wolfsrain: You had to have a certain number of points invested in certain skills. (to br expert, master and grandmaster you needed 4, 8 and 12 skillpoints). Those were the restrictions.
You needed skill points (and maybe stats) at a certain level to learn the higher levels of mastery (if allowed for your class), but the requirement for equipping an item was knowing the skill for that item (if applicable; for example, rings didn't have a skill requirement). If you had a piece of plate armor, whether an artifact or not), the only thing that mattered as far as equipping it was whether you had the Plate skill learned. You could be at normal, expert, master, or grand master, as long as you had the skill. If you don't have the Leather skill, you can't wear Leather armor at all, regardless of whether you know Dodging, Chain, and/or Plate.
Sarisio: Dragon on Emerald Island isn't killable without exploit.
If you call "run in circles while intermittently shooting arrows at the dragon" an exploit, then this statement is correct. I, personally, don't consider that an exploit. I think multi-looting the dragon's corpse IS an exploit, however.
wolfsrain: A couple of things to do if you want to kill the damn dragon without using cheats: ...
...Acquire the bow skill on at least one person, then go circle it and shoot it to death. Helps a lot to have a bow on everyone and use the pedestals/wells that are available (except Haste, because it will wear off and leave your characters Weak), but you only need 1 bow to manage it. I never used the fireball wand on the dragon because it always seemed like a waste of charges (Red Dragons have very high resistance to Fire).
Trying to stay in cover is both unnecessary and (in my mind) needlessly dangerous. Don't be standing still when the dragon stops to shoot. Unload an arrow volley, then move when he pauses. Don't get hung up on walls and don't get too close while circling him, and you'll be fine.
Sarisio: Edit; Btw those dragonflies eventually stop spawning. I think it is triggered by having 10000 experience on average or something like that.
Hunh. I've never stayed long enough to see them completely stop spawning. I know they spawn once per day for 5 days (roughly), then they don't spawn on the next day, but sleep/wait for another full day (or two) and they'll be back again for another cycle. I usually alternate killing them and sleeping while waiting however-many-months for the Luck well to recharge.