I left somewhere around mid to late 2013 and I'm having difficulty adjusting to all of the changes that have occurred, especially the use of magical research and symbiosis.

I've done what investigating I could so far (subscribed last night) and I've started to make some progress (primarily in research, still a bit vague on symbiosis), but I was hoping for some advice on training before I polish off the last of my spell slots. Also, I've admittedly never completed the new resurrection quest and I'd like to at least start down that path (believe I need more athletics for instance.)

When I left I was getting ready to transition out of togballs (primarily due to tertiary weapons) and I remember having some difficulty finding my next stepping stone.

Is there anyone that might take pity on me and be willing to help explain a few things or give a push in one direction or the other, please?

Player of Karsite.

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"Give a man fire and he's warm for a day; light a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Terry Pratchett
"You're Michael Jackson's hair and I'm a Pepsi commercial!" Bucky from Get Fuzzy

Any idea what stats are needed to complete the rezz quest? I see clerics with 44 in athletics who have completed it yet i am over 50 and getting someone to cast atheticism on me and i still fall off the bridge. any help would be appreciated.

In order to train Augmentation, Utility, and Warding well you need to cast them very near to your cap. Within about 5-8 mana less than the cap the learning drops off dramatically. You can see what your cap is for each spell by using DISCERN. The amount listed there is just an approximation and I find it to usually be slightly on the high side, so I usually knock about 5 mana off of it to play it safe.

This amount will be hard to straight up cast because it will be a huge drain on mana, so you'll need to use cambrinth and harness to reach it and keep your attunement levels sustainable. I find there are 2 best ways to do this. 1. divide your cap by 3 and do each of preparing the spell, charging your cambrinth, and harnessing at that amount. 2. prepare at or near minimum prep, and split the amount needed to reach cap between your cambrinth and harnessed mana. Both of these methods will stretch your attunement and also train the Arcana and Attunement skills very well.

Even doing that, however, you will reach a point where you'll run out of attunement before you can lock your skills and as a result learning will slow down. This is where symbiosis comes in...

<< It appears symbiosis is the way to do that out of combat, but the few discussions I've seen on training are either much lower or much higher than my skills.

Your skills are right on the edge of being the best time to start with symbiosis, since it adds approximately 200 ranks of difficulty to each spell cast. The benefit to using symbiosis with training is that it artificially raises the difficulty thereby lowering your personal spell cap, which causes you to be able to cast spells with less mana and still learn well from them. E.g. without a symbiosis your cap might be 60 mana so you need to put that amount into it in order to learn, but with a symbiosis your cap might be lowered to 30 mana and so you only need to put that much mana into it instead in order to learn. Note that you'll only be getting the effect of the 30 mana spell, but that's irrelevant for training purposes.

How to use a symbiosis. Pick any spell that teaches the skill you want and you can also cast with at least a few mana over minimum prep with a symbiosis. Figure out what your symbiosis cap is. This isn't as easy as just using DISCERN since you'll have to use trial and error. Also note that different types of symbiosis adjust the difficulty by different amounts, so if you switch symbiosis types you might need to redetermine your symbiotic personal caps. Once you figure out your new symbiotic personal cap then split that amount between your prepare, cambrinth, and harnessed mana as before.

As you gain skill, you'll also need to adjust the mana amounts up slightly to keep up with your personal caps increasing with skill. I just redetermine my personal caps once I notice learning slowing down a bit.

Once you reach about 400-500 ranks or so you'll need to start using advanced spells to continue learning effectively without running out of mana. And eventually will need to rely on esoterics with even more skill.

As for Debilitation and Targeted Magic, you'll need to cast those on a creature which is challenging for your skill. I.e. treat these skills as weapon skills and cast them on creatures that you would train a weapon on at that skill. Learning is primarily based on how challenging the creature is, so minimum prep casts teach almost as well as higher mana casts meaning there's little need to cast with more mana unless you need to put more mana in to overcome a resistance or something.

Your primary magic skill (Holy Magic in your case) will train itself without you even paying attention to it if you follow the above advice.

Sorcery can be a useful skill to learn, and it can be learned by temporarily memorizing and casting spells that are not of your mana type. Use the same techniques as for Augmentation, Utility, and Warding. Note that backlash chance is not affected by how much mana you put into a spell, so don't worry about putting in a lot of mana. Research is also a valid way to train this. It's a bit slower to mindlock and when it backlashes tends to be a more dangerous backlash, but it only has a single chance to backlash per mindlock as opposed to 25-35 chances to backlash like with casting spells. Up to you to decide which method you prefer.

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Thank you very much for taking the time to explain this. I'd also like to thank Segmere for his assistance tonight.

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"Give a man fire and he's warm for a day; light a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Terry Pratchett
"You're Michael Jackson's hair and I'm a Pepsi commercial!" Bucky from Get Fuzzy

I just wanted to take the time to thank Segmere again. He helped me last night with the daunting task of completing the quest to learn resurrection. I can think of at least a handful of times I'd have been seriously injured or killed if he hadn't been there to pick me up off the ground; in at least two cases that was literally what he did.

Thank you, Segmere, I'm very grateful you decided to return to the realms when you did.

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"Give a man fire and he's warm for a day; light a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Terry Pratchett
"You're Michael Jackson's hair and I'm a Pepsi commercial!" Bucky from Get Fuzzy