Learning Skills and Commands

As an Adventurer, it makes sense to practise your fighting skills for as long as possible on the training dummy. But once you've TM'd your top level fighting skill to level 2, you’re unlikely to advance much further. And of course, there's more to life than fighting! But currently no option to TM anything else.

On the bright side, all that effort has earned you a nice stack of XP to spend on acquiring skills. So, what goodies should we try to get first?

Mmmmm... well, better health is always desirable. And a talent for spotting miscreants lurking in corners might be handy for when you hit the mean streets of the Great Wahoonie. And a few more levels of fighting is a must-have... and surely there are more effective methods of combat available? And what about learning to swim?

Learning & Teaching

Discworld MUD help files:

Learning: http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/playing/documentation.c?path=/helpdir/learn

Teaching: http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/playing/documentation.c?path=/helpdir/teach

The command for teaching skills and commands to yourself - or anyone else - is:

teach x to [name]

Try it now, by typing

teach other.health to [your name]

teach other.health to sothis
You can teach yourself 1 level of other.points for 500 xp.

If you have enough XP to learn the skill on offer, the game presents you with the option to learn:

Use "learn" to learn the skill.
You offer to teach yourself 1 level of other.points for 500 xp.
> 
learn other.points from me
You start to teach yourself 1 level in other.points for 500 xp.
Saving...
Saving...
You finish teaching yourself 1 level of other.points.
>

If you haven't got enough XP to learn a skill, the game helpfully tells you how much XP you need to do so:

teach craft to sothis
It would have cost 9000 xp to teach 1 level of crafts to yourself.

You can also teach multiple levels of a skill, providing the person you're teaching (in this case you, obviously) has sufficient XP to learn, by typing teach n levels of x to [name].

teach 5 levels of fighting to sothis
You can teach yourself 5 levels of fighting for 512253 xp.
Use "learn" to learn the skill.
You offer to teach yourself 5 levels of fighting for 512253 xp.

And yes, that was a purely fictional example: the chances of earning 512253 XP in the Newbie Area are remote to nowhere. But you get the idea.

One point before moving on

Members of the "proper" Guilds can learn skills up to certain levels by going to their Guild houses, finding the advancement rooms and using the Advance command.

Adventurers cannot use Advance. But if you're reading this and you've just joined a Guild, or you intend to - make sure you use the Advance command to get your skills as high as possible before resorting to Teach, because advance will consume around one third of the XP required by teaching.

And moving on...

So, getting back to the original question, or a variation thereupon: which skills would you like to teach yourself?

Which Skills?

My advice for advancing your skills is to decide what you need to get the most out of your character, find out which commands will make this happen, then acquire the skills required to get the commands.

Easy!

Except... there are six sets of skills, some of which are five subsets deep, and literally thousands of commands (not including the souls mentioned in Communication). How does any newbie decide how to choose? More importantly, how on Disc can I write coherently about them all when I don't know where to begin? It's taken me months already to get as far as this paragraph!

Ahem.

So I've decided to be thoroughly draconian in this section, and dictate to the hapless reader what to get and in what order. You will, as you progress, find out for yourself which order you should advance in, and when you do, feel free to Contact Me and whinge throughly about this chapter. But until then (or at least until I finish writing the Skills & Commands section), pay attention and read carefully.

Health & Hit Points (HP)

You only get around 500 Hit Points (HP) when you arrive, and should you undergo any experience which causes that number to fall to zero, you die. Therefore you need to increase these as a matter of priority. To do this, teach yourself as much other.health as you possibly can. Aim to acquire around 1200 HP as a starting goal, and remember: you cannot TM other.health.

Perception

The higher your other.perception, the greater the chance you have of seeing thieves before they rob you, Shady Characters before they attack you, and of using the crucial Sneak command with any success. Try to learn at least 10 levels, and 25+ should be your goal. NB: You can TM other.perception by the frequent use of using any covert command, such as Sneak and Hide.

Other.Points & Guild Points (GP)

In the Combat section, I mentioned that acquiring Guild Points (GP) was a more involved process than acquiring Hit Points. Technically this isn't quite true: if you know which skill to advance, earning GP is simply a matter of advancing it. But... Adventurers do not have a Guild - the "Guild of Adventurers" is just a default state of being from which one is intended to launch into a "proper" Guild. How, then, shall we the unGuilded to discover how to advance our Guild Points?

After some investigation and the helpful advice of Minimal the Iron Fisted Adventurer (he who eschews, not only Guilds, but any form of weaponry more advanced than his mighty fists. Fool), it transpires that an Adventurer needs to advance other.points in order to acquire Guild Points.

So why are Guild Points so important anyway? you ask. Because, inquisitive one, every learnable command costs GP to execute. If you haven't got very many, then there are serious constraints on what you can do. Also, one of the most important pieces of equipment you could possibly own is a yellow stone ring of perpetual light - which is powered by GP. So, the importance of advancing other.points would be hard to overstate. But don't sacrifice Hit Points for Guild Points... and think carefully in choosing between GP and perception.

Fighting.Special

As previously mentioned, the most reliable way of acquiring XP to spend on learning skills is fighting. However, being lodged as you are in the Newbie Area, the only fighting commands available to you are attack and kill, and the only way to push the ensuing scuffle in your favour is by tweaking your tactics.

You will therefore be pleased to know that there is a comprehensive range of special attacks available which can considerably help you in a fight. And again, for a weaker fighter, these can be crucial in tipping the balance in your favour against a stronger opponent.

In Combat, we had a quick look at the fighting skill tree, to examine progress on the melee skills; the only ones you can TM while in the Newbie Area.

If you have another look, you'll notice fighting.special is right down the end, just above fighting.points.

=======SKILLS=======Level/Bonus=============================
fighting............    0    0
| melee.............    0    0
| | dagger..........    0    0
| | sword...........    0    0
| | heavy-sword.....    0    0
| | axe.............    0    0
| | mace............    0    0
| | flail...........    0    0
| | polearm.........    0    0
| | misc............    0    0
| range.............    0    0
| | thrown..........    0    0
| | bow.............    0    0
| | fired...........    0    0
| unarmed...........    1    5
| | striking........    3   15
| | grappling.......    0    0
| defence...........    1    5
| | parrying........    3   15
| | blocking........    0    0
| | dodging.........    2   10
| special...........    0    0
| | weapon..........    0    0
| | unarmed.........    0    0
| | tactics.........    0    0
| | mounted.........    0    0
| points............    0    0
>

For most fighting commands, you need to advance fighting.special.weapon to level 15. For one or two of the others, you need fighting.special.unarmed, also to level 15. And for maximum success in using those commands once you have them, you need to advance fighting.special.tactics as far as possible. Don't worry about fighting.special.mounted, however - plans to allow characters to ride horses have yet to enter the game.

One thing to note, is that once you start advancing your fighting skills, in any subset of the tree, your guild level will start to rise. I'm currently level 14 - Westley, Adventurer par excellence, was at level 163 the last time I saw him!

The noteworthy thing about this, is that Guild level and Guild Points aren't connected for an Adventurer: advancing the former requires you to work on your fighting skills, advancing the latter means raising your other.points. The "proper" Guilds have a set of primary skills, and advancing those raises Guild level and Guild Points simultaneously.

Or so my research has led me to believe so far. Grateful thanks to Labrat for elucidating this most curious distinction between Guild Points and Guild Levels, which appears to be exclusive to Adventurers.

Of course, if you know differently, please do Contact Me.

Advancing Skills

You've already seen how to teach yourself skills to advance your health and perception. You've probably tried it out - and having read the section on fighting above, you may well have tried to advance the recommended fighting skills.

And at this point you'll have probably hit two snags. The first is obvious - you've probably used up the small stack of XP you had and can't afford to learn anything else. But the other is that you can't learn the fighting skills in the same way you can learn the other skills.

The short explanation is simply this. The other skill tree is a disparate collection of miscellaneous abilities. Even the ones which look related aren't - for example, the climbing skills. Climbing trees, rocks and ropes are grouped under other.movement.climbing... but climbing them in the real world would require different skills. Therefore, (presumably) you are allowed to advance other.movement.climbing.rope (or rock, or tree) without having to get other.movement.climbing to a certain level first. Think of other as "miscellaneous", but easier to spell.

The other five skills sets, however, are all cohesive groups, and you have to advance the top level by five before you can move onto a subset... and so on, down the tree until you reach the skill you actually want.

For example, to get fighting.special.weapon, you have to get fighting to level 5, then fighting.special to level 10, then finally you can get fighting.special.weapon to whatever level you like.

This process applies to all the skill trees apart from other.

Final Words on Skills

You can learn multiple levels of a skill from yourself or someone else - but for complicated reasons, it works out slightly more expensive¹.
You may also find that learning skills from other players could be cheaper than teaching yourself - but you have to balance that against the effort of finding a teacher. Check out this page on Flatline's site for a list of the best teachers for various skills, then, if you can find them, you could ask them nicely to teach you stuff: http://skills.gothmudders.com/sensei.php.
You can abbreviate skill names to the first two letters. Or first three letters, if the first two are the same (e.g. rope and rock).
- So, instead of this: teach other.movement.climbing.tree to sothis
- You can type this: teach ot.mo.cl.tr to sothis
Subsets of a skill are always divided by dots. They just are.
Typing skills [skill name] will show you the tree for that skill. Try it now, for skills ot.

Commands

It's not possible to teach yourself commands - you have to learn them from someone else. And since we rugged Adventurer types do not have Guild schools with teachers from whom to learn, this involves asking other players very nicely if they will be so good as to share with us the fruits of their learning.

There is no set protocol for this, but remember: good manners never go out of fashion. And most people are more than happy to share - plus they earn XP when doing so.

If the kind person offers to teach you a skill or command, the syntax displayed onscreen looks exactly the same as it does when you offer to teach yourself (with their name instead of yours, obviously). And so all you need to do is type or click on learn when prompted, as usual.

Particularly generous souls, such as Lanfear will have autoteach enabled. This means you can simply learn things from them without any active input from them. However, it is still good manners to ask first, just in case a someone who is apparently "idle" is actually busy doing something that is invisible to onlookers (e.g. having a private conversation with someone via tells).

To take advantage of these saintly persons - in this example, me - the command is: teach me [command] from Sothis. If you're learning a skill, the command is the same, for e.g.: teach me other.health from Sothis. And of course, you can learn multiple levels of a skill: teach me 5 levels of other.health from Sothis. Although again, it is a good idea to ask if the prospective teacher has any preferences as to whether you learn skills from them one level at a time, or several in one go.

Once you've learnt a command, you can teach it to someone else (unless they are at a higher level of the requisite skill than you are). And, since, as previously mentioned, teaching earns you XP, it is entirely in your own interest to enable autoteach and share the wealth with all those lucky enough to cross your path.

To do this, the command is: options auto teach = on

And there we have it!

This section has been more of a swift overview than an indepth introduction to the subject of learning skills and commands - mainly because I just don't know much about it and I'm still learning things.

A more comprehensive section is already in progress (when I realised how big it was going to be, I decided to remove it from here and give it a place of its own), and when it's done you may peruse that for the latest information as I discover it.

But now, brave Adventurer... you have learned all you possibly can in the newbie area, and then some. You are now as ready as you can be to go forth into the sprawling pit of romance, intrigue, and adrenalin that is: The Discworld!

So! Click the Going Forth link and see what this new world might offer thee!

NEXT: Going Forth
BACK: Combat

The Teaching Cost Computer. Site maintained by Jeanie.