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Masteries are skills that don't do anything by themselves, but add bonuses to other skills.
Your skills will still work without masteries, but will be less effective or do less damage. Also, a
high mastery may give you special bonuses such as golden chaos portals. Masteries also apply to potions that you quaff, racial skills, and the effects of items. Everyone can gain and benefit from any mastery, even though all masteries have a certain class and group of skills in mind. Thus a warrior can gain and practice Shielding mastery to get extra benefit from those sanctuary potions, although the mastery is designed with the protection spells of the cleric in mind. They are cheap to gain, but expensive to practice, and seldom improve with use. The intention therefore, is for you to specialize in only a few masteries, mainly those useful to your class. |
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Each skill has a specific mastery assigned to it. When you use the skill,
that mastery will be checked automatically, and any bonuses calculated and added. There
will usually be no special message announcing its use or success. You can check the
help file for the skill to see which mastery it falls under. How you get the mastery is just like any other skill. First, you must gain the mastery. Then, you need to practice it, since a higher mastery gives more chance of a larger bonus. You can practice it up to the standard max, after which it improves when you use the skills under it. |
| Combat skills | Defense |
Combat Focus (Attack Spells) |
Non combat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Acrobatics Body building Quickstrike |
Illusionary might Piety Shielding Anullment |
Acid focus Cold focus Electric focus Energy focus |
Fire focus Light focus Malediction Unholy essence Weather watching |
Conjuring Conveyance Enchantment Persuasion Survival |
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This is my classification of the masteries, there will be some overlap, but
I feel this is the most accurate and practical way. The main idea of classifying is so that at a glance, you can pick masteries suitable for your class and playing style. We'll see this system in action during the next section. In the meantime, let's go through what each mastery does. ACROBATICS Type: Combat Helpfile: A mastery affecting skills that require a high level of agility. A high learning in acrobatics will improve your chances of lands attacks such as kick and trip, and, improve your chances of dodging incoming attacks. Main effects: Dodging attacks. Main classes: Thief, Warrior, Ranger, Paladin. Skills: QUICKSTRIKE Type: Combat Helpfile: A mastery affecting how quickly a warrior can prepare their weapon for the next strike. Higher learning in quickstrike will result in averaging more hits per round. Main effects: Increases chance of hitting Main classes: Warrior, Thief, Ranger, Paladin. Skills: BODY BUILDING Type: Combat Helpfile: A mastery affecting how hard you hit. Quite simply, the more time you spend building up your strength the harder you will hit. Main effects: Increases damage of attack Main classes: Warrior, Thief, Ranger, Paladin. Skills: PIETY Type: Defense Helpfile: Affects skills and spells that require the assistance of your gods. The more pious an adventurer becomes, the more favor the gods will grant them. Main effects: Protection? **still unclear** Main classes: ?? Skills: ILLUSIONARY MIGHT Type: Defense Helpfile: Training this mastery helps the spellcaster conjure imagines and illusions to fool their victims. Main effects: Defensive spells improved Main classes: Cleric, Psi, Mage Skills: SHIELDING Type: Defense Helpfile: A mastery affecting protective spells. A high learning in shielding will improve the armor class given by many protective spells. Main effects: Defensive spells improved Main classes: Cleric, Psi Skills: ANULLMENT Type: Defense Helpfile: A mastery affecting cancellation type magic. A high learning in anullment will improve your chances of dispelling magical enhancements and removing maledictions. Main effects: Removing maledictions. Dispelling opponents. Main classes: Cleric, Mage, Psi, Paladin Skills: ACID FOCUS Type: Offensive Spells Helpfile: Main effects: Main classes: Mage, Cleric Skills: COLD FOCUS Type: Offensive Spells Helpfile: Main effects: Main classes: Mage Skills: ELECTRIC FOCUS Type: Offensive Spells Helpfile: Main effects: Main classes: Mage Skills: ENERGY FOCUS Type: Offensive Spells Helpfile: Main effects: Main classes: Skills: FIRE FOCUS Type: Offensive Spells Helpfile: Main effects: Main classes: Mage Skills: LIGHT FOCUS Type: Offensive Spells Helpfile: Affects light based combat spells. A high learning in light focus will improve the damage done by color spray, prismatic spray and similar spells. Main effects: Affects light based combat spells Main classes: Mage Skills: MALEDICTION Type: Offensive Spells Helpfile: Main effects: Main classes: Mage, Cleric Skills: UNHOLY ESSENCE Type: Offensive Spells Helpfile: This mastery helps those more inclined towards the darker side of their characters. Many skills and spells unflicting unholy and negative damage on the victim will be enhanced by the caster's unholy essence. Main effects: Increase effect of negative based spells. Main classes: Mage Skills: WEATHER WATCHING Type: Offensive Spells Helpfile: Affects skills and spells that reply on weather patterns in order to work. A spellcaster that is highly trained in weather watching will have the command of nature at their fingertips. Main effects: Increase damage by weather based spells. Main classes: Ranger Skills: CONJURING Type: Non-combat Helpfile: A high learning in conjuring will improve the caster's chances of creating objects and sometimes even helpers out of thin air. Main effects: Main classes: Mage Skills: ENCHANTMENT Type: Non-combat Helpfile: A high learning in enchantment will improve the chances of successfully enchanting armor and weapons, solidying items, etc. Main effects: Main classes: Mage, Psi Skills: CONVEYANCE Type: Non-combat Helpfile: A mastery affecting skills and spells that are used to transfer something around the world. A high learning in conveyance will improve your chances of transporting to a target, bringing them to you and generally moving things around the game. Main effects: Main classes: Mage, Cleric, Psi Skills: PERSUASION Type: Non-combat Helpfile: A high learning in persuasion will improve your changes of charming a victim, getting a shopkeeper to haggle with you, etc. Main effects: Main classes: Thief Skills: SURVIVAL Type: Non-combat Helpfile: Affects your ability to survive the elements. A high learning in survival will improve your chances of building campfires, locating food, etc. Main effects: Main classes: Ranger Skills: |
| Warriors, Thieves | Clerics, Psionicists | Mages | Rangers, Paladins | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Must get |
Acrobatics Body building Quickstrike |
Shielding Piety 1 combat focus |
Fire focus Malediction Unholy Essence |
Quickstrike Body building Shielding | Nice to get |
Shielding |
Acrobatics Anullment Illusionary might Malediction |
Shielding 1 or 2 more Focuses. |
Acrobatics 1 or 2 Combat focii |
Relevant but less useful |
Persuasion [Thi] |
Conveyance |
Conjuring Enchantment |
Survival [Ran] Weather watching [Ran] |
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Which masteries to get? Masteries have a significant effect on the game, and everyone should practice at least a few basic masteries. How many is up to you - I've included 3 "must haves" for each class, but any number from 2 to 4 should be fine. Multiclassers will have to take more to get full advantage from their skills. However, take too many masteries, and you'll be spreading your pracs too thinly; take too few, and you'll have many skills without masteries. Warrior types should get fewer masteries because (1)Only 3 masteries are really relevant, unless they're going to get spelled up or quaff a lot, and (2)they'll get fewer practices than magic users when levelling because of a lower Wis. Spellcasters, especially Mages, have more spells, and therefore a much larger range of masteries. Most should get a couple of defensive masteries, and a couple more offensive masteries that offer a fair number of spells, good spread throughout the levels, and decent spell effects. For example, I've chosen Fire Focus + Unholy Essence for the Mage since that gives many spells, which are at most 20 levels apart, and has useful spells all the way up to 189 (Banishment and Immolate). Rangers and Paladins, by having so many varied skills across masteries, will need to practice more masteries. Given their limited trains, they should train the "combat skills" type masteries first since these have more benefit and a wider coverage. Defensive spell masteries are also good, and train your spell Combat Focus masteries only if you plan on using a lot of combat skills and have extra pracs. Remorts naturally have skills in the most masteries, so they need to train the most masteries, probably 5 or 6. Since remorts don't get enough extra trains for all their masteries, you'll probably have to train the "combat skill" and "defensive" masteries first, just like rangers/paladins. Looking at the table above, simply train the top row from left to right (i.e the 3 Warrior ones, then add the 3 Cleric ones, and finally the 3 mage masteries when you get the trains) Some spells, while very powerful, are the only useful spell in that mastery. To gain that mastery and practice it up to 60% will cost 10 trains, which isn't worth it for a little bonus to 1 or 2 spells. This is especially true for the non-combat spells. Examples of these include Gate (Conveyance), or Antimagic (Enchantment). How should I train/practice my masteries? My recommendation is that you gain only the masteries you need, and practice them once your stats have reached a decent base. At lower levels, stats are more important, but once your stats go beyond about 40, masteries become more useful. You can choose between getting 3 masteries and practicing them equally, or gaining 1 at a time and practicing them until about 50% before moving to the next. I recommend training the Physical Combat Masteries simultaneously, but training the Magic Focus Masteries individually. Each practice will increase your mastery by 2 or 3%. You can train a mastery up to 75%, just like any other skill. Some masteries work on a "pass/fail" basis (i.e. Either it works, or it doesn't), others work on a "percentage effect" basis (eg. Extra damage of <mastery%>). Using spells without Masteries All spells will still work without masteries, just like they did in Ver One!!. While it is human nature to not "waste" a mastery, sometimes to specially train a mastery just for 1 spell is more wasteful! (see above). Banshee wail (#16) without a mastery, will do more damage than Magic missile(#1), no matter how good your mastery for magic missile is! One of the few times this may affect your choice is if you already have a combat spell with a trained mastery (eg Flaming Sphere (#76)), and a new spell without a mastery comes along (eg Talon #83). In this case, you may choose to continue using your old spell, and save the pracs instead. We haven't had enough experience yet to find out which is better, so try asking on your class channel. Given this era of limited trains, I feel that spending pracs on non-combat masteries has a low priority. Firstly masteries rarely add anything significant to the spell (even for Chaos Portal). Secondly, if you fail, just try again, or wait a little longer - it's non-combat after all. Thirdly, you can always get someone with a high mastery to do it for you (eg Solidify). For all these reasons therefore, I would put off practicing non-combat masteries until I'm SH and have settled all my other stats and masteries. Specific details about.... Level 10: Should have capped major stats at 25 by now. Level 10+: Quickstrike, Acrobatics - Gain and train to 20% Level 20+: Shielding, Bodybuilding - Gain and train to 20% Level 25: Resume training statistics Level 30+: All 4 above - Train to 25% Level 40+: All 4 above - Train to 35% Level 50+: Piety - Gain and Train to 30% Level 60+: Fire Focus - Gain and Train to 20%. First 4 above - Train to 40% Level 70+: Anullment - Gain and Train to 10%. Piety - Train to 40% Level 80+: Train Fire Focus to 40% Level 90+: Train First 4 above to 50% Level 100: Train Anullment to 30%, Fire Focus to 50%
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