura | stargaz | 8 | 8 | 9 | 6 | 3 | 8.3 |
| Caldari | achura | monk | 9 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 3 | 8. |
| Amarr | khanid | cyberkn | 11 | 6 | 4 | 8 | 5 | 6.4 |
| Caldari | deteis | scienti | 6 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 5.9 |
| Minmatar | sebiestor | tinker | 5 | 11 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5.5 |
| Amarr | nikunni | bordrun | 10 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 8 | 4.8 |
| Minmatar | sebiestor | rebel | 8 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 4.7 |
| Caldari | civire | entrep | 9 | 5 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 4.7 |
| Minmatar | vherokior | drifter | 6 | 9 | 8 | 3 | 8 | 4.5 |
| Minmatar | brutor | slave | 11 | 4 | 4 | 9 | 6 | 4.2 |
| Gallente | Gallente | immigr | 10 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 4.1 |
| Gallente | jin-mei | jing ko | 10 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 4.0 |
| Caldari | deteis | mercha | 5 | 7 | 11 | 5 | 6 | 3.9 |
| Minmatar | brutor | worker | 9 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 3.8 |
| Gallente | Gallente | miner | 8 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 3.7 |
| Amarr | khanid | union | 8 | 7 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 3.6 |
| Amarr | khanid | zealot | 8 | 5 | 6 | 10 | 5 | 3.5 |
| Caldari | civire | merc | 9 | 5 | 4 | 10 | 6 | 3.2 |
| Amarr | Amarr | wealthy | 4 | 7 | 9 | 10 | 4 | 3.2 |
| Gallente | intaki | reborn | 3 | 8 | 11 | 6 | 6 | 3.0 |
| Gallente | jin-mei | saan go | 6 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 2.9 |
| Amarr | Amarr | relig | 4 | 7 | 6 | 14 | 3 | 2.6 |
| Caldari | deteis | tubech | 5 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 2.5 |
| Gallente | intaki | artist | 5 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 2.5 |
| Caldari | civire | disse | 9 | 5 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 2.4 |
| Minmatar | brutor | tribal | 9 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 7 | 2.0 |
| Minmatar | vherokior | mystic | 4 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 2.0 |
| Minmatar | vherokior | retail | 4 | 7 | 11 | 3 | 9 | 1.8 |
| Amarr | nikunni | navyvet | 7 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 1.5 |
| Amarr | Amarr | liberal | 4 | 7 | 6 | 11 | 6 | 1.4 |
| Gallente | Gallente | activis | 8 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 12 | 0.8 |
| Minmatar | sebiestor | trader | 5 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 10 | 0.7 |
| Gallente | jin-mei | sang do | 6 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 8 | 0.4 |
| Gallente | intaki | diplom | 3 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 10 | 0.2 |
| Amarr | nikunni | frmerc | 7 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 12 | 0.0 |
P.S. Due to constant questions about this listing above, clearning up a few confusions...
The above list covers "versatility".
Versatility does NOT mean "this is the best character you can pick".
It only means "this is the LEAST BAD character you can pick OVERALL if you have no idea what you'll be doing".
It's a table made for the persons who never played EVE before, who have no clue what to pick for their first character, and even less of a clue about what they'll want to do later on in the game.
Yes, it could mean that if you do pick the most extreme and unlikely job, this "overall least worst" choice could mean you actually got one of the worst choices, so it's not a win/win situation.
HOWEVER
If you KNOW EXACTLY what you want to be or do, and you have your skillplan mapped out for years to come, then this table above is useless to you.
What you want to do instead is get EVE-HQ, plug in that skillplan, and let the program pick the best race/bloodline/school and even the custom skillpoint distribution for you (it actually calculates just about every combination, but you sort by completion time and pick one of those with the lowest optimal completion times).
5. So what does that mean and what should I do ?
Basically, go from top to bottom of this list and pick the highest on the list that appeals to you.
Then, distribute the 5 "custom" points either to alleviate some problems in certain departments (depends a lot on your initial bloodline/ancestry choice).
Or, you can simply boost perception, intelligence and even memory : 3P/2I, 2P/2I/1M and even 3I/2M are very popular choices regardless of bloodline.
Once "in", train whatever helps you make ISK faster, MAKE some ISK fast, then buy the remaining learning skills (you only have 3 of the 6 basics, and you could already train one advanced, but it costs 4.5 mil ISK, money better spent on a cruiser in the first days).
Train all learning skills to L2, the very least, in the first day. Try to get most (if not all) of them to L3 in the first 2-3 days.
Getting L3 science and then L1 cybernetics, plugging in a set of (cheap) +1 implants is also a very good idea.
REMEMBER to train whatever you NEED first, and NOT the full learning skilltree.
For your first two-three weeks, getting a bunch of profession-related skills up to speed is a lot more important.
It will seriously hamper your progress in the long run if you fail to "make ISK" and focus on "getting the learnings done".
ONLY train the learning skills first if you already have a "main" account and this one is your secondary.
In this case, getting (via funding from main) a set of +3 implants and all L4 basic/L3 advanced learnings is mandatory as soon as possible.
After that, it's really your choice, but that's already a lot of attribute points within less than two weeks (normally).
6. Final words of wisdom ?
In this forum, you also have a pretty good outlook on how the starting skills get distributed between the races and schools.
Starter skillpack comparation thread
Only the RACE and the "profession" matters.
Bloodline and ancestry don't influence the starter skillpack, only the attributes you use to furter train/refine your choices.
You might want to get EVE-Mon downloaded, installed and configured once you created your character.
Just make sure you download it from THEIR site and not any 3rd party mirror, as you really don't want to end up with any keyloggers or trojans.
As for the "is it safe to use EVE-Mon" question, it has been repeatedly answered on these forums, even by devs.
Their reply: "we use it ourselves a lot".
If you're really paranoid (and have a bit of a programming bone in you), you can download the source code, check it, and build it yourself.
Oh, and as they always say... whenever you don't know when you're coming back online, ALWAYS set a long skill training.
Better train bits and pieces of a not-so-urgent L5 skill than miss several minutes, hours or even days of training time.
As skill training progress is not lost, you'll thank me later when "
7. A FEW (LATE) WORDS ABOUT EVE-HQ
What is and where to get EVE-HQ ?
Forum thread - explains what it is, what it can do, etc.
Their downloads page - if you think you already know what it is, just download it directly.
How to use EVE-HQ to get your optimal character build for a certain skillplan ?
First, make sure you have it downloaded, installed, working properly, etc.
I had no trouble doing any of that, but if you do, ask in their forum thread or something like that.
Open up the "Character Creation" plug-in (hopefully you got that too already).
Go under "Character Goal Seek" and fill in your desired skillplan (might take a while, make sure you got them all). It automatically fills in prerequisites, so if you know you don't want any of the prerequisites trained higher, don't bother.
The most IMPORTANT thing now is the "allow attribute variations" checkbox.
Leaving this box unchecked (default) means all characters get +1 in each custom skillpoint.
You still get the best choice (race/bloodline/job) without it selected, but you don't know what the optimal custom attributes would be.
However, it calculates a LOT faster... on very, VERY long skill plans, with this checkbox selected, you could be waiting for HOURS (yes, hours, not minutes) before a result comes in.
On short skillplans however, it's not a problem, you might get a result in seconds.
NOTE : the times you get under "Optimal Queue Time" are implantless times, for all characters.
Obviously, if you train cybernetics and plug in some implants, the times will go down... but overall, the order will remain the same between characters.
A very short example, say you want the fastest way to a Gallente mothership alt (just the bare minimum needed to board it, not actually fly it properly) : only add "Gallente Carrier III" to the list.
Since this is a relatively short plan (not extremely short, but short enough so I'm not afraid I'll have to wait for hours), I'll also "allow attribute variations"... and then click "SEEK GOAL".
After you click, get away from the machine and let the calculations run. A progress bar will slowly fill up (if you have am extremely long plan, it could be minutes before the first bar fill shows up, so be patient). In my case (the above example), the first bar showed up in a couple of seconds.
About 15 minutes later (yeah, I told you the "allow attribute variations" makes it take a much longer time... and I don't have an extremely fast machine either), I'm presented with the results list.
Clicking on the "opt queue time" header orders it by completion time : SCREENSHOT .
"Std queue time" would be the skillplan WITHOUT any aditional learnings. Of course, nobody in their right mind would use that, but who knows.
Doing the same thing without attribute variations yields results in about 40 seconds (yeah, seconds, not 15 minutes), and the results are not THAT different : SCREENSHOT .
Also, you can easily decide where the custom points should go to without having to resort to the long search, just by looking at the next few best options.
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