Shattered Kingdoms

Hi there. Less than a week into playing on SK (veteran of another, now dead, MUD - very much enjoying SK so far), and I have a hopefully quick question.

I play a rogue and twice now I seem to have managed to lose levels while playing. The first time was on one of the Journeyman levels, the most recent time was after having reached the first rank in Veteran.

While I have died once before, it was on the second day or so of playing and I don't think coincided with losing a level. The one commonality I know of both times was that I trained in a skill that was likely much advanced for me. The first time I trained in dual backstab, the second time in enhanced damage.

The most recent occurrence happened like this:
- Reached Veteran(1) yesterday, trained level.
- Spent several hours RPing in various inns. Logged off.
- Today, logged on, realized I hadn't trained in enhanced damage yet (like I was advised by another player), so I went to a trainer and tried to do that.
- It gave me some message about me struggling with it, and only let me do it twice before telling me I needed more experience. No big deal, I thought.
- Went to go kill on things, and before I did, checked worth and it said: "You have just begun your journey to the next level." Fair enough, I'd just leveled to Veteran(1) the night before.
- After checking again a few times with no progress I decided to check my Score page and saw I was back to Journeyman(5).

I'm not sure exactly when I dropped in level, and I'm wondering how this could happen? I did flee several times earlier in the day, but according to the "Help Level" file, this should have no effect on rogues. I highly doubt I've been penalized for poor role play (I was "Enlightened" just the other day and try to hold myself to a fairly high RP standard). I don't think I've been cursed by anyone.

Mostly want to know if I did something wrong so I can avoid doing it in the future. Any help or advice would be appreciated!

Thanks!

When you died, how did you come back to life? It's possible that after you leveled, you died and lost just enough XP to go back to Veteran(5) "almost eligible" and then spent the whole level's worth of XP training the skill.

Sometimes, the message that you lost a level is delayed after coming back to life. If you check right after you come back it will look like you didn't lose a level then a short time later you'll get a message like, "Your lack of experience sets you back."

Other than coming back to life through death quest or breath/raise dead, I'm not sure how you could lose a level as a rogue.

I died when I was still a Journeyman, rank 3 or 4 I believe, and someone raised me. That was days before I reached Veteran, and then subsequently lost Veteran.

It may certainly explain how I lost the first level, but I have not died since becoming a Veteran.

It seems another player I was with just before losing the level lost one as well. We both logged out about the same time, and when we logged on today, were down one level.

Not realizing I was down, I do believe I sucked up what XP I had for the new level up by training.

Curious we both lost one though, without dying?

There are a number of ways for your experience to go down. Training anything costs you XP as you noticed. However you should not be able to train away a level. Which is why most players will continue a little while after they can advance so they train some skills. It is normally very bad advise to train anything above your level as the raw cost is higher not to mention the higher level skills/spells cost more than lower level ones before you start. Also you can not "naturally" improve at any skill that is advanced until it is not. Keep an eye on the message you get well your training a skill it will give you an idea of what is going on.

How to lose XP that can cost you a level. Fleeing costs XP it is normally so small that you cant notice it however if you are right at the start of your level it can be enough to drop you a level, Ive read the help file you mentioned about rogues not being effected but there is a chance that the code regarding that doesnt exist any more.
Death costs you a fraction of XP I believe however the way back is what is most significant. Resurrection costs you nothing, Raise dead costs and breath of life costs you about a "tick" of XP. Death quest costs you nothing the first time you do it but increases with cost untill you get to about 3/4s of a level. Reincarnate costs you a whole level.
With all of the above ways the loss of XP is slightly after the action that causes it.
There is also the spell energy drain which will costs you XP. This is the one XP loss that can be reversed from a healer in town with the restoration spell they can restore any XP lost from energy drain that has happened since your last birthday.
You would know about it if you where cursed for poor RP there is normally an Imm discussion that goes along with it to my understand, they dont just come out of the blue.
The other rare way to lose XP is if there is a crash you may be reverted to an earlier safe of your player file. However if this happens you will lose everything that has changed since the save. Which is why when you get everything from a corpse it is a good idea to type save.

Did the game crash at all after the time they logged off? Setting the game time back conveniently enough to drop them back to jman?

Rogues don't lose xp when they flee so I would rule that out as a possibility. (Unless this got ninja changed).

I'm not sure how this happened. The breathing life will take some xp, but it shouldn't have been that delayed.

Yeah, it seems really odd. Even more odd that it happened to two of us. I do think the first time I lost a level was due to death/training higher than I should have, so that's OK now that I understand it.

But the second time, there was no death or curses, etc. and being a rogue, fleeing shouldn't hurt me. And I swear I leveled TO veteran the night before. I even went into an inn and mentioned it to several people who asked how the training was going. If I somehow got dropped a level when logged off (crash, etc?) it makes sense that when I went to train veteran skills the next day it drained the exp on my Journeyman(5) level (I would not have trained in those skills had I realized sooner that I'd been downed a level).

Just wish I knew how to avoid this in the future.

As a general rule I would avoid training your skills until you need them. Specially if they are higher status than you are. Good advice for leveling is train only skills you expect to use for leveling at level. Train everything else either when you are almost done with a status or after. There are very few exceptions to this rule when power leveling, however if you are not trying to GM in a day or a week you will not likely feel disadvantaged for it.

I have a idea that there might be a loop hole in the code which let you spend more than your level in Xp due to the fact you were training higher than your level. Simple number example if you had 6 Xp it normally cost 5 xp for the skill but due to high training it cost 7. Loss of a level comes with a several tick delay from the xp loss it is possible either the message slipped by you or when you logged out your player file was check and went wait you should be level x. That or there is something else going on the work around solution is don't train away all your xp before you log out.

I was told by another rogue to train in enhanced damage upon reaching veteran, and it is listed as a veteran skill. So why would this be harder than my level unless I did indeed lose the level prior to going to train it?