Meditation Path Suggestions

[Nori]

So I'm trying to figure out what path to go. I'm not too impressed with any of the level 4,7,9 skills.
For Knowledge, the get info seems iffy in use, and the level 7 ability is redundant with my characters ability to cast Vynora spells (no priest restrictions).
However, no skill loss and the 25% boost would be nice.

Path of Insanity seems pretty meh and I don't think I'd want to go for that.

Path of Power seems ok. I'm not sure how useful immunity to traps would be, erupt/freeze can only be done in Mag's domain and I'm a Vyn priest, soo? Elemental immunity could be interesting. Would that stop you from drowning? It seems more PVP oriented though unless there are monsters out there that it would be useful when fighting?
The stamina one looks amazing though. I imagine when getting more than 3 actions it would really speed stuff up. Plus better climbing, fighting etc.

Path of Love has refresh which would certainly be useful but I am grinding up HFC sooo not sure about this one. I'm sure I'd use it though.
Enchant doesn't seem to have any good use outside of protecting grass/trees?
Love effect could definitely be useful in certain situations.
Healing hands could also be useful, though I think it pales compared to Path of Power's level 11.

Lastly Path of Hate. Rage could be useful for when you need to destroy walls, primarily for PVP but I could see some other uses. 50% damage boost is insane! Combine with a huge axe... Yeah.
Fear seems a lot like Love Effect, so could definitely be useful (especially when attacked by more than one mob).
But then we have spell immunity, which seems pretty meh unless you plan on getting into priestly battles...

Any thoughts? I'm kind of leaning Path of Power or Knowledge, though I hate getting all the abilities that I'd probably never use...

[Keyboard Crusher]

Path of Insanity 11 gives you Shield of the Gone, which in its current state essentially doubles your health pool. It may be subject to change because of it's imbalance on PvP servers on Wurm Online. I like the idea of having Teleport to get dropped in the middle of nowhere, but, well, there's little practical purpose to it.

Path of Love's Refresh ability can also be used on other players. Even if you are planning on grinding HFC, it's still an on demand, instant boost to food, water, nutrition and stamina. No need to go refill your water, or fetch (if not make) a meal. The high nutrition gives a minor boost to skill gain and lets you not have to worry about your next meal for quite a long time. The stamina boost is also invaluable if you need a burst of energy for climbing, swimming or similar. The big draw to Path of Love is probably the Enchant effect. Enchanted grass is not easily packed by grazing animals. An animal pen with a full ground of enchanted grass does not need food maintenance unless it is overcrowded. Even then, packed tiles come fairly slowly.

As for Power's stamina boost... I don't think you will notice stamina to be a major problem if you are using all of your skills (e.g. you aren't a priest or specialized). By the time you can queue up an extra action, you should have enough Body Stamina to account for it, as well as a faster skill timer in whatever you are doing. You will be starting actions with higher stamina, though, meaning less of a low-stamina penalty and thus faster actions overall. The drawback may be that skillgain is often based on timer duration, meaning that longer timers generally mean more skillgain (if I'm not mistaken - perhaps it was removed from WU).

Also, the only source of Water damage is indeed drowning, so Elemental Immunity should theoretically indeed prevent that. Not an awful lot of mobs deal elemental damage, let alone a significant amount of it to merit aiming for this skill. It would be slightly more suited towards PvP, even then it is quite niche of a pick.

Another mention for Path of Knowledge is that Get Info gets some unique stuff like food levels, nutrition, trader money ratio etc. that I don't think Vynora can get.

Personally, Path of Love wins pre-11 with Enchant and Refresh. If you are a hardcore crafter/skiller, Path of Knowledge stands out. If you frequently do combat (particularly PvP) or seek to tank uniques (even the strongest of non-uniques can be reasonably dealt with), Path of Insanity stands out. Path of Power's double stamina seems fairly all-purpose.

You need to reach a fairly high meditation skill to reach those high levels of your chosen path. While that might be less of an issue if skillgain is set to high, you still need to worry about the cooldowns between skillgains AND between path level-ups.

Sorry I can't answer the question for you, but hopefully my opinions and insight can help you with your decision.

[Nori]

Thanks, that definitely helps a lot. The server I've been playing on has the meditation mod so no cooldown between gains or level-ups so getting to 11 probably would just take a couple weeks (less if it is all you do).

I figured the Path of Insanity's shield would help a lot, but a 50% reduction in healing sounds very deadly. You might be able to take a lot more damage, but then die from wounds or spend ages healing. I can see it's draw but I don't think I'd want to go that route.

Hmm, I didn't think about refresh being useful in sticky situations. Refreshing stamina is big...
Ok, then I think that narrows it down to Path of Knowledge or Path of Love.
Given that I'm playing on a 7.5x skill, 3x action server the Knowledge probably isn't as useful. Though a 40% skill boost (Vyn follower 10%, 5% nutrition and 25% Path) would be pretty boss for getting really high characteristic values.

[Keyboard Crusher]

There's not an awful lot of Shield of the Gone documentation, unfortunately, and I have yet to experiment with it so I can't fully confirm how it works. (Only got to 9 Insanity on Wurm Online and haven't continued.) It's supposed to halve all damage as well as healing, which should include wound healing/worsening. A light wound will take twice as long to heal, a bad wound will take twice as long to kill you. The overall benefits of Shield is that you are not only doubling your health pool but doubling the threshholds for wound severity.

Without SotG, taking a hit of 15 damage immediately gives you a medium wound which won't (normally) heal on its own. SotG reduces it to 7.5 (which is considered light) and will heal on its own, albeit slowly.

A fight leaves you with 80% damage without SotG will leave you with only 40% damage with SotG. The wounds will be less severe and thus will take less natural damage, and possibly even provide some natural healing if they are low enough.

Also, healing covers could see more frequent and efficient use.

Stacking skill-gain is not a bad choice, though. I don't know how skillgain works with a high server multiplier (some parts of the formula might be additive or multiplicative and might not make it as insanely effective as expected - can't say), and I am not sure if they will actually work for characteristic gains, but if you are very active in raising skills, it should be a nice boost.

Also keep in mind that if there is no cooldown on getting questions, the only thing keeping you from switching paths is the time it takes to get the questions to appear (which might actually set you back a few hours in total since the chance to get them decreases severely as you follow the path).

[Mowglia]

For PvE I'd use Knowledge. Wurm has a lot of grinding and +25% gains are invaluble assuming;

You're not into PvP. If you're all about PvP then go Insanity for Shield of the Gone. Almost all PvPers use this (although I saw one go Hate once). Don't worry about the healing, SotG is so overpowered it's ridiculous.