Skill migration
Skill migration is the system that allows characters to change what skills they train in over time. It is not intended to allow characters to easily change their hunting style or other major skills, but instead to allow changes to secondary and tertiary skills. For major changes to a character's build, either use of FIXSKILLS or a surfeit of patience is strongly recommended. To see the current status of a character's skill migration, use SKILLS BASE.
Migrating Points
Skill migrations are tracked over a 30-day period. Throughout that 30-day period, a character begins unlearning skills at a somewhat reasonable rate, which soon tapers off. Skill points are slowly untrained on a migration pulse, which happens once every 30 seconds. Since a character only migrates points on a migration pulse, no points are migrated when the character is not logged in.
Migration Rate
| Speed | Points Migrated | Points per Pulse | Points per Minute | Points per Hour | Time to Migrate 1 TP | Time at Rate | Total time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast | 0 - 60 | 0.010 | 0.020 | 1.2 | 50 minutes | 50 hours (to migrate 60 TP) |
50 hours (to migrate a total of 60 TP) |
| Slow | 60 - 80 | 0.002 | 0.004 | 0.24 | 4 hours, 10 minutes | 83 hours, 20 minutes (to migrate 20 TP) |
133 hours, 20 minutes (to migrate a total of 80 TP) |
| Very Slow | 80+ | 0.001 | 0.002 | 0.12 | 8 hours, 20 minutes | n/a | 133.333... + 8.333... × P hours (to migrate a total of P + 80 TP) |
An Uncomplicated Example
Suppose a level 100 cleric had yet to untrain any skills, and wanted to go from 100 ranks of Magic Item Use to 50 ranks. This would involve untraining 50 ranks of MIU, a skill that costs 0 Physical Training Points (PTP) and 2 Mental Training Points (MTP) to train. She would then be untraining a total of 0 PTP and 100 MTP.
The first 60 MTP being untrained would progress at a rate of 0.010 MTP per 30 second pulse, or 0.020 MTP per minute. After the first pulse, the cleric would be considered to have to 99 ranks of MIU, not 100. She would have 0.010 new MTP available, which isn't very useful.
50 minutes from the beginning of migration, one full MTP would untrain and be available to use in another skill. After another 50 minutes pass (1 hour and 40 minutes in total) another MTP would have migrated away. The cleric has now migrated 2 MTP, the cost of 1 full rank of MIU. The next pulse would then take points away from the next remaining rank of Magic Item Use, and the cleric would be down to 98 ranks of the skill.
After a total of 50 hours have passed, the cleric would have migrated 60 MTP. She'll be down to 70 ranks of MIU. At this point, migration slows down dramatically from 0.010 MTP per pulse to 0.002 MTP per pulse. It now takes five times longer to migrate a training point. After 8 hours and 20 minutes in-game, the cleric will have migrated 2 more of her MTPs, and would be down to 69 ranks of MIU.
75 more in-game hours later, and 18 more MTP will migrate. This brings her to a total of 20 MTP at the slower rate. 133 hours and 20 minutes have passed in total. The cleric is down to 60 ranks of MIU, with 10 ranks more to reach the goal of 50 ranks. Since she's passed the 80 TP threshold, her migration rate slows down once more, halving to 0.001 MTP per pulse.
It now takes 8 hours and 20 minutes to migrate a single training point, or 166 hours and 40 minutes to migrate the remaining 20 MTP. In total, it will take 300 hours in-game to untrain the 50 Magic Item Use ranks, with more than half of that time spent on the last 10 ranks.
If the cleric has been logging in and out during the migration, it's possible that more than 30 days might pass in the process. If that happens, the number of points migrated resets to 0, and the migration rate immediately jumps back up to 0.010 MTP per pulse. It stays there until another 60 points have been migrated.
Gift of Oleani
Gift of Oleani removes up to 60 converted training points from a character's 30-day skill migration period. It is one of the Gift of the Gods options received on the 29th day of Login Rewards. If a character activates a Gift of Oleani after migrating skills, (up to?) 60 training points will be subtracted from the total number of points migrated. If the character has progressed into one of the slower migration rates, this will (hopefully) bump it back to a faster rate.
The Gift of Oleani is best used immediately after migrating 60 training points. The gift will be less efficient the farther it is used from that target (on either side). If a character has already migrated over 140 training points in a 30-day period, the Gift of Oleani would have no effect on the migration rate, and thus would be wasted. For optimal migration speed, the Gift of Oleani should be activated immediately after crossing the 60 TP threshold.
Untraining Skills
As points are migrated away, characters gradually lose skills. The moment a the first iota of a training point is migrated away from a skill, the character loses 1 effective rank in that skill. Internally and in SKILLS BASE, however, fractional skills are tracked.
Fractional Skills Example
Say a warrior has 5 ranks in Harness Power, a skill that costs 0/10 to train. When she begins untraining the skill, she'll almost immediately fall to 4 effective ranks and lose the appropriate amount of maximum mana. After enough migration pulses, she'll have untrained 1 mental training point, which is 10% of the cost of Harness Power. In SKILLS BASE, then she will show 4.900 ranks of the skill, or 4 ranks and 90% left of the fifth rank.
Converted Training Points and Migration
Points are migrated away from a skill based on the cost of that skill, not the training points invested. If a Wizard has spent 64 physical points triple-train Spell Research, a 0/32 skill, he will only have to migrate 32 mental points, not 64 physical points. Each mental point will then immediately turn back into 2 physical points, unless the Wizard has somehow rebalanced his skill training in the meantime.
Multiple Skills and Mixed Training Points
More research is required into how migrating points away from multiple skills is handled. The same for skills that cost both PTP and MTP.
- Working theory: Points move equally from each skill. Within each skill, points are migrated away proportional to the ratio of PTP to MTP. If a character is on 0.010 migration and is untraining both a 3/4 and a 0/3, she will migrate 0.005 points from each. That would be 0.005*3/7 PTP and 0.005*4/7 MTP from the first skill, and 0.005 MTP from the second skill.
- Backup theory: Points move proportional to the cost of the skill. If a character is on 0.010 migration and is untraining both a 3/4 skill and a 0/3 skill, she will migrate 0.003 PTP and 0.004 MTP from the first skill, and 0.003 MTP from the second skill.
Training New Skills
The number of training points listed under SKILLS is not the number of training points a character actually has available to spend immediately, but the number of points the character will have available to spend once all migration is complete. Therefore, if a character is migrating training points, this may be considered a pool of both "Available Training Points" and "Unmigrated Training Points". Available Points are points that were either never invested in a skill or points that were invested in a skill but have since migrated away. Unmigrated Points are training points that are invested in a skill that is being untrained but have not yet been migrated away.
When a character in migration uses GOALS to train new skills, points will be taken from the "Available Points" pool to buy the new skills, starting with the cheapest affordable skill, and working to the most expensive. This continues until the number of available points is insufficient to buy another skill. All remaining skills yet to be trained will then display "ASAP" for remaining time in SKILLS BASE.
The Available Points pool will then refill, very slowly. Points will accumulate there from two sources: they will transfer over from the Unmigrated Points pool at the given migration rate, and they will appear normally as they are earned from gaining experience towards the next level. The moment there are enough Available Points to cover the cost of an "ASAP" skill in the character's GOALS, the points will be spent, and the character will have access to the skill. This means the cheapest skills will always be trained first.
New Character Migration
New characters are an exception to the rule. These characters can migrate skill points almost instantly. Until a character reaches level 20, the character's skill points are migrated not instantaneously, but at an incredibly fast rate. (It appears to be around 350 training points per migration pulse, but I've seen higher and lower rates; further testing is required.)
In addition, when a character has almost reached level 20, they will be required to confirm that their skills are set to their desired values. The character will not be able to earn any additional experience until they have given this confirmation. The final reminder is issued once the character has less than 1000 experience points remaining until level 20.
At this point, a one week time period begins during which to enter SKILLS CONFIRM; if SKILLS CONFIRM is not entered during this time period, the character will be transported to the "End of Fast Migration Limbo" and he/she will not be permitted to leave this room until the SKILLS CONFIRM confirmation is completed.
As an addendum to the previous statement, you can be unceremoniously swept into that Limbo room. But once you've completed the SKILLS CONFIRM, you should be able to either type OUT or GO OUT and be put back into the game. The room itself isn't all that clear on that point since there's no actual room description when you type LOOK.
FAQs
- What does ASAP mean?
It means 'As Soon As Possible,' in other words as soon as you have training points available either from gaining new points due to gaining experience or gaining a training point back from reducing a skill via the skill migrator.
- How does the migrator determine what skill to raise first?
Skills with the lowest training point cost will always increase before those with more expensive requirements.
- Why isn't the migrator instantaneous?
The skill migrator was never meant to be a way to make dramatic changes to your character from one day to the next, rather it was meant to provide you with a way to tweak and fix your character's training. It also allows the developers to provide means for players to adapt when significant changes are made that invalidate a previously viable training path or significantly change the way a given training path is 'played.'
- Why are you using online time rather than 'real' time?
The migrator system empowers you to correct minor flaws in your past training. It is not meant to allow you to make dramatic changes to your character, such as going from a lockpicker to an enchanter by setting some goals and logging out for six months.
If you want your character to be a lockpicker, then you should train to be a lockpicker. If your character is currently a lockpicker, but you really wanted to be an enchanter and you have exceeded the initial grace periods for migration, then you are going to have to commit yourself to migrating your skills at the normal rate.
- What if my character is unviable because I am migrating 160 ranks in edged weapons to 160 ranks in ranged weapons?
Unfortunately, you are trying to use the system in a manner contrary to its intended purpose. Consequently, it is not going to be easy to do and it is going to require a lot of time and sacrifice on your part.
Before GemStone IV's release, the only way you could change your ranks was by rerolling your character.