It's a tiered system. Think about it. Skill goes from 0-400. In that 400 points, you have I believe 5 tiers. So that's 5 tiers of basically 80 points or so. Tier 1, lvl 10-16 = skill 1-80 (more or less, might come sooner) Tier 2, lvl 17-24 = skill 81-160 (approx) Tier 3, lvl 25-32 = skill 161-240 (approx) Tier 4, lvl 33-41 = skill 241-320 (approx) Tier 5, lvl 42-50 = skill 321-400 (approx) I've seen some pop a bit earlier/later, so I've got no response to that. Just always crank out low mat recipes for items with an Orange number next to their name, or perform missions with orange names and you'll gain 2 points per successful craft/mission.