Changing Skills

[darmen]

I've learned some of the basic skills from the trainers, but I was wondering, is there a way to change them once you have selected them? Or am I stuck with them forever?

[nephy13]

You are stuck with any skill you buy for ever and ever. Fortunately, by taking one set of skills you are not prevented from buying another set of skills - you haven't reduced your potential in any way. Unfortunatly, the only way to buy the skills you actually want is to grind some more to pay for them...

[darmen]

So I could eventually buy all the skills?

[gretchen]

I was wondering that too, from a purely speculative standpoint.

In the skills window you can only see the branches you have unlocked so far, but is there anywhere or a link where you can see the whole skill tree expanded?

I got to Fight 20 and it split into 2 branches. Crafting split into 4 branches, with 4 types of things to craft...each with a bunch of skills for the 4 racial types. So, there are more "levels" to get with each split, but a lot more skills. Each level gets you 10 skillpoints...does that go up as you get higher?

Right now the skills are ranging between 7 and 45 skillpoints to buy from the things I can see so far...do they go up as you go along, ie the highest level skills cost 100 or more skillpoints?

Is it actually possible to get enough skillpoints to get all the skills? People say that casually (I've seen quotes like "you'll have more skillpoints than you know what to do with later on" and such) but is it actually possible to open up and earn all the skills?

I see that some skills are offered on a lot of the trainers, like they all offer the "runs fast skill" at some point. I'm going to speculate that once you buy it from one of them it is no longer listed on any of them?

Also is there any skill that can be entirely constructed from stanzas of other skills so you really don't need to buy it, or does every skill have at least one unique thing to offer.

[aardnebb]

I was wondering that too, from a purely speculative standpoint.
In the skills window you can only see the branches you have unlocked so far, but is there anywhere or a link where you can see the whole skill tree expanded?

I think there is one on the Ballistic Mystix site, but its down a lot, ooh here we go! http://www.ballisticmystix.com/skillTree.jsp

I got to Fight 20 and it split into 2 branches. Crafting split into 4 branches, with 4 types of things to craft...each with a bunch of skills for the 4 racial types. So, there are more "levels" to get with each split, but a lot more skills. Each level gets you 10 skillpoints...does that go up as you get higher?

Nope you always get 10 skillpoints a level.

Right now the skills are ranging between 7 and 45 skillpoints to buy from the things I can see so far...do they go up as you go along, ie the highest level skills cost 100 or more skillpoints?

Only some special craft plans (100 points each). Otherwise 50 points for things like Melee Aura or Invuln is the most cost you will see.

Is it actually possible to get enough skillpoints to get all the skills? People say that casually (I've seen quotes like "you'll have more skillpoints than you know what to do with later on" and such) but is it actually possible to open up and earn all the skills?

Yes. Even if you buy all of the stuff you can buy from multiple trainers on just one, you will have skillpoints leftover in every skill. Eventually.

I see that some skills are offered on a lot of the trainers, like they all offer the "runs fast skill" at some point. I'm going to speculate that once you buy it from one of them it is no longer listed on any of them?

Correct. Most people recommend you dont spent craft skillpoints on these skills

Also is there any skill that can be entirely constructed from stanzas of other skills so you really don't need to buy it, or does every skill have at least one unique thing to offer.

When buying magic, you can buy the "complete spell", or you can buy the credits and stanzas seperately and individually. With each bit you buy individually, the "complete spell" goes down in cost by the same ammount. If you buy the last individual componant, the complete spell vanishes entirely.

[sehracii]

is there anywhere or a link where you can see the whole skill tree expanded?

http://ballisticmystix.com/skillTree.jsp when the site is working.

So, there are more "levels" to get with each split, but a lot more skills. Each level gets you 10 skillpoints...does that go up as you get higher?

Nope, every lvl gets you 10 points always forever

do they go up as you go along, ie the highest level skills cost 100 or more skillpoints?

Skills vary, but don't change much as you go up. The only exception is the racial crafting plans (like the Fyros burning sword) and they are 100 sp each and only when you reach lvl 150. Everything else is 50 or less.

Is it actually possible to get enough skillpoints to get all the skills?

Absolutely. Many people have emptied the fighter, magic, and harvest trainers. In fact I have over 1500 sp extra each in harvest and magic and more than 3X that in fight with all 3 trainers empty. Granted more skills will become available if I get more levels, but I will still be earning points faster than I can spend them. It comes from all the splits. Magic turns into 4 branches that all share a lot of powers, auras, intelligence/wisdom upgrades, etc. Eventually the actual action upgrades only come evey 25 lvls or so, there's a lot of room for points to build up with the second and third branches leveled. And magic is the smallest tree- harvest has 5 branches, fight has ~15, and craft a whole heckuva lot.

Craft is much much much harder to learn everything, but its been done, I believe. That's because the actions are already the most expensive (30,40,50 for plans, 100 for racials, 25 each Q upgrade, 40 each boost upgrade) PLUS you can almost quadruple the sp requirements learning all four civs of crafts.

I'm going to speculate that once you buy it from one of them it is no longer listed on any of them?

Correct. Learn it one place it's removed from all.

Also is there any skill that can be entirely constructed from stanzas of other skills so you really don't need to buy it, or does every skill have at least one unique thing to offer.

You can go to the trainers and train stanzas alone, that don't come prepackaged as a skill. So buy Acid upgrade, HP credit, and range credit, and make a spell from it.

As a side not, the trainers keep track of stanzas you own and discount the skills still available. Say Spell A costs 10 sp and includes Credit X. If you train Credit X alone for 3 sp, if you go back and look at Spell A it will now be discounted to 7sp, as you already learned part of it.

[gretchen]

Thanks so much for the thorough answers, both of you!!

The bit about spells being discounted for stanzas known makes sense now, I had been wondering why costs for spells were such odd numbers (instead of 10, 15, 25...)

Followup question, is it cheaper or the same to either buy the parts or the whole spells?

[XoloX]

Buy the parts and upgrades, if offered (not all are)...
Simple reason: spellcasting has no real use of time credits (built into every pre-built complete spell) and you'd avoid them as best you can anyway so you can also avoid them by not having them while saving SP in the hard times of the beginning

[nephy13]

Buy the parts and upgrades, if offered (not all are)...
Simple reason: spellcasting has no real use of time credits (built into every pre-built complete spell) and you'd avoid them as best you can anyway so you can also avoid them by not having them while saving SP in the hard times of the beginning

Although I agree that time credits are generally useless spells (and there is no reason you can't do fine without ever using them), they do have uses:

• Making free-cast enchantments: For an enchantment, casting is always instantaneous, but its "casting time" is used as a cooldown for the power. Adding a decent time credit can allow an enchantment to use less or no sap/hp from the caster.
• "pull" spells: The initial cast of a spell to pull the attention of mobs can take longer, since you have all the time in the world before you are actually in combat.
• Non-combat spells: Spells such as "heal other" (when used by warriors outside combat, as opposed to by healers in combat) and "create sap crystal" can benefit greatly from long-casting/low-cost versions if the caster has limited sap/hp reserves. sap/hp can take a long time to be replenished compared to the slightly longer casting times you will need using this method.

This doesn't mean you should necesarily buy the pre-packaged spells, but I certainly go out of my way to buy time-credits, even though I to try to only buy the individual stanzas that I need (I'm only level 60, so SPs are still tight; I'm not saying this from the position of a level 250 with a stack of spare points).