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What to do at start of game


LintMan

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Playing my first playthrough, and I'm pretty clueless about what I should be doing. I watched all the Youtube tutorials and read the manual, but none of that helps with what you should be doing once you actually start the school year.

 

I have the "Work til you drop" action that I've been using, but I get ill if I use it more than twice without resting, so it's not all that efficient. I've almost exclusively been trying to train in my class skills, but I'm getting creamed in most of the random encounters, which don't seem to use the class skills.

 

If I have to train and study outside of class to raise those scores, is there any benefit to actually attending the classes?

 

What stuff is best to train in at the beginning, and how high do I need to get it? When do I need to start focusing on getting the class skills raised?

 

Some questions:

 

I'm about 5-6 weeks in and have no clue how to make friends. My gossip option is purple and I don't seem to have any other friend-make abilities. There's supposed to be a "Befriend" option, but I don't have that. I'm not sure what to do here to increase relationshsips with others and make them into friends. Is there any point in doing Gossip if it's in purple?

 

How many relationship points do you need to make a friend?

 

How do you take advantage of your familiar? What are the benefits?

 

I've gotten my familiar (dog) bond level to 3, but have no idea what the benefit of that is.

 

I also can't seem to make any progress on the Familiar: prepare for the Dog Show adventure.

 

Am I wasting my time with all this familiar stuff?

 

Other questions:

I found a hallway location that said "increase an attribute when you spend time there", but I see no action or ability to actually do that.

 

In the abilities/actions list on the left hand side is one to study incantations at some school to gain extra skill points, but I can't actually select that on my calendar.

 

Similarly, there was some cave I discovered that said I could enter to lose leadership but gain a bunch of points in some other stuff. But again, I can't seem to select that on my calendar.

 

I've seen some posts here talking about having Attributes of 6+. How the heck do you do that?

 

Edit: Oops, one more question: how much exploring should I be doing, and where is it best to explore?

 

Thanks!

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I personal think that Work till you Drop is a waste of Background Points because Study at the Venalicium Library is bether in my eyes.

With the newest Patch and the DLC activated you even have Study at the Vanalicium Library as a starting Ability for all Chars.

 

Classes train your subskills of the Skill and Study just increases your Study level of you class skill what is something complet different!

With Study 10 your Score in the Exam is your Skilllevel x10 but if your Study is below 10 there your score in the exam is usualy lower then your Skill.

Also some Skills give you a Attribute +1 when the Study is at lvl 10.

 

For making Friends I suggest you play the first stepst of the Request a Meeting with your Mentor Adventure first and actual read the text.

 

Geting a Attribute to 6 or above is not a easy task but you get Attribute from some SubSkill level, from some Research Topics when they get to 10, from som Study at 10 and from many Adventure Chains when you successfull played them through.

Also there are some Temporary boost like the famous Cleanse and Remake Spell you can unlook via the Religion SubSkill Piety.

 

For some Actions and Abilitys you can set a starting Location so you can get the effect of this Location for this action, but you learn about this also in the Meeting with your Mentor Adventure!

 

Familiar get usefull when you Unlook one of the good training Abilitys (Improved Familiar Handling or Go Outside the Fences) but not bevore!

If you realy whant to use your Familiar then I suggest you take the Zoology Class or train Zoology on your own!

 

In the left side you see all Abilitys / Actions /Spells ect. you Char have learned about but that dont mean you actual can use them some need extra actions to get unlooked.

For the Contu's School of Incantation you first have to pay 900 Pims via Pay Tuition (only shows in you Ability list when you have enough money) bevore you can Study there.

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Okay, will try to answer your questions in the order you asked.

 

Though I rarely use 'Work till you drop' anymore myself in favor of studying at the Venalicium library, if I did use it, I'd use it for my first two actions on a non-class day and rest for the third action. That will prevent you from getting ill due to having your stress too high.

 

Attending class is important while at school. Each time you skip a class, you have an (increasing) chance of detention and eventually expulsion. Also, there is benefit to attending the classes in the form of gaining steps to increase the skills that govern your class as well as gaining other benefits such as lore, phemes or other bonuses.

 

Officially, the best thing to start training are your School Survival skills. The most commonly used options are unlocked by increasing those skills. The Devs have called that your toolbox for the year. The befriend skill, btw, is unlocked by increasing your social skills subskill to level 2, if I recall correctly. I'm not sure that there is any consensus for when to start focusing on increasing your class skills. I personally don't bother until a few weeks before finals. With reasonable attribute levels (3 or above), I gain enough skill steps just be attending class that I usually only need to bump a couple skills to max out the class skills. This will mean a lower midterm score, but the midterm score is not weighted heavily into your final grade for the class (again per devs).

 

On the other hand, my characters max the Study level of their classes as soon as possible. You'll want to do it at some point if you care about your grades at all, and you get bonuses as you increase the study level (typically boosts to student and instructor relationships, bonuses to actions, and, for some classes, an attribute increase at level 10). And the sooner you get attribute increases, the better, because it will make learning all subskills governed by those attributes faster.

 

I don't know the exact math required to make a friend, but the higher the relationship, the easier it is. Also, the more friends you already have, the harder it is. Your ability to befriend someone is a Charm + Befriend roll, and the befriend subskills are unlocked by training your social skills subskill (under school survival). Note that even a failed befriend roll will often increase your relationship with the target by one point.

 

Your familiar has many potential benefits. Like many things, the more you put into your familiar, the greater benefit you'll get out of it. A familiar will add half its skill bonus to yours for all skill rolls. A familiar opens up one or two new adventures for you. A familiar can help you in duels. For the greatest potency, you'll want to train your familiar to increase its skills to get its bonus added to yours. Your ability to train your familiar is limited by its bond level with you. Also, completing your familiar adventure usually further rewards your familiar with attribute increases and/or new abilities. All this takes time away from training your own skills, of course. The Familiar Kinship subskill under school survival will unlock many actions to interact with and train your familiar, and the Improved Familiar Handling ability (unlocked by getting Zoology to level 5) is especially powerful.

 

For your familiar's adventure, the difficulty is against your familiar's skill, not yours.

 

For locations, some locations will provide you with a benefit only when you are at that location. It's not a permanent increase, but is still helpful under certain conditions, such as adventures. Another example is the Great Hall, which adds +10% to your Befriend chance of success when attempting to Befriend a student. To use a location in that manner, you'll need to manually select that location after choosing the action, but before confirming your calender for the day.

 

Getting attributes of 6+ isn't especially hard, it just takes time. There are many ways to earn attribute increases. Without intending to, I've had characters end the year with an average attribute score or 6.3, with the highest attributes being 10, 9, and 8. Most of my increases come from researching level 10 of certain topics, training certain skills past level 10 (10 is the normal max), and as rewards for completing certain adventures. Also, befriending certain students will increase attributes.

 

Schwarzbart already told you about the School for Incantation. It sounds like you discovered the cave (possibly through dialectic class) via lore perhaps? Without actually being informed of it. That location is the last on a 'path' of dialectic related locations. It has always unlocked for me as I used the lower level ones first.

 

Options to help you explore are unlocked by the Curiosity subskill under the school survival skill. Though one (Go outside the Fences) is unlocked by familiar kinship and will train both you and your familiar in random explore subskills. Beyond that, I can't help you too much with exploring. The only time I ever had a student attempt to focus seriously on exploring, the actions I attempted were bugged (this was many patches ago), and I haven't gotten back to focussing on it since. However, I understand that a high luck is useful, since luck governs the explore subskills, if I recall correctly.

 

Hope that helps. The game is really big, but really fun.

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Thanks Schwarzbart and Torolf for your very detailed answers.

 

Just to be sure I understand: attending the classes actually does raise your training level in those class-based skills over time? I don't recall seeing any messsages to that effect and hadn't realized that was happening, so I was focused on putting almost all my own training into raising those class skills.

 

About friendship: I actually HAD read the text on the mentoring mission about friendship, but it basically just said to use gossip to increase relationships, and then befriend them. And in my case, gossip wasn't working, and befriend wasn't available as an option and I had no idea how to get it. The missing bit for me was the need to put points into Social Skills. I had several points in each of the other school survival skills and thought I was all set.

 

About that cave: I believe I found it just by exploring, so there was no path of other dialectic locations (and I didn't have that class). So I guess that's why it wasn't available. Between this, the unstated tuition requirement for Contu's School, and the numerous not very useful places I found, I'm wondering if there's much benefit to spending a lot of time exploring.

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Class also teach Phames, which is rare and important for spellcasting and sometime teaches lore and certain related subskill.

 

In the case of sub-skill, it will only be teach at a certain date, so if you miss that day, you miss the chance to unlock a new subskill if you haven't unlock it by then.

 

For example: Arithmetic teach accounting on Veranix 8 and Administration on Pramidi 19.

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Yes, attending classes will train the class-based skills over time without giving you a message. Kinda like real life, I think. No one gives you a message telling you that you're actually learning something by paying attention in class. There are so many benefits to attending class that many of my characters end up with perfect attendance at the end of the year. But there are other benefits you get, as well. Phemes, as Nyaa mentioned. Being informed of new lores, skills and locations. I've even gotten maximum skill increases (something otherwise only achieved with a great deal of effort), and once even an attribute increase.

 

Well, to clarify the befriending mission text, I suppose you can use gossip to do so, but due to the increased effort of raising three Gossip subskills, I never have. I usually use the befriend action, or some other action unlocked by social skills/school survival to increase the relationship points. However, if you want a large clique, you will need to start using Gossip or some other ability to increase the relationship between clique members before you'll be able to add any more. Even with a high charm, I've never grown a clique beyond four students (not including myself) with befriend alone.

 

The tuition requirement is stated in the description of the school. Maybe it isn't in the action. There is a separate action to Pay Tuition for Esteban's School of Incantation. Now you have me wondering about the cave. Never having explored much beyond the library, I've not run into that issue. I know that locations are often informed as you are informed of or increase subskills, so maybe there's a prerequisite there for a dialectic subskill that you don't have.

 

This game is so detailed and balanced that I would be surprised if there isn't potentially a great deal of benefit to exploring, just that I haven't figured out how to do it effectively yet, just as it took me dozens of playthroughs to learn to complete adventures effectively. (Though I believe some patches lowered the difficulty on some adventures as well.)

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As far as I can tell, attending classes raises random sub-skills within the skill of the class. As mentioned, it's not documented.

 

As mentioned, a good starting point is the school survival skills, because they unlock a lot of useful basic skills. An easy starter is to try to max out one of the social skills, and use that as a basis for determining what archetype of schoolkid your character is (troublemaker, horsey gel (aka close to your familiar), bully, social butterfly, academic, or a mix). Something else to do early is to use befriend to build your clique from the other kids, based either on their gameplay advantages if you're a powergamer or their descriptions if you want to roleplay it, and nab a few key ones before they start joining their own cliques.

 

The other focus early on should be raising your study skills. As others have said, the best way to do this is to train at the Venalicium library. Reach level 10 (max) in study for each class skill and you will get a bonus that makes everything else easier.

 

Adventures and most random events require quite high skill levels. Unless you went crazy at character creation you're unlikely to get beyond the first step or two of most adventures - or resolve any random events well - for another 3-4 months. That said, in my view it's worth doing the first couple of steps of most adventures to get them out of the way when your skills are still low, if only to make the game a bit more interesting in the early days.

 

Apart from that, the game is about raising skills. Skills go up fast if the corresponding attribute is high, and slow if it is low. You start the game with some skills known to you, others need to be unlocked. Class skills will mostly go up on their own, unless you have terrible attributes in the classes you are taking.

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Thanks Schwarzbart and Torolf for your very detailed answers.

 

Just to be sure I understand: attending the classes actually does raise your training level in those class-based skills over time? I don't recall seeing any messsages to that effect and hadn't realized that was happening, so I was focused on putting almost all my own training into raising those class skills.

 

About friendship: I actually HAD read the text on the mentoring mission about friendship, but it basically just said to use gossip to increase relationships, and then befriend them. And in my case, gossip wasn't working, and befriend wasn't available as an option and I had no idea how to get it. The missing bit for me was the need to put points into Social Skills. I had several points in each of the other school survival skills and thought I was all set.

 

About that cave: I believe I found it just by exploring, so there was no path of other dialectic locations (and I didn't have that class). So I guess that's why it wasn't available. Between this, the unstated tuition requirement for Contu's School, and the numerous not very useful places I found, I'm wondering if there's much benefit to spending a lot of time exploring.

 

for gosip to work you have select your charcter and orther. it toke me two games to realize that selcting two orther chacters only improve the relashenship with each orther, not you.

 

as for skills the ones i find usefull are Incantation,Glamour,Negation,Sleuthing,Observation,Running,Flawless Timing,Danger Sense and Study Habits.( just to level up till 3 to unlock research, an ablity that uprgade your states)

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