Newbie Confused about skill training

[Bremman]

So I got hooked on all this when I started playing DragonRealms. That game is, but one day I stumbled upon the free trial for Gemstone and thought I'd give it a shot. At first I liked the way things ran. It gave me more options when making my character, lots of customizability. I started as a Dwarf warrior thinking it would be easiest to get a hang of. I like the game, it kind of reminds me of D&D and I had lots of fun doing the sprite quest and now I spend most of my time killing kobolds outside of town. My thing is I just don't quite "get" character training. In DragonRealms I had to use skills to raise them, now I'm given points. I just hit the auto button at creation and am scared to use any of my points for fear that I might waste them. So I'm sitting at level 2 with a bunch of TPs. Is skill training as complicated as it looks or am I missing something. I just don't know how to spend my points and I'd liked to give some other classes a try, but if I can't even figure out my warrior I just don't know.

[Celephais]

the first month you can freely allocate your skills back and forth, so feel free to experiment. After that you can migrate (more slowly) your skills around and you get a yearly "fixskills" to just redo the whole thing how you see fit.

If this is your first character you're going to mess up the training, thankfully the game is very forgiving and you can't every truely bork a character.

Edit to add:
Basic rule of thumb, first month = sword/board (Edged weapon training and shield use training as much as it'll let you, some say two handed weapons or polearms, but no need to get fancy), and train physical fitness heavily till at least max hit points (around 24 ranks give or take). This will let you take any class to level 20 without difficulty. As a warrior you probably want to double armor use too early.

When you start to get the hang of things you can add in whatever else you like (combat manuevers, multi-opp combat, etc), and in the case of "pure" spell casters at least train two "spell research" a level, and spell aiming (again easy way to explain it), and hybrids simple answer is 1x spell research (and no spell aiming).

[droit]

I'd take some time to peruse the past threads regarding your chosen profession. There are plenty of builds that have been posted that should give you an idea of how to train your character.

[Latrinsorm]

Your character obtains Training Points (TPs) as they gain experience, which is generic in GemStone and can be garnered from a number of activities.

You can spend your TPs in the Character Manager (commonly referred to as the "mangler", though the term is no less stupid for its prevalence). There are two ways to access the Character Manager:

1. Check into an inn in game. (For example, the Raging Thrak Inn in Landing, south of the entrance.) You will be given several numbered options.
2. Type GOALS in game. An internet browser window will open with a graphical version of the same interface.

Traditionally, people plan their characters around levels as follows: a character may (in some cases) 3x or triple a certain valuable skill. This means that the character trains the skill three times for each level. In the switch to GemStone IV, characters began garnering TPs during rather than at levels. These are referred to as "interlevel" training points. There are a number of applications online you can use to determine how many TPs your character will gain each level, and from there determine which skills you'd like to purchase. The first page of Tsoran's spreadsheet is very good for this.

[Latrinsorm]

It is worth expounding upon a point Celephais made:

Training Points are spent on skills and consumed. You can later un-spend these points by un-training whichever skills you like. For the first month of your character's existence, this process is (literally) instantaneous. Afterwards, this process is extremely slow. That said, every year (on or about May 20th) every character receives a FIXSKILLS, which allows you to immediately unlearn any and all of your skills and receive the appropriate amount of TPs. Don't worry about the exact mechanics of FIXSKILLS for now, just rest assured that you can't really "waste" TPs.

[Celephais]

The key point being. You literally cannot mess up your character in the first month (well I guess you could make a lot of enemys or build up a lot of justice crime).

Afterwhich any mistakes you make in training can be fixed, it may be a "slow" process, but even a poorly trained character can be left at a table over a weekend and have reclaimed enough points to make themselves viable again.

[WRoss]

They all gave you some good advise there.

Training in a weapon class and combat maneuvers will add to your AS (attack strength). This will make things easier to hit. Find what you like and train in it. No need to train in two classes though.

Your DS (defense strength) is determined by a few skills. Shield use, armor use, combat maneuvers, multi opponent combat and dodging. Dodging most directly affects your DS. Armor use and shield use training determines the type of shield and armor you can use. The more training you do, the more you'll be able to use bigger and heavier types of each of these.

Combat maneuvers also add the ability to train in certain skills. Typing CMAN INFO will bring up how many points you have to spend and CMAN LIST will bring up what skills are available. Early on, training in Weapon specialization (WSPEC)is a good idea. This will add AS when using a certain weapon type.

Lastly, physical fitness determines the fitness of your character. This will determine how much health your character has. It also determines your health regeneration, stamina, stamina recovery, among other things. It also affect your defense against certain combat maneuver attacks.

That being said a good idea of what to train in to start would be:
2x weapon use (I'd suggest one handed edged to start with)
2x shield use (if you aren't using two handed or pole arm weapons)
2x armor use
2x physical fitness
2x dodging
1x Multi opponent combat.

You'll likely have some training points left over after that. But that is a good basis of things. Also, if you type GOALS in game, it'll bring up a web window in which you can train your skills. This is sometimes easier to see. In this window, you can click on each skill and it will tell you a brief description of what things are.

[Celephais]

Physical Fitness doesn't combat encumbrance.

[WRoss]

allright, corrected it

[Latrinsorm]

Armor use and CM don't impact DS, and MOC only does in higher-level multi-opp situations.

[Defeat]

There's already a lot of good advice in this thread.

Beyond mechanics, skills points, etc. It's important to keep in mind that your character isn't bound by stereotypical "classes." One of the more popular examples out there are battle mages, which are wizards that swing weapons more often than they cast spells.

Granted, some career routes are more difficult than others (and more expensive with respect to training points), but as you begin to understand the game more (along with what you like and dislike), the more likely you can craft a character to your liking (both in terms of game mechanics and persona).

Aside from that, I wouldn't fret too much over skill points right now. As people have mentioned earlier, you can adjust as you please for the first month. Many people end up rolling a new character after dabbling a while anyhow because theyve found a different class or playstyle that they prefer more (or rather want to start fresh and get it right, want a name they like more, etc).

At this point, my advice would be to just enjoy yourself for now. Try out various classes, skill builds, so on that you might like, and go from there. When you find what you like, be it lockpicking, healing/raising other people, or just wrecking face- then dig deeper into mechanics and try to find out how you can be better at it.

Whenever that time comes for you: resources like tsoran's spreadsheet, www.krakiipedia.org, and of course players corner threads all have good information to help you on your way. I'm sure youll find there are a lot of people out there ingame and here on the boards who will be happy to help as well.

[Celephais]

At this point, my advice would be to just enjoy yourself for now.
Best advice in the thread. Just don't worry, the actual "game" part of gemstone should not be your main focus, or you're looking at a sad terribly repeatitive, low reward, grind.

Gemstone can be a lot of fun and there is a ton to do, but it's really easy to get into a min/max mindset with the most arduous grind in gaming. Which explains why so many of us are bitter here :)

[John Smith]

So I've looked around for a while and after reading a few threads I still have to ask when lets say a skill cost 1,2 for the first train but it costs 2,4 for the next level in that skill what happens to the 1,2 it cost extra do you get that back in training point of pulses on the next level or the points are consumed for good?

[Drazaan]

John Smith, that's the beautiful thing about the Skills Goals system: You will get those points refunded once you have risen in level enough.

This makes it possible to push for certain skill thresholds you are trying to reach for various reasons. For example, I wanted my ranger (who can double in armor use) in brigandine armor as soon as possible. What I did was neglect a few tertiary skills and pushed to get the 30 ranks needed for brigandine by level 13 instead of training just one armor use rank a level and finally getting to wear the armor around level 29.

Points that are converted over to another type (physical --> mental or mental --> physical) are converted back to their original form through this same mechanic.

[Kithor]

So I've looked around for a while and after reading a few threads I still have to ask when lets say a skill cost 1,2 for the first train but it costs 2,4 for the next level in that skill what happens to the 1,2 it cost extra do you get that back in training point of pulses on the next level or the points are consumed for good?

Every time you level up all your skill costs are readjusted for your current level and any extra skill points are refunded. (if you glance through some of the posts in the 'I levelled a character today' thread you'll see the messaging for it).
You *can't* make any bad decisions, the whole point of instantly changing your skills for the first month is to be able to try a bunch of diffferent things.

I might also point out that each character gets this free month of instant skill migration, so if you decide to stick around and make another character at some point that new character would get a month of free skill migration.

[John Smith]

That is great news I worried that if I went over the into double costs I could mess up my character in later years, thank you that was a tremendous help.

[Gibreficul]

That is great news I worried that if I went over the into double costs I could mess up my character in later years, thank you that was a tremendous help.

Nope, that school of thought was native to GS3, but GS4 fixed those issues.