Exam high scores?

[Legate of Mineta]

DuckSauce;

 

No, you can't be, because the Finals are the ultimate measure of your schooling and no one knows your performance until the end of the School Year. It's for that reason that the effects of Exams are not apparent until the following year.

[licz]

Got 480% in Enchant.

[mhv3]

Cool. And I was definitely wrong on the limit 9 thing.

[laclongquan]

The Negation class? Half of them got higher than 100. Those buggers are very studious.

[AdW]

The Negation class? Half of them got higher than 100. Those buggers are very studious.

Yes, it's a bit odd how everyone is apparently a genius in Negation, and for some subjects such as Arithmetic, Enchant and Rhetoric other students mostly tend to score in middling 50s.

 

While I don't like to boast, I'm stupidly pleased with my run through Finals so far (I've got 2 exams to go) for a character that spent most of the year wasting time on exploring areas and training Mastery/Gates.

Negation: 280, Revision: 310, Rhetoric: 320, Incantation: 260. Seems not too bad so far, considering that I'm not even trying to push things too much with Phemes because I don't want to reload if spells fail...

[Ranielle Limeleaf]

@AdW

At which point the professors just gave up and declared that you graduated and they should probably ask harder questions.

[AdW]

Well, sort of. At which point they declared that the combination of 10 Concentration, Study Cubicle, stat-boosting spells and the Improve Negation spell + Phemes that increase Parent skills with no limit is broken beyond belief. Honourable mentions go to the Structure Pheme (+1 Revision at difficulty 2) and the Clarity Pheme (+2 Rhetoric at difficulty 4).

[laclongquan]

Nah. It's first year, the professors want to let you have some breathing room.

[Rickard Blunt]

Firstly congratulations to the team on making such an engrossing title. I bought it for my fiance, a big Harry Potter fan, and thought I would try it out myself. A few hours later I was well and truly hooked. I can see myself playing through it several times at least.

 

I've just finished up my first year with the following grades in my finals; Rickard Blunt of Morvidus.

 

Revision - 574

Rhetoric - 564

Enchant - 702

Glamour - 730

Botany - 1000 (three zeros)

Zoology - 100 (two zeros)

 

From this I have surmised that 1000 is the highest possible mark (seems a conveniently round number) and have noted that your skill with the subject is far more important than the attached attribute.

 

I did have a query though. I was not given an option to save after the credits rolled ~ is this normal? How does my progress carry on to year 2? My previous save with the character is about 11 weeks before finals (I generally only saved when I had finished playing for the evening - not regularly - and I only keep one save game per character. I did this because otherwise I would be tempted to "roll back" when disaster struck for my character and wanted to play through without doing that). I am going to have to replay the last few weeks of term? Should I save before the last day of term or during the final sequence of questions about favourite classes and expectations for the holidays?

 

Thanks again for the great game. I will be recommending it widely.

 

Cheers

 

Rickard Blunt

Master of Botany

[89157Z]

Holy wow. I want to train at the school of Blunt Botany. How did you do that?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rickard;

 

Glad you enjoyed it!

 

It is normal not to have a save after credits- this is because Year 2 will begin on the last Day (Kaliri 28,) using the last save you have.

[Rickard Blunt]

Thanks for the prompt response Legate.

 

Guess I'll have to redo the last few weeks and save on the last day then. Oh dear what a shame (Sarcasm. Not really a problem)

 

Then to start another character (or six)

 

89157Z - Stacking spells with modifying phemes allows you to reach some astronomical numbers with a bit of thought and planning - 6th Finger is the key spell. Come to think of it having to play the last few weeks leading up to exams again gives me a chance to refine my "study" techniques - maybe I can hit 1000 in all subjects? Need to find the animal pheme though...

 

I've got plenty of ideas for events and adventures too (long time D&D DM and frustrated writer) so I will also be contributing there I hope.

 

Thanks again Legate.

 

Rickard

[Legate of Mineta]

No problem- can't wait to see what you do with in the writer's corner and/or the mod tools.

[aslee4]

89157Z - Stacking spells with modifying phemes allows you to reach some astronomical numbers with a bit of thought and planning - 6th Finger is the key spell. Come to think of it having to play the last few weeks leading up to exams again gives me a chance to refine my "study" techniques - maybe I can hit 1000 in all subjects? Need to find the animal pheme though...

Hmm, so the benefit from spells and phemes stack? Is there a limit? I never really understood how the spells and phemes operated during my playthrough (stacking, etc.) but from reading the forums here, the following seems to be how I gather it works:

 

Quick math -

 

6th finger adds 2 to Enchant (and Forge, but not directly relevant), and has difficulty 3. Since Int + Enchant is the roll and Int can roll down to 1, this effectively means the 6th finger spell has a 'payload' of (Enchant - 2) (i.e. you can add phemes upto Enchant - 2 to this spell and be guaranteed to succeed).

 

Enhance pheme adds 2 difficulty and adds 1 Enchant. Therefore, by adding nothing but Enhance pheme to 6th finger, one can increase Enchanting like:

 

E(n+1) = E(n) + floor((E(n) - 2)/2) + 2 = floor(3*E(n)/2) + 1

 

written as a recurrence relation (the +2 is from the spell itself), where E(n) is the enchant skill after casting 6th finger n-times (at maximum power each time, of course).

 

So your enchanting skill increases exponentially with the number of casts. Assuming this is the case, this implies that there should be a fixed value of casts at the end of the sequence that you want to use the payload for non-enchanting related stuff (before that point, you get more benefit from increasing your enchanting skill). By inspection, an example:

 

E(n+1) ?? 2 * E(n) + 2 (this is comparing 1 cast at maximum power versus 2 casts at 2nd to highest power - the +2 is because the spell itself still provides 2 additional 'payload')

=> floor(3*E(n)/2) + 1 ?? 2*E(n) + 2

=> 0 ?? ceil(E(n)/2) + 1

=> 2 casts at the end is better than 1, always.

 

Since (3/2)^4 > 5 but (3/2)^3 < 4, we would expect the cut-off to be <5.

 

Example:

 

Suppose you have 10 Enchant skill and 7 time periods you can use to buff your stats. Then your skill goes like:

10 -> 16 -> 25 -> 38 -> 58 -> 88 -> 133 -> 200

 

If you'd used the last cast to buff, you'd have been able to spend 131 points on the buff phemes (2 to ensure your cast succeeds).

If you'd used the last two, 86 + 88 = 174

Last 3 = 56 + 58 + 60 = 174

Last 4 = 36 + 38 + 40 + 42 = 39 * 4 = 156

 

So optimal stop point would have been with about 2-3 casts remaining. If you'd just buffed stats from the beginning, you would have only gotten 8 + 10 + 12 + 14 + 16 + 18 + 20 = 14*7 = 98 points of buffing (and 'only' 20 points of enchanting) - about half (it would also be harder to fit in phemes with 7 different casts, since most phemes don't seem to cost 2). Then again, I guess the question is if you really need 174 points worth of phemes (I suspect for some things, the answer might actually be yes).

 

As a side note, this would seem terribly broken if this is how it actually works...the downside I suppose is that it does take a fair bit of time to set up, but the duration of 6th finger means you might be able to have absurd stats for at least a couple of days. Something else to note is that you could potentially be able to 'roll' the buffs - that is, on the last time period with your ridiculous enchanting level, you cast another 6th finger at maximum enchanting boost. This essentially means you can keep the high enchanting level as long as you cast the spell at least twice a week (which also means you can get the other boost whenever you need for effectively one cast).

 

Edit - apparently there's a maximum of 9 of a pheme per spell, but since Arid adds 2 for 4 difficulty, it seems like the maximum you can carry this out is to at least +54 (which is around 80 skill). After that the gains become linear, so there's diminishing returns on improving enchanting instead of the actual skill.

 

Edit 2 - Actually, Arid is in opposition to 6th, so doesn't work. Maximum practical boost then may be only about 22 (9+2, 2x), which also essentially gives base enchant x 2 + 4 'free' payload for maintaining the enchanting score (plus whatever buffing you do during the rest of the week).

[ackron]

Just finished another playthrough using patch 10a (haven't updated to DLC 2 yet).

 

With 6th finger and lots of phemes, I managed to post the following scores (results listed in the order the exams were taken)

 

Negation: 1000

Revision: 1001 (yay extra credit )

Dialectic: 1000

Enchant: 1000

Glamour: 1000

Zoology: 1000

 

A couple of notes to help you in your calculations.

You can only add 9 copies of any given pheme to a spell, however most skills have multiple phemes that boost them (the big exception is zoology, the animal pheme is the only one I found)

Skills are capped at 100 (hence the exam scores)

 

Also, kind of as a side effect of doing this, I could boost 1 or 2 other skills up into the 30-40 range without much effort, I used this to gain some glory by raising Incantation (casting Fill the Night with Stars), Voice, (Perform Music: Voice) and Wrestling (Grapple for the Crowds).

[Adrian]

By Ashtara's toerings! I thought my (in comparison) mild spellcasting boosting it to the 200-300s was good.

Of cause I rarely take or study Enchant. Perhaps I should give it a go at some point!

 

I was curious, which pheme could be used for athletics?

[Schwarzbart]

Adrian have a look at the wiki for Phemes you can use http://academagia.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Phemes_-_Athletics (You can get there via Skills - Atlectics - scroll all the way down to Related links and there Phemes)

[Adrian]

That is just it, the phemes listed only show how to decrease your athletics parent skill, I was hoping someone might recall the name of a useful pheme offhand - assuming there is one

 

It doesn't matter much of cause, my average is still *way* above the other students, but for the sake of pure vanity I'd like to know