Improving Your Incarnoi

From LSWiki

The Incarnos improvement system used in Lost Souls is complicated, and requires the juggling of several factors for your Incarnos to improve at all. To get them to improve in a manner that makes them better at what you want is even more of a challenge.

Skills and Specialties

The full list of skills your incarnos knows is shown by the command `show skills`. There is a lot of them. If your incarnos is just starting, there are around 4 times that many that they do not know. Skills improve in 2 separate but interconnected ways, training and use. A skill cannot generally improve through use until it has been trained at least once, so that the incarnos knows the skill.

Trainers are dedicated individuals in the world that supply instruction to those that can pay. Each one can only teach a subset of skills, relevant to their role in the world. Generally you can ask them in character which skills they will train, and what training would cost. They also have a maximum level they can train a skill to.

Skills cannot just be raised by training, they must also be used. Trainers will after a training session tell you to go out and use the skill that they trained. To use a skill, preform an action that requires or uses that skill. Combat skills are raised in combat, language by talking and listening, lore skills are raised by examining items. The only limit to how far a skill can improve through use is how high your incarnos' innate limit on that skill is.

The rate at which an incarnos learns in a skill, and how high the skill can go is dependent upon the level of specialisation in the skill. Specialties reperesent how much focus your incarnos is placing on a particular skill. How much an incarnos can specialise is restricted by their attributes, so high attributes are better. Attributes will not make up for actual levels in a skill however. The higher the specialisation, the faster the incarnos learns from training and use of the skill as well.

To change your specialty in a skill, the command `set specialty degree in (skill) to (number)` is used. It is recommended that you specialise in a weapon skill and an avoiding damage skill, to at least level 5, and specialise in degree 2 or 3 in several other skills such as primary language, literacy, haggling, lore skills and awareness as a starting adventurer. Further skills will become available during play, at which point you may want to rearrange specialties.

Levels

The progression of an incarnos is tracked by levels. These start at 1, and increase as they gain experience from killing creatures and exploring locations.

Each level your incarnos receives 5 points to increase their attributes. These increases are not linear with the number of points, decreasing slowly with time. Increased attributes bring with them bonuses to your incarnos' abilities and increased specialty access.

At level 50, your incarnos becomes a Hero, and opens access to more of the content of Lost Souls. Few ever make it to this level.

At level 100, your incarnos becomes a Legend, and your atman has access to all of the starting races of Lost Souls.

Lost Souls includes support for levels as high as 625.

Questing

Within the world are specific quests that may be undertaken for additional challenges and as a drive to see more of the world. A quest usually gives experience as a side effect of completing the tasks, and will give specific rewards dependent upon the quest. Each will also give a quantity of "quest points", which purely keep track of how much of the quests are incarnos has completed.

Guilds and Associations

Guilds

A Guild is a large organisation in Lost Souls. They cross continents and command many followers. They have an alignment, and a purpose within the world. These are the massive powers in the world, bigger then the fractured governments that currently exist. In some cases large governments are guilds.

A guild's restrictions on joining are usually lax. A specific task may need to be completed before you may join, but provided you can do the task and your alignment matches the guild they will accept you. Once you are a member of one guild, you may not join any others.

Guilds give access to massive power, through the members and the special skills and items that the guild allows access to. They also place restrictions on their members, skills that cannot be learnt and a requirement to maintain an alignment similar to that of the guild. It is recommended that every incarnos be a member of a guild.

Associations

An Association is a smaller group of like minded individuals then a guild, but similar in function. They provide less power then a guild, and have much stricter entry requirements, often limited to race or culture, or with significant starting skill requirements.

Associations do not care if an incarnos is a member of other associations or even guilds provided the other organisations the incarnos is a member of do not have conflicting goals or alignments to the association.

Measures of Achievement

An incarnos is ranked on many lists. The top of these lists are kept on the website for all to see.

Level

The amount of experience acquired is shown by the level. Aside from the Hero and Legend status, the highest leveled incarnos in the world has a statue erected to them in Losthaven

Quests

The incarnos with the highest number of Quest Points.

Exploration

The incarnos who has seen the most of the world, as represented by their exploration points.

Combat

The incarnos with the highest combat skill, as defined by their kills, their assists, and their deaths