Topic

Now THIS is how to train skills... (image)

The Best Way to Train Skills

Just saying :)

Posted 15 months ago by Bashere Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Yep I had to do a bit of that while I was waiting on my first emblem.  I'm doing Mining 3 right now and it'll finish tomorrow with enough time for me to start Mining 4 (the longest skill) at the end of the test.
    Posted 15 months ago by Hameigh Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I found that little trick after the last reset - it works really well, and I have started doing the same thing this time. It really only starts to kick in after the penalty get added but still it is a great way to "almost" get that next skill without adding the penalty.
    Posted 15 months ago by Shadowy Time Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Explain please!
    Posted 15 months ago by FrankenPaula Subscriber! | Permalink
  • excellent idea!
    Posted 15 months ago by Kookaburra Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Franken:

    Let's say you have 3 skills you can learn, and they each take 90 seconds a piece. Seems easy, right? In less than 5 minutes you can learn all 3 skills. Wrong.

    What Tiny Speck doesn't tell you, is that after you learn the first skill in 90 seconds, the second skill is going to take 10 minutes, and the final skill will take 2 hours.

    However, if you learn each of the 3 skills until there are 5 seconds left (as shown in the screenshot above), after you learn the first skill, the second skill will take 10 seconds, and the final skill will take 20 seconds. (The reason being is that they have a time multiplier which is added to each skill... TIME_LEFT * 3, e.g., so the fewer seconds you have left in a skill, the less TIME is tacked on in the end.)

    Does that make sense?
    Posted 15 months ago by Bashere Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Whoa. This is kind of revolutionary. And probably an exploit that will be corrected soon, I'm guessing. :)  *Runs out to do this with her skills before it's too late.*
    Posted 15 months ago by Meridian Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Good idea - but it does mean you have to hover over the skills in case they finish accidentally instead of playing the game.
    Posted 15 months ago by Momo McGlitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Read this JUST in time to start trying this out!
    Posted 15 months ago by Jia-pop Subscriber! | Permalink
  • *Lightbulb* Dang! I wish I knew this yesterday!
    Posted 15 months ago by FrankenPaula Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +Momo: I set timers on my iPhone with a few minutes to spare, then load the Glitch HQ app and start another long skill. Then when I get back to my computer, I do it again... only this time I do hover over the skills and stop them when they reach ~5 seconds.

    It does take some work, for sure, but the end result is learning skills at a MUCH faster rate than if you just queued them all up with a Greasemonkey Script and go about your day as normal.

    +Meridian: Stoot is aware of it, and he thought it was an interesting idea, but didn't think anyone would do it because of the time invested. I feel a LOT of people will start doing this.
    Posted 15 months ago by Bashere Subscriber! | Permalink
  • this idea is ok, but it's only a short term thing really. there's only so long you can do it before you need a skill completed to allow you to learn another. also, it would be pretty boring playing the game with no skills at all while you wait for the first 'set' to be completed. I think I'll stick to the traditional way of learning to be honest.
    Posted 15 months ago by kid4today Subscriber! | Permalink
  • So during the last test, I completed every single skill that was available... the last skill I learned jumped from 4 days (when I had 2 skills left to learn) to over 12 days (after I learned the 2nd to last skill).

    If I had used this approach... I would have saved myself over a WEEK'S worth of training time just in that one skill alone.

    So while the benefits are marginal in the beginning (saving only a few hours worth of skill training), when you get to the mid or end of skill training, you would have saved several weeks worth of training by using this method.

    To each their own, tho!
    Posted 15 months ago by Bashere Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The time penalty on skill learning actually doesn't apply until your 21st skill, according to striatic.

    ctrl+f "skills don't start to inflate until after the 20th"
    Posted 15 months ago by The Crepeist Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Huh...he might be right. Been trying it out this morning, doesn't look like it really does anything
    Posted 15 months ago by Jia-pop Subscriber! | Permalink
  • there's no arguing with the fact that at later levels it will save considerable time. I guess then it just comes down to whether you want to learn that fast. there are a finite amount of skills (and levels too now), if I learn them all asap I'll personally feel as if I've reached the end of the game in a way, and I don't want that. however.... when it comes to those last few skills I will probably be very tempted to try this method, but I shall try to resist!
    Posted 15 months ago by kid4today Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks Bashere, you've inspired me to practice for later levels:  i.imgur.com/PZAe0.png
    Posted 15 months ago by John Galt Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Another simple trick is to simply save the low-time, unnecessary skills for the end.  For example, Gasmogrification was one of the very last skills I learned last time around, since I could easily make enough gases to do what I wanted without the skill.
    Posted 15 months ago by Biff Beefbat Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +Crepeist: Unfortunately, that's not the case in my experience. My first three skills were 90 seconds each to finish. I finished one, and the other two jumped up to 10 minutes each. So either it's a bug, or your source is wrong. 

    Try it out yourself... note the times it'll take to learn a skill near the bottom of the board, learn a few skills (maybe 5 or 10 more - keeping it under 20 total), and see if the bottom skill increases in time. Mine already have, and I haven't learned but 5 skills.
    Posted 15 months ago by Bashere Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think the main time inflation doesn't kick in until you've learned (10? 20?) skills, but the very first skill you pick has a severely reduced time for learning, to give new players something to work with almost instantly.

    I've got about 10 skills since reset and the times look the same now as they did the last several times I was at the skill-picking screen, anyway.
    Posted 15 months ago by Space Tiles Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Um, I may be a little bit dense here. But does that mean there isn't a standard length of time for each skill to be learnt?  If so, I'm feeling a little bit scammed! 

    It doesn't make sense to me as a player why the time needed changes, especially since there's no heads up about it.  I can't say I ever looked at how long it says a skill takes to learn, and whether that amount is different what it said yesterday.  It just never occurred to me.

    It doesn't feel 'right'.
    Posted 15 months ago by MeetHead Subscriber! | Permalink
  • You know, I figure that before time extensions start to factor in, the most important thing to do is to be learning all the time. All this finagling with seconds to spare isn't going to count for anything if you go to bed and spend 6 hours not learning anything. Also, the time you save by playing learning games like this would probably be nullified by the crappiness of spending days failing to water trees or massage butterflies.
    Posted 15 months ago by Blitz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Since you can literally shave weeks off your time with careful planning, it's certainly worth considering doing your homework.

    This was very important to me before the reset, because I got a late start but still wanted to learn all the skills before the end of the world.  A lot of that planning involved artful arrangement of the fattest skills during the breaks.  And discovering the secrets of speedy learning and pausing was an interesting challenge.

    Now that we have all eternity to learn everything, this is not nearly so important to me, but I'm sure others will still be into maximizing efficiency.  Depending on your brain, this can be a lot of fun.
    Posted 15 months ago by Biff Beefbat Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yeah, this is crazy. You're not really benefiting and are missing out on those skills.

    The first four skills you get access to (Animal Kinship I, Soil Appreciation I, Light Green Thumb I, EX Cooking I) Each take 10 minutes to learn. HOWEVER, your first skill will always take only 90 seconds to learn, after that, the remaining time is added on.

    The time that does get added on, however, gets added onto both TOTAL TIME and TIME REMAINING. In the OP's screenshot, once they finish learning one skill, the remaining time will jump from 3 seconds TO 3 seconds plus however much time was added onto the total time.

    Additionally, the penalty only starts accruing after a certain amount of skills have been learnt. I've currently learnt 16 skills without seeing any penalties (with BL1, only BL2 increases the threshold IIRC). So the OP isn't preventing any penalty from accruing because no penalty would accrue anyway.

    tl;dr The only way to save time is by learning Better Learning. Also learn the longest skills first to minimise the penalty.
    Posted 15 months ago by Negata Subscriber! | Permalink
  • tl;dr

    However I think the 'skill reciprocation factor' doesn't kick in until you've completed like 10 skills or something like that, and also your example way exagerrates the amount of time added to learning skills. I would guess that by the time you finish the skill tree, the time it takes to learn a skill is around 2-3x what it was originally before you'd learned any skills, but I could be wrong...
    Posted 15 months ago by Squorble Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree with Negata.  It's a nice idea, Bashere -- and worth it just for the screenshot!  But does it really work?  I see you've now got a few skills under your belt -- can you tell us what happened after you completed the first skill?  The real test will be what happens after your 20th skill.

    Also note that there seem to be two types of learning-time inflation.  When you learn your first skill the learning times are heavily marked-down.  The base time for lots of first-level skills is 10 minutes, but you can learn your first one in 1m30.

    This bonus disappears once you've got the first skill under your belt.  Times are then flat for ~20 levels, and then inflation starts to kick in.

    It's also worth pointing out another downside of this, which is that you'll always be behind on learning skills.  Even if you are right about defeating inflation, you've got a choice between learning one skill in 1hr and a second one in another 1hr10, or waiting 2h and then learning both skills.  So in the long run you might a few days off the optimal learning time for the whole skill tree -- but up until that point you'll also be a few days behind in terms of being able to actually use any skills that you are learning.

    Good luck though!
    Posted 15 months ago by Nonsense Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I proposed this once a long time ago. Stoot said he thought it would work but that it would cause the next set of skills to just take super long, ahaha.
    Posted 15 months ago by Cerulean Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Well, no, once you start getting into "reciprocation", there are benefits to this approach... the time left is what gets scaled (for now).  So, if you have 100 seconds left in a skill and another gets learned and you're in "Skill Reciprocation" (is that what it's called) you have 103 seconds left.  However, the first few skills don't have this factor, so your time savings are moot unless you skip these skills right until the end.  Given the PITA it is trying to play without SA1, AK1 or T1, I'd say these savings are moot.
    Posted 15 months ago by Blitz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The real issue is how penalty time gets added.

    If it simply remembers how much time you've spent and stores that as a static number (which it does), then adds a static penalty on top of it, you haven't done anything except shifted around your waiting.

    If the penalty is a function of the time remaining, then you've found a nice Kwanzaa egg.

    I suspect it's a static penalty based on max time and not time remaining, but I have not tested this hypothesis.

    Also while it is "common knowledge" that once you have maxed speed learnin' and paused that you cannot donate away any more time, that's not entirely true.  I believe the situation where I noticed this was one in which I had maxed out donation for a skill, paused it, then completed a Better Learning.

    This allowed me to shave off a little bit more time on the paused skill through donations.  I'm sure this says something about the way the math works, but I kinda don't care any more, so I never applied any brain power to figuring out exactly what happens.
    Posted 15 months ago by Biff Beefbat Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I tried this last test.  It did not work, having (I guess) already been "corrected" as Meridian put it.  Once I actually learned one (ie let it run down to zero seconds left), the others jumped up accordingly.

    After striatic posted in chat about his strategy for maximizing skill learnage, I had some conversations with folks and we ran a few tests on scamming the skills tree.  The short version of the result is: most of the really good (as in would save you a *lot* of time) scams you can think of just don't work.

    Planning the order of the skills so that you learn the long ones early (because increasing learning times once you have more than 20 skills are in the form of a percentage) seems to be the only "scam" that could yield excellent results that actually works.

    Sure, if you do that, you finish your very last skill sooner than someone else finishes her very last skill, but you have to plug away at BL and Mining and whatnot for literally weeks before you can even cook yourself a goshdarned sammich or get more than three beans at a time from a bean tree, so maybe it makes gameplay in the early days/levels un-fun enough not to be worth it either.  (Though mileage may vary greatly depending upon your style of gameplay).
    Posted 15 months ago by caromalinia Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The misconception probably arises from people thinking that the time displayed is a reflection of time remaining, and while that's true, its is more accurately a reflection of time spent learning. Here's an example to demonstrate what's happening:

    P________B

    A person (P) sees a ball (B). T ball is 9 spaces ahead of the person, so the person moves towards it.

    _____P___B

    Now the ball is 4 spaces in front of the person. This represents the time you spend learning. Now, the ball rolls away:

    _____P_______B

    The ball (time needed to learn a skill) has moved away from the person (time spent learning a skill). The total distance (time) needed to travel has increased, but the distance (time) travelled (spent learning) hasn't changed.
    Posted 15 months ago by Negata Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I remember Stoot posting that this strategy WOULD work... but of course once you learn 5-6 skills in a row, the next skill will take a considerable amount of time. So while it may be difficult in the beginning without having every skill possible learned, I wouldn't be surprised if I finish the skill tree a week or two ahead of the curve.

    I'll get back to you in 3 months :)
    Posted 15 months ago by Bashere Subscriber! | Permalink
  • In all other games I've been a spreadsheet maniac together with the best of them, but here I'm learning stuff with one single plan in mind. Having fun. 
    It's not about the goal, it's about the journey. 

    So lets say you finish all skills before me... weeks before. You'll have a 50k house weeks before too. And loads of money. 
    Then what?
    Posted 15 months ago by Zira Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I remember Stoot posting that this strategy WOULD work... but of course once you learn 5-6 skills in a row, the next skill will take a considerable amount of time.

    No more than if you'd learned the skills normally, though.  Right?

    Also, Negata has nailed how it works, but the question is how the distance the ball rolls is determined.  If it's always the same, no matter what (excepting Better Learning for the sake of this discussion), then the pausing, it does nothing.
    Posted 15 months ago by Biff Beefbat Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Planning only works if the rules stay the same, but it would appear that the rules have changed... all my skill learning times have gone up by about 10 percent within the last few hours and are above base time.  I have BL3 and 25 skills learned, including the 3 BL skills.  AK1 has a learning time of 10:03.  Base time for AK1 is 10 minutes, so under BL3 with no penalties for skills already learned, it should sit at 9:08. This was true this morning... I have learned one skill since... this one skill can't account for such a large jump unless the rules have changed. The learning time for BL4 was 1 day, 10 hours or so before... now it's 1 day, 12 hours and a bit.
    Posted 15 months ago by Blitz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Just for reference, and kind of in reply to Squorble, a completed skill tree had AK1 at 38mins 40secs. Total multiplier of x3.86 or so.
    Posted 15 months ago by faitaru Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Interesting.....thx for sharing this new tip for learning skills!
    Posted 14 months ago by Bbcversus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I independently thought of this tactic yesterday, it didn't work for me.

    -With BL 5,  I had 28-something skills.
    -Switched learning to a pile of low-time skills, like the basic cooking ones. 
    -Sped them up with favor
    -Switched away, not finishing any of them.
    -Noticed after doing about 10 this way that my learn times were going up.

    All of my careful planning for naught! Don't use this tactic; it seems skills are tacked onto your total (for penalties) as soon as you begin learning them.

    I've since finished most of the ones I've started, they added no -additional- penalty.
    Posted 14 months ago by Stuv Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What's up with the U skills? Or BA 3? =S
    Posted 14 months ago by Toastman Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yeah after seeing this the devs nerfed it which makes sense.
    Posted 14 months ago by Hameigh Subscriber! | Permalink
  • An old thread, from beta.  If you're interested, skills now count as "learned" for your penalty calculations as soon as you start learning them.  Even if you haven't finished learning them, they are counted in your total. 
    Posted 14 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not only do they count, but it's also retroactive, such that all your paused skills take even longer to learn than if you hadn't tried to do this.
    Posted 14 months ago by Toksyuryel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • We're having a similar discussion over in another thread:
    http://www.glitch.com/forum/general/9303/

    And you might be interested in my tool here:
    http://agent86.nfshost.com/glitch/skill/
    Posted 14 months ago by agent86 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This seems pretty worthless until later on, and then only if you saved your last few longest skills for last, and even then, silly?

    Especially considering once you start and pause a skill it counts towards the amount, so really in theory this shouldn't work? I'd have to test it, and I really would rather not. This seems like it'll only work with those beginning skills like you have listed, but not later on, as I've tried unpausing one to learn another, won't work too well.
    Posted 14 months ago by Bluigi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This used to work in beta.  This thread is from the time before it was changed.  This will NOT work now, as the way skills function was changed to prevent this.
    Posted 14 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ah I see, someone bumped it -stares at Bbc-
    Posted 14 months ago by Bluigi Subscriber! | Permalink