More clarity in how optimally training magical skills works?

[DanielKennethRego]

I feel I have a fair amount of clarity in how optimal training of weapon skills work - train your weapon skill to min delay, any further training still increases accuracy and damage, but at this point, other skills can take more priority.

With spell schools and magic skills in general, I don't feel I know exactly what I'm doing and how the spell schools and the Spellcasting skill directly impact the power/damage and range of my spells. How much longer should I be training say, Earth Magic, for example, for my current set of Earth Magic skills? Is there some sort of 'breakpoint' or 'landmark' like there is hitting min-delay on weapon skills? At what point would training Earth Magic no longer be benefitting my current spells?

Can someone help with resources on how to better understand these mechanics? When I play spellcasters, I feel my experience allocation and skill training is far from efficient, like it is when I play melee characters.

[e1999]

Until you feel like you're doing enough (constant) damage. Level 8/9 spells are devastating as soon as you get them castable and with lower level spells just go with what feels good.


https://loom.shalott.org/learndb.html#spell_power

[Hurkyl]

With spell schools and magic skills in general, I don't feel I know exactly what I'm doing and how the spell schools and the Spellcasting skill directly impact the power/damage and range of my spells. How much longer should I be training say, Earth Magic, for example, for my current set of Earth Magic skills?

Four points of spellcasting equals one point of skill in all other magic schools.

The value of skill is multiplied by intelligence.

Increasing skills affects raw power linearly, but there is a stepdown, so your actual spell power suffers from diminishing returns, dramatically so at high skill levels.

The relationship between power and damage varies dramatically between different spells. Two extreme examples are that the average damage roll for Airstrike looks something like

  Code:

0.113 * (72 + Power)

but the average damage roll for (the direct damage part of) Poison Arrow looks something like

  Code:

0.5 * (19 + Power)

So really, aside from the conversion between Spellcasting and other schools, there is no good way to understand the relationship between your skill levels and the effectiveness of your spells.

I rarely train magic skills for the sake of improving damage; I train them to get the miscast rates down. Training for more damage will come later when I want to get the miscast rate down further, or when I'm training the skills to get higher level spells castable.

[Lasty]

Magic skills don't have hidden breakpoints; generally you'll want to train the skill until spell failure is at an acceptable rate, and then secondarily train it more if you want more damage/accuracy/whatever else is affected by spell power for that spell.

You don't need to know spell power formulas to do a good job training magic skills.

[Sandman25]

Hexes is an exception IMHO. I often continue training Hexes despite spell failure is already 1%.

[Eyesburn]

When I play spellcasters, I feel my experience allocation and skill training is far from efficient, like it is when I play melee characters.

Keep playing spellcasters and you will get that "feeling" for skills training like when you are playing melee characters.

[HenryFlower]

Unlike combat, all the key variables are laid out for you nicely in the UI:

Optimize for: Success rate/miscast, spell power, spell points/spell levels, hunger (roughly in that order), all of which easy to inspect in the interface.

The only difficulty is picking a good learning path, but that's a function of the general "kill dudes -> don't get killed by dudes" skill hierarchy.

[KoboldLord]

I feel I have a fair amount of clarity in how optimal training of weapon skills work - train your weapon skill to min delay, any further training still increases accuracy and damage, but at this point, other skills can take more priority.

You should be aware that this is a severe oversimplification. Minimum delay is a thing that exists, and when you reach it there is a sharp reduction in value for further training in that weapon skill. However, it isn't always a good idea to beeline directly for minimum delay on all weapons. Training your weapon from 18 skill to 20, for instance, costs more xp than getting fighting, armour, dodging, stealth, throwing, and evocations *all* to 8. Those last several levels of training for a great mace or battleaxe are actually incredibly expensive, even if they raise your damage output by a large amount.

With spell schools and magic skills in general, I don't feel I know exactly what I'm doing and how the spell schools and the Spellcasting skill directly impact the power/damage and range of my spells. How much longer should I be training say, Earth Magic, for example, for my current set of Earth Magic skills? Is there some sort of 'breakpoint' or 'landmark' like there is hitting min-delay on weapon skills? At what point would training Earth Magic no longer be benefitting my current spells?

For most spells, you definitely want to train until the miscast rate is minimal. When you try to cast Fireball and fail, you lose a turn and some mp. All the monsters get a step closer or get a free attack, and the chunk of mp that went into that failed Fireball may be a hefty chunk of your total pool. Maybe you'll even take some extra fire damage. That's all pretty bad, and you don't want to have that happen very often. So training until your spell failure rate is low enough for your satisfaction is a pretty big deal. You probably don't want to be casting combat spells at all if they aren't reliable; it would be like if you randomly hit yourself with your battleaxe if you didn't have some minimum axe skill.

After that, however, you still get good returns from more spell power. Spells get more accurate and deal more damage as their spell power goes up. Status effects have a better chance of sticking, and lingering effects last longer. There are no hard-and-fast rules for when to stop training, but you usually don't have to worry about wasting xp since more damage is better. Start feeding into other skills as those skills become bargain investments, and not so much because you are worried about the latest one hit point bump to your Fireball's average damage.

[Sandman25]

Training your weapon from 18 skill to 20, for instance, costs more xp than getting fighting, armour, dodging, stealth, throwing, and evocations *all* to 8.

18->20 takes the same XP as training 1(one) skill 0->10.5
8->11 = 0->7.6

http://ianberrigan.com/

[Siegurt]

Feature request:

it would be like if you randomly hit yourself with your battleaxe if you didn't have some minimum axe skill.

If you have too low of a weapon skill, you have a chance of randomly hitting yourself with a high-level weapon

[Hurkyl]

Unlike combat, all the key variables are laid out for you nicely in the UI:

Optimize for: Success rate/miscast, spell power, spell points/spell levels, hunger (roughly in that order), all of which easy to inspect in the interface.

Not really: e.g. for blasts, the rate at which damage is affected by spell power is also a key variable, as is the relative importance of spell power to damage. Even if you saw spell power exactly, that doesn't give a good indication of how much damage your spells would do. The current graph for spell power is nearly useless for gauging the effectiveness of a spell.