Dumb AM ranger question 4 - Setting skills

[grinrain]

How do most folks set skills? I have just been clicking bow up one step, and leaving the rest as is. Tried to decrease spell/hex a bit, but they all zero out when I step around.

(sorry, sure there is a better way to express the question)

After that, I just let the game take is course. Setting stop values when I get close, but not much other than that.

[Airwolf]

Use manual skilling instead of automatic.

[grinrain]

That is sort of telling some one who barely writes python to go write assembly.

[Sorcerous]

How do most folks set skills? I have just been clicking bow up one step, and leaving the rest as is. Tried to decrease spell/hex a bit, but they all zero out when I step around.

(sorry, sure there is a better way to express the question)

After that, I just let the game take is course. Setting stop values when I get close, but not much other than that.

'm' opens the skill menu, '/' switches between automatic skilling (this is enabled by default) and manual skilling (which is what you want). '=' allows you to set skill goals, but getting certain items or effects can change priorities.
In manual mode all trained skills get an equal % of XP allocated, with * trained skills getting double the share. Five skills with + training get 20% each, whereas two + skills and two * skills get ~16.67% and ~33.33%, respectively. In the early game, you can get the stuff you want online more quickly by only training four or fewer skills at a time.
An important thing to note is that the higher a skill rank is, the more XP it needs to rank up further. Getting a skill from 0-10 is much less of an investment than getting it from 10-15. You seem to like the spell/combat hybrid builds, so being prudent about how much you need out of a given skill is likely to hinder your gameplay if done haphazardly. My advice on that front would be to keep to the lower level utility spells (1-5) and forget about the big ones (6-9) entirely for a normal 3 rune win. Mana Viper summons (Summoning+Hexes) are a good example for a spell that remains massively powerful against many encounters.

As for the coding analogy above, I'd rather call it using the same language with a changed environment variable or two

[grinrain]

I would beg to differ, requires a different level of understanding. Before, would just set weapon skill to the level that gave me minimal delay, and let the game take care of the rest. Now I need to determine how much armor vs dodge vs stealth? How much hex vs spellcasting vs invocations vs evocations and do I ever train any other school of magic.

Speaking of which, what is the best strategy to switch between skills?

[Sorcerous]

Before, would just set weapon skill to the level that gave me minimal delay, and let the game take care of the rest. Now I need to determine how much armor vs dodge vs stealth? How much hex vs spellcasting vs invocations vs evocations and do I ever train any other school of magic.

Yes, you have to determine what amounts of skills you want and how to distribute them for a balance of destruction and preservation. A rule of thumb (mine, at least) for armour is to take the ER as a basis, and add 3 points of strength and two ranks of skill on top (ex. ER=9, I want 11 Armour skill and 12 or more strength). Evocations can do plenty for you even if you only train up to 8 ranks, though 10 is more commonly seen. Honestly, the best way to learn about skills and how they relate to your gameplay is to play and see how things turn out for you. There is no answer that is completely correct or wrong that you can get from others, try to reach an answer that works for you. As for spells, you want the combination of skills and items where your spell failure rates are under 10%.

Speaking of which, what is the best strategy to switch between skills?

I do not quite understand the question, but I tend to train the basic necessary skills equally until XL 7, then include new ones to have more versatility. In the case of AM, I'd train the basic four skills (no Fighting) until XL 7, then include Fighting, Armour, and Evocations. If that's the switching you asked about, I hope this helps your plays.

[petercordia]

It is often worth racing to certain breakpoints (such as getting a spell castable or reaching a skill-target for a shield/weapon) by studying only one skill, but only if the breakpoint for that skill isn't much greater than all your other current skills. (So, generally don't do this in D:1 ) My reason for racing this way is that whilst you approach such a breakpoint more slowly, you have xp that isn't doing anything to help you.

When using manual skilling and not racing one particular skill, I usually train most skills at +, train shields and one type of weapon/magic at *, and manage a few skills which I only want a little of using skill targets. (Often the skills I want a little of of are armour OR dodging, stealth, and invocations or evocations.)

When deciding what to train, look at the costs of different skills. This is often useful.

I often use automatic skilling actually, but I find I always have to focus armour, dodging, shielding, invokations, evocations, and my main magic school. Part of the reason for this is that automatic skilling doesn't know which skills I need in emergencies.

For your human AM, I would start by training {fighting, *ranged weapon, dodging, magic, *hexes} and managing armour and other magic schools with skill targets,
then later switch to training armour instead of dodging. (Armour skill tends to be less important in the early game.)
By the time you are XL 5, it is almost always good to train any skill which is remotely useful to level 1. The exception to this rule is stealth. Again, look at the costs of different skills. I don't understand people who say you should only train one defensive skill.

Also, note that a AM are complicated. If you start as a hunter or a wizard, your initial skilling can be much simpler. (My hunters train {fighting *weapon dodging armour}, and my wizards just race conjurations to level 4 or 5)

[Sprucery]

You should always train Armour to the point when you gain another point of AC, then train something else if you like. You gain one point of AC for every 22 / (base_AC_of_all_your_armour) levels. For example, with a ring mail (AC 5) only, you'll get one point of AC every 22/5 = 4.4 levels of Armour. But if you are wearing also a cloak, helmet, boots ang gloves, you'll get one point of AC every 22/9 = 2.44 levels of Armour.

As for Dodging, there's no easy way to calculate, so you'll just have to train until you gain a point of EV, then stop. With good Dex and light armour, you might gain a point of EV without training even one full level of Dodging. In heavy armour and low dex, it will take several levels of Dodging to gain a point of EV, at which point it is not usually worth it (it's better to train something else first).

[grinrain]

Started with fighting 20%, bow 40%, armor 20% (missed the comment that said start with dodge till lvl5 or 6), hex at 20%.

Bounced between armor and dodge at 2:1, every time i did 2 lvls of armor, did one of dodge.

Did hex and spell casting back and forth, but once I got religion, did two lvls of invocation.

Once fighting got to 10, looked at my melee weapons and started long blades since they were the only decent ones I had.

Now at fighting 10, LB 3, bow at 14.4, Armor 9.8, dodge 4.1, spell casting 7, hex 6.7, Invocation 4, evocation 2.

Suggestions, comments?

As an aside, the nice thing about manual when you use a consumable like arrows, you still move your primary skill while using your +0 electro dagger to kill trash mobs.

[svendre]

You've already got a lot of great tips above from different people.

I'll just add that I generally don't train multiple skills at once. I train one skill until it hits some breakpoint where it achieves a certain level of something I want, such as AC+1 or EV+1 or extra health from fighting. Spells are a bit more complicated, if a spell requires two or more schools, I may train multiple schools at once, but then that also depends on aptitudes. For weapons, the most important breakpoint initially is not getting the delay to minimum, but getting the breakpoint to just under 1 turn per swing, for defensive reasons. Generally speaking, go for the cheapest bang for the buck.

Besides the above tactics, I also tend to raise skills up in multiples of 3. Doing so in this way doesn't always hit exact breakpoints, but you develop a sense for how well a particular skill performs relative to the dungeon level you're in over time, and it's a lot easier to just set those breakpoints, and then reassess where you're at. So I might bring up a bunch of core skills to 3, then decide I want half of them up to level 6, then pick one used the most and bring it up to level 9.. and so on.

When a character reaches fighting 15, weapon (min delay), armour 15, evasion (9 or 12 or whatever..), shields 15 - I generally consider that it's pretty stable and am more liberal in spreading points wherever I feel like it from there.

Always adjust what you train based on what you find. Press your advantages, minimize your weaknesses.