Hidden Skills

[Quartermass]

I've been reading up on these hidden skils and I want to check my understanding.

If I do something that affects wizard/fire then I go up in both the hidden fire skill but also in basic wizard skill which will gain me levels. Later on when I try to do something like a fireball it will go for half of my wizard plus half of my hidden fire to determine competence.

But if I had levelled up by going poison clouds instead, which do not use fire then eventually my fireballs when I use them for the first time would be 1/2 as effective as if I had only ever used fire magic.

Have I understood this correctly?

[jayrshaw]

Hi Quartermass,

Based on my recollection of the game's mechanics, the experience that factors into fireballs is your basic Wizard skill plus the hidden Fire skill, like you indicated. However, having twice as much experience going into your fireballs won't have as huge an impact as you may be thinking [it won't make them anywhere near twice as powerful as they would be otherwise].


--Jay

[slickrcbd]

I didn't even notice that they got more powerful, but the game is really bad about giving feedback on numbers. The only thing that actually gave you numbers were weapon attacks (including punches and kicks), everything else was more or less hidden from the player.
I only found out when I discovered The DM Encyclopedia which had info on game mechanics when I went to look up what the Hellion did.
http://dmweb.free.fr/
That said, the hidden skill makes a difference when trying to cast more powerful spells. If you only use Fireball and never use OH VEN, OH KATH RA, or DES VEN, then when you do want to use those spells you might not be able to use the MON level version without some practice.
That said, I rarely use OH VEN except on wasps, and to a lessor extent trapped screamers (or a full screamer room, which amounts to the same thing). When I do use it on something else, I generally only use a LO level one since I'm usually just trying to get the monster to move. (Very handy in the Oitus room along with fear weapons. IN fact that is often the only time I use fear weapons in the game unless I'm out of mana and encounter a couatl, in which case the staff of claws comes in handy to make them retreat while I run away to sleep).
DES VEN on the other hand I use on couatls, rusters, and gigglers all the time, and on trollins when encountering only one. Two or more trollins might merit a fireball however since DES VEN is single-target and FUL IR is multi-target. If one survives I'll try swinging a weapon or throwing/shooting something and THEN maybe finishing it off with DES VEN. Same deal for Vexirks as trollins.

So I don't usually have that issue as I tend to alternate with fire and poison bolts. What I rarely use is lightning because I haven't seen it be more effective than fire or poison bolts. According to the hint manual it is supposed to work on golems and animated armor when no other offensive spells do, but I find it's better to use YA IR or YA BRO and fight them instead.

[Ameena]

I think Lightning Bolt is supposed to have a physical component to the damage as well as a fiery one, which might be why it's supposed to work better on those guys. I just use doors and melée weapons when I have to fight them though, so can't say how well any particular spell might work. Also I basically only ever use Fireball anyway, or Harm Non-Material Being if I need that instead.

[slickrcbd]

I've posted elsewhere that poison is particularly effective on trollins and gigglers, and wasps are weak to poison clouds. You can kill any wasp with an ON level poison cloud. Most wasps on level 6 can be killed with LO level clouds.

[Ameena]

And a Lo-Fireball also one-shots them, I certainly remember that from back in the day. Works the same on Munchers in CSB.

[ChristopheF]

Have I understood this correctly?

Yes you are right.

You can get confirmation in the ReDMCSB source code, file CHAMPION.C, function F0303_CHAMPION_GetSkillLevel
When it computes the skill level for a basic skill (0 to 3), it uses the experience amount in that skill.
When it computes the skill level for a hidden skill (4 to 19), it uses the average of the two experience amounts in the hidden skill and in its associated basic skill.
Casting Poison Clouds will get you experience in 3-Wizard and 19-Water skills.
Casting Fireballs will get you experience in 3-Wizard and 16-Fire skills. The power of you fireballs will benefit from your 3-Wizard skill experience acquired by casting Poison Clouds, which is added to your experience in the 16-Fire skill.

[Quartermass]

Thanks for the replies.

This confirms something to me -

If I'm going to train my companions then I need to consider not just which actions raise my level fastest - in order to improve stats and hps and mana etc, but I also need to consider what actions they will eventually be doing because I could end up with a character that is less effective in my intended role because they were trained in a different one.