Yes, it's kill xp only. I was under the impression this was the case with mm6-8 but not sure on that; I know for a fact that's how it works in mm6.

Learning is far from useless. It's actually a quite well balanced skill in the sense that it benefits particular strategies and not others. If you intend to farm Dragonsand (or similar) to bump up your HP/SP in the late game then getting master Learning for a 40% boost on your farming is a great investment ( mastering any skill at that stage in the game is a trivial investment).

Spending skillpoints on learning in the early game doesn't give you much, no. But just buying the skill for a 10% boost doesn't hurt if you have some spare cash. Though you're unlikely to notice much of a difference since the majority of your xp at this stage will come from quest rewards.

I never really saw the need to farm much in the game since its pretty easy to complete at that point anyways but I guess if you do a lot of farming its still good? think like 70% of my total xp was from quests when I completed this game

Yeah, it's a playstyle thing. MM6 reminds me, strangely enough, a lot of Terraria - in the sense that there are grinding/farming opportunities everywhere but if you play strategically you can skip farming entirely by hitting tactical milestones and acquiring key equipment.

So the short of it is: 'Learning' is a farming skill and if you intend to farm heavily then Learning will make that much more effective. On the other hand, if your playstyle doesn't involve farming then Learning wont do much for you and you can skip it with a clean conscience.

Could use the Kreigspire Level Well for mid-game grinding, I'd guess. I've used it for cash mid-game. But it wouldn't be difficult to add some xp that way. But the end game wasn't hard with normal play.

Forgot to answer these:

Areas in mm6 respawn, plus there is a mechanic that allows you to trade gold for xp, so whether or not you have Learning your level can always go as high as you want it to go (there is no cap, though a system of diminishing returns means each level make less and less of a difference).

Skills are very important in the sense that they are one of your primary ways of powering up. On the other hand, if you make clever use of all the other options available you can comfortably end the game at level 1. It is "harder" to play without leveling in the sense that it requires good game knowledge and you must be much more strategic about how you approach progression.

And this made you miss my point entirely. I see. Maybe I should have picked a different level than 100.

Calculating final level when focusing exclusively on learning would be very hard, as your xp bonus would be increasing along the way. I don't think anyone is masochistic enough to find out.

The game would be extremely hard. Your chance to hit and damage depends a little bit on your weapon, but mostly on skills and spells. You would have an OK hp/mp pool, but your damage would depend solely on your might stat and weapon base damage and hit bonus. If I were to guess, I would assume that your damage would top out around 30 damage per hit with a really good weapon. Considering that end-game monsters have 50-100 armor, your chance of hitting and killing them will be very low. Adding the fact that you don't have bodybuilding or armor skills, you will probably fail in the end-game.

For comparison, hour of power at master level and rank 7 alone would bump your damage and hit bonus by 33 in addition to hasting you.

So in conclusion, skills are definately important (same goes for later games in the series).

Skill levels are also important for unlocking expertise and mastery, to unlock a variety of abilities, dual wielding of weapons for example, and buff spells working on all four characters at once. Nor would I like to go through the whole game with only level 1 in Disarm Trap - I'd soon reach the point of never daring to open any more treasure chests.

There's a follower for that :) Or even more effective: the Telekinesis spell allows you to make traps "go off" at a safe distance - even at level 1 ( as long as you can get the spell, it's expensive).

This would involve training but you can also use these as alternatives to Disarm Trap:
- Any character with high Perception will dodge trap damage completely
- Any high HP/AC character (like Knights) can easily tank trap damage to the point of it becoming negligible

In general, mm6 gives you a treasure trove of options for a party to solve various problems. As such Disarm Trap is a useful but very much optional skill.

My party trained to level 100 with the Hive itself yet to be done, and some titans remaining on the Hermit's Isle mainland (as I wrote before). Though I didn't record my actual exp, the level-up from 99 to 100 requires an extra 99k exp bringing the cumulative total to just under 5 meg, towards which all the quests together contributed almost 2 meg. So the mob kills (with Learning) provided 3 meg.

Precise numbers - 1,943,500 exp from quests (my record keeping won't be out by much; about half - 900k - comes from the memory crystals and control cube). Minimum of 4,950,000 to reach level 100.

Sounds about right. If you start clearing out Paradise Valley / Hermits Isle / Dragonsand then kill xp becomes a major contributor. Hence why Learning is a nice "farming" skill in the late game. Before that, or if you don't go high level farming, kill xp will have a negligible impact.

So in fact, monster kills contribute 50% more xp than quests. Good job on providing actual numbers.

Did you invest up to skill 7 master learning? And how early did you get it?

I'm not a min-maxer. I went with the flow to enjoy a balanced, well-rounded progress through the game. Thus I put my skill points into getting all the expert teaching I wanted before any of the master. Learning was my first mastery at level 20.

I remember particularly well the way I play the first "week" in New Sorpigal:
- Tuesday 6pm went into training for level 3
...+ total exp needed for this level 3 k
...+ total exp from quests so far 1 k (found the lost child)
- Thursday 6pm went into training for level 5
...+ total exp needed for this level 10 k
...+ total exp from quests so far 5 k (lost child, Goblinwatch code, candelabra)

Finished the spider queen too late for coach to Castle Ironfist on Friday, so took the ship to Mist on Saturday. Once there, bought normal Learning for everybody from Air, Fire or Water Initiate Guild, then trained to level 6
...+ total exp needed for this level 15 k
...+ total exp from quests so far 8 k (as before, plus spider queen)

From the time required, I guess I'd have added the cultists and cutpurses on the main island to my kill count before training, but those from running round the outer islands after training. Of course with kill exp from cobras and spiders, and from the hostile magicians around Falagar's house, I could have been level-6-ready before any of the Mist kills.

Arrived on Mist Tuesday, departed Wednesday to Castle Ironfist, got expert Learning from the teacher there. After more kills, trained to level 8
...+ total exp needed for this level 28 k
...+ total exp from quests so far 11 k (as before, plus giving Humphry the letters)

The pattern is consistent.

By the way, to avoid confusion, killing every dragon in Dragonsands is not what I call farming. You could call it grinding. I call it satisfying. Farming to me would mean returning somewhere to harvest a second crop (re-spawned mobs), then maybe a 3rd, 4th ...

Sure. By "farming" I simply mean that the only goal of clearing Dragonsand would be that it is a great way of 'harvesting' xp and items. It is not required for any quests, nor necessary to comfortably complete the game, nor do the dragons really block you path to anything since you would certainly have fly by that point.

In fact I would bet 'most' first time players complete the game without ever clearing dragonssand. Since it is significantly easier to simply storm the Hive than it is to defeat all those dragons.