Character advancement:

Skill system
-Advancement plans
-Perhaps heartbeat should be given a seperate section?

Overmaxxing:

Click here to read about the basics of advancing the many different skills RoD has to offer.

Stat system:

Each stat goes up to a maximum of 25. The stats and some of their effects are as follows:

Constitution helps determine your health (HP).

Dexterity affects a multitude of skills like dodging and all of covert. It also helps determine the damage and max GP in dextrous guilds like ninjas.

Strength helps determine how much you can carry and affects such skills as parry. It also plays a major role in determining damage and max GP for fighters, pirates, war wizards, dark knights, paladins...

Wisdom affects how efficient your search is, how much mana you have if you are in a faith based guild like clerics or priests, and your spells' efficiency if you are in said guilds.

Intelligence is important for both max GP and spell efficiency for magic based guilds.

Stat enhancing:

The goal of permanent stat enchancing is to reach a minimum of 18 in all important stats so that one can reach 25 with potions.

Stat training:
One can train stats in the guild, check the ingame help file for some more information. Remember to train 5 stat points before you leave the newbie guild. Stat points trained in newbie guild will not tax you. Many choose to train in stats other than your final guild's main stat and also do the same with stat points from quests. The reason is that you can use training in the guild for your main stat and not be taxed as hard.

Stat quests:
There are currently three stat quests in play: One in Enquar, one in Mystic Keep and one that goes over three continents, but starts in Hylar.

Stat items:
There are several stat items in play. Some give a temporary boost, while others give a boost as long as the item is worn. Examples of the former type are yohimbe bark (consumable), ring of power and ring of speed. Examples of the latter are badge of might and opal ring.

Potions:
Ebony potions are found on two different mobs and give a temporary boost to wisdom that stacks. Various NPC potion shops offer potions that may boost your stats, but the best prices and the best potions are generally found in player driven shops. Stat potions made by a skilled alchemist can add up to 7 to each stat.

Stat dropping:

While on the subject of stats, let's briefly mention that players, NPCs or even time can drop your stats. For the two former the drop is temporarily, while for the latter it is not really a stat drop, but more a loss of a temporary stat boost. A wizard's Prismatic Spray, an occultist's Vile Curse or a paladin's Punishment of Severan are just three of the spells that can drop your stats temporarily. In addition certain abilities like a ninja's Dim Mak can do the same, or even an org ability like the Symbiotic Fury of the Chaos Legions. While the drop is temporary, it may still stack and become a life-threatoning issue. The cure is often found in a small bottle tagged "restore water".

Vitality:

Vitality is a skill tree all characters depend upon. Here's a short description of each sub-skill:

Vitality.physical.endurance (VPE): Affects your maximum hit point score (HP) together with your constitution and racial bonus.

Vitality.physical.healing (VPH): Affects how many hit points you recover each round and how much you gain from healing items. It also affects your line in que for attacks if you are in a fighting type guild.

Vitality.mental.endurance (VME): Affects your maximum guild point score (GP) together with your main guild stat (intellect for magic users, wisdom for faith users etc) and racial bonus.

Vitality.mental.concentration (VMC): Affects how many guild points you recover each round and how much you gain from mana items like cyan potions. It also affects your line in que for attacks (and spells) if you are in a magical guild.

The cost of various guild abilities steers its members in a certain direction when it comes to vitality advancement. A wizard might want to cast both defensive, misc and offensive spells in a combat round, consuming large amounts of mana while a fighter only performs his offensive strike. The wizard therefore needs more mana than a fighter and advances VME further than the fighter. How much further only hands on experience can teach you.

Should you regret your advance, then know that the best solution may not be to refresh, but to ask a psionicist to reset only that tree. One common way to advance the last subskill of vitality (VPE or VME) is to advance one level, check "cost all" for max obtainable level, advance one more level, check again and so on. Max obtainable level will rise until it peaks and drops. By advancing one level at a time you will find when it just peaked. After finding said level one simply collects enough XP to take the rest of the advancement in one go.

Advanced overmaxing:

North of Pesvint, deep in the Valeris Forest, you can find a truly unique monster named Soulskinner. You can fight him if you dare, but don't hope to defeat him because he is known to flee the scene when he is about to loose a battle. Killing this demon is as hard as it is pointless. Your goal is to inflict minimum damage and survive long enough for him to work his magic on you. Sometime during the fight he will drain your mind of one point in whatever skill you are most proficient with at the time.

What this means is, if your fighting skill is 26 and your vitality is at 31, Soulskinner will remove one point in vitality for each time you visit him until it reaches your fighting skill level. Bear in mind however, that he will work his magic on you no more than ten times, so plan ahead!

Before proceeding, know this: - The gain from taking deaths and/or soulskinner in your advancement is minimal. It is nothing you should concern yourself with unless you have advanced to level 415 at least once and wish to fine tune your character. Also, read the http://www.rod.org/wiki?page=/overmax page before you proceed if you haven't already.

The usual way to do this is to advance deep enough to expose all the sub-skills you wish to overmax and then let Soulskinner remove those unwanted subskills: As an occultist you might want to max out summoning and cursing, then while you do so, let Soulskinner take enchanting, charming and healing back to zero before you max "spells". The benefit from this is slightly higher levels in your main areas. In our example we would gain six levels in cursing and summoning compared to not using Soulskinner based on occult.spells only. This method typically comes instead of or in addition to taking deaths to lower skills.

Warning! Using Soulskinner can be somewhat time consuming and it is not really necessary. Consider it an option for fine tuning your character, something advanced players often are concerned with.

When using deaths for overmaxing, remember that the main skill you drop needs to be over 35 when you take deaths (and raise), and that if several are over 35, then you can loose skill points in all those trees. Say that you advance sharp to 300 and want blunt and unarmed dropped from 15 back to 0 for a better overmax. Check that fighting is at 35 or higher when you die and take deaths first, then soulskinner last since deaths are skill dependant (in that higher skills when you die means you can loose more in one death).

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Page last modified Fri Feb 29 09:57:15 2008 by Fenrir

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