I take a scholar and an instructor, so that I get a fair XP bonus, but I never have to put any points into identify and I don't have to swap things around to identify them. I have to get rid of the first pair to take the carpenter and stonemason into my party to complete the 1st cleric promotion, but I always replace them as soon as the temple is repaired — certainly before I go to get credit for the quest.

As far as NPC's I generally have a gate master and merchant (or duper) until I have a master in water, with the same interruption for the cleric promotion. As early as I can I'll go to instructor/teacher but then for a while I'll swap the teacher for a merchant when I'm buying, selling and training. I also aim for master in repair for all 4 characters as I get to the mobs that break things.

This game has been a little different in that the archer had to master all 4 magics which left her well behind in other things for a while.

For example, say you were in your 40's and did three more levels of learning, 8, 9 and 10. That would cost you 27 points, or three levels worth of skill points at that level. That would give you an additional 9 percent experience bonus. So you'd think that you'd get a little less than one extra level for about every 11 levels after that. Except you don't. Because the amount of experience required for each level goes up so rapidly, by the time you hit level 80 (for example) by my calculations you would only have gained a little less than 2 additional levels and still wouldn't have earned back those 27 points.

The extra levels might be worth it, I guess, but it just doesn't seem all that worth it to me, especially since the skill points are much more valuable, relatively speaking, at lower levels. And, if I remember correctly, the experience bonus doesn't apply to experience gained from completing quests, so it would end up being even less than that.

But that's a bonus on the base experience. Since you're already master and IF you're fighting with a teacher and instructor then you already have a 21 percent bonus for learning mastery and 25 percent for the two NPCs for a total of 46.

If you earn 100 points in base experience you actually get 146 points with that bonus. The extra level in learning gives you another 3 points (3 percent of 100). Relatively speaking, you have an additional bonus of about 2 percent over what you were getting before.

Here's what I mean. You have enough Learning to gain 10% extra XP. This bonus means that by the time you would normally have accumulated enough XP to reach level 50, say, without Learning, then with it you would be at level 55 ? Surely that's a 10% gain ?

Well, no, it doesn't work that way, because the increased XP to reach each new level works out as a *percentage* of that needed for the previous level. So in fact, any level of Learning doesn't compound levels as you go up - it gives you a *constant* gain in levels as you go up.

To clarify - if you have enough learning to keep you one single level higher at level 20, then when you reach level 100 you will still be exactly one level in advance of where you'd be otherwise.