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The Nightscape Shard |  |
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Skill TreesIntroduction | Tree Structure | The Tree | Uncategorized Skills Skills Being Considered | Notes | Informal FAQ Introduction
What does "Skill Trees" mean? It's a way of arranging skills so that you have to learn one skill before you can get another. Ultima Online actually already uses informal skill-trees on a very limited basis. A good example of this is the Musicianship skill, where you have to learn that before you can learn Provocation and Peacemaking. Skill trees simply put all skills into similar structures, so that you have to learn basic abilities before you can learn advanced ones. There are eleven "probable" parent-skills: Alchemy TREE STRUCTURE
1st Tier 2nd Tier 3rd Tier 4th Tier 5th Tier 2nd Tier ... There will be no more than 5 tiers maximum in any tree. THE TREE
Alchemy Herbology Medicine Advanced Medicine Potions Explosives Poisons Anatomy Animal Lore Taming Veterinarian First Aid Surgery Artistry Cooking Baking Brewing Culinary Arts <-- Best I could come up with. Drawing Cartography Painting Portraits Glassblowing Masonry Sculpting Pottery Musicianship Peacemaking Provoking Combat Cavalier Advanced Chivalry Defense Blocking Evasion <-- Was "Dodging". Parrying Melee 1-Handed Melee Fencing Kryss ... Macemanship Maul ... Swordsmanship Long sword ... 2-Handed Melee Macemanship War Hammer ... Pole arms Halberd ... Swordsmanship Claymore ... Ranged Archery Bows Longbow ... Crossbows Repeating Crossbow ... Throwing Axes Daggers Strategy Advanced Tactics Wrestling Striking Grappling Covert Disguise Hiding Detection Camouflage Stealth Lock Picking Poisoning Stealing Tracking Crafting Carpentry Bowery and Fletching Carving Metalworking Armourer Weaponsmith Sewing Tailoring Clothier Leatherworking Armourer Cobbler Tinkering Engineering Mechanical Engineering Jeweler Weaving Advanced Weaving <-- Any suggestions for a better name here? Faith Theology Harvesting Farming Agriculture Botany Fishing Fresh Water Ocean Lumberjacking Forestry Mining & Smelting Advanced Smelting Gemology Mineralogy Quarrying Instinctive (more info) (all races) Basic Cooking Camping (balwans) Basic Fishing Basic Druidry (drow) Basic 1-Handed Melee Basic Tailoring (dwarves) Basic 2-Handed Melee Basic Blacksmithing (efyte) Basic Inscription Basic Wizardry (elves) Basic Archery Basic Carpentry (humans) (anuhrian) Basic ??????? Basic Weaving (cardean) Basic Cavalier Basic Farming (somerled) Basic Brewing Basic Parrying (tsingani) Basic Engineering Basic Throwing (vampires) Basic Magical Resistance Basic Necromancy Knowledge (more info) Basic Mathematics Reading & Writing Magery Druidry Naturalism Runology Focus Meditation Herbology Inscription Enchantment Magical Resistance Cold Resistance Energy Resistance Fire Resistance Poison Resistance Necromancy Spirit Speak Witchcraft Wizardry Advanced Wizardry UNCATEGORIZED SKILLS
SKILLS BEING CONSIDERED
Listed here are those skills which are still very much up in the air. They may or may not be included. This list will grow and shrink as this document progresses. Essentially we're going over every possible skill idea and eliminating the ones that do not fit or are inappropriate. So it is very well possible some of the skills listed here are totally out-of-place, and those would probably be the first removed.
NOTES
None at the moment... INFORMAL FAQ
Table of ContentsDo skills all improve at the same rate? No, they do not. First off, skills basically have a learning curve; it gets harder and harder to improve the more you master something, so it's fairly easy to get that first 20% and pretty hard to get that last 20%. This is offset by the fact that you don't succeed very often when your ability level is in the bottom 20%! Additionally skills further down in the tree get progressively harder to learn. What about atrophy? Skills under the new system will have atrophy, or decay. This happens to those skills which you do not use often, to reflect the lack of practice you have in them (growing 'rusty'). Do all skills deteriorate at the same rate? No, they do not. In general, atrophy happens a little faster when you are trying to maintain an ability at its peak, and slower when you are not very good at it. Is there a lower limit to atrophy? Yes, there is. A skill will not atrophy more than 10%. If a lower skill decays, how does that affect the upper branches? It doesn't affect them at all. However, lower skills are less likely to decay than skills higher in trees. When do you reach a point that a skill never deteriorates because of your utter mastery? Never. If you want to keep that top edge, you'll need to stay in training. Do skills block access to other skills? Learning skill X does not bar you from learning skill Y. Are you accepting suggestions for new skills? Definitely, but don't be discouraged if your suggested skill isn't included. When will skill trees be done and installed? That's really impossible to say at this early stage of development. How do I gain skills under the new system? You'll first need to gain a proficiency in the main skill.. "Alchemy" for example. This is called a "1st Tier" skill. After you reach the required skill level (and sub-skills can have different requirements) you can begin working on any of the skills immediately under the skill, such as "Herbology". This is a "2nd Tier" skill. So lets say I wanted to work on the "Stealth" skill under the "Covert" tree. This is a "4th Tier" skill, so you would first have to learn the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd tier skills that precede "Stealth" before you can even begin to start working on Stealth. Additionally, certain skills will have prerequisites beyond Tier requirements. This means that you'll need to have a certain proficiency in a skill or skills, sometimes in entirely other trees, before you can begin working the skill. A good example of this is "Advanced Medicine" under the "Alchemy" tree. Before you can begin learning "Advanced Medicine" you must also posses a proficiency in "Botany" under the "Harvesting" tree. The actual method to gain skills (gain-by-use, purchasing skills, etc) is currently undecided. They all have their pros and cons and we may very well end up going with a hybrid system of sorts. If you're still stumped, perhaps the diagram below will help...
How will this effect using skills? In most cases skills are being divided into multiple skills. To help explain this we'll go over the "Alchemy" tree.
Alchemy
Herbology
Medicine
Advanced Medicine
Potions
Explosives
Poisons
Currently when you learn Alchemy, you have access to all of these things. However the new
system will work like such:First you'll learn and practice in "Alchemy". This will get you access to the most basic of potions, and other alchemy related items. To advanced further in the tree you'll have to decide what direction your interested in going. If you want to create better beneficial potions and items like "greater healing" potions you'll next need to learn and practice in Medicine. And if you would want to continue down this path, you would actually next have to learn "Herbology", as it is one of the prerequisites for "Advanced Medicine". Basically a 1st Tier skill will get you the very basics in the entire tree... a 2nd Tier will advanced you further along a certain path, giving you moderate skill level in the path you have specialized in. And so on down the path. One of the key benefits to the end user is that this division allows skill gain to be slightly faster than what you may be used to on a traditional "gain-by-use" shard (OSI is a good example). Since your not wasting time and energy learning something you do not want and/or need. I'm not sure how fast or slow skill gain is currently on Nightscape so I won't compare it to that. Basically, if your only interested in Alchemy for crafting Greater Heal potions you can expect to achieve that goal much sooner, but if you want to be a professional Alchemist and do it all, expect it to take slightly longer than standard shard as mentioned before. What is the "Instinctive" tree for and how is it different? This is actually a special tree, in that you do not have to learn and/or practice any of the "skills" listed under the "Instinctive" tree. You'll have access to all the skills, or abilities, listed under "all races" in addition to any skills or abilities listed under the name of your race. If the item listed is an actual skill, also found in another tree(s), you would start with a variable amount of points in that skill. A good example of this would be the Dwarven race that has a fundamental understanding of "Blacksmithing". This means that all new Dwarves would start with a small amount of "Blacksmithing" already developed. Be sure to note that that with all Instinctive skills you must still do the work to get to that skill, no matter the position in the tree. In this case learning "Metal Working" first. What happens to already existing characters? At this early stage in development it is difficult to say, but there are two likely routes. Either all characters existing at the time of change-over will have their skills wiped, or they will be upgraded to the new system preserving their existing skills as best as possible. Certainly the later of the two will be strived for, but it can not always be guaranteed. How will the "Knowledge" tree affect other skills? The "Knowledge" tree consists of skills we like to call "in-direct skills". This means they have no direct benefit or product but do have an indirect affect on other skills. Those skills listed under Knowledge in the 2nd Tier will be pre-requisites for many other skills (or provide a bonuses) and generally are relatively easy to learn. However anything beyond the 2nd Tier will be very difficult to learn but they are offset by the fact that they would provide significant bonuses to any skills they affected. A good 2nd Tier example is "Basic Mathematics". Certain skills like "Alchemy" would require that you know Basic Mathematics, while other skills like "Carpentry" do not require it but would get a boost from it. No 3rd Tier skills are currently defined for the Knowledge tree but one being considered is "Linguistics". Being in the 3rd Tier it would be a very difficult skill to learn, but it would give significant advances to skills such as "Inscription" or "Theology". It is important to keep in mind however that the entire Knowledge tree is still very experimental at this point any could very easily be cut from the Skills Tree system. |
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Index Shard Status Media World of Nightscape Races of Nightscape Skill Trees Staff List |
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Reminders | |
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April 09th, 2006 @ 1:20PM EST Latest Version: 4.0.6a (Patch # 023) Useful Links: Message Board IRC Chat Developmental File Server Tips and Suggestions: Run frequent virus scans & change your account password periodically to ensure the greatest amount of account security! NEVER give out your password. No one at Nightscape will ever ask for your Nightscape game-account password... for ANY reason!  Game voluntarily rated. Content may change during game play. |
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