Heyo Rangers,

There's a discussion going on in the Creatures 0-50 folder about finding the learning caps on critters. It's inspired me to work on a critter guide listing all the usual info (location, attacks, skinnable, etc.) and including caps on weapons and defensive skills. I haven't done many scientific experiments in the game, but if I were to do this guide I would like to do it from the ground up. I can think of a few qualities for a character so that he provides a good control for the experiment.

1. race should be human (average, no stat modifiers)
2. stats should remain even across the board so his attacks/defenses aren't weighted towards any one particular type
3. Guild should be ranger (both weapons and armor are secondary and therefore learned at the same rate). I originally thought of using a barb, but an Empath posted on the 0-50 board saying she could go beyond the caps since she was learning weapons/armor at a tertiary rate. The Ranger guild is the only guild with both weapons and armor on the same tier.

The methodology used to figure out caps was posted by Heroiklim:

"The way I figure out caps is easy. For defense, set whichever defense I'm checking to stance 100%, the other 2 to 0%, use a favor orb to clear all unabsorbed experience, then let whatever swing at one time. If it goes up to learning, they still teach at those ranks, if it stays clear then I'm capped out. Same goes for offense, but no stances to worry about there. There's safer ways of checking it, but not as accurate. For offense, you have to land at least a light hit to move from clear to learning (which isn't necessarily an entire mind state)."

So I think I've found my calling. I've got a list of all the creature locations according to Ranik's maps, the info from the official Simu bestiary, some other info from the Crossroad of Elanthia bestiary and am ready to create my guinea pig. Any suggestions as to how to improve on the methods I will use are greatly appreciated.

~Thilan