[Shendare]

I had totally forgotten about this... but I remember SOE explaining years ago -exactly- how skill ups work in EQ Live. I think it was a dev explaining it during an SOE Fanfaire or something.

Every skill in the game has a difficulty number associated with it. They start at 1 for combat skills, and climb up to (IIRC) 15 for things like Beg that are designed to skill up very slowly.

Every skill may or may not have an alternate stat associated with it in addition to the regular INT/WIS for skillup frequency. Archery and backstab had DEX as an alternate stat, for example. Defensive skills often had AGI. Begging I think had CHA. If it doesn't have an alternate stat, it's categorized as just a general skill and is slightly harder to skill up, being given a stat mod of -15.

Most skills also have a situation where the skill check either succeeds or fails. I can't think of how Swimming, for example, would have a succeed/fail check, though.

The factors above work together to end up with the following skillup logic:

StatEffect = AlternateStat ? Max(INT, WIS, ALT) : (Max(INT, WIS) - 15)
SucceedFail = SkillCheckSucceeded ? 1 : 2

Chance1 = StatEffect / Difficulty / SucceedFail

If Roll(100) < Chance1, there's then a second check to make skill increase faster at lower values (100% at 0 skill if you pass Roll 1) and slow down to a minimum of 5% chance as your skill increases up to 190, after which it's just the Skill Difficulty and your Stats that affect skillup rate.

Chance2 = 100 - Min(95, CurrentSkill / 2)