Czar

Yeah it's a tricky situation that has been created, if this isn't to turn into a disastrous window of opportunity. A fix might be setting the skill-lock out to 24 hours so that horse rotation isn't feasible but impose a guaranteed tick rate of say 70% regardless of other factors. It would be slightly more annoying at lower skill levels but it would even out pretty quickly and it would synergise well with every other combat skill making high ql shields desirable for shield training the same way weapons are for weapon skill . edit: I should point out I pulled that 70% number more or less out of my arse, But a fixed tick rate per block is one solution that will stop the ritual of horse abuse and see people hunting for shield skill. Also I believe parries supplant blocks, another issue that makes regular hunting less than ideal at the moment.

Nayy, ask for synergy with regular combat, boosting it alone won't solve the problem. While I don't know what the timer is for the skill "lockout" yet. I suspect it is still more efficient, even after this change, to use horses on rotation rather than go out in the wild.

Zekezor already eloquently pointed out the problem with this. You cannot train shield skill and other combat skills efficiently at the same time. The nature of shield skill means it's best to deliberately disadvantage yourself against an opponent, while main fighting and weapon skills you need to have as many advantages as you can for efficient skilling. If you changed shield skilling to be similar to the way weapon skills are trained no one would even want to sit on one horse forever, because you could find synergy with every other combat skill. Why would you hit a horse for an hour for 1.0 skill in a shield when you could go hunting and get 1.0 in a shield, a weapon and a stance at the same time. The way the system works right now does not allow this.

That's ... a solution. Might be overkill though. TWIMC I already have my main shield trained as far as I want it, I was doing the others for fun and the meta skill titles, so I have benefited from this window.

We don't know how long skill gain is locked on each animal yet, I still can't get skill gain from the original horse.

I get it, but you have just created possibly the biggest most damaging window of opportunity in wurm history. Shield skill is enormously important in combat, doing it the "normal way" you could hunt all the way to 90fs and be lucky to have 40-50 skill in one shield. That's why almost everyone trained shields the way we did.

I switched to another horse for a bit, then switched back, still no gains from original horse. Suggests to me there is now a timer that starts after you have attacked an animal for a while and while the timer runs no skill gain can be had from it. Logging out doesn't reinstate skill gain either. I think pen-training as you call it is a thing of the past.

Attacking a barded horse with no weapon until you run out of stamina. Pen-training is as good a name as any. Skill gain just cuts out after a certain point, no stats, no shield skill, nothing. Alas, so much for my defender title.

I think they nerfed shield training. I got about 12 mins of skill gain, then nothing. Hardly macroing.

I have a spare 84 coc pickaxe I would donate to that cause.

Contrary to the staff denials I think there will be some form of merge or rapprochement between epic and freedom at some point down the line. I know you don't want to, but can you really see yourselves announcing the deletion of epic characters when you inevitably have to throw in the towel from a financial or player-quality-of-life point of view? Same if you opt for a complete wipe of epic, you aren't going to commit epic character genocide without allowing established characters a one way trip to the freedom cluster first. For now just take baby steps and reintroduce proper stamina gain to epic (why you ever took it off I don't know). Use an educated estimate to reimburse characters with an appropriate amount of stamina based on their digging and mining. Let people get used to that for a while. Also a personal request to devs, can you please put to bed all the myths about epic skilling at higher levels, we all know its easier in the beginning, but at higher skill levels it does seem to be more taxing. The only anecdote I have is meditating, I've raised it to high levels on both clusters and it was noticeably faster on freedom to 70 and beyond.

And 24 hours later, this is now in game. The system works!

5 minute cooldown for turning it on, none for turning it off is a decent compromise, will prevent the kind of abuse I envision. I'd prefer a whole rework though, something like when sleep bonus is active, a 12s action will remove 12s sleep on completion.

I give it a week before you remember why you put that in in the first place, until then perma-sleep bonus here I come.