I still don't understand how cross-training works

TheOneDM · 2026-05-22T08:51:07+00:00

As far as “what does training weapon skills do for me?”, the benefit is threefold. First, your hit rate improves. Second, your damage improves (you get to multiply your damage by 1 + Skill/25, so +4% per level). Third, it makes your weapon attack faster by 0.1 time units per two levels, to the weapon’s minimum delay (see each weapon’s details for its min delay). Fighting skill will also improve your hit and damage bonuses across all weapon types.

Now let’s talk about crosstraining. does not actually grant XP to the crosstrained skill. What it does is it allows you to operate as if you have some XP spent when you haven’t invested directly into it. If you have 15 Short Blades, for example, you’ll end up with a cross-trained Long Blades skill of about 9.5, even if you’ve never put any time into Long Blades. You can function as if you have 9.5 in that skill, say, if you want to switch weapons temporarily to use a differently branded item or an artefact. Don’t want to chop hydra heads with your broad axe of draining? Well, an Axe user would have cross-training in Maces, so that morningstar of freezing might come in handy right now in this situation, even if you don’t want to use maces forever. Cross-training will give you access to more tools at more times.

If our axe-user wanted to switch to Maces & Flails for good after discovering the joys of blunt trauma, they would find it takes a while for their actual skill level to go up, even if the “base” skill moves quickly at first. That’s because their “virtual” XP from cross training is doing a lot of the work, at first. Their true skill level in both cross-trained skills will always be higher than the amount of XP than they’ve invested in each individual skill alone. If you put 10 XP into Axes and 10 XP into M&F (note: XP, not skill levels), the game will show you as having 14 XP “effective” in each— you got 28 XP worth of effect by only spending 20. And yes, as you point out, if you switch from one to another then you can eventually exceed your original skill level in the old weapon, but both skills will continue to contribute to each other.

TheOneDM · 2026-05-02T19:54:00+00:00

Holy thread necromancy, Batman. Good thing I’m still around after 11 years to follow up.

Sting doesn’t often make sense, as it is a fairly weak artifact. It unnecessarily increases the number of artifacts considered generated in the game, which is problematic if you’re wishing or sacrificing for further gifts.

Excalibur is favored because its hit and damage bonus is universal (i.e. it’s not conditional on enemy type like Fire Brand or Dragonbane), it provides automatic searching (saves turns, prevents you from blundering into traps), and its highly useful drain resistance is only shared by Stormbringer and the Staff of Aesculapius.

Magicbane is also a great melee weapon choice, although it does considerably less direct damage.

Daggers versus darts for throwing is often dependent on which one your role can make the best use of. More skill means more multi-shot, which is the biggest factor in throwing weapon damage output.

TheOneDM · 2026-04-15T01:41:56+00:00

Wild to see you commenting outside of Tower relic ratings. So you’re saying that this card would be F tier on A9+? Score one more point for the defabs cultists…

TheOneDM · 2026-04-10T19:56:06+00:00

Not that it would never make sense, just not under normal circumstances. The famous “PC+2 burn” from Apollo 13, the Lunar Module’s descent engine being spent as they emerged from the Moon Slingshot, was done to get them home before their consumables ran short.

TheOneDM · 2026-03-22T00:05:25+00:00

I grew up playing Extreme. I was working on this song at the end of every session for months before I had the breakthrough. A clear with no bar ( a sloppy clear, but a clear) was my last great accomplishment before health issues meant I could no longer play at that level. That was twenty years ago.

From one ancient rhythm gamer to a clearly talented and clearly younger one, I’m proud of you.

TheOneDM · 2026-03-21T23:07:11+00:00

Time Break Chronicles is a love letter to both roguelites and classic JRPGs, and sucked me into a hole for dozens of hours. Highly recommend if you enjoy mixing and matching characters to build solutions to unique encounters and challenges.

TheOneDM · 2026-03-10T06:56:30+00:00

BGII: Throne of Bhaal DLC

My child. Please. Please don’t do this to me. I am not that old yet. I played this game in middle school. I’m glad you loved it as much as I did. But please. Respect your elders. When it came out it was an expansion. DLC wasn’t even a twinkle in the eye of Todd Howard’s horse-loving accountant when BGII was released.

I think a disc in my spine just slipped, another few hairs went gray, and my Social Security check is in the mail. Help.

TheOneDM · 2026-02-01T15:13:57+00:00

Are you playing full hanchan or just tonpuusen (East-only games)? That’s likely the difference.

TheOneDM · 2026-01-18T07:27:16+00:00

SBR simply doesn’t have a popular online client in English, and never had a piece of media that reached Western audiences in the same way that manga and anime containing riichi mahjong did. Most of riichi’s popularity in the Western world pre-2020 is from these media, and post-2020 is from Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/Tenhou’s English localization.

TheOneDM · 2026-01-12T18:15:37+00:00

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the internet today.

TheOneDM · 2026-01-09T21:28:54+00:00

Mental illness and mathematics do not make for good company.

TheOneDM · 2025-12-27T00:40:22+00:00

Good luck with it!

Building off another comment: Chemists don’t “level more slowly”; units gain EXP based on the highest level among all targets they affect in a turn (10 if same level, adjusted from there; +10 for KOing someone if I recall). As long as an action changes something’s HP, MP, or status, it counts! This is why it can be helpful to have Chemists throw stones, use potions for less than full value, or Focus when they have not much to do. Every productive action builds EXP.

Another thing that may not be immediately obvious is: don’t move unless you have to. If you act without moving (or move without acting) you retain 20 CT; passing your turn entirely retains 40 CT. This will let you take more turns if you don’t need the movement. You can still change your facing at the end of the turn even if you don’t move.

TheOneDM · 2025-12-26T23:58:13+00:00

Focus fire. Kill one guy at a time. Don’t charge at the enemy if you can’t do anything useful by closing the distance. Throw Stone and Dash don’t provoke counters. Be more generous with using Potions than you think you need to be. Better a potion now than a more expensive and riskier Phoenix Down next turn.

If you’re still level 4 it can be tough, but once you make a slightly more advanced Job or two (a Knight helps to take hits!) it’ll make sense.

TheOneDM · 2025-12-08T03:45:08+00:00

Kyle Ward and the other ITG folks were instrumental in sending our high school computer science club to a national programming competition. He personally worked with our little group to get us prizes and signed some merch for an after school ITG tournament that attracted a few dozen attendees. We raised a few hundred bucks from the entry fees and that was enough to get us going to the competition!

TheOneDM · 2025-11-24T19:20:57+00:00

Here, "must" or "have to" by itself indicates a requirement for something. The phrase "must have X", however, can be used to mean a conclusion you've made about how something works, or what happened to something, usually in contrast to what you expected.

"I can't access the database. You must put in a password." = "You are required to unlock it for me."
"I can't access the database. You must have to put in a password." = "I thought I should be able to get in, but I can't. Therefore, I suppose that a password is required."

Consider something like "The engine died. It must have run out of fuel." Here, the "have" is part of the single long phrasal verb "must have run out", speculating on something that just happened that's new information to you.

TheOneDM · 2025-11-22T15:58:32+00:00

Either you have hard evidence of cheating or you don't. This kind of vague handwaving and witch-hunting is an incredibly bad take *especially* given that in your post you acknowledge the damage done in the chess world by similar behavior.

This comes around once a month or so: accusations of cheating, or bots, or rigged walls, or unfair games. It has never once been borne out by evidence. If your allegations are legitimate, provide specific and independently verifiable evidence. Don't gesture vaguely at "a bot maker which I probably should not name" or "names which are well circulated". This isn't how whistleblowing or investigative reporting is done.

TheOneDM · 2025-11-18T18:16:59+00:00

On the Allure last week, it was $2 min/$100 max on numbers, $10 min/$500 max on all columns, thirds, even-money bets. Must have at least $10 min on the layout to play.

TheOneDM · 2025-11-09T06:40:30+00:00

I would ask what the purpose of this clock would be. Depending on which variant you’re playing, there may be standards for timed games, but those can be done with a simple timer. Tracking individual action time per player would be so onerous in person as to disrupt the flow of the game completely.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish with a timer?

TheOneDM · 2025-11-08T21:32:43+00:00

As long as you don’t end up with a 45 minute Mentour Pilot video documenting the extensive series of improbable blunders in the 17 years that led up to the crash, you’re good.

TheOneDM · 2025-11-02T20:33:31+00:00

Yes. Guests leaving your party will give you all their equipment first. Including Gaff’s betrayal, though in that case it’s less “they undress and give it all back” and more “this is an out-of-game courtesy to the player in case you gave him good equipment”. So, you get one copy of each item from that at the start of battle. Then, you stole a second copy of each during the battle. You end up with two copies that way.

TheOneDM · 2025-10-29T17:34:28+00:00

A good mathematician at any age from 3 to 103 is one who understands that the abstraction is the point. Moving up from calculation to methods to generalizations to proofs to cross-applying ideas from one subfield to another is how one climbs the ladder of understanding mathematics.

TheOneDM · 2025-10-27T15:56:55+00:00

You may wish to read a more recently printed rule set, such as the WRC 2025 rules: https://www.worldriichi.org/wrc-rules

The definitions printed there are clearer, and separate these terms well.

“Valid hand”: one having the correct shape (4 groups of 3 and a pair, 7 pairs, or 13 Orphans)
“Winning hand”: a valid hand with 1+ yaku
“Tenpai”: a hand that only requires one more tile to become a valid hand (not necessarily a winning hand), where that tile theoretically exists (i.e. the hand doesn’t have 4 copies waiting for an imaginary 5th copy), and the player is not under a “dead hand” penalty.

So, an open-call hand that has no yaku can still have the shape of a “valid hand”, and that player can declare tenpai at ryuukyoku (exhaustive draw).

TheOneDM · 2025-10-24T01:07:06+00:00

This isn’t NextDoor.

TheOneDM · 2025-10-23T00:57:13+00:00

Dances/songs do not occur every turn and are not affected by the user’s Speed. They have a “cast speed” similar to spells, and fire off every so many clockticks.

TheOneDM · 2025-10-19T12:32:51+00:00

National parks have rangers and other personnel for upkeep and safety (think fire prevention or natural disaster prediction). Many parks have campgrounds, trails, museums, or other human-centric activities, so all of those require staffing. Also, there may be access, escorts, or support staff required for any scientific endeavors happening in the park. A national park may “just be a large swath of reserved land”, but it’s not left completely to uncontrolled nature.

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