In Wiz 8 how does skill progression work?
In 6 and 7 some skills, like the weapons skills, increased by use, while others could only increase by spending skill points.
It's kind of nice to know beforehand, but I couldn't find anything about in the manual.
You want a simple or complicated answer?
Simple: all skills rise through use, but you also get points on level ups that can be used to increase them as well (9 points per level up, max 3 can be assigned to any given skill.
Complicated: there's a lot to unpack here.
1. Points can be assigned only up to 75. Everything above needs to be increased by use.
2. Getting 100 in an attribute (needs to be via assigning attribute points, increasing them through spells or item bonuses doesn't count) unlocks an extra skill connected to it that starts at 0. Imo, it's always worth it to choose 2 attributes for any char and pump them to 100* asap instead of spreading, and not only for this particular reason.
3. Every skill has governing attributes and having them on a higher level means that the skill will train through use faster. However, the difference is not nearly big enough to invest point in suboptimal attributes in hope of increasing skills faster.
4. There are skills that increase through use at a steady pace and there are those who are a pain to train. The former mostly being weapon and magic skills, the latter majority of all else (there are exceptions, though). For that reason it is usually worth considering to pump level up points into skills that increase slowly. Yes, your character will be weaker initially, but it will pay off in the long run.
5. Like with all learn-through-use rpg systems, you can get, uh, "creative" and cheese a lot of skills. Some of the possible methods you will notice quickly yourself, some need a bit of metaknowledge (like the fact you can cast healing spells on enemies). I definitely advise against using it, but it's your decision. Also, some skills are kinda too easy to powertrain to refrain from doing it (like music).
6. Any skill can increase through use once per round (standard 6 seconds, I think) maximum. Remember about it when doing degenerate stuff like splitting stacks of unidentified ammo to powertrain artifacts skill etc.
7. This game has lots of mechanics where you just don't know how things work, exactly, and training skills is no different. In general, skill needs to do something to get skill xp, but there are some weird exceptions. Take two curative water spells: cure lesser condition and stamina. With cure, you need to cast it on a character that's actually afflicted by something to get skill xp and you can do it both in combat and outside of it. With stamina it, theoretically, works the same and you need to cast it on someone with less than maximum stamina to get xp, but, for some weird reason, it will only ever increase governing skills when cast in combat. Why? Itisamystery.
*Meta advice that you wish you knew: there's a point in early-to-mid game when you can easily get a permanent +5 INT for all characters. You want 100 INT for casters asap to unlock powercast, but refrain from assigning more than 95 until you get the bonus.
