• Chapters
• Getting Started
• Survival Guide
• The Basics
• The Combat System
• Advanced Features
• Player Races
• Experience and Advancement
• The Spell System
• The Skills System
• The Guild System
• The Safe Trading System
• Adventuring 101
• Questing
• Player Groups
• Playing Spellcasters
• Crime and Punishment
• The Player Warning System
• Advanced Command Editing
• All Commands
• Atmospheres
• All Quests
• All Spells
• Autobagging
• Glossary
• Player FAQ

The Wyvern Skills System

Wyvern has a rich, flexible Skills system with dozens of skills that you can specialize in.

Contents

• Skills Overview
  • Trainers
    • Training Costs
• Magical Skills
  • Primary Magic Skills
    • Lore
    • Meditation
  • Magical Arts
    • Conjuration
    • Evocation
    • Incantation
    • Enchantment
  • Magical Elements
    • Fire
    • Water
    • Air
    • Earth
    • Life
    • Death
    • Mind
    • Spirit
• Combat Skills
  • Berserking
  • Dodging
  • Find Weakness
  • Healing
  • Range Weapons
  • Strength
  • Thrown Weapons
  • Unarmed Combat
• Other Skills
  • Blacksmith
  • Forestry
  • Jeweler
  • Lock Picking
  • Merchant
  • Oratory
  • Spirit Travelling
  • Zoology

Skills Overview

Your character can specialize by training in various skills. Each time you go up a level, you get a few Skill Points, which you can spend on any skills you like.

All races except humans start with a few points already allocated in certain skills. For example, dwarves and stone giants have a point each in the jeweler skill, which allows them to appraise gems and precious stones.

To see what skills you currently have, type skills.

Trainers

You almost always learn skills from Trainers, which are special Non-Player Characters (NPCs) located throughout the game. You can usually tell an NPC is a Trainer by chatting with the NPC. The Trainer will tell you what skill he/she/it can train you in, and how much it costs.

To learn a skill from a Trainer, stand next to the Trainer and type train. If you have enough available Skill Points and gold coins, you will transfer one Skill Point into that skill.

Training Costs

Skill training costs are now on a sliding scale. The higher you want to train, the more expensive it gets. The calculation is as follows:

• for skill levels 1-5, you pay the base cost
• for levels 6-10, you pay (base*level)/2
• for levels 11-15, you pay (base*level)
• for levels 16-20, you pay (base*level)*4
• for levels 20-25, you pay (base*level)*10
• above level 25, you pay (base*level)*25

As an example, let's say we have a skill that costs 1000gp as its base cost. Here's what you would pay to train for each successive level in the skill:

• levels 1-5 would cost 1000gp each
• level 6 would cost 3000gp
• level 7 would cost 3500gp
• level 8 would cost 4000gp
• level 9 would cost 4500gp
• level 10 would cost 5000gp
• level 11 would cost 11000gp
• level 12 would cost 12000gp
• level 13 would cost 13000gp
• level 14 would cost 14000gp
• level 15 would cost 15000gp
• level 16 would cost 64000gp
• level 17 would cost 68000gp

etc.

The rest of this guide describes the skills currently available in the game, and what they do. We add new skills every once in a while, so check back occasionally to see if there are new ones available.

Note: we often use the terms "mana", "energy" and "spell points" (sp) interchangeably. They all mean the same thing.

Magical Skills

The most important magical skill is Lore, which allows you to learn and cast spells. The remaining magical skills improve your spellcasting in various ways.

Primary Magic Skills

Lore

This is the primary magical skill. It determines the level of spells you can cast. You can cast spells up to the level of your Lore skill, or your Experience Level, whichever one is lower. For example, in order to cast Lore 5 spells, you have to be at least 5th level, and have at least 5 skill points in the Lore skill.

When you train in Lore, you are given a number of Lore Points which you can spend on spells. Each spell requires as many Lore Points as its Lore Level. Learning a Lore 1 spell requires you to spend 1 Lore Point, a Lore 2 requires 2, and so on. So, for example, if you have 6 Lore points available to spend, you could learn any of the following combinations:

• one Lore 6 spell
• one Lore 5 and one Lore 1
• three Lore 2 spells
• two Lore 3 spells
• four Lore 1 and one Lore 2 spell
• any other combination that adds up to 6 lore points

The Lore skill has a restriction that you cannot train in it higher than your current experience level. Most other skills do NOT have this restriction.

Meditation

Your Meditation skill automatically increases the rate at which you recover spell points. The higher your Meditation skill, the faster you regain your spell points. It's the magical equivalent of Regeneration.

Magical Arts

The Magical Arts reduce the mana cost for casting that type of spell. The higher your skill rating in an Art, the less mana it takes to cast spells of that Art.

Conjuration

Conjurations are spells that produce long-lasting objects or effects out of thin air, such as Summoning spells and Creation spells.

Evocation

Evocations are spells that produce blasts, cones, bolts and other damaging (but temporary) effects. Examples: fireball, icestorm.

Incantation

Incantations are spells that produce more or less immediate effects, such as cure poison, dispel confusion, teleportation, find traps and identify.

Enchantment

Enchantments produce temporary or lasting magical effects on other objects, monsters or players. Examples: enchant weapon, darksight, flame blade, free action.

Magical Elements

The Elements improve your casting ability with spells of those elements. For example, the Fire skill might make your fire spells do more damage. Spells can have more than one element — for example, Berserking is an enchantment of Fire and Mind. If you have skills in both elements of a spell, you'll get extra benefit from both of them.

Fire

The Element Fire is used in spells of fire, flame and heat.

Water

The Element Water is used in spells of ice, water and cold.

Air

The Element Air is used in spells of air and electricity.

Earth

The Element Earth is used in spells of physical materials.

Life

The Element Life is used in spells of healing and peace.

Death

The Element Death is used in spells of death and destruction.

Mind

The Element Mind is used in spells of obfuscation and discovery.

Spirit

The Element Spirit is used in spells of magical energy and power.

Combat Skills

Combat skills improve your ability to fight monsters, either in hand-to-hand or by using range weapons or thrown weapons.

As with all skills, the more Skill Points you spend on a given skill, the better you'll get at it. Some skill have a maximum cap that you can't go beyond. The trainers will tell you if you've reached your limit in a skill.

There are skills for a variety of weapon types, including swords, blades, axes, clubs, and polearms. Improving these skills increases the chances of hitting an opponent as well as the damage you can do.

Berserking

This skill dramatically improves your combat abilities while it's turned on. However, while you're berserk, you can't see your current HP level (not even using the 'score' command). Therefore it's easy to die if you're berserk, and you have to be cautious when using it.

After berserking, you have to wait for a while before you can use it again. Each point you add to the skill reduces the time you have to wait.

The duration of your berserk rage is controlled by your Berserking skill. (The spell version uses Fire and Mind skills.) Your spell-bungling chance increases while berserk. Your skill level determines your strength, speed, and chance of bungling spells.

Dodging

This skill makes you harder for opponents to hit. It also makes you harder to hit with range weapons and thrown weapons.

Find Weakness

This skill increases your chance to score a critical hit on your opponent. A critical hit does extra damage to your opponent, and in some cases can penetrate an opponent's armor when a normal attack couldn't.

Healing

This skill increases the rate at which you recover hit points.

Range Weapons

This skill improves your accuracy with firing weapons such as bows, crossbows, blowguns and slings.

Strength

This skill makes your character stronger, which has two effects:

• You can carry more equipment without slowing down.
• You hit harder in combat if your strength is high enough.

If you can carry 70 pounds without slowing, your strength is 70, which is the norm for humans in the game. For each 10 strength points above that, you get +1 smash damage on all your hits. So giants, for example, with a strength of 140, get +7 smash damage on all their hits.

The Strength skill makes you 10 percent stronger for each point you add to the skill. So if you're a pixie and you train one point, your strength will go from 30 to 33. A giant would go from 150 to 165.

Thrown Weapons

This skill improves your accuracy with hurled weapons such as spears, javelins, throwing stars, darts and knives.

Unarmed Combat

This skill improves your ability to fight with your fists, claws, or whatever you have.

Other Skills

Blacksmith

This skill allows you to appraise armor and weapons. With one point in the skill, you can get an accurate appraisal of how damaged the item is. At higher levels in the skill, you get more and more information about how good the item is, allowing you to make better comparisons between different kinds of weapons or armor.

Forestry

This skill allows you to move quickly through forests, which normally slow you down quite a bit. We don't recommend spending skill points on this skill initially, since it's not terribly useful, and you can get the ability through magic items like Rings of Forestry. Elves have this skill when they start.

Jeweler

This skill allows you to identify gems and precious stones. Only one Skill Point is valuable in this skill right now, but we may add new abilities (such as gem cutting) for it later.

Lock Picking

This skill lets you pick locks, including locks on doors and chests. To pick locks, you have to have at least one point in this skill. You also have to have a Lockpick, which you can buy in a general store.

To pick a lock, type pick lock, or just pick. If more than one locked object is near you, you can specify which one by saying pick chest, pick door, pick door 2, and so on.

Locks have different difficulty levels. Your chance of picking a lock depends on two things: your lockpicking skill, and the quality of your lockpick. The higher the combination of the two, the higher chance you'll have of picking the lock. If you fail to pick the lock, you can retry. However, some locks will be too complicated for you and retrying won't help. (The game will tell you if the lock is too complex.)

The highest you level can get at lockpicking is 20, even if you have magical bonuses.

Lock picks eventually wear out and need to be replaced. Each time you attempt to pick a lock, it does some damage to the lock pick, regardless of whether the attempt was successful.

The Knock spell can also open locks. It's very similar to lock picking, except that you don't use a lockpick, and it uses your Mind skill to figure out whether you can pick the lock. The Knock spell doesn't tell you if the lock is too complex to open with your skill level.

Merchant

This skill improves the prices you get for buying and selling items in shops.

Oratory

This skill increases the rate at which you recover shout points. Every 10 seconds, you recover one shout point. You recover one extra point for each skill point in this skill, so at 20 points in the skill, you get 21 shout points back every 10 seconds.

Spirit Travelling

This skill helps you in two ways:

• It reduces the amount of XP you lose when you die.
• It gives you more starting HP after you die.

This is a useful skill if you die a lot, or plan on dying a lot.

Zoology

Zoology gives your character a wealth of information about beast lore, taxonomy and related arts, allowing you to get information about monsters you see. The more points you have in the skill, the better information you get.

The skill is enabled automatically when you look at a monster. The closer you are to the monster, the better information you will get. Your effective skill rating drops the further you are from the monster.

The following chart shows what things you can see at each skill level:

At levels higher than 12, you can get accurate information from further and further away.

Notice that you get a new ability with every 2nd point in the skill. At level 2, you can still only see the monster's approximate difficulty level, but you see it from one square further away from the monster (so you don't have to stand right next to it).

Note: to look at a monster from a distance, right-click on it.