>> Why the dropping of the 3rd weapon and adding a 3rd magic?

The weapon req went away because it wasn't really very high and I don't feel like it added much to being a Ranger.

Adding third magic is largely because there are now 9 (7 for circling, I suppose) magic skills, so everybody gets more magic reqs.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

For lores, don't forget tactics. That is going to be grandfathered in and should be substantial for anyone who hasn't ignored scholarship, brawling, and MO.

What exactly does a "restricted skill" mean? Does it mean we can't train it at all or does it mean there will be penalties if we do?

-pete

>Other skills are restricted for specific guilds but not others. This will be mentioned in your specific guild's circle reqs.

Oh, awesome!

REALLY glad to see TM is not on the restricted list, since PM won't be able to be used.

Personally, I would prefer an additional soft req in tactics similar to the one Barbarians have that we can use in place of a lore. Stealthy scouts and combat bow users should have some idea of position and such. This would fit in well for the long-delayed plans for some ranger-specific combat maneuvers, like pounce.

Speaking of scouting, with the significantly higher requirements for training it, can we get experience for running trails looked at as an interim solution? Sithix has a lot of other priorities and I am really, really concerned with the sustainability of training scouting at those requirements. Currently training the skill is a mess and I have been letting it slide down my survivals because of the pain involved. Needing over 500 ranks MINIMUM for 150th makes me want to just scream. And this is a skill that used to be my #1 survival.

-pete

I think the biggest question isn't the reqs themselves but viable ways to train the reqs that are not mind numbing or tedious to the point where you have to spend hours doing the same action over and over in order to get that single rank. Then are the skills going to actually be truly useful for us to use that make a significant difference or impact on the overall game play-ability.

Arct

Little bit concerned about maintaining 8 survival requirements... considering we are effectively losing (getting combined) 3? survival skills from the list... correct me if I'm wrong but doesnt that mean that any survivals that were previously neglected may now be required for circling purposes? I have some escaping / stealing, but nothing to speak of as far as circle reqs are concerned...

Maybe I am missing something - could someone with a better comprehensive understanding of whats going on help me understand that I will NOT have to backtrain several hundred ranks of previously ignored / useless survivals to keep circling?

- Kart

>Maybe I am missing something - could someone with a better comprehensive understanding of whats going on help me understand that I will NOT have to backtrain several hundred ranks of previously ignored / useless survivals to keep circling?

You will be grandfathered to your current circle. So if your 8th survival ends up being 200 ranks short, then bits get taken out of your survival overflow pool (where the bits from the merged skills go) and get applied to your 8th survival.

For example, unless I miscounted something, my 8th survival after combine will STILL make the new reqs, so no "free" ranks for me :(

However, say I am wrong and I have to use what I believe is my 9th survival... That means I'd go from 300 to 320 ranks in that skill by using bits taken from hiding, swimming, or escaping when the skill merge is done and still have all the requirements for my current circle.

-pete

>Speaking of scouting, with the significantly higher requirements for training it, can we get experience for running trails looked at as an interim solution? Sithix has a lot of other priorities and I am really, really concerned with the sustainability of training scouting at those requirements. Currently training the skill is a mess and I have been letting it slide down my survivals because of the pain involved. Needing over 500 ranks MINIMUM for 150th makes me want to just scream. And this is a skill that used to be my #1 survival.

Uhm....scouting is one of the easiest survivals to train.

Uhm....scouting is one of the easiest survivals to train

Scouting isn't horrible to train, but it's far from the easiest survival to train. I would love the ability to train scouting outside of combat as well.

>>Scouting isn't horrible to train, but it's far from the easiest survival to train. I would love the ability to train scouting outside of combat as well.

If only you had like, trails made by other Rangers that taught scouting based on the difficulty of the trail. You could call them Ranger trails or something...

:D

>>What's harder than typing >hunt every 75 seconds?

Doing it every 75 seconds 6 hours a day for 7 years?

- Kart

>Doing it every 75 seconds 6 hours a day for 7 years?

Wouldn't really call that difficult to train.

When you guys hit 1000+ scouting, let me know how easy you find training it.

Falker

>Point is it needs a little more diversity - and purpose.

>Speaking of scouting, with the significantly higher requirements for training it, can we get experience for running trails looked at as an interim solution? Sithix has a lot of other priorities and I am really, really concerned with the sustainability of training scouting at those requirements. Currently training the skill is a mess and I have been letting it slide down my survivals because of the pain involved. Needing over 500 ranks MINIMUM for 150th makes me want to just scream. And this is a skill that used to be my #1 survival.

Point looks like it's about how difficult it is to train. I agree it's lacking purpose for sure, but the conversation is about training it, not what it does. I'd absolutely love to see it do more than it currently does (which isn't much.)

I understand the hunt gap in Platinum, one of the reasons I don't play it. I'm not a huge fan of only a few people playing around in a huge game though. That's more of a dwindling Plat player base though tbh.

<<Discussion is about training it to circle cap, which is 520 with the new reqs. You're commenting on learning skills near the cap of the game for those particular skills, which is entirely a different story.

Cap of the game is currently 2000. The skill needs to be hashed out so it trains well past 1000-1100 ranks, without having to rely on HUNT as the only method of training (not to mention its a crappy method at those ranks anyway), as well as having more use than for just circling. We did have the option to have scouting worked on next, however, the guild voted to have companions done first, so we must wait on scouting becoming relevant. Scouting is by no means (not even close) the easiest survival to train, at any level.

As for the discussion, it was never about training to the circle cap. It was brought up as needing more ways to train it effectively besides HUNT, IE increasing the exp for running trails. You wanted to talk about how easy it is to train, IE your comment "scouting is one of the easiest survivals to train," and then when someone disputed that you want to respond with "what's hard about typing HUNT every 75 seconds" Which completely missed Pete's point. Then when I said its not as easy as you'd have it seem, IE try saying that past 1000+ ranks. So before you want to get snarky with me, you better first bring your A game, then read all of what is being said, not just what you'd like to read.

Falker

>Pete's issue is that he's in Platinum where the main method of learning the skill is most ineffective due to the amount of players in that instance not that Scouting is difficult to learn, because it's not. It learns perfectly fine. It's still the easiest survival to train, maybe I could get a little bit more precise for you, Scouting is the easiest skill to learn in Prime in regards to our Ranger Circle Requirements. Should there be alternative ways to learn it? Absolutely, that doesn't take away from the fact that it's still the easiest survival to train.

I disagree about the easiest, most mind-numbing and repetitive with little to no point, maybe. Foraging is probably the easiest, followed closely by hiding. I can lock either of those far, far, far sooner than scouting, even under optimal conditions, where I have other hunters in the area.

>It's difficult during combat when compared to OTHER combat survivals. I could lock every one of my combat skills and drain them halfway before Scouting would lock in combat - at level - particularly if one just 'hunts' every 71 seconds (pretty sure its 71). The roundtime associated with the action for the purpose of spam-learning the skill in combat is also unbalanced when weighed against its experience reward.

This I agree with. When you add in the near complete inability to learn an effectively non-combat skill outside of combat, the aggravation only compounds.

Given that this skill has a much more central role in our requirements, I'd like to hear about our training options in the short-term and the long-term, as well what are the plans for making the skill useful across a broader range ranks beyond stretching abilities we already have to higher difficulties. Specifically, I'd like to hear if we can get the exp granted from running trails looked at as an interim solution until something permanent is put in, since it has been years now since new experience went in and this remains to be an issue and will only get worse with a soft-requirement in the skill.

-pete

>I disagree about the easiest, most mind-numbing and repetitive with little to no point, maybe. Foraging is probably the easiest, followed closely by hiding. I can lock either of those far, far, far sooner than scouting, even under optimal conditions, where I have other hunters in the area.

Well, Dragonrealms skills are all about mind-numbing and repetitive actions :P Thinking about it i'll have to agree that Foraging is an easier skill than Scouting with the ability to collect rock ad nauseum. I suppose our ideas of ease are different though. When training a skill, if I can keep it at 3/34 or higher with no effort that's an easy skill for me to train, being able to accomplish that by using hunt every so often makes it as one of my easiest skills to work with. I don't have to spend a significant amount of time focusing on that skill like sniping for hiding. When looking at the Scouting reqs im not bashing my head against the wall due to how tough it is. I guess we can agree to disagree, 520 ranks of scouting is not some nightmare to obtain. That, for me, goes to Targetted Magic.

>It's difficult during combat when compared to OTHER combat survivals. I could lock every one of my combat skills and drain them halfway before Scouting would lock in combat - at level - particularly if one just 'hunts' every 71 seconds (pretty sure its 71). The roundtime associated with the action for the purpose of spam-learning the skill in combat is also unbalanced when weighed against its experience reward.

I'm failing to see the "difficulty" factor here though, is its learning inline with some other skills? No, but keeping it at 3/34 as opposed to 34/34 is just as good until logout drain occurs. Even then learning isn't capping out at 3/34....I checked a log of my exp, When hunting every 75 seconds (if you're hunting every 71 seconds you're missing out on experience since it hasn't rolled over yet, which could be part of your problem.) while performing other skills in combat I am easily in the 20's/34. I don't see a correlation between EXP awarded and difficulty to train. Difficulty to train, at least to me, is performing something that requires a lot of work.

>Given that this skill has a much more central role in our requirements, I'd like to hear about our training options in the short-term and the long-term, as well what are the plans for making the skill useful across a broader range ranks beyond stretching abilities we already have to higher difficulties. Specifically, I'd like to hear if we can get the exp granted from running trails looked at as an interim solution until something permanent is put in, since it has been years now since new experience went in and this remains to be an issue and will only get worse with a soft-requirement in the skill.

I'll echo your sentiments, I would like to see other ways to train this as well that can be done outside of combat. I'd also love to see more functionality with this as well, because in its current form it's a pretty useless ability.

This is drawn me back to the game...

Any idea when it will go live?

Amen Kart, Pete and Arct! HUNTing works scouting well up to a low point. The older, more skilled you get, the more you hunt in harder areas with the result that fewer folks are there--typing HUNT usually gets "no tracks found" message. : (

And I feel the pain because for me to circle ad nauseum, I need scouting AND stalking. And training stalking sucks worse than HUNTing. After a while, the only fast way of learning stalking is hunt way above level, and then of course, being me, die.

Please SOMEONE fix the trails--that's an absolutely rangerly thing to do and I hate to see all that work done on it, only to see it seldom used because it doesn't "train".

Z imagined so many wonderful things with trails that were supposed to be second stage and planned. And the trails are lanquishing. Yeah, I love using the trails because it's the rangerly thing to do...but I would so much like to see the vision of useful, fun trails realized.

So yeah, typing HUNT for 75 seconds for 8 more years isn't my idea of fun.

Zinaca and her fully-grown raccoon, Shadow

>Um, no. I'm finding it hard to train and I have less than 520. It's high but not that high, yet. And don't say I don't "train right" or some other thing. This is true how I play and how I train and since everyone trains a little different, the whole "train right" thing doesn't mesh.

If you choose to train "differently" that doesn't make a skill difficult to train if you decide not to use the way that teaches it the best. I'm not arguing for just one way of training a skill. All I'm saying is that it's not as difficult as you people are making it out to be. There isn't anything much harder than using Hunt when the timer is up. Sorry.

I'll bite, what's more interesting than typing a command into a text based game. All skills are repetitive, all skills require typing the same basic commands over and over. The ones like HUNT that give you an exact idea of how to utilize them to their maximum make them even easier.

In the end it all comes down to either manually or having a script enter the same command over and over.