Remember Skill Books? Why is there such an inconsistency between Classes here?

Erickson9610

Skill Books are a kind of lorebook which grants you a level/rank in an associated skill line when you read the book for the first time. For instance, the lorebook Fundaments of Alchemy grants you a rank in your Alchemy skill line when first read.

There are Skill Books for Classes, too. Using the table found here as a reference, here are all of the Skill Books which advance Class skill lines:

• Dragonknight
  1. Ardent Flame: Draconic or Endemic? — Grants a rank to all three Dragonknight skill lines.
  2. Forged in the Heart of Mundus — Grants a rank to all three Dragonknight skill lines.
  3. Legacy of the Dragonguard — Grants a rank to all three Dragonknight skill lines.
  4. Mythical Beast, Real Powers — Grants a rank to all three Dragonknight skill lines.
  5. To Smite with Dragon Claws — Grants a rank to all three Dragonknight skill lines.
• Sorcerer
  1. Dark Magic: Three Pretexts — Grants a rank to all three Sorcerer skill lines.
  2. Mora'at's Theory of Lightning — Grants a rank to all three Sorcerer skill lines.
  3. On the Utility of Shock Magic — Grants a rank to all three Sorcerer skill lines.
  4. Principles of Conjuration — Grants a rank to all three Sorcerer skill lines.
  5. Sorcery is Not Necromancy! — Grants a rank to all three Sorcerer skill lines.
• Nightblade
  1. Advances in Lockpicking — Grants a rank to all three Nightblade skill lines.
  2. The Philosophy of Stealth — Grants a rank to all three Nightblade skill lines.
  3. Shadow Draining: A Hypothesis — Grants a rank to all three Nightblade skill lines.
  4. Stepping through Shadows — Grants a rank to all three Nightblade skill lines.
  5. Wulfmare's Guide to Better Thieving — Grants a rank to all three Nightblade skill lines.
• Templar
  1. Aura of the Righteous — Grants a rank to all three Templar skill lines.
  2. The Four Abominations — Grants a rank to all three Templar skill lines.
  3. The Friend of All Mortals — Grants a rank to all three Templar skill lines.
  4. Rituals of the Harmonious Masters — Grants a rank to all three Templar skill lines.
  5. Stendarr's Divine Spear — Grants a rank to all three Templar skill lines.
• Warden
  1. Who Are the Wardens? — Grants a rank to all three Warden skill lines.
• Necromancer
  1. Achieving Harmony with Death — Grants a rank to Necromancer's Bone Tyrant skill line.
  2. A World of Corpses — Grants a rank to Necromancer's Grave Lord skill line.
  3. Benevolent Necromancy, it Exists — Grants a rank to Necromancer's Living Death skill line.
• Arcanist

Do you see the discrepancy here? All four base game Classes get 5 free ranks to all three of their skill lines from 5 books, Wardens get only 1 free rank to all of their skill lines from 1 book, Necromancers get 1 free rank for each of their skill lines across 3 books, and Arcanist doesn't even have any Skill Books at all!

What's up with that? Classes released later chronologically are comparatively more difficult to level up than the Classes which came before them.

Danikat

I've never worried about the availability of lore books as a practical consideration, because I'm pretty sure even using a guide it's not worth the time required to go and find them compared to just using the skills to level them up.

But I do think from a lore perspective it seems very strange for the arcanist to be unable to improve their skills by reading books, when that's a huge part of the theme, and they were added as part of a chapter featuring an endless library with every possible book.

I'm not against them adding more books for the other classes (and updating the necromancer ones to upgrade all 3 skill lines), I do like reading lore books, but I'm not going to go out of my way to hunt them down on the right classes.

Kahnak

It probably took longer to write this post than it would to make up the difference in a few class ranks between base classes and classes that were released later. So, when you say, "comparatively more difficult to level up", it's hard not to view this as satire. It's like having two regular sized candy bars and one extra large sized candy bar and complaining about the difference between the two.

Renato90085

wait? arcanist difficult to level up?

Erickson9610

I just want to bring this discrepancy to everyone's attention. These books still exist, and they favor the base game classes over the DLC classes. It'd be nice if every Class was treated the same in regard to how many lorebooks rank up their skill lines — and it'd also be nice to have more lore written about the DLC classes in general.

katanagirl1

Good observation. The time to remedy that would have been when Necrom came out though, since it would make sense to place class specific books there.

However, there are books like “What is an Arcanist?” already. Maybe they could just have books like that which already exist changed to give a bump in the skill line level.

tsaescishoeshiner

Skills books for classes would be a fun idea--especially if there was a questline/repeatable quest that brought you to locations where the books spawn.

That way we could have a sort of Class-based questline without needing like 7 different quests that only certain characters could do.

Or, they could just place them along the main questline (Coldharbour) in obvious areas.

Erickson9610

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

Skills books for classes would be a fun idea--especially if there was a questline/repeatable quest that brought you to locations where the books spawn.

That way we could have a sort of Class-based questline without needing like 7 different quests that only certain characters could do.

Or, they could just place them along the main questline (Coldharbour) in obvious areas.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that there should be a guaranteed location to find these books which grant ranks to skill lines?

Why would we need quests for this? I suppose it makes sense that these books should be found along the main questline, but not every character will complete that questline.

MasterSpatula

The base game classes needed those bonuses. It might take half a year to get to VR10 (and higher VRs as they were released) back then, longer if you were an altoholic.

Today, the game hands out XP like Halloween candy.

Elvenheart

Now, this is not complaining, mind you, I always thought it was neat to read a bookshelf and randomly get increases in random skill levels, but I didn’t think of it as anything that would really seriously help me along the way. That’s because with those books when I was originally leveling my characters a long time ago we got them early in the leveling process when the skills were so low and it was so quick and easy to gain levels in them anyway, and so random they were, i.e. on a level 2 magicka sorcerer I would suddenly get a “free” level in two handed that would raise it to 2, even though that character will never probably ever use a two handed weapon.

And even the useful ones were found at such a low level that it really wasn’t a benefit, just something fun to think that you learned something from reading a book instead of actually using the skill. It’s not like you could wait until a skill was at the level before its highest level when it would take longer to level it and then go purposely read the book but avoid all bookshelves until then. I even remember thinking along the way, “I wish I could have saved that book and read it near the end of leveling that skill instead of just raising it from 4 to 5!” but I love the idea of them adding more books like that for the classes that don’t have them, just because they are fun to read. 😊

VoxAdActa

Elvenheart wrote: »

It’s not like you could wait until a skill was at the level before its highest level when it would take longer to level it and then go purposely read the book but avoid all bookshelves until then.

LOL, that's exactly what I do with my alts. I don't touch any bookshelves until my skills are in the 40–45 range. Ideally, my crafting skills will be in that range too, but I get impatient before then, so it's just when my weapon/class skills are in there. Then I spam every bookshelf I see.

Those last few skill line levels are such a pain to get, especially since I've probably already hit champion levels by then.

Not coincidentally, my Warden and my Arcanist were stuck at 47–48 in their class skills for what felt like forever.

Vaqual

Arcanist knowledge is so arcane that nobody wrote a book about it.

Erickson9610

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanist knowledge is so arcane that nobody wrote a book about it.

Surely there must be something about them in those vast libraries within Apocrypha, right? Maybe Azandar has something to say about Arcanists within his study?

James-Wayne

It's the same reason why we don't get named weapon and armor sets with cool features like they talk to you.... The team have scaled back details over the years to focus on that cadence, things need to be dropped in the dev pipeline due to time constraints it's how it is.

Hopefully seasons allows them to reinvent.