Learning...

[UnknownSoldier]

How is learning trained ?

I have an orcish priest char who started with learning 11 : the last of a long list of random char.
Surprisingly, he survived to see dwarftown and, in the process, managed to find quite a good number of spellbook.
He read them all and most of them until disappearance. Including some complicated ones like "knowledge of the ancient".

His knowledge hasn't increased once in all this time. Is it really trained by reading books ?

On another note, I have allways felt that by reading books when I have no castings of the spell, my overall number of casting will be higher. Has someone made some test to explain how the number of casting are computed ?

[Silfir]

I've had this happen to me too with a druid. Apparently reading spellbooks doesn't always reliably train Learning, which is a crying shame. Unless you find lots of potions of Learning or get lucky drinking a potion of exchange, your best bet is to eat the Oracle, and safekeep spellbooks to read when you've almost run out.

[rmcin329]

You can always try paying Garth in dwarftown to train learning

[Baranor]

I have always found that spell books are much less likely to disappear if my knowledge of the spell has dropped to less than 100. Like was said before, you can store them for safe keeping until you need them to replenish your spell knowledge.

[JellySlayer]

Here's a few possible suggestions:
-Use a potion of exchange to rearrange your stats. If you're feeling scummy, you can train will/dex/tough with herbs, then transfer those points to other skills with the potions.
-Casting the Identify/Enlightenment spell supposedly trains learning, as does reading scrolls, apparently. In my experience, you usually need to risk reading a pretty advanced spellbook (death ray, create item, wish...) to get any training.
-Eating the oracle gives ~6 points in learning. Have an altar handy.
-Potions of balance can train learning (but at the expense of other skills... unless you take precautions)
-Reading tombstones trains literacy skill, so it might train learning too, but I can't confirm this.
-At 11 points, training with Garth is pretty cheap. I'd train up to maybe 15, then eat the oracle to get into the low 20s, which is probably enough to get over 1000 castings in most spells.

[Molach]

Since you did mention a bit of scum (herb training + exchange or balance)...

You can starve your Le down to 5 or 6, then pay Garth the pile of cash for an even better effect.

15+ is all you really need, priests find a nice amount of books anyway.
But still a bit strange that it didn't increase naturally yet.

[UnknownSoldier]

I got one increase, somewhere in the middle of a wilderness battle with jackals.

I have now a magnificent 12.

I did think of the garth training, but a was really low on cash when I was in dwarftown.

I am now in the process of finding a karmic lizard, which isn't an especially rare monster but somehow still eludes me.

About Garth, can I pay him a huge stack of gold to have multiple increase ? Or do I have to come back to him between increase ?

About potions of exchange, I generally find only one or two by this time and really don't need to have my appearance transfered to my strength.

[Silfir]

Potions of exchange are more of an option for elves, that's true.

[Dawky]

About Garth, can I pay him a huge stack of gold to have multiple increase ? Or do I have to come back to him between increase ?

One big stack tends to get the job done.

[JellySlayer]

Well, at least strength can be trained back up to 16-18 without too much inconvenience...