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» (1) Introduction
» (2) Installation & setup
» (3) Creating a character & starting to play
» (4) The world
» (5) Item and flag details, elements
» (6) Monster details
» (7) Character details
» (7.2) Skills, opposed skills
» (8) Tactics & strategy
» (9) Miscellanous

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(7.1) Attributes
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(7.2a) Maiar initiation effects
(7.2) Skills, opposed skills                                                    
----------------------------
If you rise in character levels by gaining experience, you also get skill
points to distribute on various abilities. To invoke the skill system overview
press 'G' (capital G!).
If you make a mistake while distributing skill points, look up the /undoskills
command in (0.2b). "/undoskills" can only be used once per level and must be
used before you go back into a dungeon or tower.


Skills of dark grey colour cannot be used by your character at all.
Skills that are light grey are just dummy skills that serve for organizing
other skills in paragraphs.
Skills coloured orange can be used by your character, but are currently still
at zero.
Skills that your character can train and that have already been increased above
zero will change from orange to white.
Skills that have reached their maximum possible value and therefore cannot be
increased any further are displayed in light blue.

You can collapse/expand blocks of subskills by pressing RETURN key while having
selected the parent skill of that block. Useful for example for collapsing
whole blocks of skills that you cannot or don't want to use anyway.


Here is a list of the available skills and brief explanations to each one:
Note that not every skill is available to every profession (class).
For skills where it is not clear how much of an increase makes an actual
difference for the skill's effect, that number is written in parentheses below
it. Eg '(0.500)' means that each 0.500 step of this skill will improve it, and
even having just a total skill level of 0.500 will already have an effect.
Some skills require a minimum value (usually 1.000) to become effective despite
having a finer grained resolution, in these cases the minimum value is also
stated.

+Combat                         Lets you wear heavier armour without mana
 (1/6)                          points penalty.

                                Lets you wear heavier armour without losing
                                dodge chance (gained from the 'Dodging' skill),
                                or other roguish abilities like
                                boni from dual-wielding, Critical-strike,
                                area-searching and cloaking.

                                Lets you wear heavier armour without getting
                                a penalty to to-hit or sneakiness from being
                                movement-encumbered.

                                Note that Combat skill does NOT affect the
                                continuous ranged-to-hit reduction based on
                                armour weight.
                                (See (5.5) for details about encumberment.)

                                Note that Martial Arts penalties from heavy
                                armour cannot be reduced by training Combat.

                                Ability to pseudo-ID items: You can sense
                                if items are terrible, worthless, cursed,
                                average, good, excellent or special.
                                At the beginning you will only feel 'cursed'
                                or 'good', and only for melee weapons, armour,
                                boomerangs, digging tools, and veryrarely for
                                ranged weapons and ammunition.
                                Raise combat skill to at least 10 to get more
                                distinctive feelings about melee weapons,
                                armour, boomerangs and digging tools.
                                A powerful combattant (combat 30) senses the
                                usefulness of shooting weapons and ammunition
                                as quickly as for weapons armour etc.
                                A very powerful one (combat 40) can also notice
                                curses on all kinds of items.
                                The further you train Combat, the faster you
                                will pseudo-ID items.

                                Increases Fear/Stun/Confuse duration of the
                                target (if attacking causes those).
                                Reduces duration of Fear/Stun/Confuse effects
                                that are applied to you.

                                Increases 'Fighting' and 'Bows/Throw'
                                abilities somewhat, thereby increasing your
                                chance to hit in melee (weaponless and with
                                weapons), ranged weapons and when throwing an
                                item and reducing your chance to get disarmed.

                                If your Combat skill isn't zero, then you can
                                press 'm' to check your actual chances of
                                parrying (weapon) and blocking (shield), see
                                (7.11) for more details about parry/block.

    +Weaponmastery              Slightly increases melee to-dam and to-hit for
     (1/3)                      armed combat: Hit gets increased by 1/3 of your
                                skill, damage by 1/10.
                                Improves your 'Fighting' ability somewhat when
                                wielding a weapon, thereby further increasing
                                your chance to hit in melee and reducing your
                                chance to get disarmed.

                                Slightly increases your chance to score
                                critical hits in armed combat (just 7.5% as
                                effective as the 'Critical-strike' skill.)

                                Weaponmastery will also increase your parry
                                chance a good deal (see (7.11) for details):
                                Up to +10% for 1-handers, +15% for 1.5-handers,
                                +20% for 2-handers.

        +Sword-mastery          Greatly improves to-hit/to-dam with swords.
         (1.000)                At 25 and 50 you will get +1 blow per round
                                while having a sword equipped.

            .Critical-strike    Increases your chance to score hits of
             (0.025)            extremely high damage. This skill improves
                                the chance to score critical hits and adds
                                to critical-hit bonus from your equipment.


                                NOTES ABOUT CRITICAL-STRIKE SKILL:

                                Critical-strike skill only helps light swords
                                or light polearms, not heavier than 10.0 lbs.

                                (Non-weapon items that increase your critical
                                hits chance however will work with all kinds
                                of weapons and martial arts too.)

                                The weight limit counts per weapon, so you may
                                dual-wield two 10.0lb weapons just fine.
                                If you dual-wield one eligible weapon (ie sword
                                up to 10.0lb) and a non-eligible weapon (ie a
                                too heavy weapon or not a sword) then the
                                eligible weapon will still get Critical-strike
                                skill applied for its hits, and the other
                                weapon won't.

                                (The skill effect does not depend on how heavy
                                exactly the weapon is, as long as it's not
                                above 10.0 lb, so that weight threshold is
                                basically an on/off toggle for the skill to
                                apply to your attacks.)

                                Also, Critical-strike skill will not give you
                                any benefits if your armour is so heavy that
                                you get a flexibility warning (compare (5.5)).


                                NOTES ABOUT CRITICAL HITS IN GENERAL:

                                You can always score critical hits,
                                independent on weapon class and crit-skill.
                                The probability to land a critical hit will be
                                small though, if you don't have +critical hit
                                items. Critical hit bonus on items counts
                                slightly more than this skill.

                                Critical hits are applied _after_ branding
                                (ie after the rolled dice are multiplied by
                                factors for applied brands or slay mods),
                                further boosting the effect.

                                Martial artists can score critical hits too,
                                although the Critical-strike skill won't do
                                anything for them (it only helps light swords
                                and polearms not heavier than 10.0 lb).

                                Crit boni on weapons only apply to the weapon
                                itself, while bonus on other items such as
                                gloves or rings count for all kind of physical
                                attacks. (Same goes for slaying/brand mods on
                                items by the way.)

                                For weapon users, the weight of their weapon
                                affects their critical hits:
                                If your weapon is lighter than 10.0 lb, your
                                chances to score a critical hit will further
                                increase. (However, that increase is much
                                smaller than the effects of this skill or of
                                items that give 'Critical Hits' bonus.)
                                Above 10.0 lb, the chance to hit your target
                                critically won't be worse than with a 10.0 lb
                                weapon.

                                Although your chance of hitting critical spots
                                is better with lighter weapons, the damage of
                                your critical strike -IF you manage to execute
                                one- is higher if your weapon is heavier
                                (in detail: the crit class is more likely
                                to be higher for heavier weapons). This effect
                                of getting bigger crits in if the weapon is
                                heavier has no upper weight boundary, so it is
                                true for all weapons up to Grond.
                                Although Critical-strike skill (if applied) and
                                'Critical Hits' bonus from items will also
                                (about equally) improve your chances to land a
                                higher-class critical hit, the weapon weight
                                has even somewhat more effect on average on the
                                crit class than either of those two alone.
                                However, for a good improvement in crit-class
                                just from weapon weight alone, the weapon would
                                need to be much heavier than 10.0 lb.

                                Note that 'critical hit' stacks. 'Critical hit'
                                bonus from items will be actually be somewhat
                                subject to diminishing returns (while the skill
                                won't!) but if we neglect this we can roughly
                                say that +2.500 skill results in +1 crit hit.
                                So for example if you have a ring of critical
                                hits (+7) and gloves that give (+4) and also
                                trained this skill to 10.000 (+4) you'll have a
                                total of roughly +15 critical hit bonus.

        .Axe-mastery            See Sword-mastery
         (1.000)
        .Blunt-mastery          See Sword-mastery
         (1.000)
        .Polearm-mastery        See Sword-mastery
         (1.000)
        .Combat Stances         Allows you to switch between one of three types
                                of combat stance. You need to wield a weapon to
                                use stances, certain restrictions apply and are
                                explained further below.

                                This ability cannot be trained, but it is
                                increased automatically each time your
                                character gains a level.
                                If you attain the status of King, Queen,
                                Emperor or Empress and are at least level 45,
                                you will learn an additional royal rank version
                                of each stance, which is the most powerful
                                version. If you die and lose your title, you
                                won't be able to use the stance either.
                                Only warriors, mimics, paladins, rangers and
                                mindcrafters can learn certain stances.
                                On certain skill levels, you will learn a new
                                rank of a stance. A higher ranked stance
                                features more of its benefits and/or less of
                                its drawbacks.

                                Press 'm' to enter one of the combat stances
                                you have learned. You will learn four ranks
                                of three combat stances each, when you reach
                                a certain character level i.e. skill. The last
                                rank ('royal rank') is learned by defeating
                                Morgoth, independant of your level. You can use
                                the /ex command to check your current stance.
                                Each stance has advantages and disadvantages,
                                those are:

                                Balanced stance  - the default, no boni/mali.

                                Defensive stance - you will block more,
                                                 - reduce the effect of most
                                                   combat-induced stun effects
                                                   (and possibly some others)
                                                   you suffer,
                                                 - intercept less often,
                                                 - you deal less damage with
                                                   melee and ranged weapons,
                                                 - reduces chance a monster can
                                                   steal from you.
                                                 Note: You can use it even
                                                 without shield - in that case
                                                 your chance of parrying is
                                                 increased instead of blocking.

                                Offensive stance - you can stun opponents
                                                   depending on your strength,
                                                   your 'Weaponmastery' skill,
                                                   your stance rank, and your
                                                   opponent
                                                   (see (4.12) about stunning),
                                                 - intercept more often,
                                                 - parry and dodge only rarely,
                                                 - get an AC penalty.
                                                 Note: You must wield a weapon
                                                 that is not too small to be
                                                 gripped with both hands
                                                 (COULD2H, SHOULD2H, MUST2H).

                                Switching your combat stance costs you half a
                                turn of energy. Some details (R stands for
                                royal rank, available only to royalties):

                                  Inter Stun  With shield      Without shield
                                   cept self  Block/Melee dam  Parry/Melee dam
                                D1 -50%  7/8    +9%/70%         +30%/60%
                                D2 -45%  5/6   +11%/70%         +30%/70%
                                D3 -40%  3/4   +13%/70%         +40%/70%
                                DR -35%  2/3   +15%/70%         +50%/70%

                                Melee damage you inflict is reduced depending
                                on stance level. Ranged physical damage you
                                inflict (everything except for spells) is
                                always reduced by 50% in any defensive stance.

                                                 O1    O2    O3    OR
                                Intercept        +4%   +7%  +10%  +15%
                                Parry/Dodge    -100%  -90%  -80%  -70%

                                All offensive stances reduce AC by 30.
                                Offensive stance rank increases chance of
                                applying a stun.
                                Weaponmastery and Combat skill can greatly
                                prolongs those stun effect durations.

        .Dual-wield             The ability to wield two weapons at once. This
                                ability cannot be trained, it's always at 1.000
                                if your character's class can dual-wield, else
                                at zero. (So it's basically a switch.)
                                Classes that are able to dual-wield are
                                warriors, rangers, rogues and hell knights.
                                Note that both weapons must be 1-handed.
                                1,5- or 2-handed weapons cannot be used.

                                Dual-wielding will give you additional parry
                                chance as well as a blows/round bonus
                                (see (7.11) for details about parrying), and of
                                course your character will gain all magical
                                boni from both weapons (such as resistances).

                                NOTE: If your armour is too heavy (see (5.5))
                                then you won't receive any bonus and your
                                second weapon will actually be ignored as if
                                you didn't wield it at all ie you won't gain
                                any resistances/abilities/whatever from it.

                                In combat, a coin is flipped for each blow you
                                deal, determining randomly which weapon will
                                be used for that particular hit.

                                To avoid confusion: If you use weapons with
                                different blows/round, their BpR will get
                                averaged, and rounded up, then BpR bonus for
                                dual-wielding is added.
                                Example: 4BpR & 5BpR = 4.5BpR rounded to 5BpR.
                                +1 bonus BpR for dual-wielding -> 6BpR total.

                                By pressing 'm' you can disable/reenable
                                dual-wield mode.
                                While disabled ('Main-Hand mode') you will just
                                attack with your primary weapon exclusively,
                                and not receive any dual-wield specific boni;
                                this can be useful if it deals much more damage
                                than your secondary weapon.
                                You still gain all magical boni from both
                                weapons while in main-hand mode, as usual.
                                While enabled ('Dual-hand mode') you will
                                attack with both weapons, picked randomly.
                                Note: You can even enable Main-Hand mode while
                                not dual-wielding - and this also means that if
                                you lose your main hand weapon you will not
                                leave main-hand mode automatically from that.

    .Martial Arts               Ability to fight with bare hands.
     (0.228)                    Martial Arts users do not and cannot wield any
                                weapons, except for boomerangs, or they get
                                penalised heavily.
                                Note that as a specialty MA actually works with
                                the 'Backstabbing' skill!

                                They also get an armour class bonus for each
                                _unused_ equipment slot that can take a piece
                                of armour. Until the skill has been trained
                                quite a bit, armour will rather encumber them
                                instead of help. For this reason, martial
                                artists only wear very light armour or no
                                armour at all in the beginning and do not need
                                to rely on armour during the early game.

                                Slightly raises your character's speed and
                                stealth by +1 for every 10.000 skill increase -
                                the increase might be less or even zero if you
                                are encumbered in some way.

                                Increases your chance of intercepting an enemy.
                                The effectiveness is about 1/4 of what you get
                                out of training the 'Interception' skill.
                                If you train both, their effect will stack.

                                In addition to that, training Martial Arts will
                                provide a base interception chance if you don't
                                have the Interception skill available on a
                                character (see 'Interception' skill). These two
                                interception gains from Martial Arts skill add
                                up. (If you do have the Interception skill
                                available, you get a base interception chance
                                depending on your character level instead, to
                                which again the Martial Arts interception bonus
                                gets added. So you're gaining the same total
                                interception chance in both cases, as long as
                                you keep Martial Arts at maximum possible.)

                                You can check your interception chance against
                                monsters of same and double level by pressing
                                'm' and choosing "Check intercept chance".

                                Slightly increases your Dodging skill, simply
                                by increasing your Martial Arts skill, as if
                                'Dodging' was a parent skill of Martial Arts.
                                You can check your dodging chance against
                                opponents of same and double level by pressing
                                'm' and choosing "Check dodge chance".

                                Grants +1 extra attack at 2,10,20,30,40,45,50
                                each, so up to +7 blows per round in total.

                                At 10 you gain Feather Falling (see (5.8)).
                                At 15 you gain fear resistance.
                                At 20 you gain confusion resistance.
                                At 25 you get Free Action (paralysis immunity).
                                At 30 you're able to swim without problems.
                                At 40 you're able to climb mountains easily.
                                At 50 a martial artist will learn the
                                technique of levitation (see (5.8)).

                                Lets you attack with special fighting moves.
                                These MA techniques are used automatically and
                                semi-randomly (algorithmically chosen, mostly
                                the most powerful moves available are picked)
                                by your character during combat, they are not
                                player-controllable so you don't have to worry
                                about them. For a list and effects see (5.3a).
                                The dice of these martial arts special moves
                                are affected by elemental brands, but slightly
                                less than normal weapons (2/3 as much).
                                Martial arts moves can have high damage dice
                                of up to 8d7. Some moves have special effects
                                such as slowing or stunning your opponent.

                                Under certain conditions (encumberment) MA
                                abilities cannot be used and lose their effect.
                                About this and for more information about
                                Martial Arts in general, see (5.3a).

    .Interception               Ability to interfere with adjacent enemies.
     (0.500)                    Can prevent them from teleporting, casting,
                                summoning, running away.
                                The monster must be standing right beside you
                                (horizontally, vertically or diagonally).
                                To intercept an enemy it doesn't matter whether
                                you have a weapon or shield equipped or not or
                                whether you have autoretaliation on or off.

                                You can check your interception chance against
                                opponents of same and double level by pressing
                                'm' and choosing "Check intercept chance".

                                Classes that have the Interception skill
                                available for training will automatically gain
                                a certain base chance to intercept, even if
                                they haven't trained the skill. Training the
                                skill will then add to that base chance.
                                The base chance depends on the character's
                                level, capped at 50.
                                This base chance is also gained by classes that
                                cannot actually train Interception but that are
                                able to train in 'Martial Arts'. In this case
                                however the base chance won't depend on their
                                character level but instead on their current
                                skill in Martial Arts.
                                (So training Martial Arts on such a character
                                would actually increase the total interception
                                chance in two ways at once: Increase the base
                                chance and then add the Martial Arts
                                Interception bonus, see 'Martial Arts' skill
                                for details.)

                                The higher base level the monster has (rlevel)
                                the harder it is to intercept it.
                                Also, interception chance is reduced greatly
                                while you are blind and you aren't able to
                                intercept at all while you are
                                stunned, confused, paralyzed, resting, cloaked
                                or shadow running (compare (4.11)).
                                Player ghosts cannot intercept either.

                                Interception works best to prevent shooting a
                                ranged weapon. It's slightly harder to prevent
                                a monster from running away or casting a spell
                                and even somewhat harder to prevent a monster
                                from teleporting or blinking.
                                Some abilities cannot be intercepted at all:
                                Shrieking, unmagic, shooting missiles/rockets,
                                throwing boulders, breathing.

                                Note that multiple players trying to intercept
                                the same monster does not result in 'stacking'
                                of their interception chances:
                                The player who has (under given circumstances
                                such as being blinded etc) the best chance to
                                intercept will override the others.

                                Regarding spell suppression, interception
                                combines with Anti-magic in a special way, see
                                'Anti-magic' skill for details.

    +Archery                    Improves ranged to-damage bonus somewhat, by +1
     (1/3)                      for every 5.000 increase in skill.
                                Also increases 'Bows/Throw' ability somewhat
                                for when using slings, bows or crossbows, which
                                in turn increases your hit chance with those.

                                Allows you to learn shooting techniques and to
                                gain the ability to craft ammunition,
                                accessible via 'm', see (7.12) for details.

                                Increases your chance to score critical hits.

                                At 20 the quality of your handmade ammunition
                                becomes remarkably better.

                                Lets you pseudo-ID shooting weapons and
                                ammunition more often the higher the skill.
                                If increased to at least 10, pseudo-ID will
                                give you much more distinctive feelings about
                                the items. Before that, you can only
                                distinguish between cursed and good.

        .Sling-mastery          Increases hit chance (while using a sling) by
                                +1 for every 2.000 skill increase.
                                Also increases Bows/Throw ability somewhat
                                while using slings, which in turn further
                                increases hit chance.

                                At 10,20,30,40,50 you will get +1 additional
                                shot per round each (while using a sling).

                                Also reduces the chance of your sling
                                ammunition to shatter by up to 90% at 50.
                                Example:
                                a shot that usually has 10% chance of breaking
                                will only have a 1% chance of breaking if your
                                skill is at 50.000.

                                At 50 you will get an additional bonus of
                                +1 extra might.

                                Artifact ammunition never breaks.

                                Note that the explosion of exploding ammo will
                                still hit "reflecting" monsters.

                                Ricochetting:
                                This happens only with slings or boomerangs.
                                Mastery adds 33% (at 0.000) to 75% chance for
                                shots to ricochet, randomly from once up to 5
                                times (at 50.000), hitting multiple enemies.
                                Note that magic and ethereal ammo fades away
                                the moment it hits, and never ricochets.
                                At mastery skill 15.000 you will be skillful
                                enough to make your shots ricochet at nearby
                                enemies instead of completely random directions
                                except if they hit a reflecting enemy.
                                At mastery skill 25.000 you will be skillful
                                enough to make your ricochets avoid any enemy
                                that sleeps or is charmed.
                                To disable ricochetting completely inscribe the
                                sling or ammunition:  !R
                                To allow ricochetting on sleeping/charmed
                                targets at skill 25.000+ again, inscribe:  !O

        .Bow-mastery            At 12.5, 25, 37.5, 50 you will get +1 extra
                                shot per round each.
                                Otherwise same as Sling-mastery, except no
                                ricochetting.

        .Crossbow-mastery       At 25 and 50 you will get +1 extra shot,
                                at 12.5 and 37.5 you will get +1 extra might.
                                Otherwise same as Sling-mastery, except no
                                ricochetting.

    .Boomerang-mastery          At 16.6, 33.3 and 50 you get +1 extra throw.
                                Also increases 'Bows/Throw' ability somewhat
                                while using boomerangs and also regarding
                                throwing any other kinds of items,
                                which in turn further increases hit chance.

                                It is harder for monsters to intercept your
                                attempt of throwing a boomerang, than it is for
                                shooting with a sling, bow or crossbow.
                                Also unlike those ranged weapons, boomerangs
                                cannot be deflected by reflecting monsters.
                                Last but not least, boomerangs are the only
                                allowed weapon for martial artists - they will
                                not negatively impact martial arts in any way.

                                Increases ranged to-damage bonus when wielding
                                a boomerang by +1 for every 2.500 increase.

                                Grants +1/10 additional extra might every 5.000
                                points increased, resulting in full extra might
                                at 50.000.

                                Reduces the chance of a boomerang to land on
                                the ground instead of returning. All artifact
                                and ego boomerangs always return reliably.

                                Ricochetting:
                                This happens only with slings or boomerangs.
                                Mastery adds 33% (at 0.000) to 75% chance for
                                shots to ricochet, randomly from once up to 3
                                times (at 50.000), hitting multiple enemies.
                                Note that magic and ethereal ammo fades away
                                the moment it hits, and never ricochets.
                                At mastery skill 20.000 you will be skillful
                                enough to make your shots ricochet at nearby
                                enemies instead of completely random directions
                                except if they hit a reflecting enemy.
                                At mastery skill 30.000 you will be skillful
                                enough to make your ricochets avoid any enemy
                                that sleeps or is charmed.
                                To disable ricochetting completely inscribe
                                the boomerang:  !R
                                To allow ricochetting on sleeping/charmed
                                targets at skill 30.000+ again, inscribe:  !O

                                (Note that your 'Combat' skill determines your
                                ability to pseudo-ID Boomerangs.)

<< For more information about learning spells, see (7.8)
   Most spells will increase in power in one way or the other when you increase
   their school skill. Often their failure rate decreases, too. >>

+Magic                          Increases your base mana by +4 per point.
 (0.250)
                                Lets you pseudo-ID magic items faster the
                                higher your skill is. Magic items are:
                                Mage staves, potions, scrolls, rings, amulets
                                and magic devices (wands, rods, staves).

                                You can also sense curses on any kind of item.

                                If 'Magic' is at least at 10 points, you will
                                get more distinctive feelings from pseudo-ID,
                                before that you only sense 'good' or 'cursed'.

    +Wizardry
        .Sorcery                Learn to use spells of ALL wizardry schools at
                                once, instead of training a particular branch!
                                Note that if you train Sorcery your character's
                                mana pool will become sensitive to usage of
                                gloves. You will need gloves that give any of
                                Free Action, Dexterity, +Mana or elven gloves
                                in order to not get encumbered and as a
                                consequence suffer reduction of your max MP.
        .Mana                   Learn spells of the Mana branch.
        .Fire                   Learn spells of the Fire branch.
        .Water                  Learn spells of the Water branch.
        .Air                    Learn spells of the Air branch.
        .Earth                  Learn spells of the Earth branch.
        .Nature                 Learn spells of the Nature branch.
        .Conveyance             Learn spells of the Conveyance branch.
        .Divination             Learn spells of the Divination branch.
        .Temporal               Learn spells of the Temporal branch.
        .Udun                   Learn spells of the Udun branch.
        .Mind                   Learn spells of the Mind branch.

        .Spell-power            Increases the power of learned spells by
                                adding a bonus to the spell level.
                                At 50, it will raise spell levels by 40%.
                                (It won't raise the level of spells which you
                                haven't learned yet.)
                                Note that Spell-power ONLY affects spells of
                                the 'Wizardry' schools!

    +Prayers
        .Holy Offense           Learn prayers of the Holy Offense branch.
        .Holy Defense           Learn prayers of the Holy Defense branch.
        .Holy Curing            Learn prayers of the Holy Curing branch.
        .Holy Support           Learn prayers of the Holy Support branch.

    +Occultism
        .Shadow                 Learn spells of the Shadow branch.
        .Spirit                 Learn spells of the Spirit branch.
        .Hereticism             Learn spells of the Hereticism branch.
        .Unlife                 Learn spells of the Unlife branch.

    +Druidism
        .Arcane Lore            Learn druid magic taught by arcane lore.
        .Physical Lore          Learn druid magic taught by physical lore.

    +Mindcraft
        .Psycho-power           Learn mindcrafter spells of psycho-power.
        .Attunement             Learn mindcrafter spells of attunement.
        .Mental Intrusion       Learn mindcrafter spells of mental intrusion.
            Note: As soon as you train any of the three mindcraft schools your
            character's mana pool will become sensitive to heavy head gear.
            If your head gear's weight exceeds 4.0 lbs your max MP will suffer
            a reduction from encumberment.

    +Runecraft                  See '(7.8b) Runes & Runemastery'.
        .Light                  Learn to evoke light runes.
        .Darkness               Learn to evoke darkness runes.
        .Nexus                  Learn to evoke nexus runes.
        .Nether                 Learn to evoke nether runes.
        .Chaos                  Learn to evoke chaos runes.
        .Mana                   Learn to evoke mana runes.

    .Astral Knowledge           Learn spells of the Astral branch of magic,
                                exclusively available to the Maia race.

    +Blood Magic                Blood magic doesn't require mana and doesn't
                                provide spells unlike most other magic schools.
                                Instead it provides passive or innate powers
                                that are fueled by your own blood to work.

        .Necromancy             Drains life and mana from killed monsters,
         (0.500)                replenishing your HP and MP.
                                Note that you need at least 1.000 Necromancy
                                skill in order for it to work.
                                Only works if you are able to see the target,
                                and if you are not a player-ghost.

                                The amount of points gained depends on the
                                skill and the target's level. To get maximum
                                drain, the skill should be at least half as
                                high as the monster level. There is always
                                a gain of at least +1 HP and +1 MP.
                                Necromancy has no effect on undead and
                                nonliving (constructs) monsters.

                                (Don't confuse Necromancy with vampirism:
                                Necromancy drains from the monster's soul on
                                its actual death, while any vampiric effects
                                your character might have drain by simply
                                hitting the monster. So vampirism will work
                                fine in conjunction with Necromancy as they
                                are different effects that don't overlap in
                                any way.)

                                Necromancy will reduce the chance of your life
                                force (experience points) getting drained by
                                nether or chaos or by experience-draining melee
                                attacks by +1% per point, up to 50% at 50.000.
                                (This is cumulative with the 'hold life' flag.)

                                If a character has Unlife and Necromancy both
                                at 50.000 the character gains ultimate hold
                                on his life force ('Keep Life'), rendering him
                                immune to experience drain, including the
                                permanent drain effect from DRAIN_EXP items.

                                A natural vampire race character who has both
                                Necromancy and Traumaturgy at 25.000 or higher
                                will get his intrinsic melee vampirism drain
                                rate increased from the usual 50% by +1% for
                                each further point in either school, up to
                                100% when both schools reach 50.000.
                                (The 'body modification' doesn't matter, eg
                                whether in 'normal' body or 'fruit bat' form.)

        .Traumaturgy            Drains mana from monsters when you inflict
         (0.500)                damage on them, replenishing your MP.
                                Only works if you are actually able to target
                                the opponent, eg there must not be a wall
                                between you and the target; Traumaturgy does
                                not require light but also works in darkness.
                                The amount of points gained depends linearly
                                on your skill level and also somewhat on the
                                damage you inflicted.

                                Even if your inflicted damage and/or skill
                                level is so very low that the total amount is
                                between 0 and 1 and therefore would actually
                                get rounded down to zero, each attack still has
                                a (small) chance of replenishing at least 1 MP.

                                Traumaturgy is most effective with spells that
                                have an area of effect and can therefore hit
                                multiple monsters, such as balls and especially
                                clouds.
                                Traumaturgy has no effect on undead and
                                nonliving (constructs) monsters.

                                Traumaturgy has insanity-reducing synergy when
                                trained together with Hereticism. It also can
                                prolong the 'Boundless Rage' spell, the better
                                the higher Traumaturgy is trained. See (7.8)
                                for details.

                                A natural vampire race character who has both
                                Necromancy and Traumaturgy at 25.000 or higher
                                will get his intrinsic melee vampirism drain
                                rate increased from the usual 50% by +1% for
                                each further point in either school, up to
                                100% when both schools reach 50.000.
                                (The 'body modification' doesn't matter, eg
                                whether in 'normal' body or 'fruit bat' form.)

        .Aura of Fear           Monsters that hit you are stroke by fear.
         (0.500)                Mindless undead, non-living monsters and those
                                that resist fear (NO_FEAR) are not affected.
                                The chance for the aura to trigger depends on
                                your skill alone. Whether it has effect on your
                                foe or not only depends on its rlevel compared
                                to your skill - uniques and powerful monsters
                                receive a small bonus in their favour.
                                At a skill of 20 the aura is so strong that
                                your melee attacks (weapon as well as martial
                                arts) will have a chance to terrify monsters.
                                This chance increases with skill, but will not
                                affect monsters with an rlevel more than 10
                                above your character level.
                                Also at 20 it will grant you fear resistance
                                while the aura is active.
                                The aura is automatically enabled when you
                                train the skill; you can disable the aura in
                                the 'm' menu. Typing '/ex' command into chat
                                will display the state of all your auras.
                                Being blood magic, auras will feed from your
                                blood. This means that the speed of your hit
                                point regeneration will be reduced while the
                                aura is active.

        .Shivering Aura         Monsters that hit you are stunned.
         (0.500)                Monsters that are immune to cold and those that
                                resist stun (NO_STUN) are not affected.
                                The chance for the aura to trigger depends on
                                your skill alone. Whether it has effect on your
                                foe or not only depends on its rlevel compared
                                to your skill - uniques receive a small bonus
                                in their favour.
                                At a skill of 30 the aura is so strong that
                                your melee attacks (weapon as well as martial
                                arts will be branded by it (cold brand) and
                                you are granted resistance to cold.
                                Additionally at 30, cold magic or breaths you
                                generate will solidify into cutting ice shards
                                while your aura is active, dealing ice damage.
                                This element conversion reduces damage to 2/3.
                                The aura is automatically enabled when you
                                train the skill; you can disable the aura in
                                the 'm' menu. Typing '/ex' command into chat
                                will display the state of all your auras.
                                Being blood magic, auras will feed from your
                                blood. This means that the speed of your hit
                                point regeneration will be reduced while the
                                aura is active.

        .Aura of Death          Monsters that hit you are hit by waves
         (1.000)                of plasma and ice, alternating randomly.
                                The chance for the aura to trigger depends on
                                your skill alone.
                                At a skill of 40 the aura is so strong that
                                your melee attacks (weapon as well as martial
                                arts) will be branded by it (alternating plasma
                                or ice brand). (See (5.3) for brand details.)
                                Additionally at 40, cold magic or breaths you
                                generate will solidify into cutting ice shards
                                while your aura is active, dealing ice damage.
                                Fire produced will likewise ionize into plasma!
                                This element conversion reduces damage to 2/3.
                                The aura is automatically enabled when you
                                train the skill; you can disable the aura in
                                the 'm' menu. Typing '/ex' command into chat
                                will display the state of all your auras.
                                Being blood magic, auras will feed from your
                                blood. This means that the speed of your hit
                                point regeneration will be reduced while the
                                aura is active.

    .Mimicry                    Ability to shapechange into a monster!
     (0.500)                    To learn a monster form you must kill an amount
                                of it equal to its level, while your Mimicry
                                skill must be at least half as high as the
                                monster level for you to get credit.

                                To see which monsters you have killed or which
                                forms you have already learned, press ~ 2 or
                                conveniently use the "/forms" command if you
                                just want to see a list of all learnt forms.

                                Example: To learn Uruk form, you need to kill
                                16 Uruks because Uruk is a level 16 monster
                                (see ~7 for monster lore to check level) and
                                your Mimicry skill must be at least 8 while you
                                kill them, or you won't gain any knowledge.

                                You also inherit the monsters abilities,
                                weaknesses and resistances!

                                See section (7.7) for more info.
                                To find out details about a monster form,
                                press  ~ 7  in game or consult a spoiler file.
                                (See (8.4) for more info about spoiler files.)
                                You can also use Mikael's monster search page,
                                accessible via knowledge menu, just press  ~R .

                                For each point that Mimicry is trained above
                                30.000 the character's mana pool will expand
                                by an extra +5 MP (so up to +100 MP at 50.000).
                                Note that this extra mana is NOT affected by
                                +MANA items.

                                The further Mimicry is trained above 35.000
                                the faster a player can shapechange. Usually it
                                takes a full turn to change into another form
                                (or back to player form), but each point above
                                35.000 will cut this down by 5%, so at 50.000
                                Mimicry shapechanging will only take 1/4 turn.

                                Note: Some monsters exist in two versions that
                                are identical except that one is solo and the
                                other appears in packs (FRIENDS flag).
                                For example novice warriors.
                                Your kill count of these two versions will be
                                unified, so they both count for the same form.

    .Magic Device               Mainly reduces fail chance when trying to use
     (1/16)                     magic devices (wands, staves, rods, activatable
                                items - see (5.9a)), increases their power and
                                speeds up recharging of rods you carry.
                                See (7.10) for more information on magic
                                devices, the skill and the ability.

                                To reduce inventory space usage go to the magic
                                shop and buy a antistatic wrapping.

.Anti-magic                     Generated from your strong disbelief in magic
 (1.000)                        an anti-magic field surrounds you, preventing
                                nearby monsters and players from casting
                                spells (but does not prevent them from using
                                magic devices).

                                *NOTE* that as soon as you invest a point into
                                this skill you won't be able to use any spells
                                or magic devices (wands, staves, rods, items
                                that can be activated) anymore!
                                Being anti-magic still allows you to use
                                scrolls and potions though.

                                The skill effect stacks with the anti-magic
                                field of a Dark Sword and the DISBELIEVE flag
                                of monster forms acquired by Mimicry skill.
                                (See (5.9) for more info about dark swords and
                                (7.7) for details about DISBELIEVE flag.)

                                It's capped at 75% (after stacking) chance of
                                interrupting enemy spells. Party members are
                                not affected adversely.
                                Note: While ball and bolt attacks are spells,
                                breathing is not and is therefore not hindered.

                                The radius of your anti-magic field is approx.
                                the field's power / 9 and caps at range 9.
                                (The field's "power" is its chance to interrupt
                                spells, so 75% power / 9 results in radius 8.
                                To get radius to 9 you'd have to equip another
                                item that generates an AM field or shapechange
                                into a form that generates an intrinsic AM
                                field - these are rare edge cases though..)
                                The field's power is uniform everywhere within
                                the radius, ie it does not decrease outwards.

                                Each point in Anti-magic adds 1% to your
                                AM chance, so the max gain is +50% from skill.
                                If you use a dark sword that gives the maximum
                                amount of anti-magic they can give (+30%) then
                                you only need Anti-magic skill at 45 instead of
                                50 to reach the anti-magic cap value of 75%
                                (30% from dark sword + 45% from skill = 75%).

                                Warriors that specialize in Anti-magic are
                                called 'Unbelievers' (The anti-magic powers
                                result from their strong disbelief in magic).

                                Training the Anti-magic skill will shorten the
                                duration of certain magical temporary buffs
                                and debuffs on your character, which are:
                                ESP, space/time anchor, probability travel,
                                wraithform, infra-vision, see invisible,
                                invisibilty, haste, slowness, resistances,
                                invulnerability obtained from a potion,
                                deflection, shield.
                                On the other hand, it will also reduce the
                                frequency of you suffering from continuous
                                experience-draining effects (eg Nazgul rings).

                                Regarding spell suppression, Anti-magic fields
                                combine with interception in a special way:
                                The total chance to suppress a monster's
                                attempt to cast a spell will yield diminishing
                                returns if the monster's attempt gets hindered
                                by both, Interception and Anti-magic. This
                                means that having high values in both,
                                Interception and Anti-magic, will still give
                                benefits for spell suppression, but the total
                                chance of suppression that results from
                                applying both to a single spell casting attempt
                                will actually come out somewhat reduced.

+Sneakiness                     Slightly increases your character speed
 (1.000)                        (+7 at 50, so approx +1 every 7..8 points).
                                Slightly increases perception and searching.
                                Slightly reduces speed loss while in searching
                                mode, and very slightly while in rogues'
                                cloaking mode.

    .Stealth                    Increases your stealth, which determines how
     (2.000)                    fast sleeping monsters on your dungeon level
                                will wake up. Important if you don't like to
                                wake up everything at once and prefer to sneak
                                past monsters or pick your fights one by one.
                                The stealth gain is half as much as from items
                                that give +Stealth.

                                If your character is really bad at stealth,
                                like Draconians, it might seem as if the skill
                                doesn't help. But if you invest a lot of points
                                you will eventually see an improvement ;).

    .Stealing                   Ability to steal items from stores,
     (0.100, at least 1.000)    also helps against someone else trying to steal
                                from you.

                                This skill will not give you stealing-chance or
                                notice-stealing benefits if your armour is so
                                heavy that you get a flexibility warning (5.5).

                                If you get caught by an NPC shopkeeper you will
                                be on the 'blacklist of merchants' for a while,
                                which can be from 0 up to 76 minutes, depending
                                on the (discounts matter) value of the item you
                                tried to steal from the shop.
                                During this time it's impossible to steal from
                                shops, and you will get BAD prices (quadruple,
                                like in the blackmarket usually) in this and
                                all other NPC shops, including those that don't
                                sell items but just offer services.
                                (Player stores are unaffected by this.)

                                You'll also be on the 'watchlist', meaning
                                that you can shop at normal prices as usual,
                                but the shopkeepers still keep a sharp eye on
                                you meaning you are unable to steal anything.
                                The watchlist is always 4 1/2 minutes longer
                                than the blacklist, but can also be lower in
                                cases when you didn't make it on the blacklist,
                                down to a minimum of 100 seconds.

                                The blacklist and watchlist will be on hold for
                                a character that isn't logged in, so it's best
                                to steal before going to the dungeon or AFK,
                                so your black-/watchlist have time to run out.

                                The time period you'll be on these lists solely
                                depends on the item's _base_ value (so it does
                                not matter whether you got caught in a normal
                                store or in the black market.) Price discount
                                applies though, reducing the base value and
                                therefore the blacklist time too.

                                Messages when you enter a shop, how the
                                shopkeeper regards you will roughly give away
                                your remaining Blacklist time:
                                ------------------------------
                                gives you a murderous look     40-76 min.
                                gazes at you angrily          <40 min.
                                eyes you suspiciously         <20 min.
                                looks at you disapprovingly   <10 min.
                                gives you a cold glance       < 5 min.

                                After your blacklist ran out, if you're still
                                on the watchlist you get this message:
                                "The owner keeps a sharp eye on you."

                                Note that usually people don't want to be seen
                                with stolen goods, which means that very
                                expensive items, depending on their value, have
                                a certain chance of their level becoming 0,
                                making them untradable. (Note: Even if you were
                                stealing Morgoth's crown, which has a value of
                                10 million Au, you'd still have at least a 5%
                                chance of it retaining its original level.)

                                Your chance to steal an item from a shop
                                depends on your dexterity, your stealing skill
                                and the price and weight of the item. Stealth
                                and invisibility are also somewhat helpful.
                                For example it's nearly impossible to steal a
                                large piece of wood without the store owner
                                noticing it, although it's not worth much.
                                There's always a minimum chance of 5% to fail.
                                You need to be at least level 5 to steal
                                and at least level 10 to steal anything of
                                somewhat higher value.

                                If you succeed to steal an item, the message
                                will vary depending on what your chance to
                                succeed was:
                                At least 70%:        "You easily stole ...",
                                between 30% and 70%: "You stole ...",
                                Up to 30%:           "You barely stole ...".

                                You have a chance to successfully steal an
                                item even if your stealing skill is 0 and your
                                dexterity low, so everyone could give it a try.

                                If a shop offers an item more expensive than
                                it actually is (black market) that has no
                                effect on stealing. The 'normal' item value
                                is used to calculate the chances.
                                However, if an item is offered at reduced
                                price, it'll be easier to steal it!

                                It's more difficult to steal from certain
                                stores, eg stores that are found in the dungeon
                                or that don't belong to the basic town stores
                                (numbered 1-9, including the rune repository).
                                It is even impossible to steal from expensive
                                black market (the one located somewhat hidden
                                in Minas Anor), secret black market (the one
                                you can only find in dungeons), rare footwear
                                shop and rare jewelry shop (both in dungeons),
                                or from a dungeon town's temple, potion store
                                or black market.

                                It's a good idea to wear as many +DEX items
                                as possible while trying to steal from a shop,
                                since DEX is the main factor besides the skill.

                                Stealing items which have a base value (without
                                discount applied!) not higher than your
                                stealing_skill * 10 (eg 50 Au->5.000 Stealing)
                                are especially easy to steal.
                                Also, if you still get caught on such an item,
                                the blacklist time will be much shorter too.
                                Some potion/scroll/wand/staff break points
                                regarding this (not complete, just examples):
                                ?Identify: 50 Au.
                                !Neutralize Poison: 55 Au.
                                !Cure Critical Wounds: 100 Au.
                                ?Enchant Weapon/Armour: 125 Au.
                                ?Recharging: 150 Au.
                                !Speed, ?Holy Chant, _Treasure Location:200 Au.
                                !Restore stat, -Stone to Mud: 300 Au.
                                !Healing, ?Teleportation: 400 Au.
                                !Resistance, !Restore Mana, Athelas: 450 Au.
                                ?Wilderness Mapping: 500 Au.

                                Trying to 'steal back' an item that was already
                                owned by a player, ie an item that has been
                                sold to the shop, is especially hard.

                                Actually you can decrease your blacklist timer
                                by buying items costing at least 100 Au while
                                you are blacklisted, as buying items lessens
                                the shopkeepers' distrust somewhat.
                                You will gain the amount of gold spent divided
                                by 200 in seconds subtracted from your timer.
                                Example:
                                If you are on the blacklist for maybe 10 more
                                minutes and buy an item for 40000 Au (which
                                would usually only cost 10000 Au if you weren't
                                blacklisted) then you'd get 40000/200 = 200 s
                                deducted and your remaining blacklist timer
                                would now be at 6 minutes and 20 seconds.
                                Of course the loss of 30000 Au that you paid
                                too much here is *quite* substantial.

                                Training the 'Stealing' skill will carry over
                                strongly into its parent skill 'Sneakiness'.

    .Backstabbing               Lets you backstab enemies, afflicting high
     (1/7, at least 1.000)      damage. Works if the opponent is asleep or
                                running away in fear, exposing his back to you.
                                Also works when you are cloaked (only once per
                                monster though, so re-cloaking won't help) or
                                shadow running. Increasing this skill increases
                                the damage your backstab attacks deal.

                                Backstabbing requires sword-type weapons or
                                polearms, up to 10.0 lbs in weight.
                                Alternatively it works if you use Martial Arts,
                                in which case it transforms into neck-twisting;
                                that means your target must possess a neck,
                                read: A head and a torso.

                                If you dual-wield, you will also dual-backstab
                                if the moster is either asleep, or you perform
                                the attack from cloaking mode or shadow run.
                                Although you'll deal somewhat less damage with
                                each stab, since they are executed both at once
                                you will do more overall damage than with a
                                single weapon.

                                Backstab hits and critical hits do not stack.
                                If you roll a critical hit on backstabbing, the
                                damage is compared to what the pure backstab
                                would do and the higher one is used.

                                Backstabbing a non-fleeing monster has a chance
                                to apply a stun effect based on your DEX, your
                                Backstabbing skill, slightly depending on your
                                Weaponmastery skill, and on the r-level and AC.
                                Uniques and undead are harder to stun.
                                There is no difference between dual-wield or
                                one-handed use regarding stun effectiveness.

                                Vampires will feed especially much from
                                backstabbing a sleeping opponent to death.

    .Dodging                    Ability to evade attacks. In order to get any
     (1/3, at least 1.000)      benefits from doding skill at all, your armour
                                mustn't be too heavy. If it is, you will get a
                                flexibility warning (compare (5.5)).
                                Also, you must not be using a shield.

                                A low dodging skill will already help greatly
                                against monsters of similarly low level, so it
                                is helpful right from the beginning of your
                                character's career.

                                There are various attacks that can be dodged:
                                Melee attacks mostly, bolts, arrows and the
                                likes (both magical and physical) shot by
                                enemies or traps at you. And it slightly helps
                                to dodge rubble coming down during an
                                earthquake.

                                Your actual chance to dodge an attack depends
                                on the total weight you are carrying around
                                with you, where inventory usually weighs most
                                and will encumber you the most.
                                Your equipment also musn't be too heavy,
                                although your weapons are allowed to weigh
                                quite a bit, as long as your armour isn't too
                                encumbering. However, for weapons, armour, and
                                inventory always goes: The lighter, the higher
                                your chances will be.
                                And of course your dodging chance depends on
                                your dodging skill, which (after penalized by
                                the weight of all your stuff) is compared to
                                the opponent's level or trap level.
                                (For dodging monsters, the rlevel (0.4) of that
                                monster type is important. Any additional
                                levels the monster may have gained due to
                                dwelling deeper than usual will not affect
                                your dodge chance.)

                                You can check your dodging chance against
                                opponents of same and double level by pressing
                                'm' and choosing "Check dodge chance".
                                Depending on the server version you might see
                                textual descriptions instead of raw numbers:
                                "Almost no chance" means less than 5%,
                                "Slight chance" -> less than 14%,
                                "Significant chance" -> less than 23%,
                                "Good chance" -> less than 30%,
                                "Very good chance" -> less than 40%,
                                otherwise "High chance" (may occur in actual
                                game play if opponent is much lower than you).

                                Against monsters that have way higher level
                                than you, you receive a minor penalty. You can
                                still dodge them quite effectively though.

                                Dodging also gets slightly increased by the
                                "Martial Arts" skill (see above in this skill
                                table).

                                As a rule of thumb, your dodge chance (at maxed
                                dodging skill in relation to your character's
                                level) will usually cap at 67% for monsters of
                                equal level and at 50% chance for monsters of
                                twice your level.
                                If your dodging skill isn't maxed out to your
                                current character level, your dodging chance
                                will drop in a linear manner, eg if skill is
                                half your level, you'll have half the chance
                                to dodge.

    .Calmness                   Ability to not get hindered by enemies.
     (0.625)                    Monsters can try to intercept some of your
                                actions, the Calmness skill counters these
                                interception attempts. In detail: Monsters can
                                interfere if they are standing on an adjacent
                                grid (ie right next to you) and if you try to..
                                -shoot with ranged weapons,
                                -use a void jumpgate,
                                -set a monster trap.
                                That's it. So calmness does not affect, for
                                example, spellcasting.
                                Calmness does not depend on the enemy's level.

    .Trapping                   Improves your ability to set traps:
     (0.450)                    Gives you a higher chance to successfully
                                place a trap if a monster is close to you and
                                trying to interfere. Also, monsters will have
                                a harder time to discover your traps.
                                By training Trapping you also learn to optimize
                                your traps for higher damage output.
                                (Note that 'Magic Device' or 'Runecraft' skill
                                have no effect on trap damage output, even if
                                it is loaded with a device or a rune.)
                                See (4.7) for details about monster traps.

                                Improves your ability to recognize traps and
                                ammunition (pebbles, shots, arrows, bolts):
                                Lets you pseudo-ID trap kits and ammo more
                                frequently the higher your skill.
                                If increased to at least 10, pseudo-ID will
                                give you more distinctive feelings instead of
                                just 'good' or 'cursed'.

                                Trapping also improves your disarming ability,
                                making it easier to pick locks and to disarm
                                traps via the manual disarm command. (The
                                experience you gain from manually disarming
                                traps is not affected by the skill but only by
                                the traps' level).
                                You also will get a chance to identify the type
                                of a trap on disarming, increasing with skill.

                                Being more proficient in trapping will also
                                increase your chances of spotting traps, ie
                                improving your 'Searching' ability. And should
                                you still trigger a trap accidentally, your
                                chances of avoiding it will increase too!

                                At 10.000 Trapping you will learn the fighting
                                technique 'Steam Blast' which can blast open
                                doors and chests.

                                Last but not least Trapping gives you a chance
                                (depending on your skill) to salvage a trap kit
                                from any trap you disarm!

                                Hint: Inscribe all your trapping components
                                      '!=' for easy auto-pickup and make sure
                                      to create macros so you can place a trap
                                      by simply pressing a single button.

                                      To reduce inventory space usage, go to
                                      general store and buy a trap kit bag.

+Health                         Increases your hit points by 2 for each point.
 (0.500)                        Note that this gain stacks with +LIFE items
                                (compare '+LIFE' in (5.8)).
                                Increases your hit point regeneration rate:
                                 (skill_level * 2)% chance to regenerate 1.5x
                                 the normal amount of HP per turn (stacks with
                                 other regeneration effects and item flag).
                                Increases your stamina regeneration rate.

                                Helps you to recover from temporary stats drain
                                drain, hallucination, blindness, confusion,
                                poison, disease and cuts faster.

                                Lets you pseudo-ID food faster the higher your
                                skill is. If 'Health' is at least at 10 points,
                                you can get more distinctive feelings instead
                                of just 'worthless' or 'good'.

                                If you spend 10 points into Health, your
                                sanity will be displayed as a bar.
                                At 20 points you'll get the percentage
                                displayed. At 40 the value will be shown.

                                For mimicry users, Health skill is less
                                effective than for other classes, because the
                                hit point bonus is applied before the player's
                                base hit points and monster form hit points are
                                averaged to calculate the mimic's final amount
                                of hit points in a particular a monster form.

                                Note that the subskills of Health listed below
                                in general spill over quite a good chunk of
                                skill points into their parent skill Health.

    .Swimming                   Allows you to swim even while carrying more
                                weight and to better protect your items from
                                water.

                                Skill maxes at 1.000, with the ability to swim
                                improving steadily while increasing it.
                                At 0.700 you become able to swim very swiftly
                                if no monsters are within sight, enabling you
                                to 'run' through water.

                                For more details about swimming see (4.15).

    .Climbing                   You need this at 1.000 to be able to climb.
                                Climbing allows you to pass mountain terrain
                                without the need for a climbing set, special
                                boots or magical means.
                                Dwarves have little use for this skill as they
                                learn climbing intrinsically when they reach
                                level 30.

    .Digging                    How well you are able to dig. Also affects
                                your chance to find items (from digging only),
                                and chance for those items to be good or even
                                great, and it affects the amount of cash
                                generated from mining mineral veins.
                                This skill spills over especially generously
                                into its parent skill 'Health'.

                                Note that for the Digging skill to get applied,
                                which includes any boni it might give such as
                                improving what you can find or uncover, you
                                must dig manually, ie not via any kind of magic
                                or by using a KILL_WALL monster form (mimicry).

                                In particular, every 10 digging skill you will
                                have a chance to find an additional pile of
                                cash from mining a treasure vein, up to 6 piles
                                if you're lucky at skill 50.000 (provided your
                                dungeon floor depth is greater than half of
                                your digging skill, otherwise the number of
                                piles is limited to depth/5, eg 5 piles for
                                dungeon level 25, while starting at dungeon
                                level 26 you may uncover the full amount of 6
                                piles if your skill is actually 50.000).

                                Depending on the skill, you might also uncover
                                unusual features such as fountains or
                                staircases or somewhat more often (compared to
                                finding just random items from digging)
                                find chests, runes or heavy material pieces
                                suitable for golem creation.
                                The quality of objects found also depends on
                                your digging skill.

                                Certain tools such as shovels, picks and
                                mattocks will also increase your digging speed
                                greatly (independant of the skill), see (5.9).
                                Also, when hacking through trees and bushes,
                                axes will help a lot and swords somewhat, in
                                case you have no good digging tool at hand.
                                2-handed weapons even more than 1-handed.
                                For hacking away spider webs, certain polearms
                                used for slashing (scythes and sickles) may
                                help too, at least as well as swords or axes.
                                See (3.4c) for more information on digging
                                tools and (5.17) for technical details on
                                digging.

                                Demolitionist perk (EXPERIMENTAL):
                                Shortly before 4.7.3 a new experimental perk
                                was added to the Digging skill: Demolitionist.
                                This just means that if you train Digging to at
                                least 5.000 you will be able to find or acquire
                                certain ingredients that you can use to create
                                blast charges. The effect of charges does not
                                increase with skill, level, or anything else.
                                All ingredients as well as the items you craft
                                from them are level 0 and hence bound to your
                                character (untradable).
                                Some ingredients are acquired by digging, some
                                by actually killing monsters or by other means,
                                and then there is the 'grinding tool' that you
                                can buy in town in the alchemy shop for little
                                money that allows you to grind items containing
                                a significant amount of rather reactive metal
                                types to reactive metal powder or to grind
                                items made of significant amounts of wood into
                                wood chips.
                                Some recipes might even use basic lamp oil
                                which you could just by from the general store.
                                Note that some ingredients might need higher
                                skill to find:
                                Vitriol at 15.000, ammonia salt, saltpetre and
                                sulfur at 10.000, reactive metal powder at
                                10.000 (when found, not when created by using a
                                grinding tool, so it can be acquired at 5.000).
                                For information on crafting charges see (7.2b).

                                At 10.000 Digging, if Demolitionist is enabled,
                                you will learn the fighting technique
                                'Steam Blast' which can blast open doors and
                                chests.

                                If you don't want ingredients to drop to reduce
                                loot clutter, You can turn them off (and on
                                again) with the /ing command.

                                The client option 'autopickup_chemicals' and
                                the slash command '/chem' toggle automatically
                                picking-up freshly dropped chemicals by simply
                                walking over them.

                                To reduce inventory space usage, go to the
                                town's alchemy shop and buy an Alchemy Satchel.

The abilities Swimming, Digging and Climbing are also granted by items you
can find. Those are for example items that grants you levitation, so you may
just hover across water instead of swimming across. Wands of stone-to-mud will
turn any obstacle to mud that you could dig through, and some boots or a
climbing set might grant you the ability to climb highest mountains. Dwarves
also learn this ability automatically when they reach level 30.

Here is what the numbers mean (we will use the Axe-mastery skill for this
example:

+Combat                         10.500  [0.800]
    +Weaponmastery               5.250  [0.800]
        .Axe-mastery            15.000  [0.500]

As we can see this player has 10.5 skill points in Combat, 5.25 in
Weaponmastery and 15 in Axe-mastery. He just reached a new level and hence
gained 5 skill points. Now he decides to invest them all into Axe-mastery.
He presses <DOWN> key until the Axe-mastery line is selected. Now he presses
<RIGHT> key 5 times to invest all his 5 spare skill points here.
Axe-mastery will be increased by 0.500 points per invested skill point (hence
the [0.500] on the right), leaving him at 17.5 Axe-mastery now.
Since sub-skills always slightly affect their parent skills, Weaponmastery
and Combat will also be raised slightly. The result might look like this:

+Combat                         10.750  [0.800]
    +Weaponmastery               6.250  [0.800]
        .Axe-mastery            17.500  [0.500]


Opposed skills
--------------
Some skills don't go well together, and will have negative influence on each
other when increased, decreasing their opposite!
Take care on the following combinations:
        Weaponmastery   <->     Sorcery
        Archery         <->     Sorcery
        Martial Arts    <->     Sorcery
        Anti-magic      <->     excludes any type of magic and magic devices,
                                including mimicry.
                                However, a mimicking player won't lose his
                                current form on training in Anti-magic.
                                He just won't be able to transform ever again
                                by using his mimic powers.
                                His form CAN still change though, if he is
                                zapped with a wand of polymorph, quaffs a
                                potion of Chauve-Souris, uses Morph Restoration
                                service of a shop or.. dies, three
                                things that he probably wants to avoid at all
                                costs in order to keep his 'final' form.
Previous
(7.1) Attributes
Next
(7.2a) Maiar initiation effects