| Actually, using a skill does lower its cost sometimes. But not always. I haven't gone to the trouble of figuring out exactly how this works, but I can give some input.
The first character I created was a male Thrall (Rouge, Mage, Trickster, Battlemage, Cabalist), and I never noticed any lessening of skill costs (I wasn't looking for them, though, so I may just not have noticed). I played him under version 1.3.
I created a second character under 1.3, a female Elf Fighter. She happened to find an Elven Sword (light weapon) in the first chest by the campfire when you start the game and I had made sure to drop some xp in light weapons when I created her, so she had no problem using it. She wandered around happily slaying monsters with it for a couple of levels and when I went back to assign the xp she had gained, I noticed that I only needed 13 points to raise light weapons to the next level. I used the xp on other things (intelligence is soooo important, don't ya think?). She killed a few more monsters and riffraff and her level for light weapons automatically increased by one!
She experimented with a Short Sword that one of the riffraff had left lying on the ground, and there was no decrease in xp for light weapons. She went back to using the Elven Sword and the xp went steadily down, from about 1-5 points per monster. I assumed it was because she was an Elf using an Evish blade. When I got to the sewers, I tried the same thing with a Short Bow and an Elven Short Bow. I got the same results, no decrease in archery xp with the Short Bow, but a decrease with each monster hit when using the Elvish bow. I also got a decrease in light pole weapons using an Elven Spear.
I stopped her in the middle of battles a few times to check, and discovered that the decrease occurs with each hit and not when the monster dies. I did not discover a pattern to the amount of xp deducted, but it appeared that the more damage the hit did, the more xp was deducted. That may not have been the actual case.
So...later I upgraded to version 1.4 to continue playing this character. She is now a Fighter, Rouge, Samurai, Enchantress, War Witch (she rocks, by the way) and is usually carrying a Katana of the Sun and a Kama of the Void in her offhand. She continues to gain levels in light weapons, even though the light weapon is in her offhand and is not Elvish, but Eastern. She is a Samurai, though, so maybe...
Anyway, not much, but that is what I know about the use of weapons decreasing the xp needed to advance. Anybody know how this really works?
Peace and Love,
Spheric  |