Can all races learn basic skills just by using them?
 

I've noticed that some of my characters' Sense Heading increase with use, but others don't (even if I "seed" the skill with guild training). Is it just me? Does this also apply to things like Swimming?

Some skills (notably swimming) can take a while to improve, others (like sense heading or fishing) seem to improve faster as you gain ranks due to the improved success rate. Tradeskills are linked to stats, so a warrior might find their blacksmithing (linked to strength) rises very fast, while pottery (int / wis) does not.

Depending on your race, you may also get some bonus skills. All wood elves start with 50 in foraging, but this never rises unless you have a class who also gets foraging and have reached 10th level. This is because a) you don't actually have the skill and/or b) the skill still follows the (lvl x 5) + 5 rule.

/agree, it is weird how some will advance & some u must spend at least 1 point in at trainer.

Ah, so the skill increase depends on your successes. I thought you just had to use it. Makes sense, thanks!

Every time you use a skill there is a check to see if it improves +1 point. Successful use of the skill seem to have higher probabilities of giving a skill-up than failures -- this means that failures can give skill-ups too, though more rarely than successes.

Im lvl 20 and I have Sense Heading at max skill lvl, just by spamming it in a hotbutton while I walk, while im fighting... etc.

It is important to keep in mind fails/misses/etc. also can increase a skill.

Also, if you are practicing weapon skills, you *cannot* increase your skill on a green mob. You can bash on green mobs all you want, but you will never advance in melee skill (just like character level).

I am not sure about the claim that a successful combine/hit/etc. has a higher chance of giving your a skill-up than a fail. I would suspect, all attempts get same "dice roll".

In any of the tradeskills, you can always fail, even if you are high skill. And you will fail. This game is not designed to be pleasant, sometimes.

There are many varieties of fail in eq. Spell fizzles are my fave. They are set pretty soft tho on p99 it seems. Devs should maybe think of tweaking the fizzle dial a little. CH is totally overpowered and needs a *much* higher fizzle rate imo. As it stands, it's pretty brainless to keep a tank up using...... CCH

Unstable gate is by far my favorite fail (and by favorite I mean I hate it). As if fizzle wasn't enough they had to throw in random fail AFTER the spell has successfully cast and not been interrupted. The rate of unstable gate is low yet strangely most often happens while trying to avert death. Strange that lol

It is possible to configure keyboard key presses to activate a skill. This is useful for skills that you would have to click, like, too many million times in order to raise them through practice such as Sense Heading, Forage, or in the beginning stages of practicing Sneak. In the Options menu in the game, find the Controls sub-menu and locate the section of Controls that reads something similar to USE HOTBAR 1, USE HOTBAR 2, and so on. The trick here is that you will have to put the skill activation icon on the corresponding slot of the action panel. In this way, you can, for instance, set Sense Heading to activate every time you press the keyboard key to make your toon turn to the left. Even when you grandmaster Sense Heading, this can be useful as you are being constantly updated on which direction you are facing!