Need Help Melee problem

[MartinDi7]

I have a melee problem. My melee level is 1, but my overall level is 17. I had a lot fight's but melee doesn't raises. It even don't show gained XP. I.e. if you speak with NPC it shows gained XP for Luck. Or shooting with cannons shows gained Accuracy or Cannons xp. It's wrong with my PoC only or this problem arises to everyone?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It is a problem for everyone. You need to go to the opium den on Jamaica and get the tattos. They help some. Keep talking to townspeople and you will meet a teacher who can improve your melee skills. Get the very best sword you can and the golden cuirass. Find which town guards have the best swords and start attacking them. You not only get their swords but you also get a slow increase in melee.

At level 17 your melee skill should be at least 3, but do not expect it to ever get over 5. This part of the game was broken just over a year ago and no one knows how to fix it.

 

[MartinDi7]

Is there any possibility to increase melee with other ways than playing (cheats,editing files)?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I have heard that you can increase melee skills in the console, but I do not know how to do that.

 

[superkid]

Yesterday I managed to maximize the skill! To do so, you must ask Malcolm on the ship before you land to the city to practice a little more. Do this as many times as it needs to reach 10. (Your blade may break completely so it would be good to have one more.)

If not in the standard storyline, then go to a dungeon the first chance you get.

 

[Armada]

Another possibility is to revert back to the original skill system where you gain two skill points with each level-up, and can assign those points to whichever skill you like.
Go to Options > Advanced Options, find Automatic Skills System under REALISM SETTINGS: CHARACTER, and select the Stock PotC option. You probably need to start a new game as well.

This problem with the automatic system has been ignored for a long time. Hopefully we can make some kind of improvement for the next release.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Yes, practicing with Malcolm works well. I usually stop at level 4. In another storyline it gets tougher. I am at level 27 with melee and defense skills of 6 and melee will not go any higher unless I run into some more teachers.
I believe the auto skill was deliberately trashed in order to force us to use the manual system.

 

[Armada]

I just did some digging around, and I'm guessing the problem with the melee skill has something to do with this:

Early in the game, you get a deliberate "excessive" amount of XP for anything you do, but this stops after level 5 or so.
The reason is so that you can specialize quickly in something or other. So if you sail around a lot early in the game, that's what your main skill will be for most of the rest of the game until you slowly develop some more.
That was the general idea anyway...

Perhaps the code for this somehow dramatically decreases the melee experience earned after a certain level, to the point where increasing your melee skill is extremely slow.

This code in PROGRAM\MAXIMUS_Functions.c has been mentioned a few times, and might be the place to make some changes:

    //-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    // Adjust the skill gained by character level, skill level and uneven gain in skills
    //-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
    // Experience in each skill is worth more at low skill levels
    skillExp = skillExp * (11 - sti(_refCharacter.skill.(expName)));    // this produces 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
 
    // Adjust for uneven gain in skills
    int expMult = 1;
    if (_exp < 1000)
    {
        switch (expName)
        {
//        case "Leadership":    expMult =  3; break;    // LDH 30Apr09
        case "Fencing":        expMult =  3; break;
        case "Sailing":        expMult =  1; break;    // included for completeness
        case "Accuracy":    expMult =  1; break;    // included for completeness
        case "Cannons":        expMult =  1; break;    // included for completeness
        case "Repair":
            expMult = 50;                            // repair is a lot of small skill gains, minimum of 20 sent by repair functions
            if (sti(_refCharacter.rank) < 3)        // keeps player from getting repair skill 5 or 6 in the tutorial - 25Feb09
            {
                expMult = 20;
            }
            break;
        case "Defence":        expMult =  6; break;
        case "Sneak":        expMult =  3; break;
        }
    }
    // Things we don't handle in the exp<1000 test above
    if (expName == "Leadership") expMult = 3;    // LDH moved outside of test - 30Apr09
    if (expName == "Grappling")  expMult = 4;    // grappling is always high experience but doesn't happen often. - 30Apr09
    if (expName == "Commerce") skillExp /= 2;    // commerce is usually high, we're cutting it in half here so above test is wrong for this
 
    skillExp *= expMult;
 
    // Level the skill gains across ranks. Experience is worth more at lower rank.
    // limit to 2 * experience - 01May09
    skillExp = makeint(makefloat(skillExp) * retMin(2.0, 4.0 / stf(_refCharacter.rank)) + 0.5);    // 2.0, 2.0, 1.3, 1.0, 0.75, 0.67 etc

Now we just need to figure out what to change, and how much to change it by.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That looks vaguely familiar. It modifies something else, and it is that something else that needs changing. Putting a bigger number in fencing just increases how far one can go before all progress stops.