Finished my first party on 'novice' difficulty, started new party on 'normal', but my skills seem to be much slower to develope: spent half an hour trying to pick a lock without a skill bump. Switched back to 'novice', got a skill boost and opened the lock in less than a minute. Is that part of the deal with 'normal'?

Currently have a ranger with about 30 in scouting, want to change her to valkry, with 30 scouting will she still 'find' stuff without going to search mode?

Oru

Locks & Traps increases much faster on trapped chests; just keep clicking the magnifying glass, you'll get increases much more often than with locks. For practising skills i always go to novice, i'm not sure, but it seems like they learn faster.

You have to be a ranger to have the autoscout ability. Same thing with fighter, you have to be a fighter to have berserk ability. Valkyries get cheat death, etc. So if you class change, you will lose the autoscout ability.

and if you have noone with the autoscout ability... then what?
does it just rely on the person with the best senses?

With no autoscout party member you will miss any secret items - unless you turn on the "search" icon. But that makes your party more vulnerable to getting surprised by monsters in combat.

The detect secrets spell works as well as autoscout if you have it, that combined with x-ray is very effective.

Gimli, I'm just an occasional vistor to this board, but your signiture picture makes threads much harder to read than they would otherwise be.

I'm glad to know about the trapped chest training, Otter.

The only problem with detect secrets is that it doesn't last for very long, so it uses up a ton of mana. In the early game, my bishop uses mental magic mana faster than any other because of insanity and ID-both great spells to build up skills. If you've been through the game once already, you should be able to remember where some of the more important things are hidden. If not, then I'd suggest keeping a ranger.

Sorry Avalanche, I will have to look for a smaller dwarf ;)

Will turn it off for now.