'SKILL IMPROVEMENT'
A number of factors go into determining the rate at which one of your
character's skills improves. The main factors are:

- Your intelligence (INT).
- The natural difficulty of learning the skill.
- Your level.
- Your age. Older characters learn more quickly.
- Your current skill. It becomes harder to improve as you get closer to
mastery (100%).
- 'Hostile' skills (weapons, defenses, things that cause combat, etc.) take
into account the relative power of your opponent. Fighting challenging
battles sharply increases your chance of improvement.
- Invokers only: Your affinity for the element you are manipulating.

Generally, the skill improvement system favors real use of a skill over cheesy
methods. For example, you can't learn anything (even while not in combat)
while wielding a weapon you don't know how to use or while fighting an
opponent immune to your attacks.

See also: 'SKILL FOCUS', SKILLS, 'APT LEARNER'