Skill Training

From DRSecrets

I'm only putting things down for skills that may not be obvious. It's a waste of time to say that you need to attack critters to train your weapon skill etc... With that said, this is the best way I've found to train some skills. If you know of something better, then by all means add it in!

Armor Skills
Armor	Although you learn some armor just by wearing it in combat, you learn the most when you are hit often. This is true of shield as well. Find swarming critters that don't hit hard, such as beisswurms and morah creepers/vines. Also, you can learn a good 100 ranks by failing to juggle the armor-training jugglies (axes, longswords, stilettos, and spheres). Make sure that the item you're using is appropriate for your armor type. (If done correctly, you should neither take damage nor damage your armor.)
Magic Skills
Harness Ability	Charge cambrinth when your prepping spells, and cast them as high as you can, even if it means allowing for full prep.
Magical Devices	Use cambrinth with a lot of mana in them, charging a cambrinth with more mana is not efficient, if you're going to fill a cambrinth do it in 11 charge bursts. Focusing on an object with magical properties also teaches magical devices. (At 77 ranks, I'm still learning quickly by focusing on an icy-blue blade set with a glacier emerald in its crossguard.)
Power Perception	There is approximately a 6-minute timer per room, so make sure your power walk routine takes that long to loop around. Casting will give you a bit of Power Perception -- works really well at lower ranks -- but you have to cast difficult spells for your ability.
Primary Magic	Cast spells as high as you can with the lowest prep time (don't wait till full prep unless you have to) Held mana spells work really well at training PM, harness cast and release
Targeted Magic	TM works like weapons, the more damage you do the more you'll learn, so hit hard
Survival Skills
Climbing	Each climbable object has a different timer on it. Figure out the timer and it will go along way in optimizing how you train climbing. The Crossing city walls are a great place to train climbing works for about 300 ranks I believe. The pole in the Crossing Healerie also works well, even if you can't climb it. Try holding a weapon in one hand to maximize difficulty (and therefore experience).
Escaping	Some critters train Escaping pretty well, but it's not a valid way to train if you are at level with the critter. When you are webbed your evasion and parry are useless, so the only defenses you have is the armor your wearing. There are some areas that teach pretty high just by walking through them. Dusk ogres, Behind Corik's wall, and some areas in Black apes are a few of them, I know there are more but can't think of them. The flee command trains the escaping skill but it has to be a creature that is a challenge and doesn't teach great
First Aid	Leeches and bloodworms work pretty well, but they also seem to give disease pretty easily. If your tending bleeders, you have to leave the tend alone until it falls off by itself otherwise you will loose experience for unwrapping early. It's always good to stay near an Empath when training first aid because of the disease risk. Anatomy charts are great, risk free way for first aid training, it's theorized that the first read of the chart grants the most first aid experience
Foraging	FORAGE CAREFUL is your best bet if it's available to you. Find something with over 10 seconds RT, I like anything in the 12-18 second range. Forage careful has no timer. If FORAGE CAREFUL is not an option for you, then collect once and forage as many other items as you can find that teach you for 3 minutes. Collect has a 3 minute timer and regular forage also has a timer per item (I.E. jadice flower, yelith root, etc...) Forage Coin in the right spot (such as in front of the tree in Arthe Dale) teaches great for a long time (at least 100+ I'm sure it'll go more) it doesn't work as well though unless you set up a script so you have the least amount of time between forages as possible.
Hiding	At low levels, some NPCs train well, but after that critters are your only option.
Perception	Jugglies are great at low ranks, but they don't train over 650 ranks. For juggling, the rule of thumb is to juggle something that weighs 1/10 of your perception ranks, rounded down to the nearest 5. For ranks above 650, foraging, having people steal from you, and -- if you're a Ranger -- running trails are your only options. Or you can just collect rock.
Scouting	Run short trails for now. All trails currently give the same experience, so long trails are just a waste of time.
Skinning	With skinning, you don't want to get the best skin possible, you want the next one down...to handicap yourself, use larger weapons to make your attempts worse.
Stalking	Same deal with NPCs. On top of the obvious stalking of critters, advancing and retreating while hidden also teaches stalking. The easiest way to do this is with critters that are preoccupied with another hunter.
Swimming	No room timer on swimming that I know of, so find something that you can swim with a fairly long roundtime (8 seconds or more) and go back and forth in that room. The brook in goblins and the swimming hole in Arthe Dale are good for beginners. Once you have around 40-50 ranks, you can practice under the wharf in Riverhaven.
Lore Skills
Animal Lore	If you have a companion, signal it to get an item over and over until it's tired...signal it to sleep, rinse and repeat. Fishing is an option for non-Rangers, but Empaths will suffer Empathic shock from fishing.
Appraisal	The more expensive the item is, the better it teaches. There is a per item timer, so try rotating through your own equipment or through the expensive items on bazaar tables. Nothing teaches better then appraising critters in combat. Using the command ASSESS <instrument> also trains appraisal to 200+. When learning slows down, see how appraising things quickly affects your learning.
Empathy	Power-walk using PERCEIVE HEALTH where there are a lot of people that you can sense. Anatomy charts teach Empathy on the last read for the chart, so you need to be able to complete one to learn empathy from them
Mechanical Lore	Scraping skins, combining gweth stones, origami, fletching, forging, and tanning all teach well.
Music	I haven't played much with it, but it sounds like it's just a matter of finding the right song type and mood for your skill range. Play help for usage and the songs and moods seem like they start out easy and work their way harder. Slight difficulty is the best messaging for learning from instruments
Scholarship	Embroidery patterns and Origami teach pretty well. So does studying spellbooks. Anatomy charts work really well for training scholarship, you can start with a silver Leucro chart at about 50 ranks, to get those first 50 try reading in the library which also teaches well, especially at low ranks. If you're a Paladin or Cleric RECALL IMMORTAL works very well.