Weapon skills

It just takes forever. Expect your parry skill to be advanced or possibly even master before your weapon skill hits journeyman.

Your weapon skills can increase against any target as long as it can dodge your attacks. You actually reach the point where most normal fighter PCs almost never dodge you anymore - well before you hit advanced, certainly - and you have to seek out special mobs like stilt lizards and, back in the day, halflings. Sometimes there'll be a long-lived warrior around with a high enough combination of defense and agility to dodge you as well, but they rarely want to spar with new characters.

Keep in mind that there are hidden combat skills for each general type of opponent, so if you do all your training against verrin hawks, your hidden 'vs. humanoids' skill will be crap. You can find more details about this in one of the threads around the place. The most important classifications are humanoid, insectoid, mammal and reptile as these make up the vast majority of potential opponents in the game and are four distinctive hidden skills, so you should be aware that you might suck a bit against tembo and carru if all your training is from the sparring hall, and vice versa.

That's pretty much the case, although it's generally understood that warriors get some minor hidden combat bonuses. The standard weapon skills cap at 70 for both warrior, ranger, and even for assassin, though they of course don't get all of them. The things that make warriors stand out are starting parry, which is an enormous benefit whereas rangers and assassins take so long to branch parry that it almost never happens for anybody, and then disarm. Warriors also get a higher skill cap on parry and shield use than others, but it's not like other combat classes really use shields anyway.

They've severely fucked the balance up with the introduction of advanced subguilds, though. It completely destroyed one of the few good things about Armageddon's combat system, i.e. the fact that mundane characters - stats aside - were created equal and had the same general potential. It was very important for the game that anyone could make a warrior or ranger or whatever and have the same opportunities as any other of the same class, especially since the human race is on top of the social hierarchy and thus not something you hate to play. This meant that you weren't some second-rate player just because you didn't have staff favor or didn't like to play mages. Now, those with access to CGP have better mundane PCs as well, which has turned new/unnoticed players into de facto second-rate players with IG meta limitations, ruining the beautiful balance that once was. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if they just take the next step down that path and allow players to buy stat boosts with karma, something that SOI tried with disastrous results.

That got a bit off topic, but hey.

Shield use starts higher and caps lower than parry, which means that it can be mastered in a few days played easily. (Shield use: 15-45, Parry: 5-65) Also, if you started in the north, you got a boost to shield use at the start. I wouldn't even worry about your defense as a warrior. If you're in a sparring clan, you'll master both skills in about 5-6 days played. If you REALLY want to master defense quickly, find the strongest guy in your clan and get hit HARD by him every IG day you can. Bigger damage = bigger fail = bigger skill bump. (Essentially)

As far as offense, it caps higher than either defense skill (70, as someone already pointed out) and raises more slowly. In order to raise it, you must have your attack dodged, NOT parried or blocked. So, find someone or something fast. Ideally someone not using a shield. The sense I get of the combat system (this may not be correct) is that if you can't block you parry, and if you can't parry you dodge. Dodge is the last line of defense, so it's hardest to achieve. Find either a fast sparring partner, or one who is evenly matched enough to go a looong time in the ring with you. Either way you can probably get in 1-2 fails. If you're training outdoors, find fast creatures. My personal favorite are turaal.

You can also try getting ganged up on. Multiple attackers impart negatives onto you. Also, if you're preferred weapon style is etwoing an axe, try practicing chopping and two handed seperately. Two hand a sword in one round of sparring, and ep an axe in the next. Pairing your two best skills together increases your chances of succeeding, and we don't want that when we're twinking.

Also, a weapon damage skill (piercing, slashing, etc) will not raise in your secondary hand. If you use a sword in your primary and a dagger in your secondary, your slashing will increase, but your piercing will not. So, make sure you're using the weapon you want to raise in either ep or etwo.

Weapon skills take by far the longest to raise. If you do basically nothing but skill grind while logged in, you could still expect it to take 15-20 days played to master a weapon skill, so just find those long, fail-prone sparring matches and get your skill bumps.

Happy twinking!

Supposedly, that's because extended subguilds is only 'part' of the change. If the whole CGP thing gets implemented, it becomes a currency you spend. Which means those staff favored players can roll up an extended subguild and whatever and waste their CGPs, then still die to a that elkrosian that spammed for 2 days and then went on a killing spree. The next character the player will play, will have to be mundane, or at least 3 + CGP lower down the karma range. Eventually, even 8 karmers wont be able to play one sorc after the other. Not that they do that anyway, though.

yes

musashi incorrect. dodge is first, parry next, block third.

find easy prey, you always dodge. find prey with high offense, you always block. easy to test.