Focus that is drained from reading skillbooks doesn’t influence anything.
As a new player, I was reading novels, eating potato chips, even playing “Find a Kitten” between sessions of reading skillbooks, to keep my morale and focus at reasonable level. I thought it was right idea to get enjoyment/focus and spend it to raise the skills. But then I made some tests and realized that skill gain from reading at 140 focus and 60 focus is the same…
If it works as intended, it’s very unintuitive. And player can actually damage himself by not knowing it.
I belive either focus should modify skill gains from books or reading shouldn’t drain focus, because it misleads the player. Since books require alot of time, second option is quite ok balance wise. But first option is better.
Can confirm this (using version 0.C-24106-gca0d5b0, SDL).
Tested a bunch of times by leveling a skill from 0 to 1, with the average focus of ~180 and ~40. Each on average taking ~4h.
Looking at the code, there is adjustment for other penalties, but seems to be none for focus.
I’m a new player myself, but this looks like this might be huge (one can read just as fast at very low focus values, and also the focus penalty from long reading does nothing if all you’re doing is reading).
Note for anyone involved in development, assuming this is not intended, it seems ths could be fixed in a few lines of code. Check out the player::do_read() func in player.cpp (check below the “// Calculate experience gained” comment). adjust_for_focus() func in skill.cpp would be of use too (currently it’s only used for non-books practice).
Yeah, this looks more like an issue where the different ways of learning really need to be combined and standardized (i.e., everything calls practice at some point or something similar).