About training stats

Hey there good folks of Attnam parish,

First of all, a brief introduction. I have lurked this place for quite some time now and it really beefed up my IVAN skills. I still quite often die before reaching Enner Beast. But I'm definately still improving. Lately Ive been playing IVANT because frankly I find it more forgiving, I might try a shot at the real thing after I beat that one.

I was wondering if I could get some advice on the proper way to upgrade your stats.

First of all, leg strength and agility. Upgrading either of these to any end-game level seems mutually exclusive. You need to be well fed and burdened to get leg strength and you need to be on a healthy diet and unburdened to upgrade agility. I usually do some running while feeding off bananas I kicked off the landing patch, getting agi up to about 17 before I even set off. But then once I get a decent set of belongings to carry around it all goes down the drain because of burdened.
So how do people go about this? Do you actually upgrade LStr by kicking at walls? Do I need to do this first thing so I can carry around stuff unburdened? What kind of stats do I expect to achieve with the method you will suggest me?

Secondly, what is the optimal way of upgrading ones stats without it just making your life more dangerous because of the harder enemies? Is the formula used for calculating danger level known? Is it best to even out all your stats? If so, an answer to question 1 would help a lot because LStr and Agi always lag behind. Personally, the danger level thing is what I dislike most about this game, it almost makes improving yourself redundant.

If you want both leg strength and agility, train leg strength first. It's not as flexible as agility, meaning once you've got it up, there's not much chance of it going back down.

You can't get stronger without increasing your danger level. You might like to look up Freelance Berserker and Captain Action in the original greatboards forum. They were known for... Exotic gaming styles that pushed the limits, say.

I still recall the "Ultimate Golem"...

Ok, so, I first go for runs burdened/well fed so my leg strength goes up, then go for unburdenen/diet runs to become more agile?
I tried training my leg strength by kicking into balsa walls but it didnt seem to work at all. Does the training effect cancel out when your kick is too weak to have an effect?

Just a little on the side, is there a way to empty cans without eating or drinking the content? I like to pray to mellis for food, but if I feed myself during long trainings and I eat all the school food I just become too endurish I guess.

Well I know raising any stat will increase danger level but I still wonder how exactly it works, there might be combinations of stats that do better than others, no?

Well, the Ultimate Golem does have the advantage of being completely undetectable.

Can't empty cans without consuming the contents, I'm afraid, but cans are fairly common. You should be living mostly off corpses anyway.

Not all stats increase the danger level, true. One favourite is intelligence. With ESP and teleport control, it gives you a lot of options in dealing with enemies.

Couldn't you dip bottles in the cans?

Only for liquids. Can't bottle foodstuff.

Hm, so how do you do long training sessions? Like, I can imagine it being almost a requirement to spend quite a few days just jogging around for legstrength and agility. Or grinding plants with banana peals and troll hide cloak. Even with the fruit they drop you'd go hungry. So you'd depend on praying to Seges then? Because if you pray to Mellis you'd just end up with tons of school food which youd either have to eat raising danger levels or selling the full cans or whatever.
I dont suppose theres anyone/thing you can feed cans of school food to and be able to recuperate the cans?

Is it really such a bad idea to raise HP anyways?

Also, from what I'm reading, this ultimate golem thing only works in wizard mode... Or is that another "ultimate golem".

No, just the one

What you should do is fill up your cans with the troll blood you get from Mellis. I hear it's rather filling, and that stops school food invading your cans.

I didnt even know troll blood was nutritional That would indeed solve the problem.

If you can keep both Seges and Mellis happy, you can eat the school food Mellis gives you, and pray to Seges to remove the poisoning. But you've already said you want to keep danger level down.

Troll blood is, in fact, quite filling. Other potions somewhat less so. More than once I've overspent my early game training and drank all my potions to keep from starvation.

Im getting some good results from the legstrength training...
I think the trick with this game is, you need to train and equip properly for the levels ahead. But if you either train without getting proper equipment to go with it you will get a good character killed due to the danger level. However if you use too much magic to beef up equipment, you might not be able to do so once you find even better equipment. Then again, if you just train so hard your danger level always sort of reaches the danger of the level your facing itself, you might postpone exploring which would allow you to find said better equipment. I think this sort of captures the most fundamental trade-offs in the game...
Anyone have any opinions on this theory?

I'm currently playing IVANT which sort of alleviates this problem by branching off a bunch of levels in GC (the dragon cave levels) so you have more levels to both train and loot before you go deeper.
Of course I had to take my more or less lvl30 in the first 4 stats and about 20 endurance wearing full mithrill I nabbed off the invisible guard I tamed and rush straight down the dragon caves until blue dragons electrocuted the daylights out of me.

I think whats really my biggest obstacle is I start playing late in the evening and then when Im on a roll I wont stop so I always end up dying from sheer lack of concentration

Ok, seriously, ...

I started playing again this week and I seem to experiencing the same problem again.
I'm trying to train my legstrength first and then my agility. I can manage to consistently get fed up to bloated and go for runs on the worldmap while stressed. However this doesnt seem to be improving my legstrength beyond 20 and I only got that from getting ommel urine from Mellis in the first place. Of course it consistently keeps down my agi to about 13-14 even though I'm also getting ommel sweat now and then...

What the heck is going on here?? I feel like I'm the only person on this forum who is missing the trick to upgrading the legstats beyond lvl25. I mean I'm sure I managed to do it in some games...
How come in most of my games these stats' training just seems to grind to a halt at about lvl20?
Training legstrength just required satiated-overfed and burdened-stressed, right?

Can I get some kind of concrete description of the process through which one trains their leg stats? Am I doing something to ruin my capacity for leveling up at all from some point? You people are actually getting these stats up by doing some kind of physical training, right? Really, I'm totally stumped.

Hi, welcome, since I never said that before.

Why do you need so much Leg Str? Looking back at my screenshots it seems the highest I would hit would be around 22 (one exception up to 28)

If you're carrying a ton of stuff, I would bet that most of the things you're carrying you don't really need. Or at least you would never need on a moment's notice.

My inventory is usually limited to: light source, tools (pickaxe, horns, etc), cans of healing liquid, and a small chest with any offensive or defensive wands or scrolls that I would need in 2 steps (since it takes 1 step to remove them from the chest). Then I carry a wand of teleport outside of the chest - it's a risk because it might explode, but if Sherry suddenly appears next to me, the extra step to remove it from the chest would probably mean the end of me.

Then the rest of the stuff I put in a large chest that I don't carry with me. For example, there would never be an "emergency" where you would need a scroll of change material, so this just adds extra weight.

If you're really concerned about bones files then keep a large chest next to each up and down staircase in each level, and just transport your inventory to each chest as you go up and down, that way if you do die you won't lose all the goodies

Ok, I guess you dont really need leg strength.
Is it actually possible to get this stat over 30 or beyond just by some kind of grinding process though? As in, not just being very lucky in items you find like ommel fluids and holy banana....

That is a good question though. I'm sure my 28 LStr was from ommel + holy banana, not natural.

Anybody know if it does cap out, or if the chance of increasing it from 20 is just so low that it's nearly impossible?

I just realised you dont actually need to be very lucky at all, just keep praying to Mellis with empty bottles, you get ommel fluids every once in a while.
But the game would be more interesting if you'd have to think about training regimes and how you build up to them, sort of like a real life athlete would.

So yeah, it'd be interesting if someone could give some kind of in-depth strategy guide to "natural training".

Where's Alvers when you need him?

On topic, no I don't think I've ever raised my legs naturally past 20. 18 is my record for LSTR, and that was likely down to my character being naturally blessed with LSTR, just as a few characters get naturally good at other stats. Try the boots of kicking and start kicking more things. Boots of LSTR help obviously, but in my opinion it's a better idea to invest in the boots of agility.
Of course, I almost always look to SoCM my limbs as soon as possible, starting with legs for AGI and LSTR so I can actually dodge things and carry as much as I want.

The highest naturally-trained stat (other than INT) I ever had was armstrength, with my winning character, at somewhere around 35+. Dual-wielding Neerc se'Ulb will do that.

Whow, really?? I've never won the game and I didn't even think the game was winnable like that. So you can really win the game with legstrength 18, the rest about 30 except int which should really be out there. Right? I guess I never really got the agility to realise those kind of stats worked, or something.
I suppose these limits have to do with the game being "too easy" if you could raise the other stats really high?

What about if I keep praying to Mellis and I just keep drinking ommel fluids?