New skills in the game

[Frost]

A huge content update went in over the weekend. Whether or not you like the additions (as I do), there are a lot of questions about the new skills. Here is the best information that I have so far.

Please read, ask questions, and post with more complete or accurate information if you can. We can then update the wiki.

The simple explanation is this:
Mages need Astral Magic
Warriors probably want Speed.
Archers want either Mallards Eye or Speed.

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Start by talking with Luca in Tulimshar, east of town near Vincent who makes action figures out of bug legs.

Brawling
Improves bare-handed combat. (Probably not useful.)
Cost: free
Talk with Luca in Tulimshar.

Astral Soul
Improves magic attack.
Cost: 100 acorns and 1 pearl.
Talk with the Old Wizard in his magic hut north of Hurnscald.

Resist Poison
Effects not yet known.
Cost: 5 snake tongues and 10 black scorpion stingers.
Mini-game costs 10 acorns, 5 red apples, 5 green apples, 5 oranges, and 3 small healing potions.
Talk with the Nurse in Hurnscald. She'll take you through a mini-game to find the right "ratios" of healing potion vs. stabilizer vs. venom. If you die, repeat the mini-game up to 2 more times before paying again.

Mallards Eye
Reduces accuracy penalty when attacking at range.
Minimum level to learn this skill is 50.
Cost: 25k GP and 10 of each type of snake egg. Also bring your Forest Bow and arrows for the mini-game.
Talk with Gwendolyn, in the woods on the way to the swamp.
To succeed in the mini-game, picture yourself on the archery field, always facing due North. If you shoot into the wind from the North, use more power. If the wind is from your back (South), use less power. Step to the side from which the wind is coming. If you miss, change where you stand and the power you use for the next shot.
Higher Dexterity and Agility make it more likely that a direct hit will be considered a "Bulls Eye" rather than a "fingerbreadth away".

Speed
Increases speed of your attacks. Makes you walk faster. Will [soon] improve your chance to evade attacks.
Minimum level to learn this skill is 60.
Cost: 5 concentration potions and 10 snake tongues.
Visit Miriam in the snake desert. She's in a new area (Map 032-1) that used to be a dead end. Enter through the mountain snake caves.
You must have a minimum Agility of 60 to get the skill.
The mini-game requires you to, without carrying metal armor or more than ⅓ your max weight, run to Pachua.

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Luca can help you "focus" in any one skill, to make that skill active. You can focus in only one skill at a time. To change focus, you must go to Caul in Hurnscald and brew a Dementia Potion. (That is another mini-game, much like Monster Oil).

Skills can be raised by spending Skill Points, which are earned by killing monsters. Each increase in skill costs as many points as the existing level. For example, it costs 3 points to raise Speed from level 3 to level 4.
Level 9 is the maximum for any skill.
Learn as many skills as you like. There is no penalty from having a skill. It matters only which you choose to focus in.

[argul]

Hawks Eye... so it is called in the scripting variables, but actually never in the dialog shown to players....

At Luca you can focus on Mallards Eye, which is the archer skill.

[Falloutboy]

When i lvl up my job i get no points, is There a reason?
( i talk to luca and focus on a skill)
I already up 4 Times :/

[Jenalya]

It is possible, that you use a client or client version, which doesn't show you the amount of your skill points.

As far as I know, the latest official client and the latest manaplus should support it.

[Frost]

Argul, you are exactly right. It is called "Mallards Eye" in the skills list in the client. Thanks for explaining that. I just think that "Hawk Eye" makes more sense.

When i lvl up my job i get no points, is There a reason?
( i talk to luca and focus on a skill)
I already up 4 Times :/

The skill points probably don't show in your client. They show as "0" in the (slightly outdated) version of manaplus I use. Nevertheless, I can assign them to skills with no problem. The only limitation is that I don't really know how many points are left over.

[Alige]

For the speed thing : I died then I went to the old wizard then to Pachua -> very quick haha

[Frost]

Update on mages:

Before the change, my mage had a magic attack of 561. Now, with level 9 Astral Soul skill, his magic attack is 503.
There is yet hope for mages.

[whynotdad2]

Update on mages:

Before the change, my mage had a magic attack of 561. Now, with level 9 Astral Soul skill, his magic attack is 503.
There is yet hope for mages.

so no matter what mages loose some.

[Frost]

so no matter what mages loose some.

I think we'll see a lot of tweaks to the mechanics as people play and report what they find to the devs.
The code isn't all straightforward and it can be hard to understand all the effects on game mechanics until we play it out.

Let's not count the cows before they come home to roost.

[Flubbeh]

You should know that these new updates about mages did take a good ammount of fun from the players.
The magic power lowering wasnt necessary and for that i changed my skills to archer and i dont think im the only one who did that.

Whatever happens, stay calm, stay flubby

[Ghis]

Dear all,
In order to test many skills, I spent my job points and now regret my choices. I suppose many people are in the same situation.
Is there a way to reset the skills points, as for character points ?
I'm not talking about focusing/unfocusing, just resetting the points assigned to a given skill.

My second question is about unfocusing : when you ask to unfocus to Luca, the dementia potion is taken even if you say "Nevermind".
Is this the correct behavior ? After all, that can be considered as a joke

Thanks to the content dev team for this big update.
Ghis

@ Flubby : Changes are often greater after we get accustomed to them (useless but true)

[Jenalya]

Dear all,
In order to test many skills, I spent my job points and now regret my choices. I suppose many people are in the same situation.
Is there a way to reset the skills points, as for character points ?
I'm not talking about focusing/unfocusing, just resetting the points assigned to a given skill.

My second question is about unfocusing : when you ask to unfocus to Luca, the dementia potion is taken even if you say "Nevermind".
Is this the correct behavior ? After all, that can be considered as a joke

At the moment there is no possibility to reset the skill points.

Taking the dementia potion even if "Nevermind" is choosen, is a bug, which is on our list of things to be fixed as soon as possible.

You should know that these new updates about mages did take a good ammount of fun from the players.
The magic power lowering wasnt necessary and for that i changed my skills to archer and i dont think im the only one who did that.

If you train the astral soul skill, you can reach about the same magic attack as you had before.


I think, it will give you a better understanding about the skill system with some explananations about it:

The skills were implemented in the server about two years ago, but never got in game, because fate (developer) left.
Pjotr Orial/argul, alastrim and I had a look on the plans about the skill system and higher level magic and got on with that basing on fates plans.

Since the skills were already implemented in the server, we don't exactly know, how they work and may balance them, if it turns out, that this is needed. We were told that they are balanced (but of course according to the situation two years ago)

It is planned, that it will be possible to focus on more than one skill at once.
The higher levels of magic will be skills. So a real powerful mage will need all his focusses on magic skills. Other classes can focus on different things.

And you should know, that the work on the skill related NPC's took some months. So don't expect higher level magic to come soon, it will take at least the same time.

[Frost]

I edited my original post to correct some things ("Hawks" Eye is fixed per Argul), update some things, and give a short class-based recommendation of which skill to use.

I heard from a high-level archer that with the Mallards Eye skill he can now shoot skulls. He might also have longer range than before, too, though that's uncomfirmed. This would make the skill powerful indeed.

I'd love to hear comparison between using an archer with high Speed (who runs around quickly and turns targets into pincushions) and one with high Mallards Eye (who could shoot the seeds out of the apple on William Tell's head).


P.S. At this time, I have one mage with Astral Soul 9 who is almost as powerful as before the skill was added, and is able to wear better armor now. I have one fast warrior with Speed 9 (he'll get Mallards Eye next). I have one warrior who gets no apparent benefit (as expected) from level 4 Brawling.

[Frost]

As Mannekepis and others have mentioned, your character must be at least level 60 to learn the Speed skill.
I'll update the original post.

[evadem]

I have completed the speed skill quest and focused on it. I am using 29.1 client and my skills tab box shows 3 skill points available, but when I highlight the speed point skill in box and try to up it, I am not able to do so. Does this not work with the current windows client?