Reading spell books

[Dr Duh]

Is the amount of spell knowledge gained in each reading independent of the current amount of spell knowledge?

Assuming you're a wizard and not interested in book casting, it seems you have a choice of re-reading a book in one sitting until it disappears or only re-reading once your spell knowledge drops to zero, or below some certain point.

AFAIK from looking at various sources, the reasons to not re-read while you still have spell knowledge are:
1) You expect to increase your learning stat soon.
2) You expect to be able to bless the book soon if it isn't already blessed.

The reasons to re-read until the book disappears are:
1) Your casting is more efficient so long as your spell knowledge remains above 100.
2) You don't want to lug around so many books, and don't particularly feel like managing running back and forth to a stash where you keep them while you adventure.

So, while playing a wizard, and especially at the begining of the game, I'm leaning towards just re-reading any common offensive spell books I'm going to be using constantly all in one shot so that: a) I don't have to lug extra books around, b) I keep my knowledge above 100 for as long as possible, and c) I expect to find more books before I run out of casts anyways.

What I don't know though is if the amount gained each reading depends on the current knowledge - so far it seems pretty variable and I haven't been able to pick up any patterns or trends.

[Haplo]

As a wizard, I just always read to full whenever I get a book. I'm fairly sure wizards get increased book drop rate and it's not common to run out of a spell and not have alternatives. As a druid or something, I dunno what the optimal strategy is.

I think if you read a spellbook and have something like <50 castings, you get a bonus of ~100-200 added to the first time you read it... that could be wrong though. It'd be easy to test with a few rolls of wizard.

[utuki]

You get diminishing returns the more you re-read spellbooks. Soft limit depends on learning i think. As wizard you get more book drops so its not that much of a problem but you probably want to hoard books for which you hit the soft limit.

In addition if you carry your books around they will be lost to some kind of item destruction sooner or later. I usually just re-read all non-capped spells, hauling something like teleportation for bookcasting always backfired on me so far.

[Shinae]

Bad idea to keep books in inventory for too long. They get destroyed easily. Sometimes I might hold on to one if I know I can stash it in my storage safely or I am about to identify bunch of stuff with blessed scroll of identify. I never keep them for book casting.

I think learning score increases amount of castings you learn, so you might want to stash them for later reading when you have increased your learning score. But usually I just read them to keep traveling more light.

Book casting has advantage of getting better with the said spell, but it comes with risks and higher pp cost.

[Ray Robertson]

Bookcasting doesn't increase spellpower.

[Shinae]

Originally posted by Ray Robertson:

Bookcasting doesn't increase spellpower.

My bad. Haven't done book casting much. It trains mana.

[Nyx]

I have a question about spellbooks. I mostly play combat classes so I haven't dealt with magic much, but I just had a paladin who had two books burst into flame before learning the spell and when I read the third book a pit opened at my feet. Is this normal when you're trying to read them with a semi-literate character or is there some other mechanic I don't understand?

[Ray Robertson]

Originally posted by IRL Bird of Flame:

I have a question about spellbooks. I mostly play combat classes so I haven't dealt with magic much, but I just had a paladin who had two books burst into flame before learning the spell and when I read the third book a pit opened at my feet. Is this normal when you're trying to read them with a semi-literate character or is there some other mechanic I don't understand?

Yes. Things that influence success are race, class, character level, learning, literacy, concentration, whether your character knows the spell, spell and status of the book.