A majority of skill books require lvl 1 of a certain combat skill. So far in the game I haven't found any that require more than lvl 1.

I was surprised to learn that this requirement takes into account skills granted through gear. So if a skill book requires lvl 1 Hydrosophist, for instance, you can simply put on an item that increases Hydrosphist lvl by 1 and use any hydrosphist skill book.

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Secondly, on the subject of Civil skills. Civil skills on gear doesn't make sense to me. The whole point of adding points to characters is to specialize characters. Having civil skills on gear means you can get large amounts of a certain skill from gear without ever investing any character points on that skill.

Loremaster is especially troublesome. It's a skill that should be looked at again. It's apparently a one-point-wonder. One point allows you to identify gear. It's usefulness is lacklustre after that.

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My Suggestions:
1) No longer put combat/civil skills in gear. To compensate, maybe make Civil points more frequent from lvl ups.

2) Take a second look at loremaster. Maybe remove the skill entirely or give it other functionalities. If you make it so that you have to lvl up Loremaster to identify high lvl gear then having high Loremaster on one character becomes too much of a requirement.

You already need more points into Loremaster to identify higher level gear. By the time you've completed the first map you should have been able to find a few pieces of gear that required Loremaster 2 to identify.

I do agree that you shouldn't be able to learn skills because you're wearing gear the gives you a point in that ability. Especially given the fact that you don't need to have a point in that ability to use the skill, just to learn it.

Loremaster is also used to identify enemies. If you had no character with Loremaster, you would not know how much Health or Armor/Magic Armor an enemy had. Adding additional points into Loremaster allows you to see other information, such as an enemy's resistances, and any special traits/talents they possess.

As for the skills, I am also saddened that 1 point allows a character to learn all of the spells of a school, and that adding subsequent points is rather... unrewarding, currently. This will probably be changed in the coming months, perhaps drastically.

I forgot to mention: You can also gain a large amount of a certain civil skill on gear, equip that gear when needed and then unequip it for gear with better combat stats.

Example: Get a lot of gear with + bartering. Equip the bartering gear when making trades and then unequip it.

The game has such a nice point allocation system to specialize your characters in certain civil skills. Having them put on gear like this completely ruins the elegant system that's in place.

You NEVER need to identify enemies for the most part... It is completely unhelpful.

Since even at Loremaster 0... you pretty much know everything important...

The only remotely useful loremaster rating is 5...

I just assumed that we don't have the actual requirements in yet, because the devs want to see what the trends are before setting the restrictions.

I mean, we have equipment that says it requires a stat, but no number of it and anyone can use it.

Loremaster should probably have quest related stuff and dialogue much more often too.


Regarding the main point:
I'm fairly certain Larian make no pretense of making a balanced game. The design goal is more for the player to have ALL THE TOYSES so he can have retard-fun

So you have wearable items that make skills unnecessary (In DOS1 I just had 3 items with +1 barter, so instead of the CHOICE of upgrading barter, I had the CHORE of undressing and wearing all those barter items before trading, and then changing clothes again. Thank you, retarded designer), you have a crazy overabundance of wands and scrolls and arrows and grenades, all craftable of course, that also make skills and spells irrelevant, etc.

It's a design philosophy, it's not that they 'missed something'. Because... consoles probably.
It's a design philosophy also apparent with the INSANE female poses, the morphing feather and leaf plate armor, and... I hope the story is not retarded again like it was in DOS1 because their promise of more mature writing was the only reason I backed DOS2....
Right now it's looking even worse than dos1

Loremaster's main use in D:OS1, for me at least, was identifying an enemy's Willpower and Bodybuilding.

Since those are gone in D:OS2, Loremaster doesn't get much use other than identifying items...

I don't see how this is different, in principle, than moving all your stuff to the character with the highest bartering skill just before selling?

I don't see the problem here.

When I put on gear that gave me +1 in a skill I didn't have, I wasn't able to use the skillbooks for it. Have you tested this? My experience was different.

Works for me. If you want to test this quickly you can just go kill the guy who gives you the quest for the teleport gloves. He always drops a chest piece with +1 aerothurge on it.

@Darxim - My experience was that equipping an item that gave +1 Aerotheuge/Geomancer/Huntsman etc. allowed me to learn from those respective schools even thou I had no points in those schools prior. Even after unequipping the item I still have full functionality of the skills I learned. This held true for every playthrough -- that's Early Access for ya! :P

It has to be that way because of the elves. Thanks to corpse eating, they are learning spells without needing the skill class.

it is that way -- but *HAS* to be that way, meh -- some coding adjustments could change that.

No it doesn't. It only has to be that way for elves. :P They could be able to learn some skills they don't have the points for. Tyvärr would make this part of their racial cool.
As it is now it's a random chance to save a small amount of gold by not having to equip the right +skill gear and consume a skillbook.

If they could learn a skill you would otherwise haveto invest points to get it would be really cool.

This is exactly why I think skills like barter/loremaster should be group wide. The only thing added to the game by that not being the case is tedium.