sense heading, mend do not need training

[jeremy0818]

These skills do not require training from guildmaster on live, but I never seen it go up without training over 20+ levels of constant spamming on few characters on this server. Has anyone experience skill up without training?

[BlkCamel]

Training Sense Heading

6 November 2002

One of the most useful skills is Sense Heading. Without it, you have to rely on visual recognition and the /loc command to navigate around zones, which is frustrating at best. I have met players in their 20's with Sense Heading skills of under 10, and I can't understand how they can find their way around. It is also a difficult skill to raise, needing lots of repetitions to get a single skill increase. Automating your Sense Heading ability is a great way to get quick skill raises, and to keep the skill maximised. If you do this, it starts to become dependable somewhere between level 10 and 15; at level 10, a few quick key presses will pick up a reading, and at 15, most of the time your compass will be accurate.

If you haven't already, create an ability key for sense heading - just choose one of the blank buttons in the abilities menu, and select sense heading. Then click and hold sense heading and drop the button that appears on your hot key menu; I usually put it on button number nine (bottom left corner). Once that is done, use the Options->Keyboard->Macros panel to attach your forward key to user macro 9; or if you are using the old UI, use F10 to go to the old fashioned windowed display, and choose options, keyboard, next (and next again?) to arrive at the page with User Defined 9. Right click on this to select the second (null) line, and press your forward key - usually numeric keypad 8. Now, whenever sense heading is available, moving forward will trigger it, and you will get the fastest skill increase possible, with almost no effort on your part.

Some people prefer to put it on their left or right keys, as these are used more often - but then the heading is less likely to be accurate when you need it, which is when following on a direct bearing.

This is fine if you only want to train and use Sense Heading in this way. However, if you are a class/race that can forage, you will know that this is a skill that raises even slower than Sense Heading. It is possible to combine both of these skills (in fact, any number of skills) on the same key press with a social macro.

To create a social, go to your Socials menu (far right on the menu bar in the same window as Abilities), and tab through this until you find an unused button. Right click on this to open an editing window. Give it a name, I usually use 'Forward', and create something for it to execute. My Forward social looks like this:

/doability 1
/doability 2

In this case, my Sense Heading ability is on ability button 1, and my Forage ability on button 2. Then put this social onto your hot button bar, replacing the Sense Heading button you created above.

You can extend this social to include other functions; I know someone who has put Tracking on her forward key, and this can be added in to the macro in exactly the same way to train this skill.

Many on Red swear by this, I have not trained sense heading because I am good with LoC's and you can figure out position with them. But many have been advocating this system. I know this article is 2002, but it is not like binding a skill changed from 99-02

[jeremy0818]

I am more concerned about whether there is a need (must) to use the free guildmaster points to be able to use the skill or not, I am one of those people who care about whether you have used minimum amount of guildmaster points before maxing all skills

so at lvl 60 a monk would have used 13 required skill points for abilities and maybe 1 more for fletching. Languages do not nees to be trained as you can have your friend create a level 1 char and learn the skills to train for you. Thus you will proudly see 286 unused points everytime you open up the guildmaster window. But if you have to train 2 more on sense heading and mend, you will only have 284, which was not meant to be.

[BlkCamel]

I am more concerned about whether there is a need (must) to use the free guildmaster points to be able to use the skill or not, I am one of those people who care about whether you have used minimum amount of guildmaster points before maxing all skills

so at lvl 60 a monk would have used 13 required skill points for abilities and maybe 1 more for fletching. Languages do not nees to be trained as you can have your friend create a level 1 char and learn the skills to train for you. Thus you will proudly see 286 unused points everytime you open up the guildmaster window. But if you have to train 2 more on sense heading and mend, you will only have 284, which was not meant to be.

I have no evidence of this, only hazy memory. But I swear you needed to train sense heading to 5 before you saw it go up with regular use. I have not tested on p99. I never used Sense heading due to un-reliability and then eventually with Luclin the introduction of the compass. Just much easier to learn the Loc system and visualize in your head, also I was one of those people with a binder full of printed maps.

[jeremy0818]

No, no skill 'needs' more than 1 skill point, anything more is for convenience. Eqthieves has both skills listed as 'no' for training required. If you spammed every second of running around and during fight, the skill usually goes up from 0 to 1 by your character hits level 4. It goes up relatively quick frpm there. Instill doubt is even slower skill to raise (it seem to go up relatively fast on p99) and there is not much issue getting it to 200 from 1.

[BlkCamel]

No, no skill 'needs' more than 1 skill point, anything more is for convenience. Eqthieves has both skills listed as 'no' for training required. If you spammed every second of running around and during fight, the skill usually goes up from 0 to 1 by your character hits level 4. It goes up relatively quick frpm there. Instill doubt is even slower skill to raise (it seem to go up relatively fast on p99) and there is not much issue getting it to 200 from 1.

That's why I say it was off hazy memory, I never tried to raise the skill while regularly playing because of how slow it was. I played a Druid for awhile(up to level 36) and never saw skill increases from using it starting out(felt it was more RP for a druid to know sense heading), so I did as others suggested and trained it up to 5. Eventually you saw increases from using it because you didn't give up, so things like that have a confirmation bias that can stick with you. Said it before and will preach it forever, LOC system is a sense heading if you learn how to use it and one of the best skills you can have as a player in this game.:D

Good to know if I ever decided to max out every skill!

[Thulack]

I am more concerned about whether there is a need (must) to use the free guildmaster points to be able to use the skill or not, I am one of those people who care about whether you have used minimum amount of guildmaster points before maxing all skills

so at lvl 60 a monk would have used 13 required skill points for abilities and maybe 1 more for fletching. Languages do not nees to be trained as you can have your friend create a level 1 char and learn the skills to train for you. Thus you will proudly see 286 unused points everytime you open up the guildmaster window. But if you have to train 2 more on sense heading and mend, you will only have 284, which was not meant to be.

should have 287 then because there is no reason for you to put 1 point into fletching.

[Vega]

I have noticed that you need atleast 1 point in sense heading to get it to raise (but have gone up to 200 from 1).

[Rhambuk]

I have noticed that you need atleast 1 point in sense heading to get it to raise (but have gone up to 200 from 1).

This is right for me. I recently made a character and the first thing i do is bind left/right to sense heading, after 6 levels and a lot of running around I didn't receive any skill ups. After putting 1 point into last night it started raising instantly.

[jeremy0818]

Yep, and on live server you did not need to put the first point right?

[Rhambuk]

Yep, and on live server you did not need to put the first point right?

im like 90% you never had to put a starting point in ANY ability you started with, sense heading swimming bind etc etc etc. the only skills you had to put points in were the ones you needed to learn.

[Byrjun]

Yep, and on live server you did not need to put the first point right?

Correct.

Other skills that are bugged on P99 are Mend and Monk Dual Wield.