Skills

If you would seek to excel in the combat arts, you would do well to acquaint yourself with Rook, Meridian 59's premier Weapons Master. Rook is generous with free advice and wisdom regarding the worthiness of your potential adversaries. And if you share your coin with him, he is more generous still, endowing you with ever-increasing knowledge of the Slash, Dodge, Punch, and other vital battle kills. The best warriors visit Rook frequently, eagerly take on his errands, and show slavish devotion to his causes. You would do well to emulate them.

Rook takes his role as teacher very seriously, and will only teach you the skills you are qualified to learn. For example, he will not offer you Level 2 skills until you have become reasonably experienced with the Level 1 skills you started out with.

Acquiring Skills

All new citizens are given the chance to buy a few low-level skills at the time of their entry. Training in other skills must be purchased from Rook. Here's how this works:

1. Find Rook. He makes his home in one of the northern cities, and the path is well-known to all Meridian warriors. When you find him, walk up to him, type Buy, and press Enter.
2. The list that appears includes all the skills that you are qualified to buy, based on his assessment of your current abilities. You may notice that he also deals in quality armaments, which you may purchase as your purse allows.

Highlight the skills that you wish to be trained in, and click OK. To close this window, click Cancel.

3. The new skills now appear in your Skills list. To view this, click the Skills button to the right of the Chat Window. Your complete list of skills appears just below the button. (If you have too many to fit in the allotted area, drag the scroll bar that appears to the right of the list to view the rest.)

To get a detailed description of a given skill on the list, right-click it (or double-left-click it). Every skill is ranked on a difficulty level from 1 to 5.

Honing Your Skills

Combat, of course, is the best teacher. Every time you enter the heat of conflict, your skills are further tempered, and your proficiency increases (unless, of course, you die, which has a decidedly unhealthy effect on your skill levels). Because discretion is often the better part of valor, you don't have to win the battle to gain the benefit of experience from it.

To view your current skills, click the Skills button at the lower right of the World Window. The percentage number next to each skill on the list shows your current effectiveness with that skill. This rating goes up with practice: if you often dodge during combat, for example, your effectiveness rating at the Dodge will continually increase. However, this goes the other way as well: if you've beefed up your Slash skill during many hours of swordplay, then switch to a weapon that doesn't rely so heavily on Slash (say, an axe), your Slash effectiveness rating will gradually begin to deteriorate over time.