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

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.

Improving - Having the best 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.

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) and Wind of Ages (WoA) are both extremely helpful, except where specifically noted otherwise.

Blacksmithing

To get started it's best to have a forge of decent QL and good QL tools. This ensures that your forge will remain hot for longer and heat things faster, and that you will have less of a chance of failing while imping.

What I find handy when skilling up is to make multiple copies of an item and work on them all simultaneously. If you are also a miner or have ready access to unlimited ore, then you can work on any items you want. If you only have limited access to ore and/or are only working for skill, then your best bet is to create and improve needles. They use .001 lump to create, use hardly anything to imp, and you can fit a hundred in a bowl or jar.

Skill gain is faster the more difficult the work; improving items to 30 points below your level won't generate skillgain as fast as improving items to 10 below your skill level, and so forth.

Jewelrysmithing

In order to practice jewelrysmithing you need the same tools as for any other smithing skill: whetstone, hammer, pelt, and water. The higher the QL of your tools, the greater the chance to succeed when improving.

To train JSing it is best to begin with making bowls for initial skill. Bowls can be made of any metal, resulting in high resource availability. As with all skills involving improving, you should endeavor to improve each bowl (and all subsequent items) to your skill plus 10 for maximum skill gain. Eventually, presuming access to silver or gold ore, you can progress to creating armrings. These have a relatively high creation chance for low-skill Jewelrysmiths, and are worth a pretty penny to traders. Their downside is that since they weigh 0.30 each, they consume a lot of gold 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

To raise carpentry the best way is building houses or grinding sub skills like fine carpentry, bowyery and fletching. Don't use Wind of Ages on your mallet when you're building, as it results in reduced skillgain.

For help in building houses, it is strongly recommended that you visit The "how do I build a house?" guide.

Digging/Terraforming

To grind digging skill up, use a good Circle of Cunning shovel and try not to keep your eye on the skillgain; trust me it seems like you get your skill up faster. 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.

Remember don't look at the skills until you have finished at least a 5x5 surface

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. (Oat, Wheat & Barley) You may wonder why, but the reason is that you ALWAYS gain seeds for replanting.

To get started so should you start with a 10x10 field for maximum skill gain. Get a small barrel and LOTS of time and you are set. (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.

Dangerous (but a heck of alot 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 alot, so leg protection will save you health in the end.

Melee Weapons

Both axes and swords can be used to safely hack at trees for skill up to 20 in that respective weapon. Skill beyond 20 requires usage of these weapons in fighting. Using axes gives body strength for either fighting or woodcutting, while swords give body control.

Outside of fighting, there is no way to gain Maul or Club experience. Even destroying walls.

Leatherworking

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. You 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.

Lock Smithing

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.

Mining

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 (20 -30?) but from then on if you want to grind mining I would suggest mining on an ore vein. At around 30 skill, mining iron may be the best option for you, but as you get up to around 40 or even 50 in mining, you should mine Gold or Silver. I would not recommend you start off mining on gold or silver because you are very unlikely to get any ore above ql 1.00 (Mining a ql 1.00 ore/shard gives no skillgain whatsoever)

# 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.)

Weaponsmithing

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 0,02kg 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.

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.

Wood cutting

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. If possible, harvest sprout's with a sickle and replant the trees.