Fastest qay to get a multi-school spell online?

[John Milferton]

Let's just assume I'm playing a certain background that has an unnamed book with a non-specified level 3 spell.
Said spell is crucial for survival, but starts at at an horrendous 50%+ castability.
It has 2 schools, let's just call them "Transmogrification" and "Venom".
I start out with 2 points in spellcasting, 2 points in "Transmogrification" and 0 points in "Venom"

Which skills should I focus to get the spell castable realiably the fastest way possible? Should I learn both schools at once, or only focus one?

[Sprucery]

It depends on your aptitudes.

[cerebovssquire]

Training a couple levels of poison will generally get spider form online faster than only training transmutations, so I'd do that. Get UC to a decent level (5ish) first though.

[tasonir]

I believe it doesn't depend on your aptitudes, in the general case, although starting with 2 in one and 0 in the other does throw some aptitude math into it.

The general case: Turn on both transmogrification and venom and train them at the same time. Aside from rounding errors, they'll get the same amount of experience and your spell will improve as rapidly as possible. If you have even aptitudes, they'll both stay at the same value. If one aptitude is higher, that skill will have a higher skill level, BUT still has the same amount of exp as the lower aptitude. This is what you want.

Since you're starting with 2/0 skill levels, you'd first want to raise the 0 skill ability until it has the same amount of experience as the level 2 ability. Not level; experience. So if venom is +2 and trans is 0, you'd train venom until about 3, if it was -2, you'd train it until about 1.2 or something, I'm estimating. But in practice training things to level 1 or 3 is very fast and you can pretty much just ignore this step and train both equally. They'll be ever so slightly unequal later on but it will not be noticeable.

Also you can just call the schools poison and transmutations, no one will mind.

[Jeremiah]

Related question. Let's say it's a 3-school spell. (Let's call them Conjurations, Air Magic and Ice Magic.) At what point does it become worth training Spellcasting rather than the magic schools to improve one's chances of casting it?

[Sandman25]

I believe it doesn't depend on your aptitudes, in the general case

Interesting

  Code:

unsigned int skill_exp_needed(int lev, skill_type sk, species_type sp) {
 const int exp[28] = { 0, 50, 150, 300, 500, 750,         // 0-5                       
1050, 1400, 1800, 2250, 2800,      // 6-10                           
3450, 4200, 5050, 6000, 7050,      // 11-15                         
8200, 9450, 10800, 12300, 13950,   // 16-20                         
15750, 17700, 19800, 22050, 24450, // 21-25                         
27000, 29750 };

Provided you have skills with -4 aptitude and +4 (doubled XP) and 300 XP points:
1) you spend 150 on each and get 75 and 300 respectively, it's about 1.5 and 3 skill levels, average 2.25
2) you spend 100 on -4 and 200 on +4, you get 50 and 400, it's about 1 and 3.5 skill levels, average 2.25 again
3) you spend 50 on -4 and 250 on +4, you get 25 and 500, it's about 0.5 and 4 skill levels, average 2.25 again
4) you spend 0 on -4 and 300 on +4, you get 0 and 600, it's about 0 and 4.33 skill levels, average 2.16
Let's try spending more XP on worse aptitude
5) you spend 200 on -4 and 100 on +4, you get 100 and 200, it's about 1.5 and 2.5 skill levels, average 2
6) you spend 300 on -4 and 0 on +4, you get 150 and 0, it's about 2 and 0 skill levels, average 1

How about 0 and +4?
1) you spend 150 on each and get 150 and 300 respectively, it's about 2 and 3 skill levels, average 2.5
2) you spend 100 on 0 and 200 on +4, you get 100 and 400, it's about 1.5 and 3.5 skill levels, average 2.5 again
3) you spend 50 on 0 and 250 on +4, you get 50 and 500, it's about 1 and 4 skill levels, average 2.5 again
4) you spend 0 on 0 and 300 on +4, you get 0 and 600, it's about 0 and 4.33 skill levels, average 2.16

Really weird.
Maybe try with more XP?
1000 XP, +4 and -4.
1) 500 and 500 -> 250 and 1000 -> 2.66 and almost 6, average 4.33
2) 250 and 750 -> 125 and 1500 -> 1.75 and 7.25, average 4.5
3) 200 and 800 -> 100 and 1600 -> 2.25 and 7.5, average 4.8
4) 150 and 850 -> 75 and 1700 -> 1.25 and 7.75, average 4.5

[stickyfingers]

Spellcasting is worth as much as a quarter of average of spell schools, so you'd want to have only slightly less of it with 3-school spell.

[tasonir]

@Sandman: I assume there will be some "bumps" along the way with the way each level gets more expensive, keeping it from being a perfectly straight line, but that it will approximately be equal all the way through. I haven't actually done calculations on this.

And yes I left out spellcasting, once your skills get high enough the increasing cost of training them will make spellcasting worth more, and so maybe something like focusing the two spell schools and unfocused training spellcasting is the more complete answer, I tend to just turn on/off spellcasting every now and then instead, but either way. And the more schools a spell has, the more competitive spellcasting is, as stickyfingers mentioned.

[XuaXua]

Fastest qay to get a multi-school spell online?

Oh my.

[Siegurt]

@Sandman: I assume there will be some "bumps" along the way with the way each level gets more expensive, keeping it from being a perfectly straight line, but that it will approximately be equal all the way through. I haven't actually done calculations on this.

And yes I left out spellcasting, once your skills get high enough the increasing cost of training them will make spellcasting worth more, and so maybe something like focusing the two spell schools and unfocused training spellcasting is the more complete answer, I tend to just turn on/off spellcasting every now and then instead, but either way. And the more schools a spell has, the more competitive spellcasting is, as stickyfingers mentioned.

Also IIRC, the actual percentages appear to only jump at the .5 average-skill-level intervals (I assume because of some weird rounding stuff), which makes the line even less smooth.

[McGeekster]

Fastest qay to get a multi-school spell online?

Oh my.

Glad I'm not the only person who noticed.

[Sprucery]

If you want to get the spell online as fast as possible, you obviously take Spellcasting into account. Then it depends on your aptitudes how you should train the skills.

[SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon]

I believe it doesn't depend on your aptitudes, in the general case

I think this is basically correct, see below.

*code and method*

I tackle the problem a different way. Instead of asking "how to split a certain amount of exp" I ask "how much exp is required to reach a certain level". Both methods have their merits.

Spellcasting is worth as much as a quarter of average of spell schools

going to ignore spellcasting and just focus on spell schools. Besides spellcasting has more important reasons (spell levels+mp) to be trained.

Also IIRC, the actual percentages appear to only jump at the .5 average-skill-level intervals

I've noticed something like this when playing, so going to assume it's true.


For the following I'm using Sandman's aptitude difference of -4 to +4. Also I'm assuming skill_exp_needed is total needed to reach level, not amount needed for next level (if the latter then at 0 apt lvl 2 requires 200 exp, lvl 3 requires 500 exp, lvl 4 requires exp etc.). Following are a few results in the form (average level, level of -4 apt skill, level of +4 apt skill, exp required). Also assuming skills start at 0, though this isn't the case in the OP.

(0, 0, 0, 0) (obviously lvl 0 requires 0 exp)

(0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 50+25/2=62.5)
(0.5, 0, 1, 25)

(1, 1, 1, 100+25=125)
(1, 0.5, 1.5, 50+50=100)
(1, 0, 2, 75)

(1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 200+50=250) (training to equal spell levels)
(1.5, 1, 2, 100+75=175)
(1.5, 0.5, 2.5, 50+225/2=162.5)
(1.5, 0, 3, 150) (all in +4 apt)

optimal very very early on to put all exp into +4 apt skill, though this doesn't last very long plus any mage will already have some starting exp in spell schools so doesn't matter. For a higher average level:

(13, 13, 13, 10100+2525=12625) (training to equal spell levels)
(13, 7, 19, 2800+12300/2=8950) (this is roughly optimal xp allocation: 2800 into -4apt and 6150 into +4 apt)
(13, 0, 26, 13500) (all in +4 apt)

By comparison if 9000 exp (rounding 8950 to 9000) is allocated equally we get 2250 efffective exp for the -4 and 9000 effective exp for the +4, or level 9 and level 16.36 which averages to 12.68 which rounds down to 12.5. While there is a more efficient way of allocating exp we're splitting hairs at this point. Also this is assuming a huge difference in aptitudes, for a smaller difference equal allocation of exp becomes closer to optimal.

Also I believe the greatest difference between optimal exp allocation and equal exp allocation occurs at 13.5 average level, since to get a higher average level the -4 apt spell school cannot be 0. This does not take into account spellcasting however.

[John Milferton]

*way

[XuaXua]

*way

The first post has an edit button for you.