Skills
Legendary Artificer | 
Animal Mastery | 
Spell Penetration | 
Undead Mastery | 
Spell Mastery
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 rank in it. There are 20 ranks in each skill, and attaining each next rank is more expensive (see the table below). Off-color skills take twice the investment.
Developing your skills
There are 10 different skills that a mage can develop slowly over time. Skill development is based on a 'research points' income. The amount of land determines how fast skill points generate. It differs per server how many research points you need to harvest one skill point (because of different turn rates but equal duration of a game round).
Note that you no longer have to maintain guilds just for skill points after researching (unlike before February 2007).
From time to time, when you have accumulated enough research points, they turn into skill credits (also called Skill Points).
| server speed | research points needed to get a skill point | |
| Blitz - 1turn/5min | ???,??? | |
| Guild - 1turn/10min | 250,000 | |
| App - 1turn/15min | ???,??? |
- You can invest gained skill credits any time you want. But:
- Spending a skill credit costs 1 turn.
- You are adviced to choose wisely, what skill to develop. You can switch attention later on ofcourse, but you cannot withdraw invested skill credits.
- Undecisive players can store an unlimited number of not-yet-used Skill Credits (Guild server, starting December 2006)
- Originally: You could store a maximum of 5 unused Skill Credits. If you gain a sixth, it is lost (Blitz, Apprentice until Feb. 2007).
| 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 |
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 what skill to develop first
Just pointing the obvious about skills: Its not what you take first and what second, its how you adjust skills to your game style. A whorer/defensive mage should obviously pick barrier resistance and grand enchanter to ensure his defence and his incomes while he masses up lots and lots of money / items etc. (also grand enchanter works perfectly for spells like confusion/dnd/Meteor storm, other than the obvious "love and peace" and "weather summoning")
A warmage 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 advanced to the game mechanics they could cut up the loses though. 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%] )
