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Welcome back to the dev blog of Spire of Sorcery! It's been an intense week and a half for us here at Charlie Oscar (moving forward on a lot of different fronts at the same time, from global map to the way the Spire will look like). Today we will talk about something that is very likely to make you win – or lose – the campaign: the skills of your mage, as well as the skills of your disciples.
MAJOR & MINOR SKILLS
All the skills in the game are split into two groups: :turnon_lightning: Major and :turnon_lightning: Minor. An example of a Major Skill would be Alchemy. It is a big area and once a character reaches advanced stages, it will make many things possible. An example of a Minor Skill would be Lockpicking. It's a fairly specialised activity that doesn't branch out much even when it's at a very high level.
There are three ways to increase character's skills in Spire of Sorcery:
- THROUGH TEACHING
- THROUGH THE ACTUAL USE OF SKILL
- THROUGH READING BOOKS
Important note: Major Skills can be increased in all of these three ways; Minor Skills can only be increased through the use of skill and through reading books – but they cannot be taught. Generally speaking, Minor Skills are the skills that your disciples already possess by the time when they arrive to the Spire, they are a sort of a bonus (which, nevertheless, can become crucial at certain times in the campaign).
Like in other areas of the game, a character may have a specific ːnotebookː TRAIT that would make her more or less interested in working on a specific skill, which would boost or decrease their motivation and speed of their progress. Someone who loves animals will progress fast with the farming, while pushing an honest, justice-seeking disciple to practice thievery is only going to get him or her depressed.
From early on in the campaign, you'll face a tough choice: your mage's teaching impact on the disciples is limited by his or her own skills; so it's essential to invest time and efforts into increasing them.
On the other hand, any time that your mage spends learning... is the time that the mage does not spend teaching the disciples! ːF1timeː
Another key point: in the game, there are no "levels" that characters may attain. Each Major Skill has its own specific experience axis that consists of Theory and Practice, while each Minor Skill has a single Experience value that will increase throughout the game.
THEORY & PRACTICE
Characters gain theoretical experience by:
- ATTENDING CLASSES
- READING BOOKS
- CONDUCTING RESEARCH
Characters gain practical experience by:
- USING THE ACTUAL SKILL
- STAGING EXPERIMENTS
It is possible to have more theoretical experience than practical experience – the exact gap that is possible, is limited by the character's ːnotebookː MEMORY stat.
It is not possible to have more practical experience than theoretical experience, and if your Theory and Practice values are equal, then by accumulating more practical experience, you will be pushing both values up, but doing it very, very slowly.
Each quest that you assign to a disciple (or undertake through your own mage) has different skill requirements. You cannot assign someone a quest that requires a higher theoretical skill level than they currently have, simply because the character wouldn't event know what to do and where to start (for example, what if someone asked you to prepare some fresh うに ("uni"), but you had no clue where to get it and how to cook it? You'll gain nothing by sitting and staring at the wall :locked:).
Following the quest, the character's experience grows regardless of whether the action was successful or not. The lower the required skill compared to the character's practical experience, the more certain is the success of the undertaking – but there is less experience to be gained, right down to the situation where a simple candle-holder made by a master blacksmith would yield no experience at all.
The higher the required skill level compared to the character's actual practical experience, the more likely the action is to result in a failure – especially when the required skill level matches the character's theoretical experience, but falls behind the practical experience.
Does this mean that attempting actions at the edge of character's current skill level is the best way to progress? Sure, but please be aware of the drawbacks: firstly, you are likely not to receive what you wanted, e.g. making a long sword above your blacksmith's practical experience may result in waste of good metal and nothing to arm your disciples with; secondly, most failures carry a chance of accident, and in the case of blacksmith shooting above her skill, you may end up with the Spire's whole wing burning down to ashes in the process.
MAJOR SKILLS
Below are some of the Major Skills. In the brackets are the stats (major, minor influence) that affect the pace of improving the skill.
ːnotebookː LITERACY (MEMORY, INTELLECT) – how fast and how effectively a character studies books; how well a character writes books and manuscripts; how good are character's foreign language skills.
ːnotebookː CONCENTRATION (WILLPOWER, INTELLECT) – minimizes loss of progress when a character is distracted in the middle of current action; increases the efficiency of sleep and meditation. Decreases magic energy costs for all Rituals. Makes learning from other characters more effective. Opens access to advanced meditation techniques, increases speed of recovery for magic energy, allows to store more magic energy.
ːnotebookː HERBOLOGY (INTELLECT, MEMORY) – defines the effectiveness of gathering herbs and mushrooms in the wild, of growing herbs and mushrooms in the Spire (in the garden and in the mushroom cave). Defines knowledge of recipes of potions made from herbs and mushrooms. Allows to be better at seeking paths in the forests.
ːnotebookː MONSTROLOGY (CHARISMA, WILLPOWER) – training animals and monsters, taking care of captive animals and monsters. Knowledge of behaviour and anatomy of animals and monsters. Hunting for game and effectively processing and preparing killed game, capturing live animals.
ːnotebookː GEOLOGY (INTELLECT, INTUITION) – knowledge of Stones and minerals, ability to find rare stones. Knowledge of precious stones and gems, and their effects. Knowledge of special liquids (mercury, acids, etc.). Allows to be better at seeking paths in the caves.
ːnotebookː ALCHEMY (INTELLECT, MEMORY) – preparing potions and elixirs, effectiveness of using potions and elixirs. Cooking.
ːnotebookː ASTROLOGY (INTUITION, MEMORY) – forecasting future events based on the star alignment in the sky, being able to reveal the coordinates of special locations on the global map. Preparing horoscopes for disciples that reveal their character traits. Being able to find one's way based on the stars in the sky.
ːnotebookː HEALING (INTELLECT, INTUITION) – healing wounds and taking care of wounded.
ːnotebookː ARTIFICING (INTELLECT, MEMORY) – ability to recognise and create magic items.
ːnotebookː ASTRAL CARPENTRY (WILLPOWER, INTELLECT) – being able to create furniture in the Spire, building new rooms and floors.
ːnotebookː COMMON MAGIC (MEMORY, INTELLECT) – spells used in everyday life.
ːnotebookː SOCIAL MAGIC (CHARISMA, INTELLECT) – spells that affect minds and feelings of humans and non-humans.
ːnotebookː BATTLE MAGIC (WILLPOWER, INTELLECT) – spells used in battles.
ːnotebookː ADVENTURE MAGIC (INTUITION, MEMORY) – spells used for adventures and travel.
ːnotebookː RITUALS (MEMORY, INTELLECT) – the rituals that allow for control of energies and living creatures.
ːnotebookː RESEARCH (INTUITION, INTELLECT) – determines the speed and efficiency of discovering new spells and alchemic formulas. Also determines the ability to discover characteristics of unknown items by study and experiments.
MINOR SKILLS
Minor skills cannot be taught, but are obtainable and upgradeable through experience and through books. Unlike Major Skills, they don't have separate Theory and Practice experience values, but have just one general Experience value.
The most important Minor Skill is Teaching –
ːnotebookː TEACHING (CHARISMA, INTELLECT) – this skill defines how effective is the teaching when undertaken by this character; a high skill not only allows for more effectiveness, but may also kindle in the student an interest to the subject being taught.
Some of the other Minor Skills are:
- Culinary Arts
- Farming
- Woodcutting
- Reading footprints (of any creatures)
- Streetwise
- Thievery
- Lockpicking
- Survival
- Archery
- Melee
- Carpentry
- Blacksmith
SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE
Finally, there's one last piece of information about skills that we would like to share with you in this edition of the blog: every Major Skill includes a set of "special knowledge", which character gains once they accumulate a certain experience.
For example, for all magic-related skills, these are specific spells; for Herbology, these are specific types of plants; and so on.
At the start of the campaign, most special knowledge items are unavailable and need to be researched by reading books or performing research. All of the disciples in the Spire have access to the special knowledge accumulated in the Spire once their skills pass the required experience level.
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With this, we wish you a great week, and look forward to seeing you in our Discord community – or here on the forums!
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