Practice Points

[Grasmere]

What is the point of spending Skill points with associated costs when you automatically gain points as you level? Is it a method to increase the skill at an earlier level?

[Barm McLir]

Some skills are level capped (usually level * 5 + 5). For example Swimming is capped a 55 for a level 10 character.
Some are not, like Sense Heading which you can raise to 200 at level 1.
Skills that kick in a certain levels, like Dodge, you have to spend 1 training point at you class trainer before they will increase from usage.

You will end up with a surplus of training points. A good use for them is to buy the first 20 points in a tradeskill. Or maybe buying the remaining points in defensive skills if you're a class that doesn't get punched a lot. Note that buying training costs more as the skill number increases. You cannot buy above your current cap for level capped skills.

[Llandris]

Like the poster stated above, saving them for tradeskills helps. I always dump like 11 pts into sense heading on all my characters as well.

[Grasmere]

Thanks. I have sense heading maxed but I am a L16 Druid and as Barm McLir pointed out I don't get punched a lot and so would spending points in Evocation, Alteration and Channeling help?

[Barm McLir]

Yep. You can absolutely take Sense Heading to 200 on a level 1 without spending any points. You will also doubt this is true long before you get better at Sense Heading (1)!

[Grasmere]

He hee. Yes. It was well spent during medding times.

[Raavak]

Some skills don't start self-learning unless you put at least a point in them. Meditate is the biggy there. I don't know what else, I usually train most standard skills at least 1.

[Grasmere]

Some skills don't start self-learning unless you put at least a point in them. Meditate is the biggy there. I don't know what else, I usually train most standard skills at least 1.

Yes Raavak that's true but is there any point in spending valuable Plat on raising a defensive skill if it increases exponentially as you level?

[Barm McLir]

Nah, as a caster you wont have to worry about spending points in magical skills. If your're leveling quickly, find a cheap to cast spell in each school you're lacking (say divination and conjuration) and just make a macro like this

We'll put 'Sense Animals' (5 mana, divination) in Spell Slot 1 and 'Dance of the Fireflies' (10 mana, conjuration) in Spell Slot 2 and make a macro like this.

/pause 25, /cast 1
/pause 25, /cast 2

The pause command is weird -- it is the only command you can combine on the same line as another (in this /cast) and it pauses at the completion of the macro line. So you'll cast 'Sense Animal' and pause 2.5 seconds (to wait on the 2 second global cooldown on spell gems + .5 seconds of fudge to deal with network/server/client delays).

You can repeat these lines or add something else you want to train. If you get a message that you haven't recovered yet or the spells refresh timer has not been met you need to play with the delays. This will give you a Training button you can spam while reading the fine forums at Project1999.com.

[Grasmere]

Nah, as a caster you wont have to worry about spending points in magical skills. If your're leveling quickly, find a cheap to cast spell in each school you're lacking (say divination and conjuration) and just make a macro like this

We'll put 'Sense Animals' (5 mana, divination) in Spell Slot 1 and 'Dance of the Fireflies' (10 mana, conjuration) in Spell Slot 2 and make a macro like this.

/pause 25, /cast 1
/pause 25, /cast 2

The pause command is weird -- it is the only command you can combine on the same line as another (in this /cast) and it pauses at the completion of the macro line. So you'll cast 'Sense Animal' and pause 2.5 seconds (to wait on the 2 second global cooldown on spell gems + .5 seconds of fudge to deal with network/server/client delays).

You can repeat these lines or add something else you want to train. If you get a message that you haven't recovered yet or the spells refresh timer has not been met you need to play with the delays. This will give you a Training button you can spam while reading the fine forums at Project1999.com.

Wow! Thanks for the heads up on this. Very helpful indeed.

[Lojik]

If you're a pure caster you can use them on research. It gets expensive at higher skills but probably still cheaper than buying research mats and skilling up that way, if you can even find those mats for sale.

[Jimjam]

Agreeing with Lojik here; I dumped a whole bunch of points (and plat) in to my wizard's research.

Casters are kinda lucky they have a skill that is hard to level, but trainable, just so they have something they can put their practice points in to.

[DinoTriz]

Agreeing with Lojik here; I dumped a whole bunch of points (and plat) in to my wizard's research.

Casters are kinda lucky they have a skill that is hard to level, but trainable, just so they have something they can put their practice points in to.

Just be careful when using your practice points.

I burned through like 1k without realizing it while I was training Research.

In all honesty, I wish I would have skipped Research all together. Just buy spells from other players. Much easier and cheaper.

[enjchanter]

If you have a specific specialization you're aiming for (conjuration for mage, alteration for cleric, etc) it can help ensure you get the right one by dumping points into the appropriate specialization skill at level 20