First, welcome back!

Second, training's changed a bit since the older GS days, but the 1x and 2x meanings are pretty much the same. 1x = 1 rank per level, and 2x = 2 ranks per level.

Third, one of the biggest differences: you no longer need to religiously train 1x to get 1x. Consider as an example, a wizard who wants to 1x in the survival skill. It's exceptionally hard to get climbing, swimming, survival, and perception along with all the other 'necessary' skills in the early levels.

So that wizard may opt not to train at all in survival until around 40 trains / levels. Then that wizard may opt to train 5 (or 10, or however many points that wizard may wish to pump into survival that 'level') ranks. And continue to do so until at least .5x (20 ranks) or even until 1x (40 ranks) then keep up with it.

The fact that you can't really 'miss' a training rank any more is what allows this. Everyone these days might forgo a critical skill for a level or two, then 'catch up' the ranks to get back to the desired number of ranks.

A training spreadsheet is a critical addition to your planning. This will show you how best to organize your skills at a certain level threshold to achieve these results. And you'll then note that sometimes you'll be carrying large numbers of training points forward (not using all your training points each level).

I get nostalgic every now and again, and lament that we no longer have that type of 'consequence' in our lands. But, there it is - you can't 'miss' training you want, you can only delay it.

Doug

>Everyone talks about doing 1x this or 2x that, at first I thought, oh, that means train once in the 1x and twice in the 2x, but I don't think that's what it means based on how many skill points I have left.

You also get to train for level 0 and the level you are working towards, so at level 1, 1x is actually training 3 times. Consequently if you are only training one rank, you'll have a lot of points over.

>Thanks everyone! I think I get it. So because of the way levels work with level 0 and training towards your next level, the amount of ranks I should have for skills I am training 1x is 1x my level plus 2, and the ranks I should have for skills I am training 2x is 2x my level plus 2. So since Onyong is a level 2 warrior, his 2x skills are at rank 6, and his 1x skills are at rank 4.


At level 2 you get to train 4 ranks at the 1x cost and another 4 at 2x (and another 4 at 3x if you are piling points into rushing armor to get into plate). Training for levels 0,1,2 and 3. You get the training points for level 3 gradually as you gain experience during level 2 so you won't be able to fully train until just before you level. During level 2, your 2x skills should be 6,7 or 8 ranks, depending on just how far you are towards level 3, and just how important you rate that particular skill. e.g. suppose 3 of your 2x skills are a weapon, CMan and armor. Weapon is very important, particularly at level 2 because you are getting 5 to your AS for every rank trained, so that gets trained to 8 ranks straight away, CMan is fairly important so that's the next priority as points become available, and armor can wait because you aren't at a point where you are going to jump into a new suit that needs those ranks right now. Likewise with your 1x skills, they will be 3 or 4 ranks depending on just how far through the level you are.

It only works neatly just before you hit level 3. You have the ability to train 4 levels worth and the training points for 4 levels worth of training and if you can't get all your 2x skills to 8 ranks and all your 1x skills to 4 ranks at that point, you are trying to train too many skills. Just after you hit level 3, you are allowed to train 5 levels worth, but only have the points for 4 and a bit, so there will be choices to be made about which to take to 5 or 10 ranks, and which to leave at 4 or 8 for a while.

Training points are gained all the time now. You do not have to level anymore to train. You can either check in at the inn or use the GOALS command to enter the Skills page and adjust your training path any time you want.

General Radeek Andoran
Drakes Vanguard
Defender of Wehnimer's Landing
Black Raider of the Mir'Sheq

Empires exist through conquest, they live on by exercising total control of the conquered.

Only the dead have seen the end of war - Plato

>Ok that makes even more sense. 1x and 2x is referring to the cost of the skill, not how many times to train in it! If I train a skill as many times as I can at a level at 1x cost, that would be fully 1x trained, and similarly for 2x if I train as many times as I can at a level at 2x cost.

This is really a matter of taste and training points. I know it doesn't affect a warrior, but a perfect example here is the Harness Power skill, which yields increased mana point each time you train in it. (I suppose you may remember the old days when mana was just given at like 3 mana per level to everyone period.)

Technically, "1x" training means 1 time per level; however, as you see, it is possible to get 1x+2 ranks at the 1x training cost. I definitely argue there is some ambiguity in what is meant when someone says train "1x" in a skill: do they mean train the skill as much as possible at the 1x cost, or do they mean train the ranks to be equal to the character's level?

As my example with Harness Power, when the skill ranks are less than or equal to the character's level, each Harness Power rank yields 3 additional mana. Each rank beyond this nets only one additional mana point. This is not related to the 1x training cost but related to the number of ranks relative to the character's level. Thus, in the HP skill, it is usually recommended that a character have exactly the number of ranks equal to their level, no more, no less. (Some exceptions here like early levels might overtrain to get more mana, and then let it fall back to 1x, but okay there are always exceptions.)

When discussing a very crucial skill, let's say a warrior's primary weapon training, it's going to be 2x, and usually this means, in practice, "train every rank you can!!" On the other hand, it is probably a good idea by around level 40 for a warrior to be 0.5x to 1x in Arcane Symbols (the old Scroll Reading skill) and Magic Item Use. I haven't played warriors in a long time, so take this advice with a grain of salt. But my point is as an example for a warrior of a less critical skill. What is meant here is that, around level 40, a warrior may want 20 to 40 ranks of these skills, and it doesn't have much to do with the training cost so much (not suggesting 42 ranks of Arcane Symbols at level 40). 20 to 40 ranks of these skills will enable reasonable use of many scrolls and magic items. But for a warrior, going past 40 ranks is kind of a waste of points in my opinion.

Anyway, I hope this helps a bit.

Other people are explaining a lot of useful things about "catching up" but allow me to give an example from my paladin. Paladins can also triple-train in armor use (although the cost is a bit higher than for warriors, naturally). What I had done was was triple-trained in armor use to around level 20 to get into augmented chain (60 ranks...so this could be a little before or a little after level 20, depending on your allocation). Then I stopped training armor use until something like the late 30s or early 40s, and then I started pumping tons and tons of points into armor use, so I could be in full plate by level 48 (150 ranks, with full 3x training). I felt this was a good decision for me, because I viewed it as a threshold skill. Although there are minor advantages to overtraining armor use, my thought was why did I want 90 ranks of armor use between level 28 or 30 when I wasn't going to change my suit of armor (who wants to buy a nice set of armor for each step, anyway?). So to me those points were wasted, and I could put them to better use in the mean time, and then switch back to cramming points towards armor use, so long as I got it to 150 ranks near level 50.

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