Newbie questions on skills.

[KallDrexx]

Hail I just got wizardy 8 cause it looked cool and I saw the hands on preview for it in pcgamer a few months ago and they said it was good (and was in a big RPG mood). None the less i do love it. However I see posts about practicing skills instead of leveling and I imagine that is done by not pressing the cross am I correct? Also is there a way to use skills, like use my artifact skills to identify all these unidentified objects in my ilnventory?

thanks.

[fable]

If you don't press the cross, your character won't level, true. Some players assume that if your characters remain level 1 but raise their skills by constant use, they'll be equal to every battle--but that's a cheese tactic built on fallacy. You'll still have to face all the boss monsters, and there are plenty of set battles along the way; and in both cases, you'll be dealing with higher level monsters.

So don't neglect to make levels. As to skills, you can raise 'em both while making levels, and by constant use.

[Erydian]

Pressing the "cross" advances your character to the next level, and allows you to allocate level-up points. That is, if I'm referring to the same cross that you are. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Every time your characters swing their weapons or cast their spells they are practicing the skills required to perform those actions. When people speak of practicing, they are generally referring to practicing casting skills (either by casting Knock Knock at power level 1 repetitively on a locked door, or by casting protection/buff spells).

Because monster levels are relative to your characters' levels, some people choose to hold off on actually leveling (as in entering the level-up screen and allocating points) so that they can get their skills up higher through practice without increasing the difficulty of the monsters they encounter. However, I understand that monster level is also dependent on what zone you are in, so you must keep this in mind too.

From what I have seen (I don't use this method personally) people do this if their characters are having a hard time defeating the monsters that they regularly encounter (or if they are playing the game solo).

Passive skills such as the Artifacts skill go up gradually over time on their own. You use the Artifacts skill whenever you pick up an item for the first time, and yes, when you right-click items that are unidentified in your inventory. Your Shield skill, for instance, will increase if you equip a shield and enter combat with it.

Hope that answers your question.

[KallDrexx]

ah ok.. I've been leveling (lvl 5 now) but i saw that comment and I was wondering. Thanks for the replies.

So therefore what would be teh advantage of not leveling? Don't skills go up the same rate?

So if i right click and it stays unidientfied does that mean i don't have enough artifacts skill? i.e. i have 2 unidentified spellbooks that don't identify when I rihgt click (I did get some things identfied but not teh spellbooks and some other things).

[ 01-19-2002: Message edited by: KallDrexx ]

[Merkin]

One really basic advantage to not levelling is to hold down the strength/numbers of monsters. Outside of the pre-set and boss battles, encounters are based on the highest character level you've got. I find it really usefull to level up most, if not all of my characters at the same time, and especially in the early game, resiting leveling up past 4 or five until you can get to Arnika (and acquire better armor/weapons/spells) can be pretty handy.