Guides:Tips for Skills

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Here is the 'Tips for Skills' page. You can come to this page and put in info on how to raise a certain skill, e.g. what are the tricks of the trade and you can ask for help raising a skill.

General

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Typical rule of thumb for optimal overall skill gain is creating items with a chance of 50% (as shown on the item's menu), or improving items 10 quality (ql) higher than the related skill.

In some skills and crafts there will be no actual displayed creation chance. Mining to cite one example.

Altars - Working within the domain of your god(dess) can add some bonus gain to certain skills. Most skills and crafts require one to be standing still, so it cannot hurt to have an altar nearby.

Creation - Having a creation chance around 50% seems to give the best skill gain. This chance is calculated based on a number of factors to varying degrees: skill, raw material ql, tool ql, and etc. The exact emphasis can differ from item to item. Typically the quality of the parts and tools have the most impact with skill playing a close second.

Enchantments - Circle of cunning (CoC) is extremely helpful since it provides increased skillgain. It's not advisable to use Wind of Ages on your tools when you're working to increase you skills as it results in reduced skillgain.

Improving - Having the best (high QL) tools and raw materials (resources) you can get your claws on is best. In addition, finding the one item in the skill that uses the least amount of raw materials for improving is desirable.

Nutrition - At the very least, your nutrition should be higher than 40%. Anything less than that will result in decreased skillgain. You receive a 1% skillgain bonus at 60% nutrition and the bonus increases to 5% as you reach maximum nutrition. For blacklighters, it's best if you can do your work while standing on a mycelium tile. You will passively regain lost hunger and nutrition from mycelium tiles. Full nutrition can be achieved by sacrificing rare items to your chosen diety. This applies to all four gods.

Sleep Bonus - You can use this bonus at anytime to increase your skillgain while it's activated. You can accumulate sleep bonus by logging off in a bed or by consuming a sleep powder.

Blacksmithing

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To get started, it's best to have a forge of decent (50+) QL. The reason for having a good forge is that the higher QL a forge has, the longer it will stay lit. It will also heat items up faster. In order to practice blacksmithing and it's subsequent skills, you will need the following tools: whetstone, hammer, pelt, and water (usually in a barrel). You can only improve items to the QL of your tools and resources. This is why it's important to have the best (high QL) tools and resources you can get your hands on.

What I find handy, when working to increase this skill, is to make multiple copies of an item and work on them all simultaneously. It's best to have an item for each queue slot that you have access to. For example to start off, you'll want three items to work on. 20-29.99 mind logic allows you to have three actions queued. When you reach 30 mind logic it would be beneficial to work on four items.

It's best to begin by creating and improving needles. They are resource efficient to create and improve; they only use .001 of a lump.

Improving isn't limited by your skill level. It's also a good way to increase your skill level, when done properly. The gamewide method to increase crafting skills is by improving items to a QL above your skill level. It's best to go about 10-15 QL above your skill level. This is why it's important to have high QL tools.

Jewelry smithing

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To train this skill it is best to begin by making bowls. Bowls can be made of any metal, resulting in high resource availability. Eventually, presuming that you have access to silver or gold ore, you can progress to creating armrings. These have a relatively high creation chance for less skilled jewelrysmiths. They are also worth a pretty penny to traders. The downside to armrings is they weigh 0.30kg each. Therefore, they consume a lot of lump per imp attempt. You can endure this extra lump cost for a while if you have ready access to ore, but if not it is best to skip armrings entirely and proceed to the final item: rings. While their creation chance is initially low, they only weigh 0.05, meaning that a 0.10 lump lasts for 30 uses.

Carpentry

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The best way to raise carpentry is by building houses. Working to increase the sub skills like fine carpentry, bowyery, fletching, and ship building also increase the parent skill carpentry.

You'll need the following tools for the carpentry skill family: hammer/mallet, pelt, carving knife, and a file.

For help in building houses, it is strongly recommended that you visit Build house guide.

Digging/Terraforming

To grind digging skill up, use a good Circle of Cunning shovel. Look for an area you want to flatten or terraform, and then dig the areas needed and dump the dirt in areas needed. For example:-

You want a bit of land to be flat and you find out some of it is already flat so you dig the areas are not flat.

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100--------Leave the same

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100--------Leave the same

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150-------- Dig 50 here

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100--------Leave the same

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100--------Leave the same

If there is only a small bit that needs terraforming then expand the area. Cut some trees down around the edge to make a 5x5 flat surface into a 10x10. Do this as much as you can and your skill will shoot up.

Note: Using the "Flatten" command will give A LOT more skill than simply digging. However its not as productive to randomly flatten areas.
For more information see the following guides Digging and Guides/FlatRaising

Farming

The best way to grind your farming skill is to start with Bread crops or Wemp plants. (Oat, Wheat & Barley) You may wonder why, but the reason is that you ALWAYS gain seeds for replanting.

To get started you should start with a 10x10 field for maximum skill gain. (Read the Farming article for common farming knowledge.)

Fighting

There's two ways to train fighting, the safe way and the dangerous way:

I recommend using the safe way until around 10 fighting, then go off hunting.

Safe way

Create a practice doll and equip a shaft. Then beat it senseless for a bit, keeping its damage below 20 at all times. Never, EVER use a true weapon, especially a sword, on a practice doll. It's a complete waste of a good weapon and destroys the practice doll in no time. Not recommended. Equipping a shaft is a good weapon to use on a doll, or use a saw.

Dangerous (but a heck of a lot more fun) way

Go hunting. That's it. Just go hunting. You first want to try hunting down simple farm animals such as pigs, pheasants, roosters, bulls, cows, etc. Even wild cats work at the start. At around 10 fighting you want to get some leg protection and hunt down wolves. The wolves aim for the legs a lot, so leg protection will save you health in the end. Pheasants in particular can make an excellent training enemy as they will not follow you when you back away from the fight, giving you time to heal and regain stamina if necessary, especially if fighting with very low QL weapons for the skill gain.

Melee weapons

Melee weapons can be safely trained up to 20 in that respective weapon. All melee weapons, including mauls and clubs, can be used on practice dolls. Additionally, Both axes and swords can be used to safely hack at trees for skill up to 20. Skill beyond 20 requires usage of these weapons in actual fighting.

The usage of weapons on dolls can inflict heavy damage on both doll and weapon. Practice dolls over 50ql are recomended.

Using axes and mauls gives body strength. Swords give body control.

Leatherworking

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To leatherwork you will need; a needle, an awl, some leather, a leather knife and a mallet.

The best way to begin your leatherworking career is to make a leather belt. This is because leather belts use small amounts of leather when created and when improved. Leather belts also have a high % chance to make at low skill which means you will not fail as often. Once you have created your leather belt, get a piece of high-ish 15+QL leather and improve the belt until you need another tool. Keep improving it and you will gain skill (you still gain skill from fails but repairing will slow you down). Once you have a higher % chance on other items, make lots of gloves and improve them all to 15QL. Keep doing this with higher difficulty items keeping in mind that items with a 50% success rate will give you the biggest skill gain. NOTE: Needle quality and leatherworking skill will determine the % chance to succeed when creating leather items.

Once your skill reaches 10-15 (EDIT - I would have said 20-25 but this depends on if you like making rivets :Shweet), try and stud some of them. It takes 0.2 kg of rivets to stud ALL leather items apart from leather pants which take 0.8 kg and leather jackets which take 0.4 kg. If you fail to stud an item you will lose the item and the rivet. Rivet ql and leatherworking skill will determine the % chance to succeed when riveting leather armour, not the ql of the leather item to be studded. Tip; combine rivets before improving them.

As your skill goes up you will need better quality tools as the quality of your tools will determine the failure rate when improving. Your leatherworking skill level limits the max improving quality. You can improve with raw leather that has lower quality than the item you are improving you will however suffer from larger fail to improve rates. The only item used that has its own skill is a mallet; the miscellaneous skill “hammer” will effect your ability to successfully improve with the mallet. As with other skills you will gain the most skill by improving the item rather than creating them, and when the item quality is closer to your skill you will also gain the most skill. Working on drake armour gives a greater skill gain than plain or studded leather armour.

Creating leather. Successful creation of leather is determined by your leatherworking skill and the quality of the lye used. If successful the leather will be created at the quality of the hide, the higher your leatherworking skill the better chance you will have of creating leather at the maximum hide quality. Higher quality hides are harder to turn into high quality leather and unless you have very good leatherworking skill and lye it will turn into lower quality leather.

When making leather try to use the smallest amount of lye possible as the entire amount is used. To do this, make the lye in a water skin then place 11 potatoes into a jar and then fill that jar with lye. Using this method you will only use 0.08kg of lye on each hide.

Locksmithing

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To raise lock smithing, you will need to make key form. This is achieved by using a key on clay, make sure the key is of low ql so that your success chance is around 50% for optimal skill gain. You do not need to fire the clay mold! After 25 lock smithing, the fastest way to get skill is to get a small anvil that is the right ql to get you a 50% chance to make a lockpick. A pure Circle of Cunning anvil is recommended for this.

Masonry

Building houses is said to be good skill gain, but you can't even do that until you hit 30 Masonry, and at 75 skill I personally gain no skill using my WoA/CoC trowel even after putting up 10 walls. The best way to gain skill is to simply improve grindstones and other items that fall under the Stone cutting sub-category. Many towns don't allow statue spamming, as this contributes to lag, while grindstones can fit in chests and be carried easily, which is why they are preferred. The bonus to this is that you will also have higher %s on making stone bricks and stone slabs. Imping forges and ovens is also great skill gain, but does add a large amount of clutter to an area.

Another effective way (but not as fast) is to build a guard tower. Once the guard tower is complete, you will have 30 or so masonry. Improve the tower for even more skill gain.

Mining

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To grind mining people usually ask for an insanely high ql pickaxe with Wind of Ages spell. This isn't the way to go. You want a relatively low ql pick with as much Circle of Cunning on it as possible, this will give a lot of skill if you mine rock shards with it as it heightens the difficulty and the mine time, its the mine time that improves the skill gain in mining, longer mine time = more skill #.

Mining rock shards is easier for a new player up to a decent skill level (40 -50?) but from then on if you want to grind mining I would suggest mining on an ore vein. You want to mine shard/ore about 1 half of your actual skill, so say you have 50 mining, you want to be mining 25ql rocks or ore. This means you have a 50% chance of mining a full ql (your mining skill) and failing (1ql). Try to not mine capped walls lower than your skill.

Different ore veins have different difficulty. The easiest is mining plain rock, followed by iron veins and copper veins. The hardest are silver and gold. As with most things in Wurm, too low difficulty leads to reduced skill gain, while too high difficulty results in high failure rate. A failure results in a 1.00 QL rock or ore.

Items from successful mining have random QL, but the maximum possible is the lower of your mining skill and the tile's inherent quality. See prospecting for details about tile QL.

Optimal Skill Gain

• Rock: 1-50
• Iron vein: 50-60
• Copper vein: 60-70
• Tin vein or lead vein: 70-85
• Silver vein: 90-99

For the best skill gain, you will want to fail to mine the ore sometimes; about 10-15 failures (1QL) is the best skill gain. If you fail more, improve your pickaxe or downgrade an ore difficulty.

Note that if the tile is capped at a QL much lower than your skill you won't be able to check average QL of the pile of ore/shards to see whether or not you have a decent success rate. The average QL of the pile is always based on your skill and not the tile itself, and the tile QL is therefore irrelevant to skillgain. A wider range in upper QL based on skill will get lost when translated to the tile capped with lower QL so it will look like more top QL gains but in reality they would've been higher in QL if the tile was. For example: If you have 70 mining and you mine a QL32 rock tile and get 1xQL1 and 49xQL32 you don't actually get 49xHighest possible quality - the tile just doesn't go any higher so the ones that would've been in the range between 32-70 are all translated down to 32 due to the cap. The skillgain from a QL32 and a QL70 rock tile is exactly the same.

# There is actually some disagreement about this. Some people are of the opinion that the extra mining actions with a fast pick make up for the loss of skillgain due to short timers. There is also a 3rd camp which believes that it makes little difference which method you prefer & that skillgain will be about the same if you spend the same total amount of time mining. If this is the case, then how many shards (or how much ore) you want at the end of your mining session might be more important.)

Weapon smithing

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Do not care about Blades smithing and Weapon heads smithing skills, that skills you will get while making actual weapons over time. Best item to skill weaponsmithing to 40 are butchering knives, imping butchering knife takes only 0,06kg of iron. First make yourself about 150-200 butchering knife blades, don't care about failures, it will pass over time. Finish unfinished ones, do not imp blades it's a waste of time. For making blades use 1-20ql iron, anything over will be a waste. When you will make 150-200 blades also make same amount of wooden handles. Make first batch of butchering knives, use about half blades for making knives, finish unfinished butchering knives, set yourself a target ql (your actual skill in weapon smithing + 8-10 points. For example, having 10 weaponsmithing you will be able to make weapons with quality about 20). Improve all butchering knives you got to your target quality. After improving all butchering knives to certain ql you can check your skill again, set new target quality level, and proceed with improving them like 3 times. After improving all the butchering knives 3 times you should make another batch of butchering knives from the rest of the blades and wooden handles. You should notice a significant difference in success rate between two batches. Improve the second batch of butchering knives to average quality of the first batch. Then keep improving knives as your skill grows. after you gain about 30 skill in ws start thinking about making other weapons, be sure to have plenty of handles

More tips:

While you're Vynora follower be sure to have altar of Vynora nearby, it's highly possible that you get 10% more skill gain. Common sense...

Use sleep bonus, after login light forge and logout, log in back when stuff in forge will be glowing from heat (for 50ql forge it takes about 10-20 minutes, ql dependent factor)

For improving try using lumps/tools with ql at most 20ql higher than improved item!

Coc/woa tools might also be a nice boost for your skilling curve...

Blades smithing

If you feel like improving blades smithing, create 10-20 carving or butchering knife blades, and imp the blades to your skill + 5. Once you get this to about 25, there's really no point in going beyond, and start attaching them to handles and imping the tool.

Weapon heads smithing

If you want to improve your heads smithing skill, create 10-20 small axe heads and imp the blades to your heads smithing + 5. Once you get this to about 25, there's no point in going further and start attaching them to shafts and imping the true tool.

Woodcutting

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To grind woodcutting, the best way is to get a good Circle of Cunning Hatchet and start cutting down trees in the area you want to use/ build on. Make sure you repair the axe after every 5-20 uses to raise your Repairing skill. A good idea is to go to an area that is not populated, or areas infested with unwanted tree types (i.e. fruit trees), and ask any locals before cutting down the trees; this helps to avoid angering people and the sharp pointy things they will stick into you (Wild servers). If possible, harvest sprout's with a sickle and replant the trees.

Ropemaking

Improving Net Traps is a possible way to grind this skill.

Ship Building

See also: Ship Building Guide

Clothing

Cloth tailoring is not a difficult skill to level up, at least not in the first 30 points or so, and is vital to making sails, which are more or less pointless to attempt to create before 25 cloth tailoring--and not easy even then.

1. Acquire cotton.
2. Activate wooden spindle, right-click cotton, and select "Create -> string of cloth" (continue until you have no cotton left).
3. Take 75% (lowest QL) of your strings of cloth and, working from lowest QL to highest, combine them to make 0.3kg strings.
4. Take those to a floor loom.
5. Starting with the lowest QL strings and working to the highest, activate a string of cloth, right-click a floor loom, and select "Create -> square piece of cloth" (continue until that 75% is used up).

1. Starting with lowest QL square, activate a needle, right-click a cloth square, and select "Create -> Armor -> Cloth glove".
2. Using a needle, scissors, and your highest QL strings from the remaining 25% of your strings of cloth, improve the glove until it is around QL 10 or is finished.
3. Repeat until you have no cloth left.