Goals and Optimization

There is lots of interesting stuff to do in the Disc, but all stuff comes at a price. Not a monetary one, but rather, one of experience, which is a much scarcer commodity.  This forces you to focus: out of all the things one could learn and practice, which ones are the better trade-off?

The most obvious answer to the question is to focus on the most instrumental of of all subroutines: do those things that will procure you more experience.  And this, in the Disc, means getting good at sticking pointy bits of metal into other people, or turning them to ashes with fireballs, if you're a wizard. And this always remains a goal you keep pushing. But after some time, it meets diminishing returns. So while it is always in the background, you need to supplement it with better means of survival (as in defensive skills and in better personal health) and, in general, you have to try to optimize for the low-hanging fruit you are interested in gathering.

A somewhat overlapping goal will be becoming good at what your guild does, which in my case, is being a wizard and casting spells. So an interesting set of goals is spell-chasing: you want to be able to cast a certain spell and to do it well, so you spend your hard-earned experience in the magical skills required for the casting. Once you're good enough, rinse and repeat with another spell, and so on.

At the moment, I am able to cast all the spells that the Discworld's grimoires can afford (which doesn't mean I have cast all of them: there are a couple related with DEATH that don't get much use). And while I have pushed my skills in some branches of magic so that I may be ever more proficient at floating heavy things for self-protection, this also meets with diminishing results when you reach, say, 436 levels. 

So this got me thinking to what I should be prioritizing instead, or at least, on some cycle I should make, of the sort: cycle 1: spend xp on defensive/offensive magic; cycles 2, 3 and 4: spend xp on something else. But what something else, I wonder?

The first thing that comes to mind would be more useful fighting and surviving skills, so that would mean dumping xp in sword skills, health and dodging, all of which have also reached a stage in which 3 million xp barely budges them much. 

I really like the crafts, and right now, I am quite interested in gold smithing. I would also like to start making nice staves, but one has to focus and not get dispersed. So I am tempted to employ cycles 2, 3 and 4 exclusively for this purpose until I can get topmost results in forging. Which, at the moment, and with what feel like rather high skills, I still cannot.

One also, though, is inspired to chase for lesser goals in the hope of tms. My silver smithing skills are low and I don't care to spend anything on them right now, but as I can usually get baser metals than gold from the Copperhead mines, I might as well be spending those bars into improving my skills. I worked at that somewhat this afternoon. The results weren't great, but they were pretty acceptable, and I also got a couple of tms in crafts.points and in crafts.smithing.black.tools. The best pieces I got looked like this:

• A pretty brass wise owl statuette: Simple and pretty, this little brass owl has a deep well in her head for ink. 
• A copper tankard: Short and sturdy, with a solid base and a strong handle, this copper tankard will hold a full pint safely in even the most drunken grip. 

Of course, there are some mini-goals that require no expenditure of experience, and you can indulge in them for the occasional tms. Of these, the most relevant ones at the moment are:

• Spoken dwarvish: I have acquired masterful proficiency in the written form, but my spoken skills still leave something to be desire. And yet, while talking, I just managed to get to level 78!

You feel like the Dwarfish language is less confusing.

..austrophobia ..eeds .. ..ese ..aves  ..ut ..o ..s ..zhak'khin'khuz ..lse   ..nd ..ustrophobia ..s  ..k ..n  ..y ..en ..bir'khuz ..th ..mit ..ees ..akh'bir'khab ..o ..he ..reatures ..hich ..ause ..he ..centrated ..khab'bir ..ch .. ..bir'khab ..n ..e ..casional ..koragh ..m ..e ..p   ..gash ..ve ..mber ..s ..limy ..th ..amp not .. ..ssibly ..ther ..bstances  ..nd .. .. ..l ..  ..y ..ce ..khar .. .. ..khin ..ne   ..rtain ..ompany ..uld ..ake ..  ..hole .. ..orse   .. ..ves ..khin'rhag'khin ..t .. ..est

..bir'akh'aule'khar   ..s         ..   not    not   not   ..khin'khuz           ..rophobia        not   not  not  not not    not   not not        ..d     not    ..res   ..   ..      ..rated   ..        not ..d         ..ional              not  not  not     ..     not ..y      not       ..y   ..r   ..ances       not        not     not          not not           not ..   ..ny   not         not ..  not    ..         not  ..nue         

hskills

Recent skill changes during this session:

Thu Aug 20 22:31:42 2026 - spoken Dwarfish increased by 1 level to level 78.

• percussion: I am decently proficient with wind and stringed instruments, but lag behind in the rest, so I've taken to carrying with me a kokiriko, a very curious Agatean piece of craftmanship. It is basically a... kind of clapper? I am at 111 levels right now, and mostly getting bad messages when I play it ('You play an irritating rattling rhythm on your kokiriko' 'You shake your kokiriko, creating an unpleasant rattle'), but some tms are still coming. The description is as follows (and I'll provide you a picture to go along):

This unique instrument of Agatea looks very much like a bendy two foot long comb with handles at either end.  It can be played in various ways due to its flexible construction.  As the handles are moved, dozens of small rectangular wooden blocks hit each other in succession, creating a captivatingly active rhythm very similar in sound to a row of dominoes falling.

• Burden reduction: I used to carry a lot of gear because I just loved how it looked, but given that I am a spellcaster who attempts to dodge when the chips are down, I am finding myself ever and ever trying to optimize for lower weight. Until today, I was using a silver-studded sword belt as the sheath for my sea fang, while using a charmed navel stud for storing a lovely keris for component gathering. But I noticed two things today: the belt is heavy (6/9 lb) and every time I retrieve the sand keris I spend 20 gps, so a change was in order. I noticed that in the same place that I had gotten the keris, the local spirits also sold a lighter belt that could house my sea fang and the deluded knife I use for casting KID on about-to-die trolls, but which I could now double as the component-gathering dagger. The belt is the filigreed sword belt (weighing 3/9 lb) that reads like this:

This elegant belt is made of sturdy, high-quality leather and decorated all along its length with intricate gold filigree. The contrast between the dark brown and the gold lend it a certain understated style, making it as decorative as it is practical. Two adjustable loops allow for a wide range of blades to be sheathed on each hip so that from a wide-bladed scimitar to a needle-pointed dagger, one can be certain to always have quick access to their weapon of choice. There are two loops free. It could sheathe a scimitar, sword, blade, dagger, knife, rapier, epee, foil, colichemarde, sidesword or sabre.

So this is what has been occupying my mind lately. Although I have a clear picture of my current subgoals, I feel I should make an ordered list of things i want to improve, maybe one at a time, as soon as I've gotten my finesmithing working. Let me see:

-My fighting.unarmed.grappling needs some urgent spending, as my 250-ish bonuses are insufficient a lot of the time to stop muggers in the Shades for temporarily snatching my sword. I am optimistic that maybe just 20 or so more levels might do the trick. 

-My crafts.pottery.staining hasn't been able yet to reach the quite to the top: the Apocralypse pattern in the Sung pottery room defeats me each and every time, and I am pretty sure some of the most complicated designs of the Sto Lat pottery shop are beyond me. That's my next artistic goal - perhaps I need some c. 400 bonuses for this.

-Both people.trading.valueing jewellery and gems need to go up, as I sell a lot of that stuff (205 and 150 levels respectively; I should likely go for at least 250 for each).

-crafts.points needs to go up too. With only 150 levels, I run out of them pretty quick.

-the adventuring branch is one I mostly neglect and are not too enthusiastic about, but I have to get around one day to improving adventuring.movement.swimming, adventuring.movement.climbing rock and rope and adventuring.perception.  The latter would be particularly useful in a certain smuggler's den..

-after this, I should be able to focus on the different skills required for making a good staff...