Pro tip for smiths (arms lore)

[littlewierdo]

I have been doing extensive experimenting with arms lore, it has absolutely NO benefit below 47ish and seems to benefit every 3 points ABOVE 47.

The way I tested this is, I vendor trained it to 20, then I crafted 50 items at my blacksmith skill level and looked at my success rate. Then I built arms lore up to 40 and tested again, no difference. I then built it to 45 and again, no diference. I then built it to 60 and tested and their was a huge difference. Somewhere between 60 and 65, I failed a macro check, which actually was kind of cool because it gave me the opportunity to further experiment...

Starting at Arms Lore at 45 (for the second time training it), I made 30 items every complete percentage I built it, at 47, I noticed a very small difference and had the same results until 50 when my success rate improved slightly yet again. Im currently at 55 in my testing process and it seems that it is based on every 3 percent starting at 47.

So, the moral of the story is, build that arms lore (best to build it to 65, build your smithing to 65, get in class, gm arms lore, then gm smithing).

This might all be coincidence and because POL has such an awful random number generator, these results may not mean much, but I thought I might share my opinions on the results (Im not going to post the actual results).

[Ivan]

Imo this is not realy a pro tip because most of the shard know that 50% success rate usualy means best gain rate. And skills under gm dont realy matter...

If you want do some testing that has a meaning get some valid info about 85 tactics vs 100 tactics etc.

[littlewierdo]

Well, maybe it doesnt classify as a 'Pro' tip.

Actually, the best skill gain rates are between 25-50% success rate (I have built tinkering to 65 on two characters, smithing to 50, gm fletching, 85 carpentry, tailoring to 40).

In some specific cases, it may even benefit you to have even less of a success rate (runestones for fletching and carpentry for example), I started making these at 75% skill for both skills because they required much less materials than anything else (thus negating the need to gather materials as often) and because my success rate was so low, every time I did make one, I had a higher chance of skill gain.

There are also cases for building with a higher success rate as well, in the case of combat skills, doing less damage may be of a benefit because you will not have to fight as many monsters (killing one means you have to find another). Switching to another weapon as soon as possible isnt always the fastest / most efficient way.

Then of course, if we want to get into the minutia, success rates are affected by the lore skills but do not affect skill gain rate. Using purely made up numbers here, I will demonstrate:

Item X has a skill requirement of 50 smithing to make.
My character has 50 smithing skill, no arms lore.

Success rate is probably going to be around 30%.

Now, I build my arms lore to 65% and have the same 50% smithing.

My success rate may go up to 50% now (because of arms lore).

In both cases, my skill gain rate 'should' be the same even tho my success rate is higher because of the lore skill.

Of course, all of this really depends on how it is scripted, I dont have a copy of the shard to look at (and believe me, Id love to know the math behind it - game mechanics fascinate me).


BUT, all the numbers in that post are arms lore, not success rates. My point being, to boil it down to 1 sentence, Arms Lore only seems to begin benefiting you starting at 47 and seems to affect every 3 percent above that, thus, 47,50,53,56,59,62,65,68,71,74,77,80,83,86,89,92,95,98,101,104,107,110). Again, I havent tested above 55% yet (only at 55 right now).

And I absolutely disagree regarding skills below gm.

Plenty of skills have value at lower levels, depending on your needs.

For example, without 65 tinkering, I wouldnt be able to make pickaxes, shovels, maps, bottles, which, in all honesty, is the only thing I think tinkering is valuable for (with exception to steeds which I dont think are valuable enough to me to build an actual tinker).

Carpentry is another example, 85 is high enough to make everything carpenters can make, albeit with a somewhat higher failure rate on items that require 90 skill (or higher), thus negating the carpenter class for me personally.

85 item id (which is all that I am allowed on my gm fletcher) is a significant enough difference for me personally to my 65 tinkering that it was valuable enough to build it.

Regarding combat skills, there are noticeable differences as your skill increases. My fletcher for example has only two skills left to finish (Detect Didden and Magic Resistance) but other than that, all skills are maxed and I noticed improvements on his survivability once I had my Tactics at 65 versus the vendor trained 20.

Skills are not useless if they are below gmd, if they were, what would be the point in giving 'optional' skills to build?

Regarding your question about Tactics, this would be hard to test (but not impossible) as there is alot of factors involved.

First, I would have to keep a running log of how much damage is done to me, make sure my armor is in top repair (if the AC value ever drops, the test results become invalid), make sure the enemy is the same exact creature during the entire test process, etc.

In fact, the last factor I mentioned (the same exact enemy) is probably the most difficult. Monsters gain skill just as characters do, so this would skew the results as there is no way to account for this. As the monster gains skill, it begins to do more damage. And there is no way to look at what a monsters current skill is, let alone have the math to factor that part of the equation in.

This last factor (as an aside) is the reason that some creatures are strangely stronger than the exact same creature you encountered somewhere else, sparring with a creature builds its skills and most likely, if you encounter a stronger creature than what you are used to from that creature type, its likely because someone sparred with it but did not kill it.

[Hilda]

Hope you're right, cause I've never bothered training arms lore past 113 ;D

[Wolfie]

This is actually kind of neat that you noticed this. I don't think anyone else knew that the success rate changed at 3% per. Although this is just the drastic difference you notice. Its the same basic princable as archery. If you have 145dex, and then try with 150dex you will notice that you shoot drastically faster. And this is only a difference of 5stats so its not overly that much.

Also a problem with tactics Ivan is I do believe that no monsters are usually alike. Even though the name may be "Blah blah blah the Fire Fiend" I am sure that the hp and stats of the monster is different from another one. After all everything is linked to a spawn pool and if it was all the same it would make uo quite drastically boring.

This would also make sense as from some enemies ex. ratmen lord, it would explain why with about 30ar you take damage from some of them and no damage from others.

And yes skill bellow GM help... If they didn't whats the point in buying ALOT of the clothes around.

[littlewierdo]

Hope you're right, cause I've never bothered training arms lore past 113 ;D

Wait, what, huh? Oh wait, I get it. Cute . You did confuse me for a minute there...

[littlewierdo]

This is actually kind of neat that you noticed this. I don't think anyone else knew that the success rate changed at 3% per. Although this is just the drastic difference you notice. Its the same basic princable as archery. If you have 145dex, and then try with 150dex you will notice that you shoot drastically faster. And this is only a difference of 5stats so its not overly that much.

Well, dont forget that stats (and skills) can also work on a curve, rather than hard set numbers. An example of a curve might be the following:

Every 5 Dex, shoot arrows 10% slower than the previous time, starting with a base of 1 second for 150 Dex.

Dex Time
10 14.42
15 13.11
20 11.92
25 10.83
30 9.85
35 8.95
40 8.14
45 7.40
50 6.73
55 6.12
60 5.56
65 5.05
70 4.59
75 4.18
80 3.80
85 3.45
90 3.14
95 2.85
100 2.59
105 2.36
110 2.14
115 1.95
120 1.77
125 1.61
130 1.46
135 1.33
140 1.21
145 1.10
150 1.00

This is an example of a curve, notice how the difference is much more significant between 10 and 15 and MUCH less of a difference between 145 and 150. While this is obviously not how it is setup on Pang, they are probably using some sort of curve if the difference is that significant between 145 and 150.

Also a problem with tactics Ivan is I do believe that no monsters are usually alike. Even though the name may be "Blah blah blah the Fire Fiend" I am sure that the hp and stats of the monster is different from another one. After all everything is linked to a spawn pool and if it was all the same it would make uo quite drastically boring.

This would also make sense as from some enemies ex. ratmen lord, it would explain why with about 30ar you take damage from some of them and no damage from others.

Well, to actually simplify this, use a Harpy. There arent multiple types of Harpies but they do have random stats AND gain in skiils which create a huge problem for testing how Tactics work.

[Ivan]

Use players not monsters...

[littlewierdo]

Use players not monsters...

The problem here is that players can have completely different results than monsters. Magic Resist is a good example - if a player casts on me, little to no skill gain, if a monster casts on me, I get skill gain.

While not exactly the same thing, it still proves the point that monsters and players 'can' have vastly different results.

It also requires me to have two accounts as I doubt that anyone would be willing to let me spend the hours required to experiment with this.

[Ivan]

Team up with someone who is also interested in experimenting and with a free char slot (use clothes to stop skills from gaining)

(Maximillian Lloth aka Haldric as an example used to do similiar experiements at some point)

Would love to know few these things but i just cba to start testing or figuring out the way things work when it goes too complicated.

Also i bet they wont go trough suchs a trouble in pvm and pvp when there is no spells messed up in it. (resist has been made harder to gain from player spells for a reason)