Skill Observations

This document works under the assumption that you're not going to be taking advantage of bugs in the game. The biggist one in this case is joining classes without meeting the prerequisites for attributes and skills. This can make the game far simpler than it should be and hopefully will be fixed in patch 1.2.

The following list details my observations on most skills.

• The skills repair, scout, identify, alchemy and steal are unimplemented so there is no benefit to choosing a class that permits access to or learning bonuses for these skills.
• Learning bonuses get better with each level of the skill in question. That means that at level 1, a learning bonus is worth a 25% deduction from the normal cost, level 2 is worth 32.5%, level 3 is worth is worth 39%, et cetera. By level 10 of the skill, a single level of learning bonus is saving you 71% off of the skill cost!
• Learning bonuses combine to lower skill costs! The benefit to having multiple learning bonuses on any given skill can be amazing. When combined with the previous point, skills can becomes very cheap compared to their normal costs. Five learning bonuses reduces the cost of a level 10 skill by 99.8%!
• There is no benefit to advancing athletics over level 4, so don't worry about choosing a class with a learning bonus to this skill. I would recommend all characters start with level 1 in this skill since the defensive jump can be a life saver early on--just leap over those rats and slimes that surround you!
• Inspect and disarm are very handy skills to have. However, the higest trap I've discovered is level 9. This means that inspect 8 and disarm 7 are adequate, especially when you augment your disarm results with lock picks which are very common. Since advancement points are easy to come by the time you start finding the higher level traps, there isn't a big benefit to choosing a class to gain a learning bonus to these skills. (In the Fargrove sewers, there is only one level 4 chest. Push your early points into these skills to reach inspect 3 and disarm 2 fast for best results.) I don't recommend skipping these skills for bash as it will be a long while before you can successfully bash most traps without harm and in the meantime you'll miss a lot of good loot.
• Pick locks is rarely of much use and doesn't need to be advanced beyond level 4 or so, and that once past Fargrove and experience easy to gain. This is certainly not worth choosing a class to gain a bonus for this skill.
• Weapon, armour, and shield skills only need to be advanced as high as required to permit the item in question to be used without a learning penalty. It can get very expensive to meet class entry requirements if you don't exploit the skill test bug, so consider strongly having classes so you have at least one learning bonus in each prequisite skill.
• Bargain is a very handy skill to have a few points in for any character once you're out of the Fargrove sewers. For characters who are going to be heavy spell casters, its worth contemplating gaining a class that offers a learning bonus to this skill as you're going to want a lot of money for spells, runes, katels, et cetera and they're expensive.
• Spells become more powerful and reliable as you advance them so if you're going to be a spell caster, this is going to be your advancement point sink. Choose your classes carefully to gain as many learning bonuses as possible for your casting skills.
• Celestial magic is centred around self-protection and is useful to almost every playing style. Healing (including cure poison) is mandatory in either magical or bottled form, so consider including choosing adept as a means of saving money. Protection from elemental attacks makes some deadly foes fairly easy to handle. Time stop makes a laugh out of chests--get a lot of these to improve the regen rate and don't bother wasting too many points on inspect and disable trap skills. Divine intervention is simply over-powered--the angel summoned is powerful.
• Arcane magic is all about blasting the crap out of your enemies--preferably from a safe distance. The trick here is to have lots of copies of a given spell to permit bulk use of the spell (and to improve regen rates.) Starfire is appearently broken in patch 1.1, so don't worry about that early spell. Magic missile is handy for all builds if they're not handy with bows or thrown weapons and is cheap to come by. The real uber spells of this category are the nova spells--ice nova in particular. Blast entire groups of foes at a time, with the survivers frozen long enough to get an alternative attack off at them.
• Nether magic is made up mostly of indirect combat skills. Summons figure particularly high here, but there are also combat buffs if you don't mind getting your character's sword dirty.
• Rune magic is generally unwhelming. Most of the powers are buffs. This may sound good, but the rune spells and their critical rune stones are prohibitively expensive for thier minor benefit. (Sanctuary is a nice spell and available to anyone who can afford to finance it.) The focus of runes seems to be for parties in multiplayer games--there are group versions of the various buffs.
• Put points where possible into scribe and/or channel to improve the spell regeneration rate. Scribe works for arcane magic, channel for both celestial and rune magic. There is no booster for nether magic since spells are consumed during casting instead of being drained. The nether magic boosting skill alchemy is unimplemented.

Briar's Dungeon Lord's Analysis