>Quoting myself, but I thought it might be important to point out that I also was copied over at 145th circle. So it might be giving Thanatology at 1 per circle instead of what it was before.

IIRC Socharis posted that the circle-based grandfathering wasn't in place yet, so it is probably doing something naive, even if you actually have the ranks.

I'm really hoping that the conversion doesn't do something crazy where if you have much higher ranks that you need for your circle, it just uses the circle as a basis instead of actually looking at what your ranks are.

Based on the discussions from when this originally came up about the new skills being based on your highest skill in an area, I was very hopeful, but if with this use of averaging for the mastery skills, it is making me VERY concerned about where this will end up.

Winding up in a situation where I have hundreds of ranks difference between my primary weapon, the mastery skills or things that are being grandfathered, instead of having them based on my mainline combat skills really isn't acceptable to me.

Also, regarding vocals, looking at my skills in game made me remember I am trying for the vocals title that comes at 300. Like I said, I started training it for my ranger beseech and kept it up for several reasons. Considering that it does not significantly benefit me for TDPs, I'd much rather keep the ranks in performance than lose the effort I put in there.

-pete

how exactly are the melee and missle mastery numbers derived? Are they an average?

Explore the Final Frontier - the unknown calls

I don't think you understand what the mastery skills are for. The main purpose of them is to help backtraining other weapons and the use of feats. Say you have you have 500 in large edged, 300 in melee mastery and 100 in small edged. If you are using a large edged weapon you will be hitting with 500 skill. If you are using a small edged weapon you will be hitting with 175 skill(number made up since I don't know the exact formula). This will greatly help in backtraining.

As for fests, don't think any of us have a clue how they will work.

As for how much experience you have in the skill, yeah its going to be some kind of average. When learning the skill is turned on, you will not be learning it at the same rate as the weapon you are using, but you will be learning some with every single weapon that you use.

Abison

I have...

Brawling > 800
Offhand ~ 900
Light Edge > 900

And yet I only have a little over 200 Melee Mastery :(

Which will probably be like 3 weapon feats lol

~Leilond
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Leilond
http://soundsoftime.bravehost.com

>>How exactly will "tactics" be learned?

Circle, Bob, Weave, Grapple, Shove, Tackle. All of the old non-damaging Brawling maneuvers.

~Leilond
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Leilond
http://soundsoftime.bravehost.com

>how will an empath learn actual brawling <weapon skill> other than with constructs?

Classes, parrying with a parry stick?

---

Hunta Talna Kortok, built by Gor'Togs, for Gor'Togs
http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/caraamon/home.html
Weapons for Sale:
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/User:Caraamon#Wares
Combat Balance List:
http://tinyurl.com/DRBalance

I don't know about the others but Clerics should learn their theosophy from doing devotion related activities. I haven't tried on the test on a cleric yet to know if it is working.

>Okay, if these teach tactics now, how will an empath learn actual brawling <weapon skill> other than with constructs?

Besides what has been mentioned keep in mind that shock will be changing and will be less harsh.

>>not sure if this is related, but when I was copied over from plat it retained the thanatology skill of the character that was copied into, 71.

Please open a bug on this :)

>>using FLEE gave me considerably less rt than before. escaping was combined into evasion? or into a general survival pool?

At the moment, escaping is merging into Thievery, but it will be changing to Athletics.

>>Using the skill verb

Please open bugs on these so we can track them (source post http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Testing%20Central/Experience%20System%20Testing/view/106)

>>It still "feels" like a loss, and once it hits the general DR population I'm sure many others will feel this way as well.

If you want to see the full in-depth explanation of all of this, please go to the Experience forums in Prime. This was all pretty deeply explored about a year ago, and the debate and discussion is pretty broad.

The short version is, we're combining skills, and the two options were to either add your skills together or make the skills you're losing basically turn into bonus exp for whatever else you want to use it on. There's no way to keep your 'skill rank total' if we're combining skills. All of the effort you put into earning the skills that you're "losing" will return to you as you train other skills.

>>Vocals

I would put unreasonable amounts of money on the ratio of people that trained vocals for any other reason than the free TDPs, using any other mechanism than HUM, is less than one out of a hundred. The alternative is to make basically anybody who can write a basic looping script become an expert in performance, and that completely trivializes the skill.

>>Masteries

As I said, the combination we have in place right now is just a placeholder. It'll be changed, but not yet.

>>For the guild/only new lore skills:

They're not lore skills - This was a bug that I've since squished I think. Let me know if they're showing up as lores anywhere, because that's wrong. All guild-only skills are primary skills.

>>Gonif

You're asking a lot of questions that are very well-answered on Elanthipedia in the page related to the skill combine. I strongly recommend going there as a primary source so you can get answers faster :)

>>I don't know about the others but Clerics should learn their theosophy from doing devotion related activities. I haven't tried on the test on a cleric yet to know if it is working.

I'll let Grejuva speak to this :)

>>>Okay, if these teach tactics now, how will an empath learn actual brawling <weapon skill> other than with constructs?

The same way they learn any other weapon skill, which brings a consistency that I appreciate.

>>Being webbed by a nighweaver unyn trains tactics. So thats probably what it should be.

Things that taught escaping will teach athletics in the future, largely. FLEE may use evasion instead, but I'm not sure on that. Dartenian can tell you more.

---

Having answered all of those, I want to apologize for another weekend where I wasn't attending very much. I'll be getting bug accounts set up shortly for those that have emailed me, and then I'll go through the bugs and start fixing. We expect magic to be coming out this week, but we want to make sure things are stable enough that we're not getting red herrings everywhere.

Thanks!

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

>>I'd still probably end up training a music during many of the things I would do while training music. The only exceptions would be forging and opening boxes.

I have no intention of discouraging this - However, right now, HUM is literally just free ranks for no effort. I don't think it makes sense to reward the people that got these ranks with an impressive Performance skill.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

>>I have no intention of discouraging this - However, right now, HUM is literally just free ranks for no effort. I don't think it makes sense to reward the people that got these ranks with an impressive Performance skill.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but adding an instrument into the mix isn't exactly going to notably change the amount of effort required.

All that will do is make me change

---

exp:
put exp vocal
match end enthralled
match end nearly locked
match end mind lock
match start EXP HELP
matchwait

start:
put hum tango quick
match exp You finish humming
match end You can't muster the strength to perform.
match end You stop playing your song.
matchwait

end:
exit

---

To

---

exp:
put exp vocal
match end enthralled
match end nearly locked
match end mind lock
match start EXP HELP
matchwait

start:
put play tango quick on instrument
match exp You finish humming
match end You can't muster the strength to perform.
match end You stop playing your song.
matchwait

end:
exit

---

Vocals are used for ranger beseech, so if you remove vocals from rangers you break one of their abilities to get a beseech.

Ranger pfanston and his soggy puppy

>>Vocals are used for ranger beseech, so if you remove vocals from rangers you break one of their abilities to get a beseech.

Correct. It's vastly more likely that the beseech will change its skill check than rolling vocals into performance for everybody.

>>1, I was able to use a former ME <scim> as offhand weapon as a necromancer. As this class is weapon tert, with the combination is this intended?

Not sure - Combat question I think.

>>2. Backstab: in lore... Intended?

Nope. Should be fixed.

>>3. Backstab: still getting the "awkward but useable" when using weapons that were formerly "me".

Correct. Weapons are not changing size. APPRAISE will be updated to reflect a weapons 'class' as well as the skill it utilizes. For many weapons this will be 'medium edged weapon' and 'small edged', respectfully.

>>Results in killing critters with backstab were totally very,very, VERY disappointing. I was getting brushing hits, glancing hits on raiders in rossmans, which was the major source of boxes for my thief to train on. I couldn't kill them with Backstab at 431, 60 agility/reflex,discipline, 50 strength and with khri spar going. That in my considered opinion is too much of a nerf. I was learning the skill, but not killing. In prime I am able to one-hit BS them.

Combat question - If you could ask it over on the Combat board of the Test forum, Dart is more likely to see it. I think I'm the only one monitoring the Experience folder.

>>I'm pretty much waiting on a red name post here stating when the offense/defense calcs are revised/fixed before I do further testing. I do not believe the current system is what is intended, as it seems all anyone ever lands is glancing/grazing strikes.

Noted and passed on.

>>Vocals were also supposed to be a factor with the proposed animal call ability that was on the table a while back. Still really would prefer to keep vocals given the beseech. I'd never have trained them without that.

Totally understand. I definitely realize that the decision to ignore vocals is going to impact some RP scenarios. My only hope is that those that are impacted by it are willing to look past their own tweaked RP and understand both that the lack of vocals inclusion in Peformance allows us to develop for that skill in a much more compelling way, and also that they'll get all of their Vocals bits back as other Lore bits, which will be paired nicely with the new crafting systems as they come.

I've made a bunch of fixes to skills bugs. There are still a handful of big ones to look into, but a lot of the verbiage ones should be fixed. Most notably NOT fixed are the plat conversion mechanics. I'm working on those to make them a bit cleaner but it's not done yet.

We will be doing a character refresh (and an area refresh) once I get the rest of the conversion bugs fixed - That should let us figure out what bugs still exist in that. I'm also working on getting more of the combat stuff fixed so that people can resume testing with more robust code.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

Right now... Not a whole lot. Once I fix the Big Bugs I've got left, I'll post some new direction, but for now just keep doing the things you used to do (that aren't combat) and let me know if you notice anything behaving weirdly. I know swimming, climbing, and compendiums (?) are behaving strangely, so now I need to figure out why.

Thanks for all of your help so far!

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.