Some of you have tips on improving your gadgeteer's engineering skill early or your Bard's music skill with the Charm guitar; id like to share with you a tip on improving throwing skill.

Remember in Umpani, in the shooting range where you meet up with Sgt Rubble, there are three dummies in there.

If you have any character that has very low Throwing or Archery skills, you can have him/her improve in here.

I have RFS81 and it is currently useless in the Range Attack (zero throwing skill). I gave it a sling and bullet rocks and have it shoot at the dummies. Once it made a few hits, I would hide the group to stop the fight. After the fight, RFS81 would gain a point in Throwing and Long Range Skill. I manage to improve its skill from zero (or 8?)throwing to 40+, Long Range from zero to 30+ with about 300 rock bullets. Funny, RFS81 have 56 in Critical, yet I did not see any INSTAKILL there.

I did not use those dummies on archery practice though. arrows pack a higher damage, I would have killed those clowns fast to make this run usefull.

Remember, a few hits only and then hide. You dont get 20 skill points in one fight even if you spent all 500 bullets. The way I see it, one improvement point per fight no matter how long or many hits you made.

As I recall, only Ninja have the chance of doing a critical hit on a thrown item; this is not a feature of the Monk class. Of course, anyone using ammo with insta-kill chance might get a ranged crit. But don't expect that with plain bullet stones.

On the other hand, that's certainly a good tip for bringing RFS up to speed. His ranged ability is the only thing lacking when you take him on. Why not post this also to the tips thread at the top of the board?

<center>Nightowl2</center>

P.S. You may also want to try that by equipping him with feather darts and throwing knives, one set in each hand.

a tad off topic, but what happens to bullet stones once they are thrown?

i used to think that the piles of stones i would find lying around, were the ones i had thrown. and that some weird force made them group together, for me to find again.

but if that's the case, why don't i find lots of medusas or impaling, too? i use those much much more than standard stones.

:D please be kind, i may be silly, but that's the fault of wizardry. :D

V***V

I think that they go to the same place as one half of some the (former) pairs of my socks.

Only rangers can get criticals with slings (and bows, and modern weapons) and only ninja can get criticals with thrown weapons (darts, shuriken, knives). Monks and samurai can only critical in close combat.

That's a good tip, though. I'll have to try it the next time I'm in there... Though I have to admit I rarely bother to train my monks in any sort of ranged weapon (too little damage). I have better luck just using a bo in the secondary weapon slot.

[ 02-09-2002: Message edited by: Merulus ]</p>

I heard that throwing pots need throwing proficiency and this is one training that can improve just that.

I was thinking of giving RFS81 some pots to throw later on; Acid Bomb, Pandemonium, etc are nice to throw at the very start of the fight. And RFS, as I heard, has high initiative, he is most likely to be the first to move. Too bad if on the first round he would be sitting dock doing nothing to help out the group.