ARCHIVE: CLOK BBS

After looking at the prices on the studybooks and their skill ranges, I can't help but wonder if they're truly worth the riln that is asked in exchange. You can spend 1000 riln on a 1-100 skill book, or you can pay about.. 150-200 riln for lessons from the trainers to receive more skill than the book will ever offer.

Would it be possible for the skill ranges these books offer to be looked at, or their value? As a whole, you're losing a lot more riln than you'll save by using them.

And as a guild that's already extremely tight for riln, that presents... problems.

With the changes to skill leveling this probably does need some adjustment, but you also need to consider that part of the value is in not having to go out of your way to find a trainer. Maybe that ease of access is not an 800 riln value, but it is still quite a nice perk that many guilds go without.

Oh yes, I suppose I should have included in my initial post that I don't expect it to be cheaper overall. But 800 additional riln for something that will only cost like 200 riln or less is.. it a pretty drastic difference. Of course, a lot of the value in books is not having to go back to town constantly to get a new lesson, as is stated by their description.

Oh boy, Elemancer textbooks. Time to open up the can of worms!

I certainly feel as if the textbooks are still priced at before the "Changes to Skill Gains" era, and possibly even predate the "2500 skill cap" era based on how low the cap the textbooks goes to.

For all you non-alt-a-holics out there, to own a set of textbooks for a single element costs 121k riln, with the most expensive costing 30k for a single purchase. To put that in perspective, that's 6 warhorses! Most people don't even one a single warhorse, let alone two, forget a house or a whole set of exquisite armor (Which you could buy all of the above with.) And yes, 121k riln isn't so bad to someone who's been playing for a long time... but this is for skillbooks below 1000. I don't think anyone has ever spent 121k, total, for just training under 1000 skill points, even in the olden days.

You could argue that their value is in their portability, but I should also remark on the length of study times, as well! Studying a textbook takes 30 seconds, training under a PC takes 10, and training under an NPC takes 0. Since it's magic and there's rarely a 'better elemancer,' then it's comparing the lengthy and expensive training that a portable textbook offers versus the instantaneous and cheap training that running to a teacher would offer.

I don't think a textbook should ever replace a good teacher, especially in the later stages so capping at 1k is perfectly fine with me. I would be happy if the number of textbooks was either reduced and the range of skill extended, or if the price was adjusted (or both!)

Heck, I'd be ecstatic if they were consolidated as a single textbook, "Introduction to Elementmancy," and only trained someone to 300, like a certain nonexistent item for a nonexistent guild.

I've definitely thought about the textbooks and initially went and snagged all of the 1-100 textbooks and, while the portability was nice, I found that I only got a small handful of uses out of them before they were outdated when the price of training with a nearby elemancer would've been much cheaper. So aside from having something to toss on a bookshelf I'm really not sure as to their ultimate benefit given the cost and range of uses when a little extra time to travel to a trainer would save hundreds if not thousands of riln.