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skills

Discworld concepts help

skills

Name

skills - How good you are at things and how to get better.

Description

Discworld uses a hierarchical skill system. A player has skills numbering into the hundreds in which they can improve and train.

The hierarchy of skills

Each skill falls into one of seven top-level groups: adventuring, covert, crafts, faith, fighting, magic and people. Each of these groups is then further subdivided as necessary.

For example, magic skills are divided up into magic.spells, magic.methods, magic.items and magic.points. Next, magic.spells is divided into magic.spells.offensive, magic.spells.defensive, magic.spells.misc and magic.spells.special - none of these skills have subskills, so the subdivision ends there.

Viewing your skills

To find out what skills you have, use the "skills" command. Used on its own, this will show you all your skills. You can also view only a subset of these by using for example "skills magic", "skills magic.spells" and so on. The output of the skills command will show two numbers associated with each skill. The first of these is your level and the second is your bonus - see "Using your skills" below for more information on bonuses.

Advancing your skills

When you start out as a new character, you may not immediately be able to advance the "branch" skills such as magic.spells.misc, because you can only advance skills that you have at least depth*5 skill levels in.

For example, if you have no magic skills at all, the only thing in the magic skilltree that you will be able to advance is magic itself. Once you have 5 levels of magic, you can start advancing magic.spells. Once you have 10 levels of magic.spells, you can start advancing magic.spells.offensive.

Skill levels can be advanced at your guild, by teaching yourself, or by learning from other players. If you aren't sure which skills you should advance, you might want to try asking other players on the talker (see "help talker").

Using your skills

When it comes to using your skills, it is generally your bonus in each skill that is relevant, rather than your level in that skill.

Although your bonus in a skill is partly determined by your level in that skill, it is also affected by your stats. There are five stats - constitution, dexterity, intelligence, strength and wisdom. To view your stats, type "score stats". To see how a given skill depends on your stats, use the "skills" command, for example "skills magic.points stats". See "help stats" for more.

See also

adventuring, covert, crafts, faith, fighting, magic, people, advance, commands, cost, hskills, learn, stats, taskmaster, teach