Basic Skills Run

Basic Skills Run

As a new player fresh off the island, you will find that one of the key aspects of life in Egypt is making trips (long trips, in many cases) to visit School and University buildings in order to gain access to the skills you need to make your way in the game. Even if you are not intent on leveling up, you will still have to acquire enough basic skills from these institutions to perform necessary, everyday tasks like brick making and board making. Because Egypt is vast, and as a new player you have no access to any transportation besides your feet, you do not want to have to make these trips often. Visiting several schools in one trip to gain skills is known as a Skills Run, which is actually pretty descriptive of what you'll be spending at least an hour or two doing - running, and skilling up.

Skills are acquired from Schools, and schools require tuition (in the form of goods) in return for giving you a skill. This article focuses on how to get as many skills from as many Schools as possible in the shortest time.

You will also pass Universities on your Skills Run. You should stop at every University you go by and click it, too - you will gain new technologies, which are free because somebody else has already donated the required research materials, so not making the stop would just be dumb.

With some planning, gathering and a good map [F3], you can in fact gain a large number of skills you'll use every day in just one or two runs. The keys to making this work are:

• Know what skills are available at your level from what Schools
• Know what materials you need to give the school to gain the skill
• Know where and how to gather those materials, and take everything you can with you
• Use the map to locate a grouping of Schools and plan the order in which you will visit them

Your immediate goal is to use the F3 map to find the clutch of Schools nearest you (they tend to be on the outskirts of each town) and then plan the order in which you will visit them. It may make more sense to go to an area slightly further away, but with with a better layout of schools for your particular run. Study the maps carefully, because this kind of advanced route planning is a skill you can use over and over again through many skills runs as you level up.

Also, since you can start all the Tests from the various Universities, make sure and stop by them as well on your way (not to mention all the tech learning you get for free, thanks everyone). For example, the first UBody test of plant classification can be done while running this skill, and therefore, open you up to more skills during this same run (specifically carving 2, which is easily attained).

The First Run

Your first run will be to get the Compound Construction skill from the School of Architecture in order to begin construction on your first compound (known as a CP). CPs are important because, unlike on Welcome Island, there are items such as Kilns that you cannot build outside; instead, they are attached to your compound. The tuition you need to provide to the School of Architecture (SArch) in order to get the Compound Construction skill is:

• 100 boards
• 200 bricks

You should at this point know how to build a wood plane to make boards after gathering slate and wood, and how to make bricks as well.

Note: In order to pay tuition, you only need these basic materials, nothing else. So save yourself some time and make the plane/brickracks as close to the SArch as you can to save the walking trip. You don't need to go to your planned CP area to start work, since you'll most likely be tearing down these flimsy projects before too long. I made that mistake and added an extra few hours wandering about before I got to work.

School of Architecture

• Compound Construction (level 1) - 100 Boards, 200 Bricks. Allows the construction of a Compound, your home base.

This skill is required to pass the Principles of Architecture Test - building and expanding your first compound. This will get you to Level 2, which opens access to some more skills you'll be buying on your second run.

See the New Player Guide for advice on where to build your fist CP. (If you have a paid account, immediately add a cornerstone to prevent deterioration.)

The Second Run

This is your shopping list for the 2nd run. What you'll spend all this stuff on is explained further down the page.

• 20 bricks
• 102 wood
• 10 clay (bottleneck)
• 2 flint
• 2 leather (bottleneck)
• 300 thorns
• 30 cactus sap (please injure it!)
• 26 twine (optional, see notes in the S Body section)

That's 492 debens of the 500 debens that you can carry, so you may prefer to gather much of your wood, thorns, and cactus sap during the run.

Extracting clay requires that you walk on cracked earth while carrying a jug full of water (NOTE: You do NOT need a shovel. The icon for gathering clay is very misleading. Shovels are for dirt and stones; you only need Water in Jugs for clay.) When you first ask for the Pottery skill, at the SThought, the school will give you 1 free Jug if you don't have any clay to get you started. That's a tedious way to go. Hopefully you can get a Guild or a friend or a neighbour to loan you some jugs, so you can gather some clay to pay your pottery skill tuition.

The Pottery Skill is an excellent example of a bottleneck skill. When nobody has the pottery skill, early in a Tale, getting some Clay can be a real pain. Once Pottery Wheels are routinely available trying to solo the pottery skill is just solving a puzzle that has long since been solved. Borrow some jugs and simply avoid the bottleneck.

While you're gathering Clay you'll also get Flint about 10% of the time. Gather clay until you have at least 2 Flint because you're going to need those for tuition, too, even if you don't need them straight away.

The 2 leather are required for Exploration Travel, which is a skill you are likely to desperately want as it allows you to use an exploration point and the associated Home location to travel large distances instantly. Sheep and leather are easy to come by, so you should be able to borrow two leather. To get two leather, you can find two sheep (you can only carry one at a time) and slaughter them in a public sheep pen (they'll escape most of the time if you try to slaughter them out in the open) or your Guild's pen.

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You can visit these Schools in almost any order, although depending on your goals, and what you've been able to borrow, you may need to do the SThought first.

School of Thought

• Pottery (level 0) - 10 Clay (bottleneck). Allows the construction of a Pottery Wheel, which you need to make wet jugs (unless you can borrow some jugs).

• Kiln Construction (level 1) - 20 Bricks. Lets you build a Kiln, which you'll need to fire the wet jugs so they'll hold water.

School of Harmony

• Exploration Travel (level 1) - 2 Leather (bottleneck). Allows you to designate one Exploration Travel point and an associated Home location, that you can jump to except when you are downtown, near a Chariot Stop.

School of Worship

• Foraging (level 2) - 300 Thorns, 30 Cactus Sap Foraging allows you to gather herbs for cooking or trade.

Note: Because Foraging is a Level 2 skill, you will want to go to the School of Worship last (or 2nd to last if you really want to spend time on Rhythmic Strength and 500 grass) to give yourself optimal time to a) level up, and b) collect a whole bunch 'o thorns. However this is a very handy skill and one you will use it a lot, so it's good to get it done.

School of Body

• Carving (level 1) - 100 Wood.
• Rhythmic Strength (level 1) - 500 Grass. Allows you to collect grass twice as fast (once you have a Scythe).

Note: There is a lot of debate over whether Rhythmic Strength is worth it. It is of no use until you are cutting grass with a scythe, which won't be for a while, and the grass is a substantial burden to gather and carry at this point, with very little benefit. You can skip it now and go back to it a few levels later, or when you actually need it.

You can also do it at the end of your Skills Run (remember, you can only carry 500 things at once, so this skill requires a full load of grass) and simply gather some grass on your way to the school. The recommended technique for gathering grass is to simply click on a distant point, and then repeatedly click on the grass icon as you're walking along.

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The Power Run Option

All of the materials used so far for tuition are materials you can gather. However, if you've built your CP, grown some flax, and done some flax processing, then you can use 26 twine that you've made with your very own fair hand (or borrowed!) to get one more important skill on this run. If you're not prepared to face all the flax stuff yet, though, don't worry about it - the fish are not going anywhere.

Using your new Carving 1 skill, stand at the S Body and make a knife, using 1 wood, 1 twine, and 2 flint (Click self > Skills > Carving > Knives). Now use your knife to make a sharpened stick (Self > Skills > Carving > Level 1 > Whittle). You now have Fishing tuition!

School of Body

• Fishing(level 2) - 1 sharpened stick, 25 twine

You just saved yourself an extra trip to the SBody, by clever planning! The school will provide a Basic Fishing Pole in return for your tuition, so you can now go Fishing.

• School of Leadership - SKIP

No low level skills

• School of Art and Music - SKIP

There are no more low level skills you can obtain - you already have them from Welcoming Island. Available on mainland only at this school is Nile Green flax seeds. Old Egypt flax produces 1 flax per harvest. Nile Green flax produces 2 flax per harvest. What you receive when you ask is random so you may have to ask more than once.