Automatic Skill Point Distribution


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 07:25

Automatic Skill Point Distribution

The system for which skill you automatically try to train is outdated and annoying. It feels like every time you're pushed into killing something with a backup weapon or by throwing things at them in early game, you have to go to the skills and tell it 'no, just because I killed one thing that way doesn't mean I want to train it.' This is especially true because in the current system it's hard enough to get one skill up where you want it, despite splitting your skill XP between 5+ skills like it tries to make you. I recommend...starting with a default for you background (say if you spawned as an Ice Elementalist, it trains Ice and Spellcasting, for example) and not making any automatic changes at all. (If you want to train something else, you tell it to train that). Simply put, it's less annoying to make the changes when you need to than to remember to undo the automatic changes all the time. I'd also like to note that it's a bit weird how extremely specialist-centric things have become.
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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 07:59

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

I would like to start with the manual training("default_manual_training = true" should do at least this, yes?) and all skill off and get to choose what I want to train at the start

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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 12:34

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Options exist, so if you want to default to manual you can do that. And shift+letter lets you turn off all but one skill. There are also scripts you can use to open the skill screen at the start of the game.

Automatic training is a good default because it means new players can play without messing with the skill screen.

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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 12:49

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Galefury wrote:Automatic training is a good default because it means new players can play without messing with the skill screen.


Isn't it more harmful because it's better to focus on one~two skills most of the time anyway?

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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 13:09

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

New players don't think about skills at all. They think about where the walls are and how novel it is that walking into things makes you attack them. Eventually they figure out 5 to get HP back.
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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 20:20

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

nordetsa wrote:
Galefury wrote:Automatic training is a good default because it means new players can play without messing with the skill screen.

Isn't it more harmful because it's better to focus on one~two skills most of the time anyway?

That was kind of my point here; the current automatic makes it very hard to win; where an automatic -should- be good enough that it doesn't kill you to have on. Not as good as manual is one thing; but making you terribly under-skill-leveled by D: 4-6 is another.
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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 20:36

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Amnesiac wrote:I would like to start with the manual training("default_manual_training = true" should do at least this, yes?) and all skill off and get to choose what I want to train at the start

The code below will pop open the skills menu on the first turn automatically if that's something you're interested in.

  Code:
{
local need_skills_opened = true
function ready()
  if you.turns() == 0 and need_skills_opened then
    need_skills_opened = false
    crawl.sendkeys("m")
  end
end
}

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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 21:03

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

where shold I insert this?

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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 21:14

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Init.txt or your .rc file online

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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 21:17

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

I tried to paste the code at the end of the file, but it doesn't seem to work. Sorry if I'm doing something wrong, I'm not experienced with this kind of things.

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Post Saturday, 17th August 2013, 23:18

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Note that you can also influence experience point spending in automatic mode. I always play in automatic, and I have won a couple of games.

It is too much to expect that you can (easily!) win a game without tinkering with the m screen at all (it might make a funny challenge for good players). However, it is also too much to suggest that you cannot win without using manual skilling mode or even just win by training only single skills. While the latter are generally more efficient, the game is generous enough to provide leeway for automatic skilling.
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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 03:06

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Automatic training is one of the stupidest "features" crawl has. I'm convinced manual mode is both simpler to use and easier to win with. Having a second "automatic" mode clutters the UI and acts as a trap for newbies.

It's really an artefact from the 0.8 to 0.9 transition period, and the only reason the damn thing exists is to mimic and even worse system. Nowadays, half the playerbase doesn't even know what victory dancing was, and the other half plays strictly with manual training.

However, it is also too much to suggest that you cannot win without using manual skilling mode or even just win by training only single skills.

This does not mean the feature should exist, especially not as the default.

I tried to paste the code at the end of the file, but it doesn't seem to work. Sorry if I'm doing something wrong, I'm not experienced with this kind of things.

FWIW, I submitted a patch a while ago which added a single-line config option to the game to get this to work. It was rejected in favor of players using that Lua code, which I mostly agreed with.
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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 04:04

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

I think that automatic skill training belongs in crawl, despite the fact that I do not use it myself. Mostly 'optimal' skill training is actually really hard to learn, and I think more often than not players using manual skill training make things worse more than those using automatic. And of course, there are are likely players who do not want to press m that much.

For reference, here is a morgue of a character that used only automatic skill training: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/autodefe/morgue-autodefe-20130216-051653.txt

Note that aside from its very low fighting, this character's skills look better than the typical character dump on this forum in almost every way.
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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 04:33

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

@Amnesiac: Works for me. I'm running trunk on Arch Linux, and I opened /usr/share/stone-soup/data/settings/init.txt * and pasted the Lua code at the end of the file, saved it, and then restarted Crawl. Next new character (Zorba the GrEE) got the skilling menu popping up as soon as the game began.

* This is what the stone-soup-git Arch package uses and not the default, btw. I think /usr/share/crawl is the default sitewide config directory. I've never gotten user-local init.txts to work.

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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 06:19

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

I'm doing the same, except I'm on winxp

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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 07:52

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

pubby wrote:Automatic training is one of the stupidest "features" crawl has. I'm convinced manual mode is both simpler to use and easier to win with. Having a second "automatic" mode clutters the UI and acts as a trap for newbies.

I read stuff like this so often [emphasis mine], and I am quite sick of it. People try to explain (calmly, and with arguments) why automatic has a reason to exist, despite its drawbacks. It is fine that you're convinced manual is better and will never use anything else. It is not fine that you didn't even try to understand those arguments.

pubby wrote:It's really an artefact from the 0.8 to 0.9 transition period, and the only reason the damn thing exists is to mimic and even worse system. Nowadays, half the playerbase doesn't even know what victory dancing was, and the other half plays strictly with manual training.

Obviously, this is wrong.

I don't have problems with stern and strict disagreements about design decisions. This is what this forum is there for, and occasionally actually good for. However, resorting to "stupidest feature" is a shortcut to getting threads moved from GDD to CYC.

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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 14:04

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

dpeg wrote: However, resorting to "stupidest feature" is a shortcut to getting threads moved from GDD to CYC.


I feel like as long as its properly counterbalanced with a sanctimonious rant all is right with the world.
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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 14:21

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

People try to explain (calmly, and with arguments) why automatic has a reason to exist, despite its drawbacks.

The only argument I've seen for automatic training in this thread is that it's easier for newbies. I don't really buy this because the first moment they press 'm' and discover the skill menu, they're going to be confused.

Note that aside from its very low fighting, this character's skills look better than the typical character dump on this forum in almost every way.

Unfortunately, most newbies would have no way of knowing this, and may skill different. It would be interesting to see if a newbie actually ended up with a similar result.

Obviously, this is wrong.

???
I don't see how this is any more constructive than my hyperbole.
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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 15:24

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

pubby wrote:I don't see how this is any more constructive than my hyperbole.

It helps prevent misconceptions by less experienced players reading this forum.

There's already an in-game option to switch modes and a pre-game option to make manual the default. Why are we complaining about this?

Amnesiac wrote:I'm doing the same, except I'm on winxp

On the main menu at the top it should say the exact path of your options file. Make sure you're editing the right file.
(Also, to clarify, this only works for brand new games, not restored saves.)

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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 15:29

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

I open D:\crawl_tiles-0.13-a0-2720\settings\init.txt(the same is shown in the main menu) then insert your code at the end, but it doesn't work

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Post Sunday, 18th August 2013, 15:47

Automatic Skill Point Distribution

If you want, create a thread in tech support and post the contents of yor init.txt in code tags.
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Post Monday, 19th August 2013, 05:54

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

I, personally, really don't like thinking about skill choices. I've won a lot, but thinking about where to spend my XP next always bugs me. It feels like it needs constant work, and staring at a little menu thinking about which numbers to change makes me spend less time killing interesting monsters in interesting situations. Auto-training removes that lack of comfort for me, and for that reason, I like auto-training.
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Post Monday, 19th August 2013, 16:53

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

BlackSheep wrote:The code below will pop open the skills menu on the first turn automatically if that's something you're interested in.

that certainly looks easier than pressing 'm' on the first turn doesn't it
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Post Monday, 19th August 2013, 17:20

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

If you had to read the code every time you started a game, that might matter.
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Post Monday, 19th August 2013, 18:33

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

For what it's worth, I'm in the "automatic training works pretty well and it's probably worth some efforts to make it work better" camp. My guess is that the majority of players would do well to think more about combat tactics and less about skill choices.

That said, I generally use manual training because I like to push buttons. I'm far from convinced I do it better than the computer, though.
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Post Monday, 19th August 2013, 20:15

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Arrhythmia wrote:I, personally, really don't like thinking about skill choices. ... staring at a little menu thinking about which numbers to change makes me spend less time killing interesting monsters in interesting situations.

Personally, I think I enjoy playing with the skill training screen more than killing monsters. We all have different personalities and enjoy different aspects of the game.

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Post Monday, 19th August 2013, 20:18

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

To answer the OP directly, any attempt at starting skill templates for each background is going to frustrate somebody. You may not want to train throwing when you use the skill, but somebody who finds an early stack of javelins might. If you're concerned enough about accidentally training skills, it's very easy to disable specific ones even in automatic mode.
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Post Monday, 19th August 2013, 21:18

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

njvack wrote:For what it's worth, I'm in the "automatic training works pretty well and it's probably worth some efforts to make it work better" camp.

Well, I did ask for feedback on it when I redid all the skill code back in 0.9. I got a few and did some tuning, but I'm still willing to tweak it further. So if anyone has suggestions...

mikee wrote:Note that aside from its very low fighting, this character's skills look better than the typical character dump on this forum in almost every way.

Well, he also doesn't have much weapon skill, so this isn't surprising. Looks like he exclusively blasted his way to victory.

pubby wrote:
Note that aside from its very low fighting, this character's skills look better than the typical character dump on this forum in almost every way.

Unfortunately, most newbies would have no way of knowing this, and may skill different.

What do you mean skill different? It's automatic! Have you noticed that he didn't even bothered to disable any skill? He probably never opened the skill menu.

pubby wrote:It would be interesting to see if a newbie actually ended up with a similar result.

We'll never know since newbies don't win the game.
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Post Monday, 19th August 2013, 23:05

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Maybe fighting could get also get a little training weight whenever dodging and armour do? The skill is at least as useful for taking hits as it is for hitting things.

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Post Monday, 19th August 2013, 23:09

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Galefury wrote:Maybe fighting could get also get a little training weight whenever dodging and armour do? The skill is at least as useful for taking hits as it is for hitting things.

Seconded.
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Post Tuesday, 20th August 2013, 13:39

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Galefury wrote:Maybe fighting could get also get a little training weight whenever dodging and armour do? The skill is at least as useful for taking hits as it is for hitting things.

That's an interesting idea. Although I'd need to reduce the training from using weapons to compensate.
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 01:11

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Galefury wrote:Maybe fighting could get also get a little training weight whenever dodging and armour do? The skill is at least as useful for taking hits as it is for hitting things.

Or perhaps move the combat bonus into the weapon skills (that's basically what they are FOR anyway), and make it a defensive skill for the hp? (or move the hp into armor and dodging?)
I find it slightly offputting that I have to put points into a melee skill to get more hp on a ranged character, even when I don't plan on touching a melee weapon (since point-blank shooting is a thing).
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 13:10

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

On the other hand, not using melee at all isn't really a normal playstyle.
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 13:30

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

njvack wrote:For what it's worth, I'm in the "automatic training works pretty well and it's probably worth some efforts to make it work better" camp. My guess is that the majority of players would do well to think more about combat tactics and less about skill choices.

Yeah. I've played with it as an experiment (I don't think it was an online game though) and it was fine. A skilled player can definitely do a better job with manual mode, but automatic definitely is good enough, and will do a better job than a novice player. Which is really what it's meant to do.

It could probably be a bit smarter with weapon skills, and if you aren't melee it tends to undertrain fighting (which is good for all characters). It could also be more intelligent with spellcasting training, because at least in my experience, that's a skill which makes sense to train when you need it (for example, when you could use a few more spell slots). All of that's a matter of tuning though, overall the system works.

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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 13:59

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

evilmike wrote:It could probably be a bit smarter with weapon skills [...]. It could also be more intelligent [...]

What do you mean by that? There isn't any intelligence in the system. It increases the weight of training when you use a skill and that's it. I'm afraid trying to make the system smarter would make it complicated and unpredictable. I'd rather keep it simple and just tweak the weights of "exercises" (actions which increase the training percentage of a skill).
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 14:14

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Maybe it could weight weapon skills less after reaching minimum delay?
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 14:23

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

BlackSheep wrote:Maybe it could weight weapon skills less after reaching minimum delay?

The idea of special-casing weapon autoskilling for mindelay makes my very soul cry in anguish.
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 14:31

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

That's a little melodramatic. It's an extremely common piece of advice for beginners to stop training your weapon skill when it reaches min. delay, and it's very easy to calculate. It's a minor change with a reasonably substantial gain.

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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 14:44

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

njvack wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:Maybe it could weight weapon skills less after reaching minimum delay?

The idea of special-casing weapon autoskilling for mindelay makes my very soul cry in anguish.


That seems to be a problem of the game, i.e. that weapon skill effectiveness drops off hugely after reaching min delay. If the game has that sort of special case, then the auto skill system should take that into account. Otherwise people would just manually stop it once min delay is reached.

FWIW, I'm probably one of those who'd benefit from shifting to auto training (I overthink my skills training sometimes). Maybe I ought to play a few games on auto.
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 14:55

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

BlackSheep wrote:That's a little melodramatic. It's an extremely common piece of advice for beginners to stop training your weapon skill when it reaches min. delay, and it's very easy to calculate. It's a minor change with a reasonably substantial gain.

I know. And it's a good idea, honestly. But it makes the programmer in me cry out "mindelay is a broken concept" and in my soul, that's a very loud voice.
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 15:06

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

e: can't say anything nice, so i wont say it at all
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 15:18

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

njvack wrote:But it makes the programmer in me cry out "mindelay is a broken concept" and in my soul, that's a very loud voice.

While thinking about how to eliminate mindelay I have realized that it has a lot of very nice effects. I think it could be smoothed out a little to remove the magic number. But that some weapons benefit less from very high weapon skill than others, while also requiring less weapon skill to not be extremely risky to use, is good.

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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 15:32

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

galehar wrote:
evilmike wrote:It could probably be a bit smarter with weapon skills [...]. It could also be more intelligent [...]

What do you mean by that? There isn't any intelligence in the system. It increases the weight of training when you use a skill and that's it. I'm afraid trying to make the system smarter would make it complicated and unpredictable. I'd rather keep it simple and just tweak the weights of "exercises" (actions which increase the training percentage of a skill).

I know it doesn't try to be "smart" about these skills now, and overall it's more elegant this way. It's just that weapon skill and spellcasting are both a bit different from other skills, in that they have specific numbers you want to go for. Weapon skill has the whole issue with attack delay, and spellcasting has certain values where you gain new spell levels. If the automatic skill training could put a higher weight on abilities like this, when it makes sense to, I'd be fine with it from a gameplay perspective. Considering the actual underlying design though, it could be too messy/complicated to be worth the effort.

If anything, the blame lies more with the way these skills work, anyway.

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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 20:42

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Perhaps the special casing could be in the weighting contributed, Increase the weighting of fighting vs weapon skill when your current weapon skill == min delay for the weapon you've just hit with, and increase the weighting of spellcasting vs spell school when number of free spell slots == 0 and Character level > highest level spell memorized.

(Plausibly it could scan your inventory for books with unmemorized spells, and bigger weapons, but that sounds.. ugly)

Not perfect, but I bet it'd give you more points of spellcasting and fighting when you need them.
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 21:29

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

evilmike wrote:If anything, the blame lies more with the way these skills work, anyway.

Yeah, this is making me want to work on getting rid of min delay more than on skill training...

Siegurt wrote:Perhaps the special casing could be in the weighting contributed, Increase the weighting of fighting vs weapon skill when your current weapon skill == min delay for the weapon you've just hit with

Well, that's a good idea, something like that might help and should be easy enough to code.

increase the weighting of spellcasting vs spell school when number of free spell slots == 0 and Character level > highest level spell memorized.

Spellcasting is trickier. I would definitely not base it on available free slots. One way would be to increase the weight as you get closer to a new slot, but it would probably just make the training rate oscillate strangely for not much gain.
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Post Wednesday, 21st August 2013, 22:13

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Heheh, that probably just shows my own predilection for training spellcasting in an oscillating way.. I train until I have enough slots to memorize something, then memorize it and turn off spellcasting until I have another spell available that I want to cast, then turn it back on... etc. etc.

Guessing whether the player *wants* to memorize any of the spells available is a tough one. Although I think it's safe to say, if they've got enough spell slots to memorize any of the spells they have available, and haven't done so, then they *don't* need more spellcasting right now.
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Post Thursday, 22nd August 2013, 11:10

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

Hmm I have always continued to train Weapon skills a bit after getting my other important skills to 15 or what ever point I feel i need them :/ I do feel that weapon skill is useful past minium delay unless you use your spells to kill hard targets :/ maybe i'm just a fool.

I personally feel like with bit of management auto training can help to keep your build even. Maybe player should have an option to double focus a skill while training it. This would reduce the amount of skills auto train even further. Auto training often helps to keep my build balanced after mid game. It helps you not to neglect less important skills, and i do belive it often gives right balance of defensive skills, stealth and what ever offensive skill you decide to focus on.

Also learning skills system does take some time. And whole skill system is quite bit to chew during first runs. Most new crawl players do have experianced players to help them, but still auto training helps to not have to chew everything at once.

Only problem with auto training is that it doesn't help you help you in early game. Untill you have trained your main killing spell to high enough point.

Anyway I think there should be option to double focus a skill or manual skill training with option to give some portion of the xp automatic training.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Thursday, 22nd August 2013, 11:58

Re: Automatic Skill Point Distribution

There is already a focus state for skills. It's enabled by default and double the training weight.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

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