Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MetalGear]

All my adventurers are getting murdered by random goblin bandits/night critters, so I decided that I would actually train one so that he may actually have a chance of survival. What am I suppose to use as training dummies? I guess random wildlife would be a good choice, but I never get any encounters. I remember that people used to swim to train their skills, so is it worth it to put a couple of points into swimming and just go along a river and kill everything you encounter. How would you companions behave when you jump in the water (I would like to keep a party with me to keep the boogeymen away)

P.S. What's the difference between a pike and a spear? As far as I know, they're both used for stabbing things. It seems like pikemen don't have shields while spearmen do, but maybe that's the humans just being silly (after all, they can wield a TWO-HANDED sword and a shield).

[minno]

All my adventurers are getting murdered by random goblin bandits/night critters, so I decided that I would actually train one so that he may actually have a chance of survival. What am I suppose to use as training dummies? I guess random wildlife would be a good choice, but I never get any encounters. I remember that people used to swim to train their skills, so is it worth it to put a couple of points into swimming and just go along a river and kill everything you encounter. How would you companions behave when you jump in the water (I would like to keep a party with me to keep the boogeymen away)

P.S. What's the difference between a pike and a spear? As far as I know, they're both used for stabbing things. It seems like pikemen don't have shields while spearmen do, but maybe that's the humans just being silly (after all, they can wield a TWO-HANDED sword and a shield).

Training:  I usually start out with enough shield skill to block most attacks, and then train wrestling by attacking something that can't fight back, usually a horse with shattered/removed hooves.  Its feeble attempts to fight back usually boost me to about High Master shield user.  I then go find a night creature and set up a macro (ctrl-r to start/stop recording keypresses, ctrl-p to play recording) to do a blunt strike on a non-essential body part.  Since night creatures don't feel pain, they'll never pass out, so I can keep going until I'm legendary with the weapon.

Swimming:  I always get 2 levels of swimming at the start, since it's practically impossible to train it without doing that.  I like to have a reasonable swimming level so I can cross rivers without fast-traveling.

Pike/spear:  A pike is a large spear, so you get a penalty (maybe) to combat ability if you use it 1-handed.

[MetalGear]

But where do I find something like a horse? Random encounters seem incredibly rare now and I doubt I'll find anything if I just wander around the world outside of fast travel.

[Knigel]

The difference between a pike and spear is they use different skills, a pike is twice as long as a spear, and consequently pikes have 20% more penetration (12,000 instead of 10,000), the most of any weapon currently in the game.

[Javarock]

But where do I find something like a horse? Random encounters seem incredibly rare now and I doubt I'll find anything if I just wander around the world outside of fast travel.

Go to towns and ask about sorrunding areas, If they say

"Horses are known to be in Blah, And sorrounding areas" You head there on foot and keep looking.

[minno]

But where do I find something like a horse? Random encounters seem incredibly rare now and I doubt I'll find anything if I just wander around the world outside of fast travel.

Go to towns and ask about sorrunding areas, If they say

"Horses are known to be in Blah, And sorrounding areas" You head there on foot and keep looking.

I can usually find something like a horse, muskox, or unicorn (yes, I'm evil) to torture/train on by just walking straight out from the village.  Really, any large herbivore works well for this, if you can target and shatter its hooves.

[Kobold Troubadour]

Alright maggots, fall in and get your asses in gear! We're gonna' make you ladies into useful cannon fodder yet!

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70969.msg1728862#msg1728862

[MetalGear]

Well...I'm kinda in an interesting situation now. I went down to the ocean shore and got to adequate swimmer, then started swimming up a river. I just realized that I can't climb out of the river (yes, I tried Alt+move). So, I decided to just continue swimming. A milkfish stole my dagger (I threw it, it got stuck in the lower body and the fish swam away). Now, I found a herd of hippos to terrorize. I killed two of them already and I'm chasing the rest now. That thief fish is somewhere with them. I'm probably just gonna swim until I die or find a place where I can get out. Hopefully, the boogeymen won't get me in the water.

[minno]

Well...I'm kinda in an interesting situation now. I went down to the ocean shore and got to adequate swimmer, then started swimming up a river. I just realized that I can't climb out of the river (yes, I tried Alt+move).

You should swim back the way you came.  You're guaranteed to be able to find a bank with a low side if you go to the ocean, but some rivers have sides that are too high above the water to climb out.

[MetalGear]

What happens if I continue to swim up? Will I eventually die of exhaustion/sleep deprivation (or getting killed by some aquatic critter). I've never seen a place where a river originates from and I'm rather curious.

[Knigel]

What happens if I continue to swim up? Will I eventually die of exhaustion/sleep deprivation (or getting killed by some aquatic critter). I've never seen a place where a river originates from and I'm rather curious.

If you can't find an exit, yes.

And I've seen those plenty of times. Nothing special, just the river splitting up into a lot of little branches.

[Gokajern]

If you're not getting encounters, maybe the wildlife parameter was too low on worldgen? In the beggining training with wildlife is the way to go, specially with the more harmless critters like groundhogs and buzzards, just wrestle one or two into staying right where they are and then sit on the ground and wait, you will gain a lot of dodge, armor use and shield (if any). When you are at least decent with those skills get yourself an adamantine or a steel edged weapon and go find a bronze colossus, bring some steel clad company, now hack all of his limbs (be careful not to kill him, stay away from the head, make sure you don't have that many party members with you). If done right you'll end up with the perfect sandbag, he can't attack you at all (will still try, giving you points for dodge, etc) and you can just attack him until you colapse from exertion (not really recommended), just remember to use weapons that glance off him, like training weapons/silver/copper stuff, also try not to hit him with whips or scourges.

[Nagidal]

I had the best training when I found an area where "groundhogs roam freely". There is nothing like wrestling a groundhog barehanded. They only mildly bruise you and when you ambush and wrestle them, the stay alive forever. in a week (in-game-time) I was a legendary wrestler and a legendary fighter. (If you cannot find groundhogs, macaques train you also well.)

My strength, Agility, Focus, Willpower, and Kinestetic sense went high quickly thorugh gaining skills like that.

I felt like an exploiting a bug.

I also find out how to train throwing quickly. Grab some stones and keep throwing them at the same tile you are standing. In less than an hour real time you become legendary thrower and it helps your Archer skill, too.

[shlorf]

I went into a 2 tiles wide pond and held down 4 and 6. I became a legendary swimmer in a few days and was promptly told to get my hydraslaying quests in the next fortress by every human :>

[minno]

The secret to effective training is keyboard macros.  You can start recording with ctrl-r, type in the keypress sequence, and stop recording with ctrl-r again.  I turned down the keypress delay in the init raws to about 3, so it goes blindingly fast but sometimes skips keypresses.  You can play the recorded macro with ctrl-p, and if you press ctrl-p while you're recording, it lets you double the macro, so it repeats the sequence twice.

I can train swimming really easily by going into a body of water and pressing left, right, and then ctrl-p about 10 times while I'm recording, which makes me move back and forth for about 5 minutes.  I've also set up a macro to pick up a rock, make it into a sharp rock, and throw it, which trains knapping, throwing, and archery at the same time.  I've done macros to train combat as well, which works well with aimed blunt strikes to non-vital body parts.