Advice on leveling skills

[ThehipsterGoron]

Aside from combats anyone have advice on leveling skills fast?

[Jaggid Edje]

Build the best classrooms that you can and have higher skilled staff do the teaching. There is no faster way to level the skills than classrooms.

[ThehipsterGoron]

See there in lies the struggle lol im on my first long term batch for teachers

[Jaggid Edje]

It's especially slow for that last skill rank if you have apprentices that have relics which give them + to maximum skill rank. Insanely slow until you have the apprentice specialist classrooms. I'm at that point right now in my current game. I have yet to find any faster way though, especially for the elements that do not have any consistent work activity for students to engage in.

[Naecabon]

Each Element typically has a corresponding grind-able action they can do to power level their skills. Teachers will gain experience while teaching but it is very slow. Students will learn quickly if you put the X multiplier to Teaching relic on their corresponding teacher - but for Teachers rounding out their final 7/8 skill points, it can take a while. Here's what I use -

Fire - Cooking, obviously. But Hunting also works - have them solo the Fog Squids / Breathsteakers as much as possible. AFAIK, destroying actually also works - you can set a whole bunch of trees to Destroy and prioritize it for them and they'll get to work. Fire is probably the easiest.

Water - Potions and Drinks - craft more than you need. The high level Potions give a lot of XP.

Lightning - Augury gives insane XP.

Wind - Painting

Earth -Sculptures

Dark - Quilting

Nature - Gardening is such a common activity that these guys will usually level up pretty quickly without much fancy work.

But yeah, for each of these tasks, you can just queue up a ton of extra crafts. I think I had like 60 Repair Quilted running around my base at one point when powerleveling my Dark Mage.

Side note - be sure to unequip any Relics you may have in Altars that provide bonus + to an element's activity. These do not seem to provide the corresponding experience, meaning they essentially 'leech' XP from the would-be craft. (I would get, say, 90 XP from a normally 125 XP craft when I had them slotted in, etc)

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Naecabon:

Teachers will not gain experience for teaching.

Teachers do get skill xp for teaching. It's not a lot, but they do get it. Only really useful if you have staff with a skill at 0 and you want it ranked up to 1 so that they can do other tasks.

Also worth mentioning that all of your other tips are great, but we should be clear that for students, learning in a classroom is faster than any of those other methods. The OP asked for fast, which is why I didn't go into any of that stuff. Classrooms are what is fastest for students, assuming you have good classrooms and teachers.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Naecabon:

They do not gain element XP as they teach. I tracked it. Check yourself, look at the bar before, during and after. It doesn't move.

A Mage has to actually cast to get XP, and the teachers never actually cast. Just the students.

I tracked this several times in many experiments and couldn't get XP to gain. Was hovering over to monitor current X/6400 XP in a spreadsheet and everything. Was always the same number(s) when I re-checked.

You are quite mistaken; they do cast when teaching, just not frequently, and they do get skill xp when they cast, but only for the specific skill that they are casting (same is true for students).

It's easiest to see this on the apprentice stations because only one element is cast on that one. Look at a teacher's skill xp, then wait for them to do a cast and look again. I assure you that they get skill xp. It's, literally, the only way to raise a staff member from 0 in most of the elements because they cannot do the other tasks until they have a skill of 1.

[Naecabon]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by Naecabon:

They do not gain element XP as they teach. I tracked it. Check yourself, look at the bar before, during and after. It doesn't move.

A Mage has to actually cast to get XP, and the teachers never actually cast. Just the students.

I tracked this several times in many experiments and couldn't get XP to gain. Was hovering over to monitor current X/6400 XP in a spreadsheet and everything. Was always the same number(s) when I re-checked.

You are quite mistaken; they do cast when teaching, just not frequently, and they do get skill xp when they cast, but only for the specific skill that they are casting (same is true for students).

It's easiest to see this on the apprentice stations because only one element is cast on that one. Look at a teacher's skill xp, then wait for them to do a cast and look again. I assure you that they get skill xp. It's, literally, the only way to raise a staff member from 0 in most of the elements because they cannot do the other tasks until they have a skill of 1.

I am booting up the game to test and track this for probably the 11th time now

[Naecabon]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by Naecabon:

They do not gain element XP as they teach. I tracked it. Check yourself, look at the bar before, during and after. It doesn't move.

A Mage has to actually cast to get XP, and the teachers never actually cast. Just the students.

I tracked this several times in many experiments and couldn't get XP to gain. Was hovering over to monitor current X/6400 XP in a spreadsheet and everything. Was always the same number(s) when I re-checked.

You are quite mistaken; they do cast when teaching, just not frequently, and they do get skill xp when they cast, but only for the specific skill that they are casting (same is true for students).

It's easiest to see this on the apprentice stations because only one element is cast on that one. Look at a teacher's skill xp, then wait for them to do a cast and look again. I assure you that they get skill xp. It's, literally, the only way to raise a staff member from 0 in most of the elements because they cannot do the other tasks until they have a skill of 1.

Alright you win, I have no idea why XP wasn't climbing for me previously but he casts on a rotation. Less frequently than the students and it wouldn't be an effective way to powerlevel but he's definitely casting.

[Jaggid Edje]

I'm in game and steam lets you record videos, here's a super short video that shows the teacher cast, after the student has cast a couple of times:
https://youtu.be/90Wcqipcij0

The more students you have around it, the longer between each cast of the teacher, by the way. So if you need a teacher to skill up (such as from aforementioned skill rank of 0), minimize the students being taught (and do it on a apprentice station not the basic one if you can).