POV Javier
I listened intently to the teacher. In order to plan my career precisely, I needed all the information about the world's advancement system. At the same time, I diligently took notes so that I didn't miss or forget any information, no matter how small it was. During a respite from the teacher, I looked at my fellow heroes and saw a familiar image. Ansgar was sleeping and the couple was flirting. Nothing new. No matter, I had better things to do and had to continue listening to the teacher.
“Now let’s move on to how to increase skills. Remember what you heard in the last lecture about the different categories of skills. First of all, the skills themselves, regardless of their category, are divided into major and minor skills. Increasing a major skill requires significantly more effort, but this skill is significantly more powerful. There are different ways you can learn a skill and increase its level. The easiest way is to practice, practice and practice again. This can be done independently or under the guidance of a teacher. Another way is to increase with XP. The last and by far rarest case is due to a special event.
Let's get to practice. Most skills can be improved through practice. Exceptions are some skills from the general and special categories. There are basically two types of practice, active and passive. Physical training, sparring and concentration exercises are part of active learning. The disadvantage is that you are limited by practice. While practicing at the beginning is the easiest way to improve a skill, it becomes more and more complex as the skill level increases. It's quicker to take another route, which I'll get to later. Passive practice is when you expose yourself to certain situations and then your body and mind learn from them. These include perception abilities and resistances. These two skills are also special in that they can almost exclusively be practiced passively.
The second way and probably the fastest is to increase via XP. You always get XP when you defeat monsters that are also worth experience for you. At the beginning a wolf gives you XP, but later you become so strong that the wolf no longer poses a threat to you. Then you won't get any more XP for this wolf. From our experience, the difference in levels is particularly important. The second possibility is through special events. The first time you defeat a certein boss in a dungeon, you will receive a one-time XP bonus. While you are automatically credited with XP in the skill you use when you practice, you can freely distribute the XP from battles according to your own ideas.
A special way to learn a new skill is through titles. This may sound tempting, but it is less common than you imagine. So someone who has master rang in cooking and wins a cooking tournament gets the title of master chef. The title also grants access to the Daggers and Herbology skills. However, I have yet to meet a master chef who didn't already know how to use daggers or had no knowledge of plants. Your title of Hero grants you access to skill appraisal, among other benefits. However, what has actually already occurred is the dragon slayer title. If you defeat a true dragon, you will receive the title of Dragon Slayer. It includes the ability to tame dragons. With this you can raise a dragon from a dragon egg if you ever get your hands on one.”
Oh, your own dragon? That sounded very tempting. And we were heroes, so it was natural to assume that we wanted to defeat dragons. A look over at Cornelius told me that he was really excited. You could see that sparkle in his eyes, just like when he set a specific goal back in the role-playing game.
“Another way is also the rarest, that is by chance. You would gain poison resistance if you survived a strong poison without first possessing the ability. If you survive. You also increase your poison resistance each time you are poisoned. However, I strongly advise you not to consciously go this route. Too many have died trying to force something just for the sake of it. It is too dangerous. However, sooner or later you will learn pain resistance. You can’t fight without getting hurt yourself at some point.”
I didn't attach any importance to it at all. Pain had to be avoided at all costs. After all, I was a wizard, or at least will become one, so I'll avoid having to fight on the front lines.
“The last way is to learn from an instructor. An instructor has several tasks. For example all skills that can be improved through active practice can also be improved through an instructor. The advantage is that also perception skills can also be improved with his help, as he then knows methods for specifically practicing certain skills. He is also always necessary when a skill needs to be relearned or when it needs to move up a rank. In addition to the basic rank, with which you learn skills, there is also the Advanced, Expert and Master rank. The only rank you can unlock through practice is the Advanced rank . To do this you need level 10 in the skill and this unlocks a minor skill that is considered a specialization. An example are weapon skills or any magic. Once you have level 20 in a skill, you can upgrade to Expert and unlock a second specialization. While there are many instructors who have the Expert rank, Master ranks are rare and live in a variety of locations. They are also very highly regarded for their knowledge. Masters are sometimes improved through self-experience, as this leads to the development of their own style. A stele in a dungeon is another option.
Please note, however, that not every class can increase every skill to an unlimited skill level. To be able to upgrade a skill to Expert, you must upgrade your class. You determine which skills these are for your class when you advance in class. We have corresponding data for most classes. You can also unlock individual skills for master rank only, but I would advise against that. It only makes sense if you are not aiming for complete class upgrades and have too few development points.
But using an instructor also has several disadvantages. Firstly, an instructor can only help you as long as your own ability value is below that of the instructor. Then the teacher must first be found and be available. It costs money because many of them make a living from teaching. And you can only learn what the teacher himself has mastered. But you only achieve true mastery of a talent when you develop your own style although it's rare. For you, dear heroes, all the instructors here in the capital are of course free of charge and there are also many outside of it with whom we work together.”
After everything I had heard so far, it was even more important to plan well. As always, XP is a limited resource and if you wanted to get the most out of your resources you had to plan well. In addition, it seemed that you quickly reached your limits through practice and then could only improve with XP.
“Let’s come to perhaps the most important part of this lecture. How much does it actually cost to improve a skill to level 10? Each level of a minor skill costs 100XP and each major skill even costs 1000XP. This means it costs 1000XP for a minor skill and 10.000XP for a major skill to level it up to advanced level. Increasing an advanced skill costs 200 or 2000 XP and an expert skill costs 300 or 3000 respectively.
Finally, a word of advice. You can learn all skills, but you cannot improve all of them to a high level. You don't have enough time and too few XP for that. You have to decide whether to increase a few skills very high or leave many at low values. Dear heroes, there are four of you, so I would suggest you divide the most important skills between you and avoid unnecessary duplication. Not all skills are equally important and for some you can rely on staff. To give you a comparison, in order to increase 4 major skills and 8 minor skills to expert you need to be around level 50 worth of XP. You can find out more about levels in another lecture. If there are no more questions, I will end my lesson for today and wish you a pleasant day.”
The teacher bowed, picked up his staff and left the room. I took another look at my notes. So I was able to improve most skills through practice, while others had to be paid for through XP. This means I learned all the skills I wanted as quickly as possible because all it took was an instructor. Then I will increase everything that could be increased through practice. The rest came with the class and the XP. I made a list of what skills I definitely wanted to have and took care of those first. Time was precious and could not be wasted.