Those other skills

[Ellendora]

Greetings all. 1st post here, so be gentle. I have searched the forum history, but still have a persisting question about some non-trade skills. Other than feeding my OCD by maxing my skills, what is the real purpose of:

Fishing: With Fishing(200) you can fish great items to be used in other tradeskills?

Begging: Dont know the benefit of this being maxxed. How can a caster max this out?

Swimming: Longer breath and faster movement rate, got that one figured out.

Bind Wound: Should have worked on this earlier, but what is the benefit of having it maxxed? Free heals when your HP is below 50%?

Languages: Roleplaying purposes?

Alchohol Tolerance: You can tolerate your drinks made at Brewing(200+)? I have heard this skill is good for some LDoN traps, but this is unconfirmed.

Well, I already love this site and hope to use it frequently. I look forward to future posting and communications.

Thanks!

Ellendora
Cleric on Quellious (63rd Level)

[Verdandi]

Re: Those other skills

Fishing: With Fishing(200) you can fish great items to be used in other tradeskills?

Yes. I don't know if there are things that can only be fished at 200 and not at 199. There is however hard data that you get more rare fishes with higher skill. The rare fishes tend to be the most valuable things, of course. Sometimes they're fish or other sea stuffs (like seaweed) for special foods, drinks, or oils for other skills. Sometimes they're completely different objects, like keys or coins for quests.

Begging: Dont know the benefit of this being maxxed. How can a caster max this out?

I believe the benefit is that you're less likely to be agroed by the person from whom you are begging, as well as getting a little more money out of them. But I have heard that even at maxxed skill you're still only going to get silvers at most. It's the only skill I have that isn't entirely maxxed, being at 188 atm, because it is soooooooooo slow. I know people who threw a few hundred plat at the last few skill points just to get it over with. But to do that with begging just seems wrong! To raise it, you can either spend a boatload with your guild trainer or you can target an npc and hit your Begging button a few million times.

Bind Wound: Should have worked on this earlier, but what is the benefit of having it maxxed? Free heals when your HP is below 50%?

Yep. This is particularly handy at lower levels when melees can still solo. Bind wound reduces the downtime. As a shaman I get it every so often from a particularly attentive tank when I'm cannibalizing hehe. Some classes have the ability to get it above 50% as well as AAs that can let you get it all the way to 100% I think now.

Languages: Roleplaying purposes?

The only practical use I know of for them is to read some in-game books. Well, most of those aren't practical either. But I believe the books that give each race's research recipes for the old research (up to lvl 50 spells) are written in various languages. I think that's particularly what the "old" versions of the languages are, like Old Erudian and Elder Teir'Dal. I would guess those that don't have any in game use were just for flavor and roleplaying and to allow for future use in the storyline.

Alchohol Tolerance: You can tolerate your drinks made at Brewing(200+)? I have heard this skill is good for some LDoN traps, but this is unconfirmed.

I don't know anything about the LDoN use but I do know that the higher your alcohol tolerance is the less the negatives effects get per drink (drunken swaying, slurred speech, lowered int/wis). Drinking alcohol increases your strength (not sure what it does to the rest of the melee stats) so I suppose that alcohol tolerance lets you drink more for higher strength with less of the negative stuff? Sounds about right, although I haven't actually tested it.

[Froni Thunderpaws]

Fishing - a number of fished items are used in quests and many are used in recipes for baking, brewing, tailoring tannins, pottery, etc. And it is a fun way to pass some time especially if you need to med.

Begging - not sure myself and I am awful at it. It does look like you might be able to beg items off of certain mobs instead of having to hand money to them for the item. But you can also aggro the mob which is unfun when they are red with lots of friends nearby.

Swimming - very helpful in water zones. I am always surprised when I run into people in the 50+ levels who can barely swim. But then I was a Froni-fish and kept the skill maxxed as I leveled.

Bind wound - depends on class. Only with AA's can you have it heal beyond 50% (unless you are a monk?) The higher the skill the better you can heal to the cutoff and less risk for doing more damage.

Langauges - there are certain NPC's who will only speak with you in the native langauge. Mostly prisoners in Plane of Justice. Every once and a while someone finds a bit of hidden lore trying other languages on NPC's. Oh, Verdandi reminded me with her post - Brodder's Diaries are written in gnomish and the Liber Brassica (book of the cabbage/broccoli/kale/brussles sprout/cauliflower/kohlrabi genus) volumes are written in different languages as well (those books were where the Earring of Solstice/Protection of the Cabbage quest was introduced.)

AT - why not? Just a side of effect of consuming some of those brews you worked so hard to make. Tunnel vision is fun as long as you don't need to be doing anything until you sober up. I am about 180 with AT and I get just as stupid and clumsy (WIS,INT, and I think AGI or DEX all drop to really low values) as I did at skill 0 - just takes a lot more stuff to get intoxicated.

[Thorvari]

Fishing - must be over 100 to fish some of the special zone specific items I think. These special items are used in various quests.

Begging - There is a quest in GoD (Breakdown in Communication?) that you need a Begging skill of 151 to complete. The NPC will not hand out the item when hailed with a skill of 150 or below.

Swimming - outrunning the mob when headed for the zone while swimming. Swimming through lava faster cuts down on the total damage taken.

Bind Wounds - mana free heals, Monks and Beastlords can heal to 70% once they get a skill of 201, with AA they can heal to 100%

Languages - there are some quest/flavor NPCs in Plane of justice that will not talk unless you have skill in a certain language. I believe 75 in Orc is required for the HoH alt access quest. Also reading in game books for quests and flavor.

AT - cuts the effects for when you get hit with the LDoN trap that makes you drunk.

[Grozza]

Originally posted by Thorvari
Bind Wounds - mana free heals, Monks and Beastlords can heal to 70% once they get a skill of 201, with AA they can heal to 100%

You can include Rogues, Warriors, and Paladins in this list. Probably SKs as well but not sure.

[Verdandi]

Originally posted by Thorvari
Bind Wounds - mana free heals, Monks and Beastlords can heal to 70% once they get a skill of 201, with AA they can heal to 100%

Originally posted by Grozza
You can include Rogues, Warriors, and Paladins in this list. Probably SKs as well but not sure.

Shamans too. It is capped at 200 until level 51 when it can go up to 210 and 70%.

[Carmaris]

Clerics get the bind wound bonus at 51 as well. But if I recall correctly, they're capped at 201 for some odd reason.

[Sanna]

Alcohol Tolerance -

I leveled a bard to somewhere between 15 and 20 on FV (for reasons unrelated to, well, anything, actually), and got a lot of pole-summoned ale and got drunk off my kitty booty. Turned on Selos, hit F10 to remove the visible UI, and zipped around Pok's outer wall with that 'tunnel vision'.

Was the most simple fun I'd had in EQ in a long while, at the time. ^_^!!

Did you know the south wall of of the south side of Pok is really beginning to deteriorate?

To me, the fun of those 'other' skills is just being able to say to /guild, "Begging 22!" and then they go, "why the heck are you that close to the mob? Back up, sit down, and med!" hehe. To me, it's just simple fun.

-- Sanna

[Amaruk]

Bindwounds: The higher your skill the more you heal per bandage, anyone with a skill of 201 or higher can heal to 70% and you can increase that by 10% per AA level spent upto 30% increase. You get (Skill Level)/4 hps healed per bandage up to 200 skill then it starts taking jumps for every point over 200. I think its like 80 per at 210 skill. Warriors get an AA to increase the amount healed per bandage and for some reason Monks do NOT get that skill. Wish we did though.

[Reflan]

There are even a couple of items that produce summoned bandages in the game. As does, of course, a mage. My SK carries a dagger that can produce bandages; kind of a cool little thing.

As to swimming, it does not increase the length of time you can be underwater.

Sure is handy though; if say you are fighting underwater goblins in Lake of Ill Omen, your swimming skill will need to be at or near max to have a chance of chasing them successfully so they don't run away and get lost in the murk or train other mobs on you...or to swim away when you start losing without being stunned and killed from the back. High swimming is a must!

There's even a whole underwater plane, the plane of water.

As to certain languages being needed for quests, that is some darn obscure info - and useful and fascinating for that reason alone! I had a bizarre failure on the HOH alternate key quest, and if you know how hard it can be to get the parts for the quest, you know how very aggravating and disappointing that was. That Orc language at 75 could possibly have the slightest thing to do with it astounds me, as there aren't even any orcs in that plane or anywhere else in that expansion, and it seems to have nothing to do with the quest at all. And having begging at 151 for the GoD quest? Had no idea. I guess I'm very glad to know that though; I never bothered with begging at all, but I'm going to start tomorrow.

[Craftah]

Journal of the Vagabond
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO DROP
Slot: CHARM
AC: 14
STR: +10 DEX: +10 STA: +10 CHA: +10 WIS: +10 INT: +10 AGI: +10 HP: +75 MANA: +75 ENDUR: +75
SV FIRE: +10 SV DISEASE: +10 SV COLD: +10 SV MAGIC: +10 SV POISON: +10
Required level of 65.
WT: 1.1 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL
Slot 1, Type 7
Item Information:
Increases in power with high alcohol tolerence and begging skill.

Another reason to get Alcohol Tolerence and Begging to 200...

[dmuerte]

There is a dragon in the berserker epic that does a ae drunk. So if you have max alcohol tol you probably wont be hurt as huch.

[Fudapuda]

I believe it is also true that on some servers (RP server and Red servers) that languages play a much more important role...

Fudapuda
Bertox

[Silverfish]

A Sneaky Trick, Learned

I learned about a very peculiar synergy with my skill set, because I have 200 alcohol tolerance and 100 in all languages. When I get roaring drunk, I'm still completely understandable to the people around me when I speak. I think the game engine switches your statements among various languages to simulate slurred speech, but it's quite handy when I get into drinking fests with guildmates and I can speak normally while they have to fall back to emotes to be understood.

I found a sneaky trick to building begging as well, for those who get in melee range of opponents. Set up a hotkey like this...

/attack off
/doability (begging)
/attack on

...and spam it during combat. It's easy to build it up this way, and it does work as a ghetto taunt as you do it (so use discreetly if you're not MA). There are those who say that you should avoid building it up so that it's more effective as a taunt when you need it, but I haven't noticed a big difference between zero begging and 70 begging in terms of how often it draws agro. And, although I'm not sure of it since it only happened once, I think that success from a begging attempt gets you something off the loot table, since I succeeded once begging from a Luggald and it handed me its dagger (ghetto disarm!).

If you don't get in melee range of fight mobs, you can always beg from your pet. Or, find a very weak NPC and work them for pocket change. I personally practiced begging from the young Halfling behind the waterfall in Rivervale. I agroed her twice but didn't care since she couldn't hit me once and I just jumped in the water to leave.

I also heard a rumor that you can beg from boats, but I've never had any luck doing that, so let me know if you can.

SIlverfish

[KanadWinterstorm]

Used to beg from my pet in teh old days, but as dandi said it goes up incredibly slowly. One of the new quests in the expansion requires a begging skill of 151+ though.

Books in game have been broken for a long time, anyone can read them regardless of language skill or language the text is written in. I remember talking about this in a thread on the Liber Brassica Felix books somewhere on the boards. It's been this way as long as anyone can remember that I've talked to.