Skills

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Barrier Proficiency | Grand Enchanter | Legendary Commander | Augment Summoning | Grand Conqueror

Introduction

The mages you can hire in Guilds can spend their time on thaumaturgical research, improving existing magic techniques. All this effort at some point can become useful even to most powerful mages, such as you. When you build Mage Guilds on your land, people working in them can not only help in researching new spells or uncovering ancient artifacts - they will also spend their time on mentioned thaumaturgy.

The skills are divided into two groups: speciality-specific () and non-specific (Plain, ) skills. The first group is the more powerful, but training color-specific skills other than your own color, takes double the time of developing a plain one.

When you train yourself in one skill, you increase your level in it. There are 20 levels in each skill, and attaining each next level is more expensive (see the table below). Off-color skills take twice the investment.

Reaching each new level, costs you its enumerator (at the lack of a better word) worth of skill points. You gain these skill points at a rate based on server speed, and the square root of the number of guilds you keep.

Developing your skills

From time to time, when you have accumulated enough skill points, you level up the skill that you had activated in the skill page.

There are 10 different skills that a mage can develop slowly over time (see below) You are advised to choose wisely what skill to activate for development. You can switch attention later on of course, but you cannot withdraw invested skill points.

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server speed		skill ticks needed to get one skill point		On 600 land with 5% guild		On 2000 land with 5% guild		On 5000 land with 5% guild
Blitz - 1turn/5min		???,???		239 turns		y turns		34 turns
Beta - 1turn/5min		???,???		239 turns		y turns		34 turns
Solo - 1turn/7min		???,???		x turns		y turns		z turns
Guildwar - 1turn/7min		???,???		x turns		y turns		z turns
Arch - 1turn/8min		???,???		x turns		y turns		z turns
Lightning - 1turn/2min		???,???		x turns		y turns		z turns

A cast of Wish can give you an instant skill point, and thus makes you reach a next skill level dozens of turns faster.

On Beta, the turns required to gain a skill point (if you have 5% guilds) are ~166k / land. That means that at 5k land, you gain a skill point every ~34 turns. So, leveling a skill from 0 to 1 takes 34 turns, while leveling a skill from 19 to 20 requires ~670 turns at 5k land and only ~630 turns, if you gain a free skill point from Wish.

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Rank	Rank Invest	Total Invest		Rank	Rank Invest	Total Invest
1	1	1		11	11	66
2	2	3		12	12	78
3	3	6		13	13	91
4	4	10		14	14	105
5	5	15		15	15	120
6	6	21		16	16	136
7	7	28		17	17	153
8	8	36		18	18	171
9	9	45		19	19	190
10	10	55		20	20	210

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You can easily develop one skill to level 20 over the course of an entire reset. Getting two skills to level 20 requires a much more substantial investment in guilds -- four times as many. Of course, you don't have to take skills all the way to level 20 -- you could get four skills to level 10 each in about the same time it takes to get one skill to level 20.

Developing off-color skills costs double the price of on-color or neutral skills.

Tips on what skill to develop first

Just pointing out the obvious about skills: Its not what you take first and what second, its how you adjust skills to your game style. A hoarder/defensive mage should obviously pick barrier resistance and grand enchanter to ensure his defense and his income while he masses up lots of money / items etc. (also grand enchanter works perfectly for spells like confuse/dnd/Meteor storm, other than the obvious "love and peace" and "weather summoning")

A war mage on the opposite needs either barrier penetration, legendary commander or grand conqueror for the same reasons.

If you are going to attack a lot then boost your attack powers ! If you are going to defend a lot boost your resistance. At all points choose what you like to do in this game and pick the skills so you do it best way possible.

For those people that are a bit more knowledgeable about the game mechanics they could cut their losses. That is to pick the skills that make up for your natural disadvantages as a player. Someone who cannot play a full run properly due to lack of turns or bad use of mana then "augment summoning" will reduce the castings needed to make an army (thus less mana used also) and the first 3 ranks in the phantasm skill is 3% less mana cost on all spells. ( 4rth rank is -3.6% i dont know further [Edit: lvl 6 is -6%] )

Another thing to consider is how the skill will affect the end-game. The most common thing to do is either level a single skill to 20, or have a couple or more skills at 10. Consider how your choice of skill will leave you compared to other people with their own choice of skill. Will your level 20 Spell Penetration help when everyone has their army boosted by Legendary Commander 20? Will having gotten Grand Enchanter to 5 first mean you have less of the skill you trained second and put you at a disadvantage?

Old Information

Originally,

• You could store a maximum of 5 unused Skill Credits. If you gain a sixth, it is lost (until Feb. 2007)
• Spending a skill point took one turn -- discontinued when skill collection was made 'passive' (until Feb. 2007)
• Skill collection was based linearly on the number of guilds you had (not on the square root of that number), and only guilds up to 5% of your land total counted. So most mages ran exactly 5% guiilds, and high-land mages gained skill points 3 or 4 times as fast as normal mages. (changed ??? early 2009??)