Skills/Discordance
Discordance plays jarring music that weakens a creature. A discorded creature loses part of its strength, dexterity, intelligence and every skill for as long as you keep playing nearby.
At a glance
| Skill cap | 100 (Grandmaster), raised up to 120 with Discordance power scrolls |
|---|---|
| Tool |  any instrument
|
| Partner skill | Musicianship |
| Main uses | Weakening a creature before or during a fight |
| Stats it trains | Dexterity and Intelligence |
How to use it
Use the skill: Choose the target for your song of discordance. Target a creature (not a player). After a successful Musicianship check, the Discordance check uses the creature's difficulty. On success: You play jarring music, suppressing your target's strength.
The creature loses a share of its Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and all of its skills:
| Discordance | Lowered by |
|---|---|
| 50 | 10% |
| 75 | 15% |
| 100 | 20% |
| 110 | 22% |
| 120 | 24% |
The effect lasts as long as you stay alive, visible and within range. If you move out of range it ends 15 seconds later.
Other messages: You attempt to disrupt your target, but fail. (failure), A song of discord would have no effect on that. and That creature is already in discord.
After each attempt you must wait 12 seconds before using another skill.
How bard skills work
Every bard skill starts the same way:
- Carry an instrument. If you have more than one, the game asks which to play the first time.
- Use the skill and pick your target.
- You first make a Musicianship check: your chance is your Musicianship out of 100. If it fails: You play poorly, and there is no effect.
- If you play well, the skill itself is checked against the target's difficulty.
Range: 8 tiles plus 1 for every 15 points of the bard skill you're using (14 tiles at 100, 16 at 120).
Difficulty depends on how tough the creature is: its hit points, stamina, mana and total skills. Spellcasters, fire breathers, poison-immune creatures and poisonous creatures are much harder, and paragons harder still. You get help from:
- an exceptional instrument: 5 points easier;
- a slayer instrument against its matching creatures: 10 points easier (but 10 harder against the opposite kind);
- Musicianship above 100: half of every point over 100 comes off the difficulty.
Your chance with the bard skill is 50% when your skill equals the difficulty minus 10, rising or falling 2% for every point of difference.
| Your Discordance minus (difficulty − 10) | Chance |
|---|---|
| -25 | 0% |
| -15 | 20% |
| -5 | 40% |
| Even | 50% |
| +5 | 60% |
| +15 | 80% |
| +25 | 100% |
Training Discordance
- Every attempt that gets past the Musicianship check is a chance to gain. Creatures you succeed against about half the time teach the most.
- Below 10.0 you gain on every attempt, sometimes several tenths at once. Above that, each attempt has a chance to gain 0.1.
- The harder the attempt is for your skill level, the better your chance to gain. Your chance also drops as you get closer to your Discordance cap and to your total skill cap of 700.
- If you've set Discordance to go down (the arrow in your skills list), gains elsewhere can lower it to make room under your total cap. Lock skills you want to keep.
- Reaching 100.0 adds Discordance to the Skills Mastered count on your achievements.
- Bards, bard guildmasters and waiters will train you for gold: up to a third of their own skill, at most 42.0, for 1 gold per 0.1 points. Ask them (or use their context menu) to train the skill, then drop the gold on them.
Stats: each successful use has a smaller chance (under 1%) to raise Dexterity and a smaller chance (under 1%) to raise Intelligence by 1 point. Each stat can rise at most once every 10 minutes, and only if it's set to rise.
Suggested path
| Discordance | How to train |
|---|---|
| 0 to about 33 | Buy it from a bard. |
| 33 to 60 | Discord animals in the wild. |
| 60 to 100 | Discord monsters, moving to tougher ones as your chance climbs. |
| 100 to 120 | Requires a power scroll. Discord the strongest creatures you can. |
Power scrolls
Discordance tops out at 100.0 unless you use a Discordance power scroll. There are three kinds: exalted (110), mythical (115) and legendary (120). Double-click one to raise your Discordance cap to that number: "You feel a surge of magic as the scroll enhances your Discordance!"
- Discordance power scrolls come from champion bosses: Barracoon, Lord Oaks, Mephitis, Neira, Rikktor, Semidar and Silvani. Each champion boss leaves 6 power scrolls in random fighting, magic, bard and animal skills, handed out among the players who helped kill it. Each scroll is a 110 (60%), 115 (35%) or 120 (5%).
- A scroll only works if it's higher than your current cap. Otherwise: "Your Discordance is too high for this power scroll."
- Champion power scrolls are cursed: they always drop when you die, even from a blessed container. Use them or bank them quickly.
- Raising the cap doesn't raise your skill. You still have to train the extra points.
Tips
- Weaken the boss. Lower skills mean its attacks miss more and its spells fail more.
- Stay in range. Wander off and the effect fades 15 seconds later.