I like that in theory, a more advanced magic user need cast more advanced magics to train, but the reality of many guilds is there simply isn't a spread of spells to facilitate that. Picking up sorcery/scroll spells for training purposes is an obvious solution, but it seems very silly to force a choice between 'continue to train your character effectively' or 'supplement your utility/combat by picking a spell you want'.

I've not tested with it, but I do hope that pumping very high amounts of mana into an intro/basic spell teaches on par with pumping less mana into an advanced/esoteric.

I really wish the spell difficulty requirement would go away. It sucks to have to tailor your spell choices as you advance both to spells you want and for spells so you can keep advancing. Its just annoying and a fix to make fixes.



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In memory of Lisa/Martee. Passed 6/17/2013. A friend. A sister.

<<I learn reasonably well and don't get destroyed by Assassins, so I tend to believe that it's just a matter of having to fill gaps that the changes create>>

It's considerably more than this. I think it's fair to say that elder armadillos to drakes to cabalists is a very well "stepped" group of creatures in terms of difficulty and caps. In 3.0, I can learn everything on elders though it's close for TM and evasion. In 3.1, I learn very poorly even in cabalists, offenses and defenses, and they are challenging enough that if I hunted them regularly, I would need to leave the hunting ground at least once an hour to get healed. I don't enjoy that, particularly when half of that time is spent just trying to lock TM alone. I would figure out a way to deal with it, assuming the exp rewards are adjusted, but I'm not digging it at the moment.

Could then be an issue of players wanting to train primaries and tertiaries in the same place, 'safely'. Mastery certainly facilitated backtraining weapons, but the same thing doesn't exist for most skills.

I'd guess that the thing GMs probably would wish for is people hunt at level, against one foe, one on one combat.

Because that is how critters are designed.

Of course the best rank gainers KNOW that they need lots of things to keep moving the most skills to get those ranks FAST (or at least FASTER).

I wish I had some suggestion for moving either side to the other.

All I can suggest (and this would probably just annoy the move ranks faster crowd) is more bonuses to multiple opponents. Which to me the hope would be more people pushing for one on one combat (do I really think that players will want one on one :shrug:).

Just my point of view.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

I had something here but can not keep from trying to type how I feel about folks not reading posts before typing replies.

needless to say training a 0 rank armor in dillo's will get you killed fast, sorry One hit to that area = stunned then you die.



Deadly force, is the force which a person uses, causing—or that a person knows, or should know, would create a substantial risk of causing—death or serious bodily harm. Deadly Force is justified only under conditions of extreme necessity as a last resort,

>>> I'd guess that the thing GMs probably would wish for is people hunt at level, against one foe, one on one combat.

We all know that they design areas to more or less guarantee you will be engaged to 2-4 creatures at once, however. So, if my character can take an at level creature one on one but I can expect to be engaged 2-4 on one, the inevitable result is that I "underhunt" so I don't get the snot beat out of me.

I agree with literally everything in OP's post.

I really do love most of the new additions I've seen in 3.1. The new maneuver system is incredible, I'm loving the new Bard spell releases, and I'm certainly in favor of fixing cyclic exp gain.

However, my experience so far in terms of 3.1 hunting has been far from pleasant. And though I've not experienced the difficulties that some of the high level magic users are reporting in terms of inability to lock magic skills, I do think it's important for characters to have the flexibility to be able to cast ANYTHING from their spellbooks and be able to gain skill. Pigeon holing training so that the same ~5 esoteric spells (aug, util, ward, debil, tm) are used over and over isn't fun for anyone.

>>Maybe it's because I don't actually have any primary combat skills (except Tactics, but that's on par with my tertiaries because of the way it was derived upon introduction), but I'm not seeing the terrible results that others are reporting.

Part of this, I believe, is that once you reach celpeze+ hunting areas, the creatures cover much wider spreads in terms of the ranks in which they'll grant experience. According to epedia, assassins train from 650-1250 ranks. I'd certainly hope that everything will lock in there if you're sitting in their comfortable range.

In comparison, according to epedia the creatures in my hunting range, dobek moruryns and young forest gryphons, train from 250-450 and <300-450 respectively.

I've stated this in another thread already, but as a player of a survival and armor tert guild character with less than a 100-rank gap between his top combat skill (tactics) and his lowest defense (defending/shield), it has been terribly frustrating to find a hunting ground that allows me to train all of my combats effectively at once.

What worries me is that I'll find myself capping my tactics/magic/weapons on critters before I'm ready to move up, and eventually fall into a situation where I'm basically just backtraining defenses until all of my combat skill are even. This is NOT how I want my character to be, as I prefer having certain strengths and weaknesses based upon my skillsets. In fact, what's the point of having skillsets at all if I can't ever train my primary lore skillset in combat since I'm waiting for shield and evasion to play catch up?

Maybe once I can comfortably hunt celpeze or other high level creatures this won't be an issue due to their wider spread of trainable ranks, but for the moment is is a very real problem for me and I hope to see it addressed.

>>Perhaps the degree could use some tweaking, but the change absolutely is necessary; people being able to learn from creatures that pose zero threat is broken, and it does make the game worse. From the Empath perspective, it creates a maddening shortage of stuff to heal, which makes it pretty hard to play the role of a healer (which is fun and enjoyable).

Sorry to hear if this is still an issue for the Empaths. When I'm in Crossing it seems like there's a pretty steady stream of people that come to the Empath guild looking for heals. I'll admit though, when in more remote areas I usually default to heading straight to an auto-healer when I leave combat due to the difficulty in finding an Empath. After so many times of running in circles, or finally finding an Empath only realize that they were afk, I've found it's much faster to just head straight for the autopath, which is a shame.

Perhaps there's other ways of boosting Empathy experience, but I'm not convinced that the changes to combat experience I've seen in 3.1 are the correct solution.