Skill training

[galehar]

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/skill-training

[absolutego]

it's been, what, a little over a month? and i'm already forgetting how much the game has changed with victory dancing gone.
it's pretty much perfect now, as far as i'm concerned. so thanks again for all the work and the three billion commits. hope those finally let up :)

[galehar]

There is a new change to the skill training in trunk. You don’t have to practise skills to learn them anymore, you can select them starting right at level 0. On the other hand, you need to have some means of training a skill to be able to select it.

Could you explain why this restriction is present?

1) To reduce clutter on the skill screen.
2) Because it makes sense that you need to be able to practise a skill for it to be trained.
3) Because you rarely want to train a skill you can't use anyway so this shouldn't be annoying.
4) To bring back some of the restrictions on skill training that were lost when VD was removed, but in a more interesting way. For example, you actually need to play while wear a shield to train the skill instead of just owning one and knowing a rat.
5) To avoid artificial behaviours like learning a spell just to get a skill than forgetting it while waiting for a higher level one to get castable. Now you might want to choose a spell that you want to use since it will take up some slot space, instead of just any random low level spell of the school you're interested in.

[joellercoaster]

I struggled a little with this this morning... I'd had a character in progress beforehand, and I couldn't get his main skills to train (Long Blades and Armour) with the things he was using at the time of the change until I dropped them on the floor and picked them up again (weirdly training when wearing ring mail and not the plate he had).

I know this is super minor, as it should only happen to people playing a dev branch, but just in case anyone else is experiencing it, here's what worked for me.

[betamin]

There is a new change to the skill training in trunk. You don’t have to practise skills to learn them anymore, you can select them starting right at level 0. On the other hand, you need to have some means of training a skill to be able to select it.

Could you explain why this restriction is present?

1) To reduce clutter on the skill screen.
2) Because it makes sense that you need to be able to practise a skill for it to be trained.
3) Because you rarely want to train a skill you can't use anyway so this shouldn't be annoying.
4) To bring back some of the restrictions on skill training that were lost when VD was removed, but in a more interesting way. For example, you actually need to play while wear a shield to train the skill instead of just owning one and knowing a rat.
5) To avoid artificial behaviours like learning a spell just to get a skill than forgetting it while waiting for a higher level one to get castable. Now you might want to choose a spell that you want to use since it will take up some slot space, instead of just any random low level spell of the school you're interested in.

IMO this is bad for non magic users because you need to wield a sword to train for it and while you do it you don't have the most effective character, while magic users can just pick a level 1 spell and wait until the high level spell comes with no complications.

Come on, throw us melee users a bone.

[GermanJoey]

IMO this is bad for non magic users because you need to wield a sword to train for it and while you do it you don't have the most effective character, while magic users can just pick a level 1 spell and wait until the high level spell comes with no complications.

Come on, throw us melee users a bone.

Actually, if I understand the change correctly, all you need it to carry a sword in your inventory. This is still in contrast to 0.8, where you actually had to use the sword constantly in order to train the skill.

[thenewflesh]

while you do it you don't have the most effective character, while magic users can just pick a level 1 spell and wait until the high level spell comes with no complications.

Come on, throw us melee users a bone.

You misunderstand. You only have to carry a sword in your inventory to train Long Blades, you don't have to actually wield it. It just doesn't apply to armour / shields which is kind of strange.

[betamin]

Oh, I thought it was the same system as for the shields, nvm.

[ElectricAlbatross]

By the way, why does one have to be wearing a shield to train Shields?

[galehar]

while you do it you don't have the most effective character, while magic users can just pick a level 1 spell and wait until the high level spell comes with no complications.

Come on, throw us melee users a bone.

You misunderstand. You only have to carry a sword in your inventory to train Long Blades, you don't have to actually wield it. It just doesn't apply to armour / shields which is kind of strange.

Forcing you to wield the weapon is no good because you can always swap to it for the kill. So it's not a real restriction, just an interface annoyance. However, you can't swap shield and armour during combat, so this is a real restriction.

[thenewflesh]

For some reason I can train armour with steam dragon hide, is it a bug?

[CommanderC]

I have just noticed a way you can abuse this new skill system: Identification of evocable rings like teleportation and invisibility without putting them on.

[galehar]

I have just noticed a way you can abuse this new skill system: Identification of evocable rings like teleportation and invisibility without putting them on.

For some reason I can train armour with steam dragon hide, is it a bug?

Both bugs fixed. Thanks for reporting.

[Danei]

while you do it you don't have the most effective character, while magic users can just pick a level 1 spell and wait until the high level spell comes with no complications.

Come on, throw us melee users a bone.

You misunderstand. You only have to carry a sword in your inventory to train Long Blades, you don't have to actually wield it. It just doesn't apply to armour / shields which is kind of strange.

Forcing you to wield the weapon is no good because you can always swap to it for the kill. So it's not a real restriction, just an interface annoyance. However, you can't swap shield and armour during combat, so this is a real restriction.

It becomes a "real" restriction for weapons if the only weapon of a certain type that the player has (an early game long blade found on the ground, for example) is cursed. As it stands, I can pick up the weapon and train long blades without ever using resources to check its curse status/equipping it and risking the curse -> using resources to lift it.

I realize this is a corner case (hence the quotes around "real"), and the resources involved aren't exactly rare, but it happened today that I found a long sword on a HEWr, found it to be cursed via Detect Curse, and had no means of uncursing it for quite a while, but still trained long blades anyway without equipping it.

So I thought I'd mention it in this thread, without stating I think anything needs to be changed about the system.

[Moose]

Yah, this can create awkward situations ...

For my club-wielding trolls, I like to roll a troll monk, and immediately turn off all skills except for maces and flails ... but because I started as a monk, I don't have access to train the skill yet.

Finding a club is simple enough for sure, as soon as I pick it up, I can train the skill... but, I still do TONS more damage with my claws than with the club, so I just hold the club in my inventory not wielding it. It's not until I find a giant club or something from an ogre, that I'll actually wield it.

So to me, it just seems very arbitrary that I have to carry around this useless club for the sole purpose of being able to train maces and flails.

[bobross419]

Could just do away with the carry requirement completely and allow the selection of all skills (including 0 level) right from the start. Its not like its really difficult to pre-victory dance anything to 1 as it is then not use the skill until much later when its effective.

[Blade]

Could just do away with the carry requirement completely and allow the selection of all skills (including 0 level) right from the start. Its not like its really difficult to pre-victory dance anything to 1 as it is then not use the skill until much later when its effective.

It wouldn't really make sense for a lv.1 berserker to be able to start training Spellcasting (etc.) with zero MP, no spellbooks, and a magic-hating god. Having at least slight restrictions on which skills can be trained seems far better if skills are to have any relation to what you actually do.

[KoboldLord]

It wouldn't really make sense for a lv.1 berserker to be able to start training Spellcasting (etc.) with zero MP, no spellbooks, and a magic-hating god.

There is no reason to attempt to do that. If you feel the urge the mock Crawl's realism because it doesn't cover this irrelevant corner case, go ahead and get it out of your system while I punch this elephant to death and then devour it whole.

Having at least slight restrictions on which skills can be trained seems far better if skills are to have any relation to what you actually do.

We tried the system where skills had a relationship to what we actually did. It sucked. So the devteam got rid of it, at least mostly. Turns out completing hundreds of identical simple tasks with lots of tedious repetition is one of those things we play games to avoid.

[bobross419]

Could just do away with the carry requirement completely and allow the selection of all skills (including 0 level) right from the start. Its not like its really difficult to pre-victory dance anything to 1 as it is then not use the skill until much later when its effective.

It wouldn't really make sense for a lv.1 berserker to be able to start training Spellcasting (etc.) with zero MP, no spellbooks, and a magic-hating god. Having at least slight restrictions on which skills can be trained seems far better if skills are to have any relation to what you actually do.

There are some minor cases that can be used to argue against it, but like your berserker example they really aren't that major. A berserker can train Spellcasting as soon as they've read-ID'd a few scrolls. If they are really wanting to switch to another god later then its really not that big a deal. Whether they start training Spellcasting at XL:1 or XL:4 makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things.

Arguments can be made for learning specific casting schools, but again its not that major of an issue to memorize one level 1 Charms so that you can pre-train for later Haste.

There really isn't a point at which someone will be trying to learn so many different skills that they will run out of carry capacity. The current system just encourages pre-dancing and added tedium. Realistically, unless you are a streaker then losing an XL:1 character because you are trying to pre-dance M&F with a club really isn't that big of a deal.

There would still be a strategic element involved as well - Spend the exp to get Shields up to buckler levels now when I might not see benefit until later or get to hungerless/minimum delay faster which gives immediate returns.

[bobross419]

There isn't pre-dancing involved anymore. The restriction we're talking about here is being unable to train skills without [wearing a shield/wearing armour with an evasion penalty/having a spell of a certain school memorized/carrying a weapon of a certain type].

Pre-dancing refers to current-stable obviously and not current-trunk.

[Megabass]

There isn't pre-dancing involved anymore. The restriction we're talking about here is being unable to train skills without [wearing a shield/wearing armour with an evasion penalty/having a spell of a certain school memorized/carrying a weapon of a certain type].

Pre-dancing refers to current-stable obviously and not current-trunk.

Switch from automatic to manual mode. You can set your skills up to be trained however you like with focus/disabling/a little monitoring.

[bobross419]

There isn't pre-dancing involved anymore. The restriction we're talking about here is being unable to train skills without [wearing a shield/wearing armour with an evasion penalty/having a spell of a certain school memorized/carrying a weapon of a certain type].

Pre-dancing refers to current-stable obviously and not current-trunk.

Switch from automatic to manual mode. You can set your skills up to be trained however you like with focus/disabling/a little monitoring.

... pre-dancing refers to gaining the first level in current stable. Next time I'll try to break everything down Barney style.

[snow]

I don't like how you have to have an earth spell to get up earth magic. It's incredibly tedious to try to memorize iron shot at terrible (it takes so many tries) just to put experience into earth magic to use it later on. Shouldn't you be able to put experience into earth magic from the start and memorize iron shot when it doesn't take many, many tries to do so? On that note shouldn't memorization take X turns instead of forcing a player to try over and over again? And I know how some spells can hurt you if you fail to memorize them but really is that feature needed? It just makes you stash the book and memorize it later instead of just memorizing it now and dropping the book.

[nicolae]

I don't like how you have to have an earth spell to get up earth magic. It's incredibly tedious to try to memorize iron shot at terrible (it takes so many tries) just to put experience into earth magic to use it later on. Shouldn't you be able to put experience into earth magic from the start and memorize iron shot when it doesn't take many, many tries to do so?

Why not find some level 1 Earth magic spell and use it for getting Earth magic trainable? (Or, alternately, be a little more flexible with strategy.)

With the new skill setup, it might be reasonable to suggest a handful of spellbooks containing nothing but Level 1 spells for the purposes of helping mages branch out -- the Book of Cantrips is the only current spellbook that's only level 1 spells, as far as I know, and none of them are elemental.

On that note shouldn't memorization take X turns instead of forcing a player to try over and over again?

I am in agreement with this, though, spellbook memorization failure is annnooooyyyying and I don't know what purpose it serves. Would an all-or-nothing spellbook learning curve be viable -- if you can read it, you're guaranteed to learn it after X number of turns, and if you can't it just says you're too dumb to learn things today.

[absolutego]

If anything I think it's better to take it in the other direction (let you train shields/armour without wearing them, etc). These restrictions are among the things people hated about the old system.

i'm all for this too. it sounds good on paper but in practice you just game the system (see snow's example above), and when you can't there's a discrepancy: you can train weapons without ever wielding one, but not shields or armour.

i'd only restrict it to stuff you've already found some means to train. so you can't train earth if you haven't found a book with a single earth spell. (no need to have it in inventory though.) the alternative would be very spoilery (e.g. training necro with a non-necromancer from turn 1 if you plan to take up kiku) and remove some of the need to adapt to a given game.

[sanka]

I have learend condensation shield with a character that have never ever actually used it (bad success rate, no ice magic), just to enable training shields skill without wearing one. I did this when I actually had the shield, but it would be too cumbersome to wear it with low skill (it was a troll, so no starting up training with bucklers).

I am neutral with these restrictions - they are not so annoying and have some effect on the game, altough only with a few number of skills, so it's a little strange.

[Galefury]

Let me remind you why the restrictions were introduced:

Could you explain why this restriction is present?

1) To reduce clutter on the skill screen.
2) Because it makes sense that you need to be able to practise a skill for it to be trained.
3) Because you rarely want to train a skill you can't use anyway so this shouldn't be annoying.
4) To bring back some of the restrictions on skill training that were lost when VD was removed, but in a more interesting way. For example, you actually need to play while wear a shield to train the skill instead of just owning one and knowing a rat.
5) To avoid artificial behaviours like learning a spell just to get a skill than forgetting it while waiting for a higher level one to get castable. Now you might want to choose a spell that you want to use since it will take up some slot space, instead of just any random low level spell of the school you're interested in.

I also initially was strongly against these training restrictions, mostly because I disagree with point 4. It does not add anything interesting to the game in my opinion, it just makes people try to game the system. But in this thread people seem to be overly negative. I have seen very little useful criticism. You're pointing out problems (most of which were already discussed before the restrictions were introduced), but don't offer solutions.

The first point (reducing clutter) is the most important of these IMO, and any suggestion to change the current system needs to take it into account. Suggestions like displaying skills of any school you have ever seen in a spellbook are simply not compatible with this point. Here are two suggestions that don't interfere with 1):

a) Only have restrictions for gaining the first skill level. After that the skill is always displayed anyway, so there is no increase in clutter. This loses 2) and 5), which is bad. It also loses 4), which is good IMO, but the devs I have discussed this with seemed to disagree.

b) No restrictions on training. But the current restrictions are used to determine which level 0 skills are displayed. If you want to train an undisplayed skill you just use m*. This would make the keys for skills change between m and m*, but I think this is a fairly minor problem. This avoids any and all need to game the system, by making the restrictions only affect the interface, not the gameplay. 2) and 4) are gone, 5) is addressed differently than before.

[XuaXua]

Does the Cloak of Darkness (evokable Invisibility) use Evocations?

If so, Evocations does not appear as trainable when wearing it on the not-so-near-trunk-anymore version I'm playing (0.10-a0-1183).

[thenewflesh]

Does the Cloak of Darkness (evokable Invisibility) use Evocations?

If so, Evocations does not appear as trainable when wearing it on the not-so-near-trunk-anymore version I'm playing (0.10-a0-1183).

Testing in wizard mode shows that it's a bug: it does use evo, raising evo increase the ability's success. The same bug applies to any kind of armour (gloves, boots, shields, etc.)

[XuaXua]

Does the Cloak of Darkness (evokable Invisibility) use Evocations?

If so, Evocations does not appear as trainable when wearing it on the not-so-near-trunk-anymore version I'm playing (0.10-a0-1183).

Testing in wizard mode shows that it's a bug: it does use evo, raising evo increase the ability's success. The same bug applies to any kind of armour (gloves, boots, shields, etc.)

Reported here:
https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=4743

but then-again, since those evocations use food, maybe they decided not to allow evocations to be trained due to that. Of course, wands use charges, so how can you train while holding a wand? I feel the concept behind qualifying evocations training may be broken.

[thenewflesh]

Then why do jewelry, body armour (robes, etc.) and weapon let you train it? Plus it's also enough to have a wand or a deck in your inventory. I believe it is a bug, not intended behaviour.