These skills are all considered arcane, which means that they are not affected by your racial skillmax. You can train them to 100 (if your guild allows it) without spending extra experience, even if your racial skillmax is lower.
- Cast generic
This skill determines your success rate when casting any spell. Very important.
- Cast X
Along with cast generic, the cast X skills determine your success rate when casting the relevant spells. You will want to consult the help files for your spells (help spell X) to see which cast skill affects them (it is the "Cast type:" line). Very important.
Note
This is NOT the same thing as the damage type of the spell! For example, the channelburn spell does fire damage, but is affected by "cast channelling", training "cast fire" has no effect on it at all.
- Mastery skills
These skills have widely varying names, usually Mastery of X or Knowledge of X. Each of them affects spells of a single "cast X" group, but the effect varies - for damage spells, it usually is +damage, for defenses it is strength or duration, and so on. Mastery skills are non-essential and expensive, but can be very useful, so train them as your experience allows.
- Analysis of magic lore
Passive skill. When you hit something with a damage spell, it can tell you how much the monster resists that damage type. The messages are:
- screams in pain (0% resist)
- writhes in agony (20% resist)
- shudders from the force of the attack (40% resist)
- grunts from the pain (60% resist)
- winces a little from the pain (80% resist)
- shrugs off the attack (100% resist)
- Ceremony
Active skill, improves the chance of casting the next spell successfully. Useful when about to do something that you don't want to fail, not used very often though.
- Conceal spellcasting
Prevents mobs from becoming aggressive when casting offensive spells in their room. Rarely needed.
- Damage criticality
Allows you to occasionally inflict critical hits with spells for extra damage. Nice to have, but not essential and expensive to train.
- Quick chant
Faster casting, very important. This skill works by sometimes skipping a round or two - you can observe the effect with Essence eye. Very important skill to have, but also expensive - train as you can, but don't overdo it, as it can increase with usage.
- Essence eye
Informs you about progress when casting. Very useful and cheap skill that also raises with usage. 40-50 is sufficient early on.
- Mana control
Reduces the mana costs of failed spells. Cheap skill that's useful to have.
