I'm hoping to settle this once and for all. I don't see how the answer can affect game balance at all, so I'll go ahead and ask it. Does location for spamming invoker spells really make a difference? Some people swear you can't be in the guild, or you can't get it all in one spot. There are lots of other myths floating around as well. Are there really learning limitations on invoker spamming, by location?

Mostly myth.

The one nugget of truth might be, and I can't remember which spells this would be true for or not true, is that some spells might be easier if you can really cast them.

E.g. casting siltscreen in a room where you're actually making a siltscreen might be an easier improve than spamming siltscreen in a room that already has one.

From 'help 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 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.

There are places in the game where you can't learn at all (notably shrines). Other than that, that helpfile has it.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I would say that there are often times where guilds are inappropriate to the casting of the spell. I could be wrong, but the following is information I was always under the impression to be the case.

If you're attempting to cast a hostile spell where it is impossible to use, that can often negate the actual "act" of casting the spell, therefor negating any possible chance of improvement upon success. (You'll notice some of these when your only improvements are only on mistakes)

I have absolutely zero expectation of receiving any details, but...

Are you serious? There is no throttling code to make it more difficult for someone to spam up a skill during a single game session? Or, to master something at an especially low level? There's really nothing fancy going on behind the scenes?

Discounting exceptions of which you're likely aware, no.

I read this as charachters with higher hours, but might have mistaken, so that it means level instead. I for some reason always experienced aging chars to learn stuff quicker (at around 200 hours, stuff starts to go up real quick). If I am mistaken, a correction would be much appreciated.

That came later than the helpfile, and we missed it. The helpfile's been updated to include character age as a variable.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I still believe there is a boolean, "is_spamming = true" type of thing which imms tag on you if they catch you spamming your spells...

Ok, but in all seriousness, it's more a study in psychology than anything.. after spamming for hours, looking for that ONE line that says "You have perected XXX!" one can go quite nutty and can invent all sorts of methods and explanations.

My personal favorite that I've figured out is, the closer I get to running out of mana, the more my chances are that I learn (and I KNOW its not true, but am sticking with it anyways!).

A couple comments from the helpfiles (disclaimer: only my own personal observations):

"Your current skill. It becomes harder to improve as you get closer to mastery (100%)." - Yea, it seems 91+ is a bitch, then 97+ is an even bigger bitch...but could be attributed to less and less learning from mistakes I haven't decided yet. In any case, I can get a skill up to that 91% mark in half the time it takes to finish off that final 9%.

"'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." - In my limited experience it seems that spamming offensive invoker spells on kobolds yields almost as much if not as much learning as on more difficult opponents... Could just be 'coz I can get through 'em faster so it balances out.

"The natural difficulty of learning the skill" - I'd assume this means that there is a sliding scale on different spells making the learning easier or harder for a given spell..?

CF has a streaky RNG, so it tends to yield multiple spell improvements at times, a stroke of luck which is easy to interpret as good spamming parameters. I've also heard that you're not as likely to get skill improvements by spamming in the guild. I suggest a spamming location where you are least likely to get killed while spamming. Also, a known location effect is that you cannot get improvements in shrines.

I'd also like to add that if the spider in your rooms roof is in the right position, you'll get a skill improvements three times as likely as normally.

I've also heard that a death, or log in can affect it as well.

The IMMs have stated that death/log on/off does not affect learning rates.

On the other hand this is a piece of superstition that has borne out for me, so I will continue to maintain it!

:)

"I logged in and got plenty of improvements. What a pleasant surprise." is the event which is easier to remember than

"After a hours of tedious spamming, I've finally managed to get improvements and can quit and go to sleep now." is not so memorable moment.

Pleasant surprises when a spell that was "stuck" is easily perfected after logging in at later occasion are likely to be the situations that have created this myth.

The myth that I personally believe is that RNG is streaky, meaning that if I get one improvement, I am more likely to get another if I use some spell/skill immediately after that.

I'm not sure if the RNG is streaky per se. If the RNG was seeded by, say, time and time alone, or one factor by itself, then sure, it could be streaky in and of itself. But the improvement streaks that one might get, I would guess, are less a factor of the RNG than they are of other things, like morale. For example, every time you attempt to parry, the RNG is seeded and set to pick a number between 1 and 100. If it returns 1, you improve, otherwise you don't (of course, this is my guess as to how it works, in a simplified make-believe way). If your morale is high, it's guess a number between 1 and 50. If it's low, 1 and 150. You're fighting a more difficult opponent with high morale? 1 and 25. So, if you're constantly fighting difficult opponents, doing well, haven't died in some time, are well rested and fed, have a good group going, etc. etc., you're more likely to hit some sort of streak.

Just my guess.

Improving skills is purely a numbers game. You chance for improving is based on a bit of luck and then how many other people in the mud are also trying to improve that skill, or another.

Ask enough woman to sleep with you and your bound to find one to say yes.

Practice your skill enough and your bound to have it go up. Have more people practice that skill and your bound to have it go up as well. It is all in the numbers. It all is factored with probability.

Roll a ten sided die until you roll a 1. You have a 1 in 10 chance. Have two people roll a ten sided die. Now you and a 2 in ten shot of rolling a 1. First one, gets the percentage point to the skill.

Improving skills is purely a numbers game. You chance for improving is based on a bit of luck and then how many other people in the mud are also trying to improve that skill, or another.

Your chance of improving is an independent event. The activities of other players do not factor in.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

To begin with, if two people are rolling ten sided dice, your probability of landing at least one 1, is not 2/10, but instead 1 - (0.9 * 0.9) = 0.19 (even though the difference between 0.2 and 0.19 is miniscule, it is significant as with your formula with 10 dice would give you 10/10 odds). Whatever else you said there, just made no sence in any way.

The probability of me rolling a one is 1/10. If I do, I win. The probability of you winning (by rolling a one after I don't) is 9/10*1/10=9/100, or 0.09. I'm not sure what it is you're calculating...

...or maybe I should put down the margarita and pay attention.

Why should I give a damn whether or not you win or not when it is not taken from me? As Valg said, they are independent events. And Elmeri's calculation is valid(two people rolling dice, and at least one of these two dice yields a one), though it only matters if you do care whether or not that other guy gets an improvement.

I was just responding regarding the math of the dice, irrespective of game mechanics. If I roll two 10-sided dice, I have a 19/100 chance of rolling at least one 1. If the first player to roll a 1 wins, I have a 1/10 chance, and you have a 9/100 chance of winning (assuming I go first). I was only commenting on this because we have branched off onto a discussion of the math that greyanhk proposed, not how the RNG works.

nt

>I was just responding regarding the math of the dice,
>irrespective of game mechanics. If I roll two 10-sided dice,
>I have a 19/100 chance of rolling at least one 1. If the
>first player to roll a 1 wins, I have a 1/10 chance, and you
>have a 9/100 chance of winning (assuming I go first).

Your logic is flawed. My chance for winning isn't dependent on your chance of winning, as we are not competing with each other. By saying that you have 1/10 chance of winning and that I have 9/100 chance of winning you count the scenario where I roll one and you roll one as a win for you, but a loss for me, when in fact, we would both get improvements in this case(if you roll 1/10 you get an improvement in this case, where RNG is assumed to be ten-sided die). This is the flaw in you logic, as in this case we both win. It doesn't matter who goes first, we both have 1/10 chance of winning. We both have 9/100 chance of winning in the way that the other person doesn't win, and there is a 1/100 change that we both win. This sums up to 19/100 chance of an event of victory.

The way you worded it would yield that you'd expect 19 improvements in 100 wins, while in the way I worded it 20 improvements in 100 rolls would be expected(this takes into account that one roll of 2 dice can yield 2 improvements, since the dice are rolled to two players).