Guides:Tips for Skills
Here is the 'Tips for Skills' page. You can come to this page and put in info on how to raise a certain skill, e.g. what are the tricks of the trade and you can ask for help raising a skill.
Contents
General
Typical rule of thumb for optimal overall skill gain is creating items with a chance of 50% (as shown on the item's menu), or improving items 10 quality (ql) higher than the related skill.
In some skills and crafts there will be no actual displayed creation chance. Mining to cite one example.
Improving - Having the best tools and raw materials (resources) you can get your claws on is best. In addition, finding the one item in the skill that uses the least amount of raw materials for improving is desirable.
Creation - Having a creation chance around 50% seems to give the best skill gain. This chance is calculated based on a number of factors to varying degrees: skill, raw material ql, tool ql, and etc. The exact emphasis can differ from item to item. Typically the quality of the parts and tools have the most impact with skill playing a close second.
Enchantments - Circle of Cunning (CoC) and Wind of Ages (WoA) are both extremely helpful, except where specifially noted otherwise.
Blacksmithing
To get started it's best to have a forge of decent QL and good QL tools. This ensures that your forge will remain hot for longer and heat things faster, and that you will have less of a chance of failing while imping.
What I find handy when skilling up is to make multiple copies of an item and work on them all simultaneously. If you are also a miner or have ready access to unlimited ore, then you can work on any items you want. If you only have limited access to ore and/or are only working for skill, then your best bet is to create and improve needles. They use .001 lump to create, use hardly anything to imp, and you can fit a hundred in a bowl or jar.
Skill gain is faster the more difficult the work; improving items to 30 points below your level won't generate skillgain as fast as improving items to 10 below your skill level, and so forth.
Carpentry
To raise carpentry the best way is building houses or grinding sub skills like fine carpentry, bowyery and fletching. Don't use Wind of Ages on your mallet when you're building, as it results in reduced skillgain.
For help in building houses, it is strongly recommended that you visit The "how do I build a house?" guide.
Digging/Terraforming
To grind digging skill up, use a good Circle of Cunning shovel and try not to keep your eye on the skillgain; trust me it seems like you get your skill up faster. Look for an area you want to flatten or terraform, and then dig the areas needed and dump the dirt in areas needed. For example:-
You want a bit of land to be flat and you find out some of it is already flat so you dig the areas are not flat.
100--------Leave the same
100--------Leave the same
150-------- Dig 50 here
100--------Leave the same
100--------Leave the same
If there is only a small bit that needs terraforming then expand the area. Cut some trees down around the edge to make a 5x5 flat surface into a 10x10. Do this as much as you can and your skill will shoot up.
Remember don't look at the skills until you have finished at least a 5x5 surface
Note: Using the "Flatten" command will give A LOT more skill than simply digging. However its not as productive to randomly flatten areas.
For more information see the following guides Digging and Guides/FlatRaising
Farming
The best way to grind your farming skill is to start with Bread crops or Wemp. (Oat, Wheat & Barley) You may wonder why, but the reason is that you ALWAYS gain seeds for replanting.
To get started so should you start with a 10x10 field for maximum skill gain. Get a small barrel and LOTS of time and you are set. (Read the Farming article for common farming knowledge.)
Fighting
There's two ways to train fighting, the safe way and the dangerous way:
I recommend using the safe way until around 10 fighting, then go off hunting.
Safe Way
Create a practice doll and equip a shaft. Then beat it senseless for a bit, keeping its damage below 20 at all times. Never, EVER use a true weapon, especially a sword, on a practice doll. It's a complete waste of a good weapon and destroys the practice doll in no time. Not recommended.
Dangerous Way
Go hunting. That's it. Just go hunting. You first want to try hunting down simple farm animals such as pigs, pheasants, roosters, bulls, cows, etc. Even wild cats work at the start. At around 10 fighting you want to get some leg protection and hunt down wolves. The wolves aim for the legs alot, so leg protection will save you health in the end.
Leatherworking
To leatherwork properly you will need; a needle, an awl, some leather, a leather knife and a mallet.
The best way to begin your leatherworking career is to make a leather belt. This is because leather belts are the cheapest(dont take much leather) to make and you will most likely not fail. From then, get a piece of leather of high-ish QL and improve the belt until you need another tool. Keep improving it and you will gain skill. Once you have a higher chance on other items, make lots of gloves and improve them all to 15QL. Keep doing this with higher dificulty items and once your skill reaches 10-15. Try and stud some of them (it takes 0.2 kg of rivets to stud ALL leather items apart from leather pants which take 0.8 and leather jackets which take 0.4)
As your skill goes up you will need better QL tools. Tool QL and skill level limits your max improving QL, not the raw leather QL.
Lock Smithing
To raise lock smithing, you will need to make key form. This is achieved by using a key on clay, make sure the key is of low ql so that your success chance is around 50% for optimal skill gain. You do not need to fire the clay mold! After 25 lock smithing, the fastest way to get skill is to get a small anvil that is the right ql to get you a 50% chance to make a lockpick. A pure Circle of Cunning anvil is recommended for this.
Masonry
Building houses is said to be good skill gain, but you can't even do that until you hit 30 Masonry, and at 75 skill I personally gain no skill using my WoA/CoC trowel even after putting up 10 walls. The best way to gain skill is to simply improve grindstones and other items that fall under the Stone cutting sub-category. Many towns don't allow statue spamming, as this contributes to lag, while grindstones can fit in chests and be carried easily, which is why they are preferred. The bonus to this is that you will also have higher %s on making stone bricks and stone slabs. Imping forges and ovens is also great skill gain, but does add a large amount of clutter to an area.
Mining
To grind mining people usually ask for an insanely high ql pickaxe with Wind of Ages spell. This isn't the way to go. You want a relatively low ql pick with as much Circle of Cunning on it as possible, this will give a lot of skill if you mine rock shards with it as it heightens the difficulty and the mine time, its the mine time that improves the skill gain in mining, longer mine time = more skill.
Mining rock shards is easier for a new player up to a decent skill level (20 -30?) but from then on if you want to grind mining I would suggest mining on an ore vein. At around 30 skill, mining iron may be the best option for you, but as you get up to around 40 or even 50 in mining, you should mine Gold or Silver. I would not recommend you start off mining on gold or silver because you are very unlikely to get any ore above ql 1.00 (Mining a ql 1.00 ore/shard gives no skillgain whatsoever)
Weaponsmithing
Do not care about Blades smithing and Weapon heads smithing skills, that skills you will get while making actual weapons over time. Best item to skill weaponsmithing to 40 are butchering knives, imping butchering knife takes only 0,02kg of iron. First make yourself about 150-200 butchering knife blades, don't care about failures, it will pass over time. Finnish unfinished ones, do not imp blades it's a waste of time. For making blades use 1-20ql iron, anything over will be a waste. When you will make 150-200 blades also make same amount of wooden handles. Make first batch of butchering knives, use about half blades for making knives, finnish unfinished butchering knives, set youself a target ql (your actual skill in weapon smithing + 8-10 points. For example, having 10 weaponsmithing you will be able to make weapons with quality about 20). Improve all butchering knives you got to your target quality. After improving all butchering knives to certain ql you can check your skill again, set new target quality level, and proceed with improving them like 3 times. After improving all the butchering knives 3 times you should make another batch of butchering knives from the rest of the blades and wooden handles. You should notice a significant difference in success rate between two batches. Improve the second batch of butchering knives to average quality of the first batch. Then keep improving knives as your skill grows. after you gain about 30 skill in ws start thinking about making other weapons, be sure to have planty of handles
More tips:
While you're Vynora follower be sure to have altar of Vynora nearby, it's highly possible that you get 10% more skill gain. Common sense...
Use sleep bonus, after login light forge and logout, log in back when stuff in forge will be glowing from heat (for 50ql forge it takes about 10-20 minutes, ql dependent factor)
For improving try using lumps/tools with ql at most 20ql higher than improved item!
Coc/woa tools might also be a nice boost for your skilling curve...
Blades Smithing
If you feel like improving blades smithing, create 10-20 carving or butchering knife blades, and imp the blades to your skill + 5. Once you get this to about 25, there's really no point in going beyond, and start attaching them to handles and imping the tool.
Heads Smithing
If you want to improve your heads smithing skill, create 10-20 small axe heads and imp the blades to your heads smithing + 5. Once you get this to about 25, there's no point in going further and start attaching them to shafts and imping the true tool.
Wood cutting
To grind woodcutting, the best way is to get a good Circle of Cunning Hatchet and start cutting down trees in the area you want to use/ build on. Make sure you repair the axe after every 5-20 uses to raise your Repairing skill. A good idea is to go to an area that is not populated, or areas infested with unwanted tree types (i.e. fruit trees), and ask any locals before cutting down the trees; this helps to avoid angering people. If possible, harvest sprout's with a sickle and replant the trees.
