Melee weapons skill gains

[Solbelum]

Melee skill gains seem to have slowed dramatically.

I decided to drop maces for swords on my dexxer (100 str, 100 dex). I have him sparring my gm fencer with a butchers knife. He gained quickly for 10 points then all but stopped gaining. I took the character to town and bought about 20 points of skill. Started them sparring again and he has only gained 2 points from 32.8 real in 45 minutes.


I have trained weapon skills in this way many times on OSI and on this shard several months ago. The gains were always quite fast at least into the 70-80 skill range. Is there some change that I missed while i was not playing here for a few months?

Also, Tactics skill has always seemed to gain slow on this shard. On OSI during this era, it was always the first skill I GMed. Seems to be the last one I GM on my characters here with the exception of resist. I think that a character should GM tactics easily in the course of GMing swords and wrestling.

[MatronDeWinter]

While it is rather strange not GM'ing tactics as the first skill (which typically was the case when sparring with a paladin or whatnot in t2a), tactics (and skills in general) gain really fast here. I think the issue is more that the weapon skills gain TOO fast, which leads to this belief that tactics is slow. Both of these skills should take about twice as long to gm on OSI.

You can do things here to benefit your tactics and weapon skills gain. For instance, starting your newbie fencer off (0 fencing) vs a gm wrestle is NOT a good idea. Instead buy it to 30, and spar with something that has a weapons skill of around 60, this should put you well into the 80's in the weapon skill. Then you switch to an opponent with GM weapons skill (or a bull/order guard/paladin), this will quickly gm your skill. But, because weapon skills are so fast here, you will likely not be gm tactics. So what you do now, is use your newfound GM weaponskill to fight a creature with very little weapon skill. Tactics gain is based on successfull hits, where as weapon-skill gain is based on the amount of attempts and the skill of your adversary.

Also, you gain weapon skill significantly faster when sparring with a non-player. This might be the drawback you are facing. Instead of fighting one of your many alternate characters, try facing off with a bull and have it attack a newbie vet, and you heal the vet for healing gains.

I always buy weapon/tact to 30, spar with a llama until about 50, then fight an npc fighter to 80, and then a bull until GM. Then I go back and fight a cow to quickly gm your tactics.

This whole process from 0-gm in both skills, usually only takes me 8 hours. That is EXTREMELY fast, where-as OSI, this would probably take around 40 hours. Also, note that, while I am sparring I am always healing something (if need be) or macroing EVALINT or ANATOMY to get those skills up into the 60's by the time I GM weaponskills.

Furthermore, since the animal/hireling could be attacking your alt, while you strike it, and heal your alt, you will be completely able to macro Herding AND Music/snoop at the same time and you will have your stats at 100, before you ever gm the weapon skill.

It is so amazingly easy, I dont know what to tell you.

[Solbelum]

My concern is more that it is different now then it was a few months ago on this shard. If it was changed purposefully that is fine. I am just asking if it was supposed to have changed.

I dont claim that sparring my alt is supposed to be the fastest way. I just know that doing it that way it shouldnt take 6 hours to go from 33 to 37 swords...

[Derrick]

My concern is more that it is different now then it was a few months ago on this shard. If it was changed purposefully that is fine. I am just asking if it was supposed to have changed.

The only change that was made a few months ago was decreased skill gain from sparring with players (which is an OSI accurate factor). Still though the weapons skills seem to gain much faster than OSI as long as you are fighting with someone with appropriate skills, this is also OSI accurate. Difficulty is a factor in most skill gain.

As far as tactics though, this is not difficulty based, you have a chance to gain tactics on each successful hit.

[Solbelum]

good enough

[Kefka]

Spar an NPC order guard that you find at random towers.

I just GM'd two melee skills from 30, each one took about 4 hours with 100 DEX. That seems pretty quick to me.

[UnknownLord]

polar bears = win.

[LNP]

I've been sparring another character in my house and gained from 84 tactics to 100 and 90 swords to about 98 in about 7 hours. Not the most effective way but I didn't have a healer that could heal two characters while sparring a paladin.

[ClowN]

as long as you can hit your "sparring dummy" you have a chance to gain. get an NPC with low wrestling. i usually will grab a paladin and remove his sword, or some other really weak npc. you want to land every single swing, if you are missing, you are not gaining. if you have healing/anatomy on your template, just chain bandage heal the npc while u attack it. to keep the npc from attacking you, use a 2nd account, and macro provocation on the npc while standing out of melee range (also make sure your npc is safely trapped in your house). doesnt matter if you gain provo or not, the act of attempting to provoke the npc will make him attack the provoker, and ignore the char you are training.

iv used this more times then i can count and iv never spent more then 5 hours or so to GM a combat skill with 100 dex.

NOTE: might want to test this though before going unattended, i just read a thread on here where someone was saying provocation might not be working properly right now.

[nightshark]

seriously, wep skills are definitely inaccurate to gain here.

#1 - what matron said, i never had a char on OSI that didn't GM tactics before it's weapon skill.
#2 - you can GM swords or wrestle from a llama in less than 4 hours, with 100 dex. it seems you get the best skill gains for fighting the weakest possible creatures, i swear.

[MatronDeWinter]

seriously, wep skills are definitely inaccurate to gain here.

#1 - what matron said, i never had a char on OSI that didn't GM tactics before it's weapon skill.
#2 - you can GM swords or wrestle from a llama in less than 4 hours, with 100 dex. it seems you get the best skill gains for fighting the weakest possible creatures, i swear.

No, they just start out with the weapon skill that is most beneficial to your gains. Then as you spar, they gain skill along with you.

Suppose a llama has 40 wrestle.
Someone with 40 wrestle will gain quickly to gm from this as they both progress.
Someone with 90 wrestle will gain extremely slow while the llama catches up (slowly) to a gainable skill.

[nightshark]

seriously, wep skills are definitely inaccurate to gain here.

#1 - what matron said, i never had a char on OSI that didn't GM tactics before it's weapon skill.
#2 - you can GM swords or wrestle from a llama in less than 4 hours, with 100 dex. it seems you get the best skill gains for fighting the weakest possible creatures, i swear.

No, they just start out with the weapon skill that is most beneficial to your gains. Then as you spar, they gain skill along with you.

Suppose a llama has 40 wrestle.
Someone with 40 wrestle will gain quickly to gm from this as they both progress.
Someone with 90 wrestle will gain extremely slow while the llama catches up (slowly) to a gainable skill.

the llama never gains skill, it is never tabbed in

[MatronDeWinter]

It should be tabbed in, there should be no way to attack something (melee) without being hit in return.

[nightshark]

It should be tabbed in, there should be no way to attack something (melee) without being hit in return.

There are a few bugs that allow you to fight NPCs without getting hit. Don't believe any of them are era accurate, but that's just how it's working right now.

[marmalade]

hint: INVISIBILITY