Skills¶

Lyonspyre uses the classic T2A skill table: 49 usable skills (Alchemy through Remove Trap), all of the post-T2A entries (Necromancy, Chivalry, Bushido, Ninjitsu, Spellweaving, Mysticism, Imbuing, Throwing) are server-side locked at 0 and uselockable. Stealth and Remove Trap are kept by design even though they technically arrived just after T2A.

You pick seven skills to fight with (skill cap 700, individual cap 100 — both can be raised, see Caps), use them, gain in them, and that's your character. Lyonspyre adds layers — talents, resonance, specialties — but skills remain the spine: a Magery / Eval Int / Wrestling / Meditation / Tactics / Resist / Anatomy mage is still recognisable to anyone who played in 1999.

What's different on Lyonspyre¶

Change	Vanilla T2A	Lyonspyre
Skill gain multiplier	1.0×	4.0× (playtest knob, will tune before launch)
Per-gain step size below 80	0.1	0.2 (also a playtest knob)
Stat scaling on displayed skill	Value = Base + stat offset	Value = Base always (no flickering display)
Skill total cap	700	700 base, +50 via Mote of Mastery drops
Skill loadouts	none	Saved skill templates you can swap between (see below)
Post-T2A skills	trainable	hard-locked to 0 on every login
`[skillgain on` debug	n/a	Per-attempt gain-chance printout — flip on, see "Lumberjacking: 39.6% gain chance" on every roll

The 4× gain-rate multiplier and the 0.2-step-below-80 modifier are intentionally generous playtest knobs. Expect both to drop closer to historical T2A rates once the shard goes live; you're seeing intentionally fast progression right now.

Caps — total and per-skill¶

Two separate caps bound your character, and both can be raised past their defaults:

Cap	Default	Raise it with	Per item	Ceiling
Total skill cap (sum of every skill)	700	Mote of Mastery	+1.0 to the total	750
Individual skill cap (any one skill)	100	Scroll of Mastery (one per skill)	+1.0 to that skill	150

Scroll of Mastery is per-skill. A Scroll of Swordsmanship Mastery raises only your Swordsmanship cap, a Scroll of Magic Resist Mastery only Magic Resist, and so on. Each scroll you consume lifts that one skill's cap by 1.0 — so reaching 120 in a skill takes 20 scrolls, and the 150 ceiling takes 50. Scrolls exist for the 22 core skills (the classic combat, magic, taming and bard skills, plus Blacksmithy and Tailoring).

A couple of things to keep in mind:

Raising a cap doesn't grant the skill. The scroll only lifts the ceiling; you still train the points the normal way, now able to climb past 100.
The total cap still rules. Pushing one skill to 150 spends 150 of your 700 (or 750) budget — so going tall in one skill means going shorter elsewhere, or investing Motes of Mastery to widen the total.

Magic Resist is the skill players most often take past 100, because every point of MR beyond GM keeps shaving boss spell damage — up to a 75% reduction at MR 150 (see Magic). Mechanically it's raised exactly like any other skill: with Scrolls of Magic Resist Mastery, +1.0 each, to the same 150 ceiling.

How gain works¶

Every time you successfully use a skill, the engine rolls against the standard T2A formula:

chance_to_use = (yourSkill - minSkill) / (maxSkill - minSkill)

If that passes and you're within difficulty range, you may also gain. Gain chance is then:

gc = ((cap - total) / cap + (skillCap - skillBase) / skillCap) / 2
gc += (1 - useChance) * (success ? 0.5 : 0.2)     // standard
gc /= 2
gc *= per-skill weight                             // some skills gain faster
gc *= 4.0                                          // Lyonspyre playtest multiplier
gc = max(gc, 0.01)                                 // floor

So your gain rate accelerates when:

You're far from your total skill cap (more headroom = faster gains).
You're far from the per-skill cap of 100 (harder to gain the last few points).
The check was on something hard (low success chance → high "should-have-been-harder" bonus).

Pets gain at 2× the human rate. The accelerated-skill bonus (NewPlayerTicket / quest reward) multiplies the per-tick gain step by 2–5×.

Skill gain wants you to roam¶

Repeated checks at the same target in the same map cell stop counting toward gain. The engine remembers your last few attempts; if you've been skill-checking the same target tile too many times in a row, gain is denied. This is intentional — UO has always pushed you to move between resource nodes / monsters rather than nail one. Mining a single mountain forever still gains; standing on one ore tile spamming Mine does not.

AFK macroing itself is allowed (see Auto-Reconnect & Macro Resume) — this rule just means an effective grind loop should vary its target so every check keeps counting. A loop that roams nodes gains; one that hammers a single tile runs but stops gaining.

`[skillgain on` — live gain chance display¶

Toggle on with [skillgain on, off with [skillgain off. While enabled, every successful skill check prints a one-line system message: "Lumberjacking: 39.6% gain chance (rolled gain)" — useful for tuning grind sessions and confirming the math matches what you expect. Off by default; per-character toggle held in memory (resets on server restart).

Picking seven¶

The classic UO rule still applies: specialise. Seven skills @ 100 beats fourteen @ 50 at almost everything except crafting (where a 50 GM template can still gather raw mats). Common templates:

Mage: Magery, Eval Int, Wrestling, Meditation, Resist, Tactics, Anatomy
Warrior: Tactics, Anatomy, Healing, weapon skill (Swords/Macing/Fencing/Archery), Parry/Resist, Magery (chug-tier 30–50)
Bard: Musicianship, Provocation, Peacemaking, Discordance, Magery, Resist, Meditation
Tamer: Animal Taming, Animal Lore, Veterinary, Magery, Eval Int, Meditation, Resist (or Wrestling for self-defense)
Thief: Stealing, Snooping, Hiding, Stealth, Magery, Resist, Wrestling
Crafter: pick five crafting skills + Item ID + Arms Lore — keep one slot for a combat skill or a getaway tool (Magery for recall)

Skill Loadouts (Lyonspyre custom)¶

Skill Loadouts let you save and swap entire skill+stat templates without losing the work you put into either side. You grind a Mage to 700 total, save it as "Mage"; later you build a Warrior with the same character, save it as "Warrior". Swapping zeros out the active skills and re-applies the saved one, atomically.

Key points:

Peaks are remembered forever. Once you train a skill to 95, it's a 95 peak; any future loadout you load can set that skill back to ≤95 without re-training. Peaks only ever go up.
2 slots per character in v1 (production target 4–6).
Swap cap: stat sum ≤ 225, per skill ≤ peak, total skills ≤ your skill cap (700 base, 750 with Mote of Mastery).
Atomic apply: validates everything first; if any check fails the swap aborts cleanly with a sysmessage. No partial state.
No cooldown / out-of-combat in v1 — those gates are tunable to 12 hours and 5 minutes for launch. Don't get used to instant swapping.

Saved loadouts persist with your character and are exposed through the Skills tab of the Profile panel ([profile). The unified preset system can wrap a skill loadout together with a talent build and a resonance setup for one-click full-character swaps.

Categories¶

Skills group into the same buckets UO has always used:

Category	Skills
Combat	Tactics, Anatomy, Wrestling, Swordsmanship, Mace Fighting, Fencing, Archery, Parrying, Lumberjacking, Arms Lore
Magic	Magery, Eval Int, Meditation, Resist, Inscription, Spirit Speak
Healing	Healing, Veterinary, Anatomy
Stealth	Hiding, Stealth, Stealing, Snooping, Detect Hidden, Poisoning, Remove Trap, Lockpicking
Crafting	Blacksmithy, Tailoring, Tinkering, Carpentry, Bowcraft/Fletching, Alchemy, Cooking, Inscription, Cartography
Wilderness	Tracking, Animal Lore, Animal Taming, Veterinary, Camping, Fishing, Mining, Herding
Social & Bard	Begging, Item ID, Arms Lore, Forensic Eval, Taste ID, Musicianship, Provocation, Peacemaking, Discordance

Skills that appear in two categories (Anatomy in Combat + Healing, Veterinary in Healing + Wilderness, Arms Lore in Combat + Social, Inscription in Magic + Crafting) are described once in the primary category page and referenced from the second.