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#### Unlearning?

Could someone please explain the concept of unlearning? What is the point?

Posted 12 months ago by Miniature | Permalink

### Replies

- I'm sure someone will explain it much better than me, but here's the gist: past a certain point, you incur an extra time penalty on each skill that you learn. Unlearning skills you don't want or use frees up space in your brain and lessens or gets rid of that time penalty (depending on how much you unlearn).
  Posted 12 months ago by Rev. Desdemona | Permalink
- Oh ok i guess that sort of make sense although isn't it king of a contradiction to learn a skill to unlearn one?
  Posted 12 months ago by Miniature | Permalink
- Sometimes someone will learn a skill just because it seems easy or short. Then they will find that they don't use or need it after all. So, they can unlearn rather than let it clog up their brain.
  Posted 12 months ago by Flowerry Pott | Permalink
- Unlearning doesn't count towards your skill penalties :)
  Posted 12 months ago by Rev. Desdemona | Permalink
- But humans can in theory learn unlimitedly so shouldn't glitchians be able to?
  Posted 12 months ago by Miniature | Permalink
- My point exactly Miniature... but it seems that the skill is staying :(.
  Nyt.
  Posted 12 months ago by Nytician | Permalink
- You can if you want to, but it'll take you time. Just like real life ;) I think this system is in place to avoid forcing specialization, while still heavily encouraging it. It is the best way to make this game cooperative/social, which is TS's intent. If we all know everything, there's little reason to rely on anyone else for help. But this way, those who don't want to rely on anyone else don't have to, as long as they're willing to put some extra time in.
  Posted 12 months ago by Rev. Desdemona | Permalink
- I guess that's a good point thanks everyone. one more thing i'm new so what does TS stand for?
  Posted 12 months ago by Miniature | Permalink
- @miniature lol it's the name of the company that made this game. TS = Tiny Speck.
  Posted 12 months ago by Vinchon | Permalink
- Ok yes i am stupid. I did know that tiny speck made the game but i guess i didn't connect. :P
  Posted 12 months ago by Miniature | Permalink
- @Miniature - I asked the same question a couple of days ago and I got a very good point: if/when a new skill is introduced in the game, my little glitch with its bloated brain at full capacity will need 4-7 days to learn it. I will need to wait several days to be able to use what everybody is raving about on the forums.
  Posted 12 months ago by Praxedes M Sagasta | Permalink
- You're not stupid, Miniature! :-) Sometimes the jargon takes a bit of getting used to. Don't worry about it. People enjoy answering questions, so keep on askin'!
  Posted 12 months ago by Flowerry Pott | Permalink
- "No, only different in your mind! You must unlearn what you have learned!" - Yoda
  Gotta unlearn if you wanna be a Jedi.
  Posted 12 months ago by Otto Otto | Permalink
- For those who haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend agent86's "Skillifier!". (The exclamation point is part of the name.) The seemingly small 3% increase in learning time adds up to a total of 500% if you learn every known skill, even the ones we can't learn yet like Potionmaking III.
  Starting out every skill looks like fun. Why wouldn't I want to be able to do everything? Wheee! But after a couple of months you might find you don't like plants of any kind. You can unlearn 19 skills (excluding Soil Appreciation I and II as they are prerequisites to Herd Keeping) and reduce your learning time for your next skill by 3 * 19 or 57%. That is, if it was going to take you 500% longer than base time to learn your next skill, after unlearning 19 skills it will only take you 443% longer. If you can slim down to just 36 must-have skills (not including Better Learning or Unlearning) then you can learn your next skill at 80% of base time.
  Posted 12 months ago by Crag | Permalink
- Oh ok i guess that sort of make sense although isn't it king of a contradiction to learn a skill to unlearn one?
  There are only about 60-70 skills right now, but I have heard that a skill tree of over 400 is in the works. In a situation like that it would take nearly forever to learn all the skills. Instead, you would pick some skill trees that you might be interested in and play with them. Eventually you might want to explore a new skill tree and find yourself willing to 'unlearn' one of your existing trees in order to gain that new experience.
  The current situation where you can aim for learning all the skills is an artifact of the early stages of the game. It's not how you would be likely to play once the game has added much more content.
  Posted 12 months ago by WalruZ | Permalink
- @WalruZ Where did you hear this from? Cause wow 400?
  Posted 12 months ago by Vinchon | Permalink
- www.glitch.com/forum/genera...
  Posted 12 months ago by IcyMidnight | Permalink
- I've never heard about 400 skills, but I have heard that they have at least 120 skills mapped out thus far.
  Posted 12 months ago by Rev. Desdemona | Permalink
- I suspect if we get 400 skills we'll also get more Better Learning levels. Glitch is advertised as allowing players to do anything and everything. I don't think "you can do whatever you want as long as you play for your entire life" would go over well.
  If there were 400 skills counting against the penalty (after your first 37), it would take 109,138 times base to learn your last skill. If your last skill had a 30 minute base time, like Gasmogrification, it would take 2,273 days to learn.
  With 120 penalized skills that last 30 minute skill would take almost 28 times longer than base, or about 14 hours. The formula I'm using is 80% (for BL5) * 1.03 ^ n where is the number of skills. If you subtract 37 skills from that 120 for brain size, then n becomes 83 and the multiplier is 9.29. In general, learning time doubles every 23 skills. If you get all BL first then your first 37 take 80% time, your 60th takes 160% time, your 83rd takes 320% time and your 106th takes 640% time.
  If you don't have a calculator handy, note that Google understands queries like "80% * 1.03^46", or for something more powerful, try Wolfram Alpha.
  Posted 12 months ago by Crag | Permalink
- I understand the whole concept of unlearning but what i don't understand is why we need it?
  Your saying that you unlearn skills so that they don't count for your learning penalty but why should we even have a learning penalty. The more things you know often makes you learn things faster for humans because things are connected so it doesn't make sense that the more things you know in Ur the slower you learn things.
  Just seems wrong, and i think that we shoud be able to do all skills and make our choice as to whether we want to spend time to learn them all. Therefore we should have no learning penalty
  Posted 12 months ago by Miniature | Permalink
- The more things you know often makes you learn things faster for humans because things are connected so it doesn't make sense that the more things you know in Ur the slower you learn things.
  Also, you can't milk real butterflies. Therefore it just seems wrong that butterflies are milkable.
  The learning penalty is there to prevent higher-level/skilled players from 'owning' the game to the detriment of lower-level players; a learning bonus would represent a huge unbalancing. By the time you have multi-day learning times, you're already able to do significantly more in-game in terms of yields and actions, and you should be shifting your focus accordingly.
  Posted 12 months ago by Holgate | Permalink
- @ Holgate <3
  Ok yes i understand the point about butterflies.
  But on the other hand higher level player have got their by playing and lower level people will also eventually get there. And i don't believe that Glitchians are so mean as to 'own the game' i believe that higher level people do a lot of sharing they did to me.
  You have a point that they are able to do more so with that in mind a small learning penalty might be in order. But i think they've taken it too far.
  Posted 12 months ago by Miniature | Permalink
- And i don't believe that Glitchians are so mean as to 'own the game' i believe that higher level people do a lot of sharing they did to me.
  It's not a matter of being mean (or not mean), it's simply that there's a curve in place that encourages higher-level players to focus less on the pursuit of MOAR SKILLZ NAO, and more on less structured activities -- like sharing with lower-level players. That multi-day gap for the top level skills on the current tree has value for a game that's premised on a long-term commitment.
  Posted 12 months ago by Holgate | Permalink
- Well not being a high level i shall yield. Your probably right in anycase.
  Posted 12 months ago by Miniature | Permalink
- A question for which I haven't seen the answer:
  If I have learned Animal Kinship 7, can I unlearn AK1 through 6, and keep AK7 ?
  If yes, there are consequences (will the effects of AK7 be diminished) ?
  Posted 12 months ago by Dj Storm | Permalink
- Dj Storm, I believe you would have to unlearn AK7 first. So, no, you can not unlearn AK1 and keep AK7.
  Posted 12 months ago by MaryLiLamb | Permalink
- No you cannot unlearn anything that is a prerequisite of another skill you have. You have to unlearn from the top down.
  Posted 12 months ago by BoomFrog | Permalink
- Thanks!
  Kind of what I expected, but it isn't written down anywhere.
  Posted 12 months ago by Dj Storm | Permalink
- Its actually written on the staff topic when they released the skill. If I can find and link I will but I'm on mobile so it might take forever. But it has been said. It wouldn't be fair if you could unlearn all those skills and just keep the top skills or make sense. Personally I don't think unlearning makes much sense at the moment anyway but I'm sure bigger and better things are to come.
  That was actually much easier to find than expected www.glitch.com/forum/genera...
  Gameplay updates for Nov. 30th (which is still a hot topic) scroll to where it starts talking about unlearning. 3rd bullet. =)
  Posted 12 months ago by Clickadee | Permalink