Hello all. I have a question regarding the Artifacts skill. My previous party had little difficulty identifying stuff, thanks largely to my Bard. (yeah, I restarted ... it's a requiremnt, right?) I'm "bardless" with this new group, and they can't identify anything more complex than arrows and bullets. I don't really want to put points into the Artifacts skill if I can avoid it. I read an earlier post that said you can raise the skill by using certain items, particularly something called mana stones (sounds like something right out of Asheron's Call). Where can I get these stones? Are there other items I can use? Btw, I haven't made it to Arnika yet. Maybe tonight ;)

thanks and happy hunting

You can also raise it by using the powders and potions and such in a battle. If you right-click on something, it tells you what skills it requires to use it. Some of those powders and such might be able to raise your skill using them outside a battle but I don't recall for sure. Of course, I had two bishops with my group and they were my chief ID-ers and my ranger would find plenty of stuff for them to ID. As I continued through the game, though, the artifact skills for everyone just raised on their own just from seeing stuff. I think I ended with the lowest having a 60+ artifact skill. The same is true of communication -- you shouldn't have to put a point into it because most of your characters will get them just from talking to the NPCs.

You can also use the Identify spell on items. This is a good way to build skill in the Mental realm for your casters.

The nice thing about the artifacts skill is that the more you have of it, the more you use it and the better it gets. For example: Let's say you have a characters with artifacts skill of 15 and everyone else has artifacts skill of 2 or 3. When you see some stones in the road, your character with the higher skill knows that they are bullet stones without having to examine them. Because he or she knows what they are and identifies them, everyone else's artifact skill goes up. In fact his or her own skill goes up a tiny bit just because he or she was successful at knowing that those stones are ordinary rocks.

My advice is to put a few points into artifacts at the beginning of the game for one person and one person only. After a bit, don't put any more there, use those points in other areas. But the character who has the higher artifacts skills will start identifying stuff and building everyone's artifact skills.

Good Luck,
Knarfling