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 (out of your control), the amount of land (very much in your control) and the amount of guilds you keep (if you keep 5% of your land, you've optimized that part).

Developing your skills

There are 10 different skills that a mage can develop slowly over time:

Encyclopedia | Units | Spells | Items | Heroes | Skills | Buildings | Guides Legendary Artificer | Animal Mastery | Spell Penetration | Undead Mastery | Spell Mastery

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

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.

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

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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
Beta - 1turn/5min		???,???		239 turns		y turns		34 turns
Solo - 1turn/7min		???,???		x turns		y turns		z turns
Guild - 1turn/7min		???,???		x turns		y turns		z turns
Arch - 1turn/15min		???,???		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 tens 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 develop one skill very far (to level 20 over 2-3 months of time), or you can develop a couple of skills to a decent level. The game rounds (resets) are too short to develop all skills to the maximum of level 20.
Developing plain and on-color skills is cheap. Developing off-color skills costs double. It is nearly impossible to get an off-color skill to level 20 within the length of a game round.

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%] )

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)