Training

Training is a term used to describe the act of raising your skills artifically, similar to "practicing" a skill in order to enhance it.

Melee
To train your melee skill (sword, axe, club, or fist), you must acquire a target to bleed, with the chosen type of melee weapon, and successfully bleed it once for every 30 combat rounds. The number of combat rounds allowed is reduced by 10 for every attack you absorb while attacking your target in a single combat round. As such, you will need to make blood once every 20 combat rounds if 1 creature is attacking you while you're attacking your target, and once every 10 combat rounds if 2 creatures are attacking you.

Targets can include, but are not limited to:


 * Other willing players.
 * Monsters found in great number, such as Orc Warriors, Bandits, Rotworms or Dwarves.
 * Monsters summoned or convinced by a willing player, or yourself, that have inherent healing abilities. Ghouls and Monks are the most popular, though Dark Monks, if convinced, can prove especially effective for a knight.
 * Monsters with the cloning ability, such as Slimes. In this instance, it is imperative that the "mother" creature remain alive, while the "clones" suffer damage from your weapon.

Knights advance fastest in melee training, with the highest skill being 115 as of December, 2006. Paladins can also advance in melee skills at a reasonable rate. Several Paladins currently have melee skills in the 60-65 range. Druids advance slightly faster than Sorcerers, but since the introduction of wands, melee skills for the mage classes have become all but irrelevant.

Distance
The same as melee training, though bleeding your target will double your progress benefit on that particular hit.

Paladins advance in distance rapidly, with the highest skill registering at 114 as of June, 2006. Knights can reach a distance skill of 40 at best.

Shielding
Your shielding skill will subsequently rise if, in addition, you have monsters attacking you while bleeding your target. The creatures need not bleed you, nor must they be of a certain strength. Additionally, any creatures attacking you beyond the 2nd will not add to your shielding skill. Thus, 2 creatures in the optimal number of training creatures for shielding advancement.

Knights and Paladins both rise in shielding at equal rates.

Magic Level
Each magic level requires a precise amount of mana to be spent before advancement. Simply casting spells will further your progress meter accordingly. Prior to the 7.6 update, mana was only counted in 20-point blocks, discarding any mana from spells costed beyond the last multiple of 20. With the introduction of wands, which use as little as 2 mana points, this feature has been replaced, and every mana point spent is now counted toward the progress meter.

Sorcerers and Druids reach the highest levels of magic, with the highest being 86 as of June, 2006. Paladins have been rumoured to have magic levels as high as 26. No Knight has ever surpassed magic level 9, as of the aforementioned date, and only two have been known to achieve it.

Fishing
Simply fish to advance your progress meter in this category.

Tips
To further your progress, employ the following tactics:


 * Bring plenty of food for prolonged training sessions. Ham provides the best gold piece per HP ratio, while brown mushrooms provide the best weight to HP ratio. Eating will not only allow you to heal during PvP training, but it will allow you to cast spells in general and advance your magic level.
 * Have two creatures attack your target in unison, and then proceed to attack it afterward. This is a phenomenon known as "shield-breaking", meaning your weapon will penetrate your target's defense value, which has been occupied by the first two attacks. Note however, that distance fighting automatically bypasses shielding, so this method is not necessary for distance training. Furthermore, this tactic will not work on targets that are not friendly, via convincing, summoning, or PvP training, as monsters will not attack other monsters that are hostile toward you.
 * In PvP training, make sure your partner is wearing as little armor as possible to encourage more bleeding. The amount of damage he can take is directly equal to the amount of life he regenerates while eating, plus HP gained from any healing spells he can cast with regenerated mana.
 * When training with slimes you'd like to bring as much food as posible since slimes tend to hit high from time to time. Find a space in which only 2 slimes are able to attack you simultaniously. (Note that slimes can push parcels so dont count on it to block a slime from getting to you)
 * On worlds with less players on them a good training technique would be hunting places with rather large amounts of creatures, while being on defensive or balanced mode.
 * Make sure while training that the creatures attacking you shall move as less as posible, since for a creature to move, he looses about 0.4 seconds of responce time that would otherwise be used towards him fighting. So each time he moves you loose 0.4 seconds of shielding advance by him.

Good places for training

 * Near the Desert Dungeon Quest place. On the passage before entering the quest room, you'll find a slime. Lure the mother slime to the down hole that you went up to go behind it. There only 2 slimes can hit you at once.
 * North of the Amazon Camp you'll find a cave with 1 beholder and 1 slime. Kill the beholder as fast as posible, it will most likly run to a space in which he is trapped that you will also use as your training spot. (Northern point of the cave)
 * Thais Ancient Temple, is the most popular training place for low level knights. There are several places to stand in which only 2 slimes can hit you.
 * Venore rotworm cave. There is a huge slime spawn, but without any spots to train at all. At the point farthest to the north east you will find a roping place. Just rope the mother slime upwards and stand in the corner of the ladder spot so that only 2 slimes may hit you at the same time.
 * Venore in house of Wyda, lure slimes of the south for the house, and enter in room.
 * Fibula Dungeon on the first level underground. There you will find on the left huge cave with many rotworms and carrion worms. It's dangerous while surrounded, but there are a plenty of spawns so you won't have to wait too long.
 * Troll's cave south-east of Thais. On the deepest level there are few rotworms and good corridors to train, but beware of unwanted skeletons with its life draining.
 * There are many places to train at Tiquanda, and slimes spawn everywhere.