Skill Guide

Won’t rest until you’re a Grand Master of all skills?

Training from NPCs

Any NPC with sufficient skill can teach you up to 40 percent of the skill you’ll need to be a grand master. For a one-stop place to train all your skills, Jack has set up a training service in the Golden Casino and has expanded his business by sending his sister Jill to the Mercenary Camp. He can teach every skill up to 40.0, for a price.

Jack of All Trades

Learning Even More

Once you’ve learned all the NPC can teach you, you’re on your own! Here in Imagine Nation, difficulty has nothing to do with the rate at which you gain skill and it doesn’t matter if you eat or do not eat. The most efficient way to train any skill is to find out how to repeat it quickly while consuming as few resources as possible.

Did you know…

You can use the IN Patcher to install sample Razor macros for gaining skill? Just go to Tools, then Install Sample Razor Macros and let it download them for you!


Bardic Skills

Bards will play their instrument to induce various effects on their target. Of these, Provocation is by far the most useful. To practice these, you must of course have an instrument in your pack.

Discordance

Very simple, just cast discordance on any creature. Note that this is a harmful effect and will mark you as criminal if used on blue creaturs.

Musicianship

Also easy, just use your instrument to play it. This can be done at the same time as any other skill by simply adding it into your routine (macros).

Peacemaking

More repetition; simply play your music and target yourself or a creature to play soothing music.

Provocation

This is the fun one. You’ll need two creatures who are close together, but are not able to get to one another.  The sparring partners in the Mercenary Camp don’t mind if you practice on them. The horses in the stalls at the Mercenary Camp or in Yew are a good alternative, but may be tamed or killed, interrupting your practice.

Simply provoke one creature to attack another every nine to ten seconds and you will gain skill, but you won’t harm your test subjects as they can’t get into the other’s stall to hurt them! No animals will be harmed in the process, so PETA can relax.


Combat Skills

Training dummies are just no match for fighting a real monster or person. The mercenaries at the Mercenary Camp have a large number of recruits who are just itching to train with you and by fighting them, you can easily raise your skill to the maximum level.

Archery, Mace Fighting, Tactics, Parrying, Swordsmanship, Wrestling, Fencing

You will need to attack the Sparring Partner, heal yourself if you get low, wash your bandages when you are running out, re-equip your weapon and shield when you are done bandaging, then go back to fighting.

Warning: Some thieves may be very interested in your bandages or other belongings. We recommend taking precautions to avoid being killed while sparring due or losing your valuables while concentrating on the battle.

Anatomy

Use the anatomy skill on anyone, even yourself! Don’t use it on yourself too much though, as you may go blind. (joking, of course)

Healing

Just use bandages on yourself constantly while taking damage. One good way to do this is to have a sparring partner attack you while you try to keep yourself healed, or coupled with resisting spells or magery.


Magic Skills

Want to be a master mage and play with the very energies of the world? Cast devastating magic spells and resist other peoples’ magical attacks? Want to regain your mana at an accelerated rate? Want to be able to cast magic arrows to make your toast in the morning? We can help with most of those. Evaluating Intelligence

Just evaluate the intelligence of anyone or anything around you, even your own.

Magery

Cast any spell a lot. The most popular method is to cast Magic Arrow on yourself while healing yourself with bandages if you get too low. If your mana is low, use meditation to gain it back faster.

Another way to gain skill without using resources is to bring Orbs of Beastman control to the mage in the Mercenary Camp. These can be found on Beastman Controllers outside the camp or bought from other players.

Note: These will take you up to 99.9 magery. The last point must be gained normally to fix a problem with people not receiving their magery reward.

Meditation

Simply meditate over and over. You can raise this very quickly by constantly meditating while donating mana at the mana donation center in Moonglow. However, if you use this skill while practicing magery or inscription, you will become a master of meditation before you master the other two skills and will spend less total practice time.

Resisting Spells

Cast a fire field and walk back and forth in it, parallel to the direction the field is facing. You will take a single point of burn damage every time you take a step and will have a chance at gaining skill that way. Multiple fire fields will hit you multiple times and will give you more chances to gain skill. You will need to heal yourself when your hitpoints get low though, so this is a good skill to combine with Healing.

Spirit Speak

Very easy. Just continually try to commune with the dead and your skill will reach master levels in no time. Once you’re a grandmaster spirit speaker, everyone will be able to understand you when you speak as a ghost as well.


Thieving Skills

Oh, the thief. Whether they’re bumping up against you at the bank in their res robes or stealthing up to that dragon you just killed to take the loot, they can be a nuisance. Whether you want to be a trouble maker or learn to defend against them, the thieving skills are good to know.

Detecting Hidden

Simply repetitively try to detect hidden things. You may not find anything, but simply trying will make you more aware of your surroundings.

Hiding

Just keep hiding over and over and you’ll quickly learn how to conceal yourself efficiently.

Lockpicking

This one takes a bit of finesse to master efficiently. First, you’ll need a lock that is easy to pick. You can get a lockable box created by a player with low leveled tinkering and carpentry and you should never break a single lockpick. Once that is done, the easiest way to set up a training routine is to place the key inside the box and the lockpicks in your pack. Once this is set up, try to use the key to lock the box, then use the lockpick to unlock the box. Since you can’t reach the key while it’s locked, you will only be able to re-lock it and not unlock it. Just repeat this process and you’ll have no problems with even the toughest of locks in no time.

Poisoning

The best way to raise poisoning is to couple it with alchemy. Just apply all the poison potions that you create to any bladed item.

Snooping

Find a vendor that doesn’t move around very much, or at all, then keep trying to check in their backpack. Note: You will lose karma doing this, but it should not be enough to go grey.

Stealing

While you could technically practice this with a friend who is willing to let you rifle through their pockets, a useful alternative is a pack llama or pack horse. Just load them up with an item or stack of items, then keep trying to steal it. When you successfully steal the item, just move that item back into the animal’s pack.

Note: You will lost a lot of karma. Enough to go grey.

Stealth

The same as hiding; just keep using stealth. Movement is not required to gain skill


Trade Skills

The merchants of the world love these skills once they have them mastered, but hate the process of mastering them. Both gathering skills and crafting skills are included here and both can be bothersome and time consuming compared to the other skills on this page. However, after you are a master, you can expect lots of income from other players when you start stocking a vendor with your wares.

This is where the method of finding the most repetitions for the lowest resource usage comes in handy.

Alchemy

Simply craft a lot of potions. You can create lesser poison potions using a single nightshade, then apply the poison potions to a bladed item to re-use a single bottle and raise your poisoning skill at the same time.

Blacksmithy

The bane of most players existence, this skill is notoriously hard to raise but has amazing rewards at its highest levels. The lowest-resource item is the dagger, which takes three ingots to make. You can smelt the dagger to get a single ingot back though, meaning each dagger is a net loss of two ingots. However, by resmelting the daggers instead of selling them, you’re losing a lot of gold that you’d otherwise receive by vending the daggers.

Bowcraft/Fletching

Making one log into one shaft, or one shaft into one bolt or arrow at a time is the best way. Note that if you have 100 logs, then create a shaft, it will instantly craft all 100 logs into 100 shafts with only once chance for skillgain, so the best way to get better is to take one log from a container, then craft it into a shaft before removing another log. The same concept can be applied when making those shafts into ammunition.

Carpentry

This skill is unique in that what you craft changes based on the level of skill you are at. If you are at less than 70.0 carpentry, you’ll need to make clubs to gain skill, which consumes three logs per club. After you reach 70.0 carpentry and 45.0 inscription, you can switch to crafting blank scrolls (one log, one spider’s silk). This gives gains for both carpentry and inscription at the same time using much fewer resources!

Cooking

Couple this with fishing. Once you have a healthy supply of raw fish steaks, just cook them all into tasty fish cakes that you can then feed to your pet dire wolf.

Inscription

Just make whatever scrolls you’d like. At lower levels, you can craft magic arrow or blank scrolls (see carpentry) to gain skill. Once you have sufficient skill to make more useful scrolls, it would be best to create those instead. The reasoning behind this is that higher-level scrolls are actually useful and can be sold, whereas making only magic arrow scrolls is wasting your money as noone will need them for anything.

  • Useful Scrolls for Low-Levels: Greater Heal, Lightning, Blade Spirits, Recall, Paralyze
  • Useful Scrolls for Higher-Levels: Gate Travel, Flame Strike, Summon Daemon, Energy Vortex

Note that crafting scrolls also consumes mana, so you can couple the meditation skill with this to gain in both at the same time.

Lumberjacking

Chop a bunch of trees. Take all their wood. Sell it or use it for other skills.

Mining

Hit the ground really hard with a pickaxe or shovel. That’s it. You don’t gain mining from smelting ore. Just beating up the ground.

Tailoring

Craft and sell lots of bandanas or skull-caps since both only take two cloth. You can also cut them with scissors to get bandages, but it’s probably best to sell them.

Tinkering

Pick any tool or item that only takes one of some specific resource and make a lot of them. Lockpicks only take one ingot and can be sold to vendors or used to raise lockpicking.


Wilderness Skills

Animal Lore

Analyze an animal over and over again. Very simple.

Fishing

The easiest way is to get a boat, hop on and go out into deep ocean. Then, fish everything in an area, have your tillerman go forward, stop, then wait until you fish out that new area. An alternative method is to have the tillerman go forward slowly while you fish constantly, but you’re likely to run into land much sooner this way and may miss a few chances at a fish.

You will end up with lots of boots, fish, giant fish, and the occasional sea serpent once your fishing skill gets very high. At higher levels of fishing, you’ll need to keep an eye out for these nasty serpents or make sure that you know to bandage if one starts hitting you.

Herding

Using a shepherd’s crook, target an animal, then tell it where you want it to go to. Repeat this process many times.

Tracking

You can raise this easily by using the skill, then changing your mind. (cancel the gump) You don’t have to actively start tracking anything, just taking note of what is around is enough to gain skill.

Veterinary

Have two animals fight each other, then keep them alive with bandages. A good chance to train your chicken for the next cock fight!

There are colored chickens named “Fighting Cock” that are stronger than normal chickens for these fights, so don’t just train normal chickens.


Miscellaneous Skills

Arms Lore

Keep inspecting a single weapon or armor. (newbie dagger?)

Begging

Find a somewhat stationary NPC, then keep begging them for their gold since they can’t walk away from you.

Note: You will lose karma.

Camping

The most useless skill in the game also takes a ton of resources to raise. You’ll need a very large supply of kindling, then you’ll need to start fires all over the place with them and hope noone catches you for arson.

Cartography

Draw up a lot of maps. An interesting note is that you do not need to use blank maps, which are unstackable. You can also use stackable scrolls to create maps, then sell the finished maps to a mapmaker.

Forensic Evaluation

Inspect a dead body a lot. A good place for poking dead things with a stick is the Mercenary Camp’s NorthWest corner. Axel the horse-hater keeps killing horses up near his horse-trap.

Item Identification

Keep inspecting any item. Even if you already know what it is.

Taste Identification

Pick a potion or food item and keep licking it.


Whew! Are you done with all those skills already? Congratulations! You must be pretty smart. Now there’s nothing left to do but learn non-numeric skills like PVP, hunting, Claycrafting, Stonecrafting, Glass-blowing or some of the many arcade games in the casino. Good luck!