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» Contents » (0) Quickstart » (1) Introduction » (2) Installation & setup » (3) Creating a character & starting to play » (4) The world » (5) Item and flag details, elements » (6) Monster details » (7) Character details » (7.2) Skills, opposed skills
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(7.2) Skills, opposed skills ---------------------------- If you rise in character levels by gaining experience, you also get skill points to distribute on various abilities. To invoke the skill system overview press 'G' (capital G!). If you make a mistake while distributing skill points, look up the /undoskills command in (0.2b). "/undoskills" can only be used once per level and must be used before you go back into a dungeon or tower. Skills of dark grey colour cannot be used by your character at all. Skills that are light grey are just dummy skills that serve for organizing other skills in paragraphs. Skills coloured orange can be used by your character, but are currently still at zero. Skills that your character can train and that have already been increased above zero will change from orange to white. Skills that have reached their maximum possible value and therefore cannot be increased any further are displayed in light blue. You can collapse/expand blocks of subskills by pressing RETURN key while having selected the parent skill of that block. Useful for example for collapsing whole blocks of skills that you cannot or don't want to use anyway. Here is a list of the available skills and brief explanations to each one: Note that not every skill is available to every profession (class). For skills where it is not clear how much of an increase makes an actual difference for the skill's effect, that number is written in parentheses below it. Eg '(0.500)' means that each 0.500 step of this skill will improve it, and even having just a total skill level of 0.500 will already have an effect. Some skills require a minimum value (usually 1.000) to become effective despite having a finer grained resolution, in these cases the minimum value is also stated. +Combat Lets you wear heavier armour without mana (1/6) points penalty. Lets you wear heavier armour without losing dodge chance (gained from the 'Dodging' skill), or other roguish abilities like boni from dual-wielding, Critical-strike, area-searching and cloaking. Lets you wear heavier armour without getting a penalty to to-hit or sneakiness from being movement-encumbered. Note that Combat skill does NOT affect the continuous ranged-to-hit reduction based on armour weight. (See (5.5) for details about encumberment.) Note that Martial Arts penalties from heavy armour cannot be reduced by training Combat. Ability to pseudo-ID items: You can sense if items are terrible, worthless, cursed, average, good, excellent or special. At the beginning you will only feel 'cursed' or 'good', and only for melee weapons, armour, boomerangs, digging tools and food, and very rarely for ranged weapons and ammunition. Raise combat skill to at least 10 to get more distinctive feelings about melee weapons, armour, boomerangs and digging tools. A powerful combattant (combat 30) senses the usefulness of shooting weapons and ammunition as quickly as for weapons armour etc. A very powerful one (combat 40) can also notice curses on all kinds of items. The further you train Combat, the faster you will pseudo-ID items. Increases Fear/Stun/Confuse duration of the target (if attacking causes those). Reduces duration of Fear/Stun/Confuse effects that are applied to you. Increases 'Fighting' and 'Bows/Throw' abilities somewhat, thereby increasing your chance to hit in melee (weaponless and with weapons), ranged weapons and when throwing an item and reducing your chance to get disarmed. If your Combat skill isn't zero, then you can press 'm' to check your actual chances of parrying (weapon) and blocking (shield), see (7.11) for more details about parry/block. +Weaponmastery Slightly increases melee to-dam and to-hit for (1/3) armed combat: Hit gets increased by 1/3 of your skill, damage by 1/10. Improves your 'Fighting' ability somewhat when wielding a weapon, thereby further increasing your chance to hit in melee and reducing your chance to get disarmed. Slightly increases your chance to score critical hits in armed combat (just 7.5% as effective as the 'Critical-strike' skill.) Weaponmastery will also increase your parry chance a good deal (see (7.11) for details): Up to +10% for 1-handers, +15% for 1.5-handers, +20% for 2-handers. +Sword-mastery Greatly improves to-hit/to-dam with swords. (1.000) At 25 and 50 you will get +1 blow per round while having a sword equipped. .Critical-strike Increases your chance to score hits of (0.025) extremely high damage. This skill improves the chance to score critical hits and adds to critical-hit bonus from your equipment. NOTES ABOUT CRITICAL-STRIKE SKILL: Critical-strike skill only helps light swords or light polearms, not heavier than 10.0 lbs. (Non-weapon items that increase your critical hits chance however will work with all kinds of weapons and martial arts too.) The weight limit counts per weapon, so you may dual-wield two 10.0lb weapons just fine. If you dual-wield one eligible weapon (ie sword up to 10.0lb) and a non-eligible weapon (ie a too heavy weapon or not a sword) then the eligible weapon will still get Critical-strike skill applied for its hits, and the other weapon won't. (The skill effect does not depend on how heavy exactly the weapon is, as long as it's not above 10.0 lb, so that weight threshold is basically an on/off toggle for the skill to apply to your attacks.) Also, Critical-strike skill will not give you any benefits if your armour is so heavy that you get a flexibility warning (compare (5.5)). NOTES ABOUT CRITICAL HITS IN GENERAL: You can always score critical hits, independent on weapon class and crit-skill. The probability to land a critical hit will be small though, if you don't have +critical hit items. Critical hit bonus on items counts slightly more than this skill. Critical hits are applied _after_ branding (ie after the rolled dice are multiplied by factors for applied brands or slay mods), further boosting the effect. Martial artists can score critical hits too, although the Critical-strike skill won't do anything for them (it only helps light swords and polearms not heavier than 10.0 lb). Crit boni on weapons only apply to the weapon itself, while bonus on other items such as gloves or rings count for all kind of physical attacks. (Same goes for slaying/brand mods on items by the way.) For weapon users, the weight of their weapon affects their critical hits: If your weapon is lighter than 10.0 lb, your chances to score a critical hit will further increase. (However, that increase is much smaller than the effects of this skill or of items that give 'Critical Hits' bonus.) Above 10.0 lb, the chance to hit your target critically won't be worse than with a 10.0 lb weapon. Although your chance of hitting critical spots is better with lighter weapons, the damage of your critical strike -IF you manage to execute one- is higher if your weapon is heavier (in detail: the crit class is more likely to be higher for heavier weapons). This effect of getting bigger crits in if the weapon is heavier has no upper weight boundary, so it is true for all weapons up to Grond. Although Critical-strike skill (if applied) and 'Critical Hits' bonus from items will also (about equally) improve your chances to land a higher-class critical hit, the weapon weight has even somewhat more effect on average on the crit class than either of those two alone. However, for a good improvement in crit-class just from weapon weight alone, the weapon would need to be much heavier than 10.0 lb. Note that 'critical hit' stacks. 'Critical hit' bonus from items will be actually be somewhat subject to diminishing returns (while the skill won't!) but if we neglect this we can roughly say that +2.500 skill results in +1 crit hit. So for example if you have a ring of critical hits (+7) and gloves that give (+4) and also trained this skill to 10.000 (+4) you'll have a total of roughly +15 critical hit bonus. .Axe-mastery See Sword-mastery (1.000) .Blunt-mastery See Sword-mastery (1.000) .Polearm-mastery See Sword-mastery (1.000) .Combat Stances Allows you to switch between one of three types of combat stance. You need to wield a weapon to use stances, certain restrictions apply and are explained further below. This ability cannot be trained, but it is increased automatically each time your character gains a level. If you attain the status of King, Queen, Emperor or Empress and are at least level 45, you will learn an additional royal rank version of each stance, which is the most powerful version. If you die and lose your title, you won't be able to use the stance either. Only warriors, mimics, paladins, rangers and mindcrafters can learn certain stances. On certain skill levels, you will learn a new rank of a stance. A higher ranked stance features more of its benefits and/or less of its drawbacks. Press 'm' to enter one of the combat stances you have learned. You will learn four ranks of three combat stances each, when you reach a certain character level i.e. skill. The last rank ('royal rank') is learned by defeating Morgoth, independant of your level. You can use the /ex command to check your current stance. Each stance has advantages and disadvantages, those are: Balanced stance - the default, no boni/mali. Defensive stance - you will block more, - reduce the effect of most combat-induced stun effects (and possibly some others) you suffer, - intercept less often, - you deal less damage with melee and ranged weapons, - reduces chance a monster can steal from you. Note: You can use it even without shield - in that case your chance of parrying is increased instead of blocking. Offensive stance - you can stun opponents depending on your strength, your 'Weaponmastery' skill, your stance rank, and your opponent (see (4.12) about stunning), - intercept more often, - parry and dodge only rarely, - get an AC penalty. Note: You must wield a weapon that is not too small to be gripped with both hands (COULD2H, SHOULD2H, MUST2H). Switching your combat stance costs you half a turn of energy. Some details (R stands for royal rank, available only to royalties): Inter Stun With shield Without shield cept self Block/Melee dam Parry/Melee dam D1 -50% 7/8 +9%/70% +30%/60% D2 -45% 5/6 +11%/70% +30%/70% D3 -40% 3/4 +13%/70% +40%/70% DR -35% 2/3 +15%/70% +50%/70% Melee damage you inflict is reduced depending on stance level. Ranged physical damage you inflict (everything except for spells) is always reduced by 50% in any defensive stance. O1 O2 O3 OR Intercept +4% +7% +10% +15% Parry/Dodge -100% -90% -80% -70% All offensive stances reduce AC by 30. Offensive stance rank increases chance of applying a stun. Weaponmastery and Combat skill can greatly prolongs those stun effect durations. .Dual-wield The ability to wield two weapons at once. This ability cannot be trained, it's always at 1.000 if your character's class can dual-wield, else at zero. (So it's basically a switch.) Classes that are able to dual-wield are warriors, rangers, rogues and hell knights. Note that both weapons must be 1-handed. 1,5- or 2-handed weapons cannot be used. Dual-wielding will give you additional parry chance as well as a blows/round bonus (see (7.11) for details about parrying), and of course your character will gain all magical boni from both weapons (such as resistances). NOTE: If your armour is too heavy (see (5.5)) then you won't receive any bonus and your second weapon will actually be ignored as if you didn't wield it at all ie you won't gain any resistances/abilities/whatever from it. In combat, a coin is flipped for each blow you deal, determining randomly which weapon will be used for that particular hit. To avoid confusion: If you use weapons with different blows/round, their BpR will get averaged, and rounded up, then BpR bonus for dual-wielding is added. Example: 4BpR & 5BpR = 4.5BpR rounded to 5BpR. +1 bonus BpR for dual-wielding -> 6BpR total. By pressing 'm' you can disable/reenable dual-wield mode. While disabled ('Main-Hand mode') you will just attack with your primary weapon exclusively, and not receive any dual-wield specific boni; this can be useful if it deals much more damage than your secondary weapon. You still gain all magical boni from both weapons while in main-hand mode, as usual. While enabled ('Dual-hand mode') you will attack with both weapons, picked randomly. Note: You can even enable Main-Hand mode while not dual-wielding - and this also means that if you lose your main hand weapon you will not leave main-hand mode automatically from that. .Martial Arts Ability to fight with bare hands. (0.228) Martial Arts users do not and cannot wield any weapons, except for boomerangs, or they get penalised heavily. Note that as a specialty MA actually works with the 'Backstabbing' skill! They also get an armour class bonus for each _unused_ equipment slot that can take a piece of armour. Until the skill has been trained quite a bit, armour will rather encumber them instead of help. For this reason, martial artists only wear very light armour or no armour at all in the beginning and do not need to rely on armour during the early game. Slightly raises your character's speed and stealth by +1 for every 10.000 skill increase - the increase might be less or even zero if you are encumbered in some way. Increases your chance of intercepting an enemy. The effectiveness is about 1/4 of what you get out of training the 'Interception' skill. If you train both, their effect will stack. In addition to that, training Martial Arts will provide a base interception chance if you don't have the Interception skill available on a character (see 'Interception' skill). These two interception gains from Martial Arts skill add up. (If you do have the Interception skill available, you get a base interception chance depending on your character level instead, to which again the Martial Arts interception bonus gets added. So you're gaining the same total interception chance in both cases, as long as you keep Martial Arts at maximum possible.) You can check your interception chance against monsters of same and double level by pressing 'm' and choosing "Check intercept chance". Slightly increases your Dodging skill, simply by increasing your Martial Arts skill, as if 'Dodging' was a parent skill of Martial Arts. You can check your dodging chance against opponents of same and double level by pressing 'm' and choosing "Check dodge chance". Grants +1 extra attack at 2,10,20,30,40,45,50 each, so up to +7 blows per round in total. At 10 you gain Feather Falling (see (5.8)). At 15 you gain fear resistance. At 20 you gain confusion resistance. At 25 you get Free Action (paralysis immunity). At 30 you're able to swim without problems. At 40 you're able to climb mountains easily. At 50 a martial artist will learn the technique of levitation (see (5.8)). Lets you attack with special fighting moves. These MA techniques are used automatically and semi-randomly (algorithmically chosen, mostly the most powerful moves available are picked) by your character during combat, they are not player-controllable so you don't have to worry about them. For a list and effects see (5.3a). The dice of these martial arts special moves are affected by elemental brands, but slightly less than normal weapons (2/3 as much). Martial arts moves can have high damage dice of up to 8d7. Some moves have special effects such as slowing or stunning your opponent. Under certain conditions (encumberment) MA abilities cannot be used and lose their effect. About this and for more information about Martial Arts in general, see (5.3a). .Interception Ability to interfere with adjacent enemies. (0.500) Can prevent them from teleporting, casting, summoning, running away. The monster must be standing right beside you (horizontally, vertically or diagonally). To intercept an enemy it doesn't matter whether you have a weapon or shield equipped or not or whether you have autoretaliation on or off. You can check your interception chance against opponents of same and double level by pressing 'm' and choosing "Check intercept chance". Classes that have the Interception skill available for training will automatically gain a certain base chance to intercept, even if they haven't trained the skill. Training the skill will then add to that base chance. The base chance depends on the character's level, capped at 50. This base chance is also gained by classes that cannot actually train Interception but that are able to train in 'Martial Arts'. In this case however the base chance won't depend on their character level but instead on their current skill in Martial Arts. (So training Martial Arts on such a character would actually increase the total interception chance in two ways at once: Increase the base chance and then add the Martial Arts Interception bonus, see 'Martial Arts' skill for details.) The higher base level the monster has (rlevel) the harder it is to intercept it. Also, interception chance is reduced greatly while you are blind and you aren't able to intercept at all while you are stunned, confused, paralyzed, resting, cloaked or shadow running (compare (4.11)). Player ghosts cannot intercept either. Interception works best to prevent shooting a ranged weapon. It's slightly harder to prevent a monster from running away or casting a spell and even somewhat harder to prevent a monster from teleporting or blinking. Some abilities cannot be intercepted at all: Shrieking, unmagic, shooting missiles/rockets, throwing boulders, breathing. Note that multiple players trying to intercept the same monster does not result in 'stacking' of their interception chances: The player who has (under given circumstances such as being blinded etc) the best chance to intercept will override the others. Regarding spell suppression, interception combines with Anti-magic in a special way, see 'Anti-magic' skill for details. +Archery Improves ranged to-damage bonus somewhat, by +1 (1/3) for every 5.000 increase in skill. Also increases 'Bows/Throw' ability somewhat for when using slings, bows or crossbows, which in turn increases your hit chance with those. Allows you to learn shooting techniques and to gain the ability to craft ammunition, accessible via 'm', see (7.12) for details. Increases your chance to score critical hits. At 20 the quality of your handmade ammunition becomes remarkably better. Lets you pseudo-ID shooting weapons and ammunition more often the higher the skill. If increased to at least 10, pseudo-ID will give you much more distinctive feelings about the items. Before that, you can only distinguish between cursed and good. .Sling-mastery Increases hit chance (while using a sling) by +1 for every 2.000 skill increase. Also increases Bows/Throw ability somewhat while using slings, which in turn further increases hit chance. At 10,20,30,40,50 you will get +1 additional shot per round each (while using a sling). Also reduces the chance of your sling ammunition to shatter by up to 90% at 50. Example: a shot that usually has 10% chance of breaking will only have a 1% chance of breaking if your skill is at 50.000. At 50 you will get an additional bonus of +1 extra might. Artifact ammunition never breaks. Note that the explosion of exploding ammo will still hit "reflecting" monsters. Ricochetting: This happens only with slings or boomerangs. Mastery adds 33% (at 0.000) to 75% chance for shots to ricochet, randomly from once up to 5 times (at 50.000), hitting multiple enemies. Note that magic and ethereal ammo fades away the moment it hits, and never ricochets. At mastery skill 15.000 you will be skillful enough to make your shots ricochet at nearby enemies instead of completely random directions except if they hit a reflecting enemy. At mastery skill 25.000 you will be skillful enough to make your ricochets avoid any enemy that sleeps or is charmed. To disable ricochetting completely inscribe the sling or ammunition: !R To allow ricochetting on sleeping/charmed targets at skill 25.000+ again, inscribe: !S .Bow-mastery At 12.5, 25, 37.5, 50 you will get +1 extra shot per round each. Otherwise same as Sling-mastery, except no ricochetting. .Crossbow-mastery At 25 and 50 you will get +1 extra shot, at 12.5 and 37.5 you will get +1 extra might. Otherwise same as Sling-mastery, except no ricochetting. .Boomerang-mastery At 16.6, 33.3 and 50 you get +1 extra throw. Also increases 'Bows/Throw' ability somewhat while using boomerangs and also regarding throwing any other kinds of items, which in turn further increases hit chance. It is harder for monsters to intercept your attempt of throwing a boomerang, than it is for shooting with a sling, bow or crossbow. Also unlike those ranged weapons, boomerangs cannot be deflected by reflecting monsters. Last but not least, boomerangs are the only allowed weapon for martial artists - they will not negatively impact martial arts in any way. Increases ranged to-damage bonus when wielding a boomerang by +1 for every 2.500 increase. Grants +1/10 additional extra might every 5.000 points increased, resulting in full extra might at 50.000. Reduces the chance of a boomerang to land on the ground instead of returning. All artifact and ego boomerangs always return reliably. Ricochetting: This happens only with slings or boomerangs. Mastery adds 33% (at 0.000) to 75% chance for shots to ricochet, randomly from once up to 3 times (at 50.000), hitting multiple enemies. Note that magic and ethereal ammo fades away the moment it hits, and never ricochets. At mastery skill 20.000 you will be skillful enough to make your shots ricochet at nearby enemies instead of completely random directions except if they hit a reflecting enemy. At mastery skill 30.000 you will be skillful enough to make your ricochets avoid any enemy that sleeps or is charmed. To disable ricochetting completely inscribe the boomerang: !R To allow ricochetting on sleeping/charmed targets at skill 30.000+ again, inscribe: !S (Note that your 'Combat' skill determines your ability to pseudo-ID Boomerangs.) << For more information about learning spells, see (7.8) Most spells will increase in power in one way or the other when you increase their school skill. Often their failure rate decreases, too. >> +Magic Increases your base mana by +4 per point. (0.250) Lets you pseudo-ID magic items and food faster the higher your skill is. Magic items are: Mage staves, potions, scrolls, rings, amulets and magic devices (wands, rods, staves). You can also sense curses on any kind of item. If 'Magic' is at least at 10 points, you will get more distinctive feelings from pseudo-ID, before that you only sense 'good' or 'cursed'. +Wizardry .Sorcery Learn to use spells of ALL wizardry schools at once, instead of training a particular branch! Note that if you train Sorcery your character's mana pool will become sensitive to usage of gloves. You will need gloves that give any of Free Action, Dexterity, +Mana or elven gloves in order to not get encumbered and as a consequence suffer reduction of your max MP. .Mana Learn spells of the Mana branch. .Fire Learn spells of the Fire branch. .Water Learn spells of the Water branch. .Air Learn spells of the Air branch. .Earth Learn spells of the Earth branch. .Nature Learn spells of the Nature branch. .Conveyance Learn spells of the Conveyance branch. .Divination Learn spells of the Divination branch. .Temporal Learn spells of the Temporal branch. .Udun Learn spells of the Udun branch. .Mind Learn spells of the Mind branch. .Spell-power Increases the power of learned spells by adding a bonus to the spell level. At 50, it will raise spell levels by 40%. (It won't raise the level of spells which you haven't learned yet.) Note that Spell-power ONLY affects spells of the 'Wizardry' schools! +Prayers .Holy Offense Learn prayers of the Holy Offense branch. .Holy Defense Learn prayers of the Holy Defense branch. .Holy Curing Learn prayers of the Holy Curing branch. .Holy Support Learn prayers of the Holy Support branch. +Occultism .Shadow Learn spells of the Shadow branch. .Spirit Learn spells of the Spirit branch. .Hereticism Learn spells of the Hereticism branch. .Unlife Learn spells of the Unlife branch. +Druidism .Arcane Lore Learn druid magic taught by arcane lore. .Physical Lore Learn druid magic taught by physical lore. +Mindcraft .Psycho-power Learn mindcrafter spells of psycho-power. .Attunement Learn mindcrafter spells of attunement. .Mental Intrusion Learn mindcrafter spells of mental intrusion. Note: As soon as you train any of the three mindcraft schools your character's mana pool will become sensitive to heavy head gear. If your head gear's weight exceeds 4.0 lbs your max MP will suffer a reduction from encumberment. +Runecraft See '(7.8b) Runes & Runemastery'. .Light Learn to evoke light runes. .Darkness Learn to evoke darkness runes. .Nexus Learn to evoke nexus runes. .Nether Learn to evoke nether runes. .Chaos Learn to evoke chaos runes. .Mana Learn to evoke mana runes. .Astral Knowledge Learn spells of the Astral branch of magic, exclusively available to the Maia race. +Blood Magic Blood magic doesn't require mana and doesn't provide spells unlike most other magic schools. Instead it provides passive or innate powers that are fueled by your own blood to work. .Necromancy Drains life and mana from killed monsters, (0.500) replenishing your HP and MP. Note that you need at least 1.000 Necromancy skill in order for it to work. Only works if you are able to see the target, and if you are not a player-ghost. The amount of points gained depends on the skill and the target's level. To get maximum drain, the skill should be at least half as high as the monster level. There is always a gain of at least +1 HP and +1 MP. Necromancy has no effect on undead and nonliving (constructs) monsters. (Don't confuse Necromancy with vampirism: Necromancy drains from the monster's soul on its actual death, while any vampiric effects your character might have drain by simply hitting the monster. So vampirism will work fine in conjunction with Necromancy as they are different effects that don't overlap in any way.) Necromancy will reduce the chance of your life force (experience points) getting drained by nether or chaos or by experience-draining melee attacks by +1% per point, up to 50% at 50.000. (This is cumulative with the 'hold life' flag.) If a character has Unlife and Necromancy both at 50.000 the character gains ultimate hold on his life force ('Keep Life'), rendering him immune to experience drain, including the permanent drain effect from DRAIN_EXP items. A natural vampire race character who has both Necromancy and Traumaturgy at 25.000 or higher will get his intrinsic melee vampirism drain rate increased from the usual 50% by +1% for each further point in either school, up to 100% when both schools reach 50.000. (The 'body modification' doesn't matter, eg whether in 'normal' body or 'fruit bat' form.) .Traumaturgy Drains mana from monsters when you inflict (0.500) damage on them, replenishing your MP. Only works if you are actually able to target the opponent, eg there must not be a wall between you and the target; Traumaturgy does not require light but also works in darkness. The amount of points gained depends linearly on your skill level and also somewhat on the damage you inflicted. Even if your inflicted damage and/or skill level is so very low that the total amount is between 0 and 1 and therefore would actually get rounded down to zero, each attack still has a (small) chance of replenishing at least 1 MP. Traumaturgy is most effective with spells that have an area of effect and can therefore hit multiple monsters, such as balls and especially clouds. Traumaturgy has no effect on undead and nonliving (constructs) monsters. Traumaturgy has insanity-reducing synergy when trained together with Hereticism. It also can prolong the 'Boundless Rage' spell, the better the higher Traumaturgy is trained. See (7.8) for details. A natural vampire race character who has both Necromancy and Traumaturgy at 25.000 or higher will get his intrinsic melee vampirism drain rate increased from the usual 50% by +1% for each further point in either school, up to 100% when both schools reach 50.000. (The 'body modification' doesn't matter, eg whether in 'normal' body or 'fruit bat' form.) .Aura of Fear Monsters that hit you are stroke by fear. (0.500) Mindless undead, non-living monsters and those that resist fear (NO_FEAR) are not affected. The chance for the aura to trigger depends on your skill alone. Whether it has effect on your foe or not only depends on its rlevel compared to your skill - uniques and powerful monsters receive a small bonus in their favour. At a skill of 20 the aura is so strong that your melee attacks (weapon as well as martial arts) will have a chance to terrify monsters. This chance increases with skill, but will not affect monsters with an rlevel more than 10 above your character level. Also at 20 it will grant you fear resistance while the aura is active. The aura is automatically enabled when you train the skill; you can disable the aura in the 'm' menu. Typing '/ex' command into chat will display the state of all your auras. Being blood magic, auras will feed from your blood. This means that the speed of your hit point regeneration will be reduced while the aura is active. .Shivering Aura Monsters that hit you are stunned. (0.500) Monsters that are immune to cold and those that resist stun (NO_STUN) are not affected. The chance for the aura to trigger depends on your skill alone. Whether it has effect on your foe or not only depends on its rlevel compared to your skill - uniques receive a small bonus in their favour. At a skill of 30 the aura is so strong that your melee attacks (weapon as well as martial arts will be branded by it (cold brand) and you are granted resistance to cold. Additionally at 30, cold magic or breaths you generate will solidify into cutting ice shards while your aura is active, dealing ice damage. This element conversion reduces damage to 2/3. The aura is automatically enabled when you train the skill; you can disable the aura in the 'm' menu. Typing '/ex' command into chat will display the state of all your auras. Being blood magic, auras will feed from your blood. This means that the speed of your hit point regeneration will be reduced while the aura is active. .Aura of Death Monsters that hit you are hit by waves (1.000) of plasma and ice, alternating randomly. The chance for the aura to trigger depends on your skill alone. At a skill of 40 the aura is so strong that your melee attacks (weapon as well as martial arts) will be branded by it (alternating plasma or ice brand). (See (5.3) for brand details.) Additionally at 40, cold magic or breaths you generate will solidify into cutting ice shards while your aura is active, dealing ice damage. Fire produced will likewise ionize into plasma! This element conversion reduces damage to 2/3. The aura is automatically enabled when you train the skill; you can disable the aura in the 'm' menu. Typing '/ex' command into chat will display the state of all your auras. Being blood magic, auras will feed from your blood. This means that the speed of your hit point regeneration will be reduced while the aura is active. .Mimicry Ability to shapechange into a monster! (0.500) To learn a monster form you must kill an amount of it equal to its level, while your Mimicry skill must be at least half as high as the monster level for you to get credit. To see which monsters you have killed or which forms you have already learned, press ~ 2 or conveniently use the "/forms" command if you just want to see a list of all learnt forms. Example: To learn Uruk form, you need to kill 16 Uruks because Uruk is a level 16 monster (see ~7 for monster lore to check level) and your Mimicry skill must be at least 8 while you kill them, or you won't gain any knowledge. You also inherit the monsters abilities, weaknesses and resistances! See section (7.7) for more info. To find out details about a monster form, press ~ 7 in game or consult a spoiler file. (See (8.4) for more info about spoiler files.) You can also use Mikael's monster search page, accessible via knowledge menu, just press ~R . For each point that Mimicry is trained above 30.000 the character's mana pool will expand by an extra +5 MP (so up to +100 MP at 50.000). Note that this extra mana is NOT affected by +MANA items. The further Mimicry is trained above 35.000 the faster a player can shapechange. Usually it takes a full turn to change into another form (or back to player form), but each point above 35.000 will cut this down by 5%, so at 50.000 Mimicry shapechanging will only take 1/4 turn. Note: Some monsters exist in two versions that are identical except that one is solo and the other appears in packs (FRIENDS flag). For example novice warriors. Your kill count of these two versions will be unified, so they both count for the same form. .Magic Device Mainly reduces fail chance when trying to use (1/16) magic devices (wands, staves, rods, activatable items - see (5.9a)), increases their power and speeds up recharging of rods you carry. See (7.10) for more information on magic devices, the skill and the ability. To reduce inventory space usage go to the magic shop and buy a antistatic wrapping. .Anti-magic Generated from your strong disbelief in magic (1.000) an anti-magic field surrounds you, preventing nearby monsters and players from casting spells (but does not prevent them from using magic devices). *NOTE* that as soon as you invest a point into this skill you won't be able to use any spells or magic devices (wands, staves, rods, items that can be activated) anymore! Being anti-magic still allows you to use scrolls and potions though. The skill effect stacks with the anti-magic field of a Dark Sword and the DISBELIEVE flag of monster forms acquired by Mimicry skill. (See (5.9) for more info about dark swords and (7.7) for details about DISBELIEVE flag.) It's capped at 75% (after stacking) chance of interrupting enemy spells. Party members are not affected adversely. Note: While ball and bolt attacks are spells, breathing is not and is therefore not hindered. The radius of your anti-magic field is approx. the field's power / 9 and caps at range 9. (The field's "power" is its chance to interrupt spells, so 75% power / 9 results in radius 8. To get radius to 9 you'd have to equip another item that generates an AM field or shapechange into a form that generates an intrinsic AM field - these are rare edge cases though..) The field's power is uniform everywhere within the radius, ie it does not decrease outwards. Each point in Anti-magic adds 1% to your AM chance, so the max gain is +50% from skill. If you use a dark sword that gives the maximum amount of anti-magic they can give (+30%) then you only need Anti-magic skill at 45 instead of 50 to reach the anti-magic cap value of 75% (30% from dark sword + 45% from skill = 75%). Warriors that specialize in Anti-magic are called 'Unbelievers' (The anti-magic powers result from their strong disbelief in magic). Training the Anti-magic skill will shorten the duration of certain magical temporary buffs and debuffs on your character, which are: ESP, space/time anchor, probability travel, wraithform, infra-vision, see invisible, invisibilty, haste, slowness, resistances, invulnerability obtained from a potion, deflection, shield. On the other hand, it will also reduce the frequency of you suffering from continuous experience-draining effects (eg Nazgul rings). Regarding spell suppression, Anti-magic fields combine with interception in a special way: The total chance to suppress a monster's attempt to cast a spell will yield diminishing returns if the monster's attempt gets hindered by both, Interception and Anti-magic. This means that having high values in both, Interception and Anti-magic, will still give benefits for spell suppression, but the total chance of suppression that results from applying both to a single spell casting attempt will actually come out somewhat reduced. +Sneakiness Slightly increases your character speed (1.000) (+7 at 50, so approx +1 every 7..8 points). Slightly increases perception and searching. Slightly reduces speed loss while in searching mode, and very slightly while in rogues' cloaking mode. .Stealth Increases your stealth, which determines how (2.000) fast sleeping monsters on your dungeon level will wake up. Important if you don't like to wake up everything at once and prefer to sneak past monsters or pick your fights one by one. The stealth gain is half as much as from items that give +Stealth. If your character is really bad at stealth, like Draconians, it might seem as if the skill doesn't help. But if you invest a lot of points you will eventually see an improvement ;). .Stealing Ability to steal items from stores, (0.100, at least 1.000) also helps against someone else trying to steal from you. This skill will not give you stealing-chance or notice-stealing benefits if your armour is so heavy that you get a flexibility warning (5.5). If you get caught by an NPC shopkeeper you will be on the 'blacklist of merchants' for a while, which can be from 0 up to 76 minutes, depending on the (discounts matter) value of the item you tried to steal from the shop. During this time it's impossible to steal from shops, and you will get BAD prices (quadruple, like in the blackmarket usually) in this and all other NPC shops, including those that don't sell items but just offer services. (Player stores are unaffected by this.) You'll also be on the 'watchlist', meaning that you can shop at normal prices as usual, but the shopkeepers still keep a sharp eye on you meaning you are unable to steal anything. The watchlist is always 4 1/2 minutes longer than the blacklist, but can also be lower in cases when you didn't make it on the blacklist, down to a minimum of 100 seconds. The blacklist and watchlist will be on hold for a character that isn't logged in, so it's best to steal before going to the dungeon or AFK, so your black-/watchlist have time to run out. The time period you'll be on these lists solely depends on the item's _base_ value (so it does not matter whether you got caught in a normal store or in the black market.) Price discount applies though, reducing the base value and therefore the blacklist time too. Messages when you enter a shop, how the shopkeeper regards you will roughly give away your remaining Blacklist time: ------------------------------ gives you a murderous look 40-76 min. gazes at you angrily <40 min. eyes you suspiciously <20 min. looks at you disapprovingly <10 min. gives you a cold glance < 5 min. After your blacklist ran out, if you're still on the watchlist you get this message: "The owner keeps a sharp eye on you." Note that usually people don't want to be seen with stolen goods, which means that very expensive items, depending on their value, have a certain chance of their level becoming 0, making them untradable. (Note: Even if you were stealing Morgoth's crown, which has a value of 10 million Au, you'd still have at least a 5% chance of it retaining its original level.) Your chance to steal an item from a shop depends on your dexterity, your stealing skill and the price and weight of the item. Stealth and invisibility are also somewhat helpful. For example it's nearly impossible to steal a large piece of wood without the store owner noticing it, although it's not worth much. There's always a minimum chance of 5% to fail. You need to be at least level 5 to steal and at least level 10 to steal anything of somewhat higher value. You have a chance to successfully steal an item even if your stealing skill is 0 and your dexterity low, so everyone could give it a try. If a shop offers an item more expensive than it actually is (black market) that has no effect on stealing. The 'normal' item value is used to calculate the chances. However, if an item is offered at reduced price, it'll be easier to steal it! It's more difficult to steal from certain stores, eg stores that are found in the dungeon or that don't belong to the basic town stores (numbered 1-9, including the rune repository). It is even impossible to steal from expensive black market (the one located somewhat hidden in Minas Anor), secret black market (the one you can only find in dungeons), rare footwear shop and rare jewelry shop (both in dungeons), or from a dungeon town's temple, potion store or black market. It's a good idea to wear as many +DEX items as possible while trying to steal from a shop, since DEX is the main factor besides the skill. Stealing items which have a base value (without discount applied!) not higher than your stealing_skill * 10 (eg 50 Au->5.000 Stealing) are especially easy to steal. Also, if you still get caught on such an item, the blacklist time will be much shorter too. Some potion/scroll/wand/staff break points regarding this (not complete, just examples): ?Identify: 50 Au. !Neutralize Poison: 55 Au. !Cure Critical Wounds: 100 Au. ?Enchant Weapon/Armour: 125 Au. ?Recharging: 150 Au. !Speed, ?Holy Chant, _Treasure Location:200 Au. !Restore stat, -Stone to Mud: 300 Au. !Healing, ?Teleportation: 400 Au. !Resistance, !Restore Mana, Athelas: 450 Au. ?Wilderness Mapping: 500 Au. Trying to 'steal back' an item that was already owned by a player, ie an item that has been sold to the shop, is especially hard. Actually you can decrease your blacklist timer by buying items costing at least 100 Au while you are blacklisted, as buying items lessens the shopkeepers' distrust somewhat. You will gain the amount of gold spent divided by 200 in seconds subtracted from your timer. Example: If you are on the blacklist for maybe 10 more minutes and buy an item for 40000 Au (which would usually only cost 10000 Au if you weren't blacklisted) then you'd get 40000/200 = 200 s deducted and your remaining blacklist timer would now be at 6 minutes and 20 seconds. Of course the loss of 30000 Au that you paid too much here is *quite* substantial. Training the 'Stealing' skill will carry over strongly into its parent skill 'Sneakiness'. .Backstabbing Lets you backstab enemies, afflicting high (1/7, at least 1.000) damage. Works if the opponent is asleep or running away in fear, exposing his back to you. Also works when you are cloaked (only once per monster though, so re-cloaking won't help) or shadow running. Increasing this skill increases the damage your backstab attacks deal. Backstabbing requires sword-type weapons or polearms, up to 10.0 lbs in weight. Alternatively it works if you use Martial Arts, in which case it transforms into neck-twisting; that means your target must possess a neck, read: A head and a torso. If you dual-wield, you will also dual-backstab if the moster is either asleep, or you perform the attack from cloaking mode or shadow run. Although you'll deal somewhat less damage with each stab, since they are executed both at once you will do more overall damage than with a single weapon. Backstab hits and critical hits do not stack. If you roll a critical hit on backstabbing, the damage is compared to what the pure backstab would do and the higher one is used. Backstabbing a non-fleeing monster has a chance to apply a stun effect based on your DEX, your Backstabbing skill, slightly depending on your Weaponmastery skill, and on the r-level and AC. Uniques and undead are harder to stun. There is no difference between dual-wield or one-handed use regarding stun effectiveness. Vampires will feed especially much from backstabbing a sleeping opponent to death. .Dodging Ability to evade attacks. In order to get any (1/3, at least 1.000) benefits from doding skill at all, your armour mustn't be too heavy. If it is, you will get a flexibility warning (compare (5.5)). Also, you must not be using a shield. A low dodging skill will already help greatly against monsters of similarly low level, so it is helpful right from the beginning of your character's career. There are various attacks that can be dodged: Melee attacks mostly, bolts, arrows and the likes (both magical and physical) shot by enemies or traps at you. And it slightly helps to dodge rubble coming down during an earthquake. Your actual chance to dodge an attack depends on the total weight you are carrying around with you, where inventory usually weighs most and will encumber you the most. Your equipment also musn't be too heavy, although your weapons are allowed to weigh quite a bit, as long as your armour isn't too encumbering. However, for weapons, armour, and inventory always goes: The lighter, the higher your chances will be. And of course your dodging chance depends on your dodging skill, which (after penalized by the weight of all your stuff) is compared to the opponent's level or trap level. (For dodging monsters, the rlevel (0.4) of that monster type is important. Any additional levels the monster may have gained due to dwelling deeper than usual will not affect your dodge chance.) You can check your dodging chance against opponents of same and double level by pressing 'm' and choosing "Check dodge chance". Depending on the server version you might see textual descriptions instead of raw numbers: "Almost no chance" means less than 5%, "Slight chance" -> less than 14%, "Significant chance" -> less than 23%, "Good chance" -> less than 30%, "Very good chance" -> less than 40%, otherwise "High chance" (may occur in actual game play if opponent is much lower than you). Against monsters that have way higher level than you, you receive a minor penalty. You can still dodge them quite effectively though. Dodging also gets slightly increased by the "Martial Arts" skill (see above in this skill table). As a rule of thumb, your dodge chance (at maxed dodging skill in relation to your character's level) will usually cap at 67% for monsters of equal level and at 50% chance for monsters of twice your level. If your dodging skill isn't maxed out to your current character level, your dodging chance will drop in a linear manner, eg if skill is half your level, you'll have half the chance to dodge. .Calmness Ability to not get hindered by enemies. (0.625) Monsters can try to intercept some of your actions, the Calmness skill counters these interception attempts. In detail: Monsters can interfere if they are standing on an adjacent grid (ie right next to you) and if you try to.. -shoot with ranged weapons, -use a void jumpgate, -set a monster trap. That's it. So calmness does not affect, for example, spellcasting. Calmness does not depend on the enemy's level. .Trapping Improves your ability to set traps: (0.450) Gives you a higher chance to successfully place a trap if a monster is close to you and trying to interfere. Also, monsters will have a harder time to discover your traps. By training Trapping you also learn to optimize your traps for higher damage output. (Note that 'Magic Device' or 'Runecraft' skill have no effect on trap damage output, even if it is loaded with a device or a rune.) See (4.7) for details about monster traps. Improves your ability to recognize traps and ammunition (pebbles, shots, arrows, bolts): Lets you pseudo-ID trap kits and ammo more frequently the higher your skill. If increased to at least 10, pseudo-ID will give you more distinctive feelings instead of just 'good' or 'cursed'. Trapping also improves your disarming ability, making it easier to pick locks and to disarm traps via the manual disarm command. (The experience you gain from manually disarming traps is not affected by the skill but only by the traps' level). You also will get a chance to identify the type of a trap on disarming, increasing with skill. Being more proficient in trapping will also increase your chances of spotting traps, ie improving your 'Searching' ability. And should you still trigger a trap accidentally, your chances of avoiding it will increase too! At 10.000 Trapping you will learn the fighting technique 'Steam Blast' which can blast open doors and chests. Last but not least Trapping gives you a chance (depending on your skill) to salvage a trap kit from any trap you disarm! Hint: Inscribe all your trapping components '!=' for easy auto-pickup and make sure to create macros so you can place a trap by simply pressing a single button. To reduce inventory space usage, go to general store and buy a trap kit bag. +Health Increases your hit points by 2 for each point. (0.500) Note that this gain stacks with +LIFE items (compare '+LIFE' in (5.8)). Increases your hit point regeneration rate: (skill_level * 2)% chance to regenerate 1.5x the normal amount of HP per turn (stacks with other regeneration effects and item flag). Increases your stamina regeneration rate. Helps you to recover from temporary stats drain drain, hallucination, blindness, confusion, poison, disease and cuts faster. If you spend 10 points into Health, your sanity will be displayed as a bar. At 20 points you'll get the percentage displayed. At 40 the value will be shown. For mimicry users, Health skill is less effective than for other classes, because the hit point bonus is applied before the player's base hit points and monster form hit points are averaged to calculate the mimic's final amount of hit points in a particular a monster form. Note that the subskills of Health listed below in general spill over quite a good chunk of skill points into their parent skill Health. .Swimming Allows you to swim even while carrying more weight and to better protect your items from water. Skill maxes at 1.000, with the ability to swim improving steadily while increasing it. At 0.700 you become able to swim very swiftly if no monsters are within sight, enabling you to 'run' through water. For more details about swimming see (4.15). .Climbing You need this at 1.000 to be able to climb. Climbing allows you to pass mountain terrain without the need for a climbing set, special boots or magical means. Dwarves have little use for this skill as they learn climbing intrinsically when they reach level 30. .Digging How well you are able to dig. Also affects your chance to find items (from digging only), and chance for those items to be good or even great, and it affects the amount of cash generated from mining mineral veins. This skill spills over especially generously into its parent skill 'Health'. Note that for the Digging skill to get applied, which includes any boni it might give such as improving what you can find or uncover, you must dig manually, ie not via any kind of magic or by using a KILL_WALL monster form (mimicry). In particular, every 10 digging skill you will have a chance to find an additional pile of cash from mining a treasure vein, up to 6 piles if you're lucky at skill 50.000 (provided your dungeon floor depth is greater than half of your digging skill, otherwise the number of piles is limited to depth/5, eg 5 piles for dungeon level 25, while starting at dungeon level 26 you may uncover the full amount of 6 piles if your skill is actually 50.000). Depending on the skill, you might also uncover unusual features such as fountains or staircases or somewhat more often (compared to finding just random items from digging) find chests, runes or heavy material pieces suitable for golem creation. The quality of objects found also depends on your digging skill. Certain tools such as shovels, picks and mattocks will also increase your digging speed greatly (independant of the skill), see (5.9). Also, when hacking through trees and bushes, axes will help a lot and swords somewhat, in case you have no good digging tool at hand. 2-handed weapons even more than 1-handed. For hacking away spider webs, certain polearms used for slashing (scythes and sickles) may help too, at least as well as swords or axes. See (3.4c) for more information on digging tools and (5.17) for technical details on digging. Demolitionist perk (EXPERIMENTAL): Shortly before 4.7.3 a new experimental perk was added to the Digging skill: Demolitionist. This just means that if you train Digging to at least 5.000 you will be able to find or acquire certain ingredients that you can use to create blast charges. The effect of charges does not increase with skill, level, or anything else. All ingredients as well as the items you craft from them are level 0 and hence bound to your character (untradable). Some ingredients are acquired by digging, some by actually killing monsters or by other means, and then there is the 'grinding tool' that you can buy in town in the alchemy shop for little money that allows you to grind items containing a significant amount of rather reactive metal types to reactive metal powder or to grind items made of significant amounts of wood into wood chips. Some recipes might even use basic lamp oil which you could just by from the general store. Note that some ingredients might need higher skill to find: Vitriol at 15.000, ammonia salt, saltpetre and sulfur at 10.000, reactive metal powder at 10.000 (when found, not when created by using a grinding tool, so it can be acquired at 5.000). For information on crafting charges see (7.2b). At 10.000 Digging, if Demolitionist is enabled, you will learn the fighting technique 'Steam Blast' which can blast open doors and chests. If you don't want ingredients to drop to reduce loot clutter, You can turn them off (and on again) with the /ing command. The client option 'autopickup_chemicals' and the slash command '/chem' toggle automatically picking-up freshly dropped chemicals by simply walking over them. To reduce inventory space usage, go to the town's alchemy shop and buy an Alchemy Satchel. The abilities Swimming, Digging and Climbing are also granted by items you can find. Those are for example items that grants you levitation, so you may just hover across water instead of swimming across. Wands of stone-to-mud will turn any obstacle to mud that you could dig through, and some boots or a climbing set might grant you the ability to climb highest mountains. Dwarves also learn this ability automatically when they reach level 30. Here is what the numbers mean (we will use the Axe-mastery skill for this example: +Combat 10.500 [0.800] +Weaponmastery 5.250 [0.800] .Axe-mastery 15.000 [0.500] As we can see this player has 10.5 skill points in Combat, 5.25 in Weaponmastery and 15 in Axe-mastery. He just reached a new level and hence gained 5 skill points. Now he decides to invest them all into Axe-mastery. He presses <DOWN> key until the Axe-mastery line is selected. Now he presses <RIGHT> key 5 times to invest all his 5 spare skill points here. Axe-mastery will be increased by 0.500 points per invested skill point (hence the [0.500] on the right), leaving him at 17.5 Axe-mastery now. Since sub-skills always slightly affect their parent skills, Weaponmastery and Combat will also be raised slightly. The result might look like this: +Combat 10.750 [0.800] +Weaponmastery 6.250 [0.800] .Axe-mastery 17.500 [0.500] Opposed skills -------------- Some skills don't go well together, and will have negative influence on each other when increased, decreasing their opposite! Take care on the following combinations: Weaponmastery <-> Sorcery Archery <-> Sorcery Martial Arts <-> Sorcery Anti-magic <-> excludes any type of magic and magic devices, including mimicry. However, a mimicking player won't lose his current form on training in Anti-magic. He just won't be able to transform ever again by using his mimic powers. His form CAN still change though, if he is zapped with a wand of polymorph, quaffs a potion of Chauve-Souris, uses Morph Restoration service of a shop or.. dies, three things that he probably wants to avoid at all costs in order to keep his 'final' form.
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