Topic

A Quick Question about Better Learning

So I'm a wee bit of an over-planner. I got the bare necessities of skills after the reset (although emphasized mining which was a first for me), but have spent the past week really focusing on Better Learning. 

Now, I've waded through a lot of info about BL and its ramifications and decreasing returns, etc. etc. The one thing I'm curious about is if I have BLV, do I, II, III, IV, and V all count as a part of my 37 non-affected skills? Is it really 32 non-affected skills then?

Posted 14 months ago by Folderol Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Yes
    Posted 14 months ago by Toksyuryel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Alright, I thought that that was the case. Thanks!
    Posted 14 months ago by Folderol Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm not sure if Toksyuryel is right.  I was of the understanding that none of the Better Learnings count towards your 37 skills, unless they have changed it
    Posted 14 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I've read both, but most recently on the Wiki it seems to imply that they do count now (only because it doesn't say they don't count.)  
    Posted 14 months ago by Reba Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Now I am really confused lol
    Posted 14 months ago by Phochai Subscriber! | Permalink
  • They changed it. According to stoot (here), the amount of skills you can learn only starts increasing past 20 with BL2. However, the description for BL1 states "[...]fit 21 skills without slowing down."

    It's safe to say then that the skill descriptions for the better learning skills include themselves in the total number allowable.
    Posted 14 months ago by Negata Subscriber! | Permalink
  • They do not count in the sense that learning them will not increase the time it takes to learn any other skill. So, if you include them, you can have 42 skills (not 32) without any increased learning time.
    Posted 14 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Negata: yes!
    Posted 14 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Skill description for BL5: "Now this is what it is all about: with Better Learning V, 37 skills will fit into your brain without slowing it down, and you'll get a mind-boggling 20% reduction in the time required to learn any new skill. You'll fly through the table o'skills like a batterfly out of purgatory."

    stoot, don't you mean to say you can have 42 Skills (not 37) without any increased learning time? Including the 5 Better Learning Skills?
    Posted 14 months ago by Victoria Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm saying you can have 37 and the Better Learning skills are not included.
    Posted 14 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thank you so much for your fast response!

    I'm bad with numbers. Like, really bad.
    Posted 14 months ago by Victoria Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Are you planning to add a notice about brain capacity to the Skill learning page?
    Posted 14 months ago by Victoria Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @stoot, that does not appear to be the case.  I have 35 skills not including the 5 BL skills and I definitely have learning penalties (to the tune of 1.03^3) going.
    Posted 14 months ago by Blitz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I wonder: If un-learning came out, would we not be able to unlearn BL 1-4? I'm assuming not, because just keeping 5 would be cheekily effective and...awesome. Actually, why not let it be like that? It's not like we haven't spent long enough grinding through em, and unlearning precursor skills could add an extra layer to skillbuilding stratergy!
    Posted 14 months ago by xLIFEx Subscriber! | Permalink
  • They've stated you won't be able to unlearn a skill that's a prereq to skills you already know without unlearning the skills with that prereq first.  That said, I'd happily unlearn Fruit changing right about now.
    Posted 14 months ago by Blitz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Victoria: yes!

    Blitz: it's possible I am wrong. And it's also possible that there is a bug. We'll see! Noted earlier that someone posted that the BL1 description does say "21" to include itself, so I might have it backwards!
    Posted 14 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Unfortunately, Blitz and Toksyuryel are correct - I just started learning my 33rd skill and the time increased. 

    So I think pretty definitively, the Better Learning skills do include themselves in the maximum skills. 37 for BLV actually means 32 skills other than the Better Learning skills you already have. 
    Posted 14 months ago by Folderol Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ROFL! You crack me up, stoot.  So, is it 37 or 42? Inquiring minds want to know.
    Posted 14 months ago by GreyGoose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Rachel, it's definitely 37 (32 skills + 5 Better Learning skills). 
    Posted 14 months ago by Folderol Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks, Foderol....I was just kinda hoping that...oh well:) Only 4 hours until Mining 4 is over. It will be my 33rd skill. BL 5 was my 32rd. I'll plug in a couple more of MAs ( or maybe AK 5 & 6) and chose Tink 4 & 5 for my 36th and 37th skill.
    Posted 14 months ago by GreyGoose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Okay, so we have Stoot saying that the Better Learning skills don't count towards brain capacity. But checking learning times against my own skills, it appears that they are being counted.

    Here's how I worked this out.

    As of the time of writing, I have Better Learning I-IV plus 35 other skills, and am currently learning Better Learning V. Better learning IV grants 32 "free" skills for the purposes of ramping up learning times. As such, I should have three skills slowing my learning down; therefore my learning times should be multiplied by 1.03^3 ~= 1.0927. Factor in the 12% bonus from BL4, and the multiplier should be 1.03^4 * 0.88 = 0.9616. This, as I shall demonstrate, is not the case.

    We know that the base learning time for BL5 is 5 days. The net learning time with my skills is 5d 13:46:15. This yields a multiplier of 1.1147222.

    Factor out the BL4 bonus: 1.1147222 / 0.88 = 1.2667
    Take the log root 1.03: log(1.2667)/log(1.03) = 8
    32 + 8 = 40

    This clearly shows that there are 40 skills contributing to slowdown, not 35 as our existing data would suggest. The only place these extra 5 skills can come from is Better Learning I-IV, plus Better Learning V itself. Can anyone else verify this?
    Posted 14 months ago by Ninetailed Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have 29 (+1 paused) skills and learning BLIV at the moment. My BLV says that it would take 5 days 38 min to complete.
    Posted 14 months ago by Percy Bercow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ninetailed: and people say calculus isn't practical for real life hehe. The fact that I have no idea what you just did is the validation for the C I got in calculus 10 years ago.
    Posted 14 months ago by Neatly Sliced Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Neatly Sliced: There were a couple of tricky concepts in there like compounding and logarithms, but no actual calculus. I'd be happy to explain it if you like.
    Posted 14 months ago by Ninetailed Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If I could understand what the hell your post said Ninetailed  I could try to verify it lol.  What happened to me?!?!  I was always top of my class in math at the high school level, but as soon as I no longer needed it my brain thought it wasn't useful anymore, and out it went!
    Posted 14 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • So I've learned BLV and have 35 skills, in total.  

    My Teleportation V is listed at: 3 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, 14 seconds (I have paused it)
    Encyclopedia base time for Teleportation V:  3 days, 7 hours, 5 minutes, 46 seconds
    My Croppery I is listed at: 49 minutes, 26 seconds
    Encyclopedia base time for Croppery I: 49 minutes, 26 seconds
    My Tinkering V is listed at: 2 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes, 41 seconds
    Encyclopedia base time for Tinkering V: 2 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes, 41 seconds

    Ok now I'm confused.  My Teleportation V (which I paused) is actually increased but the Croppery I and Tinkering V is the same as the Encyclopedia.  Based on Croppery and Tinkering, the BLV skills do NOT count towards the 37 skills.  But I had no idea pausing a skill would make it LONGER than the base time?!

    I really wish these details were better understood by the game creators, I was also trying to figure out how pausing and restarting skills worked cause I wanted to pause a skill but had spent thousands of favor points to reduce the time, and I didn't want to waste the favor.  None of the devs could explain it to me, and it seems this issue is not understood as well!
    Posted 14 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Laurali: My analysis only accounts for one skill advancing at a time. Truth told, I don't know how pausing affects skill progression. There are a couple of unknowns here:

    * Whether and how a skill that has been started but not completed counts towards the known skills total.
    * Whether and how a paused skill's training time is affected by the completion of other skills.

    I'll do a little bit of research into this over the next few days, but for the moment, it would be helpful to know whether you learned BL5 before or after you started and paused TP5.
    Posted 14 months ago by Ninetailed Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Laurali, the base time for Croppery  is 60 minutes. With BLV and no learning penalty, Croppery I should take 48 minutes... based on your penalty (3 percent), you would appear to have 38 skills learnt or in progress...
    Posted 14 months ago by Blitz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Blitz: Oh ok, so the Better Learning skills DO count towards the 37.  That is frustrating again cause previously Stoot had mentioned they don't, and I planned my entire skill tree assuming the Better Learning skills don't count towards the 37
    Posted 14 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yeah, Laurali, unfortunately it does count towards the 37. You really only have 32 skills that aren't the 5 Better Learning skills. 
    Posted 14 months ago by Folderol Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @stoot is a possible solution to BL counting towards learning efficiency be the skill limit of each BL be increased by 1 as it appears that they are counted as a skill?
    Posted 14 months ago by Percy Bercow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • boo. I wish that the Better Learning skills weren't counted...
    Posted 14 months ago by Not A Brontosaurus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Poo i read stoots reply last time i saw this thread that the better learnings werent included in the 37, just seen they are. Is it ment to be like that or is it supposed to be 37 not including the better learnings. Maybe we could get a confirmation as to whether its possibly a 'bug' like stoot mentioned earlier or wether its just wishful thinking
    Posted 14 months ago by Yee Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When Better Learning was changed, it was posted pretty quickly how many free skills they gave and the staff didn't go 'oops'.  I'm pretty sure from that that they're meant to count.  They might as well count since we have years to learn a month's worth of skills at the moment.
    Posted 14 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I am banking on there being new skills to learn as time goes on.
    Posted 14 months ago by Parrow Gnolle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Parrow You should also bank on being able to unlearn skills as time goes on.
    Posted 14 months ago by Jaggerd Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Stoot: If only it worked that way. I have 37 skills (BL5 included), and when I started my 38th skill, bam.. 3.0009% increase on the rest of my skills' time.
    Posted 14 months ago by Bashere Subscriber! | Permalink
  • So it sounds like the post above was accurate:

    32 skills for free, but you can also learn the BL skills for free, giving you 37 total. 
    Posted 14 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Ninetailed I can confirm BL is counting towards my time penalty. I repeated your process using my Mining IV as an example.

    Completed BL ranks: I-IV
    Currently learning: BLV
    Total number of skills learned (including BL): 55

    Base learning time for Mining IV: 5 days
    Net learning time for Mining IV: 8 days 16 hr 24 min 39 sec
    Multiplying factor: 1.736756 

    Factoring out the BL bonus: 1.736756/0.88 = 1.973587
    Taking the root log 1.03: log(1.973587)/log(1.03) = 23
    23 + 32 = 55

    This proves all my skills (including BL) are counting towards my slowing factor.
    Posted 14 months ago by Plemen Subscriber! | Permalink
  • OK, I made a spreadsheet that anyone can use to perform the same calculation. Hopefully it'll be easier than doing everything by hand. :)

    docs.google.com/spreadsheet...
    Posted 14 months ago by Plemen Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I recently built an API-based skill calculator, and I came to the same conclusion as Plemen - the BL skills themselves count towards your 'free skill count'

    You can play with the tool here and see how it is effecting your learning times and etc:

    http://agent86.nfshost.com/glitch/skill/
    Posted 14 months ago by agent86 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, I should also point out that it seems like paused skills count towards your learned skills.  I believe this is to prevent people 'gaming the system' by pausing skills with a few seconds to spare, thereby negating the penalty percentage by having a bunch of skills mostly learned at a lower penalty percentage.
    Posted 14 months ago by agent86 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @agent86: You are correct. Skill penalties originally when the skill was learned. However, as you noticed that leads to an easy exploit. They were then changed so the penalty now applies when you begin learning a skill.
    Posted 14 months ago by BarryW Subscriber! | Permalink