Maybe it's just that I don't have a good grasp of what chump change is, but I see a couple weeks of class as a pretty big investment. That's time we could be spending with Pupa! Or with Chloe! Or Furuta!
We have to take classes. It's an school for swordsmen, mages, smites, healers and a dozen other professions united under the vague title of Hero. Classes are a thing we will be doing.
Although 5-10 Echoes does sound pretty cheap. And I don't disagree that we may need it at some point.
The way I see the system is that we are incentivized to use Echoes to get a broad variety of low level skills, while classes are our chance to go more in depth with a small number of skills. We can get every skill up to novice (or whatever low level) with Echoes, but we'd have to raid the graveyard several times just to get a couple skills up to the next level above that. On the other hand, classes (hopefully) will level up one skill to the next level, even if that level would cost a lot of Echoes.
Let's really look at the system actually, it's something I've been wanting to do for a while anyway. As I said before, it costs 5 Echoes for a basic skill, then 25 for an intermediate, with journeyman somewhere around 50 to 60, based on how much expert costs (85 Perform, singing). I'd also like to point out that Lirra has yet to improve a skill through hard work yet. We've only been doing classes for about two weeks, so that's hardly surprising, but it does show skill growth is fairly slow. I'm betting that any skills we're currently training will level up by the time of the 'special' lesson. But still, its pretty slow once you get past the first hurdle and start on higher levels.
Now lets look at the Echoes we've got our hands on. Our first bump of Echoes totaled 81, with 5 violent, 7 wistful, 9 lost, 10 obsessed and 50 faded. Then we got 8 violent, 11 wistful, 12 lost, 13 obsessed and 7 faded Echoes. That totaled 51. All in all, that's 132. Looks like quite a bit, but the way it's spread out means we don't have that many skills, and most are faded, so they go in the EXP sponges that are the basic stat improvements. And those
cost. Even slight improvements cost 15, which is a good bit more then most skill cost, and then it jumps to
75. Then we factor in that each skill level has to be paid for on it's own. So getting say, the sword skill up to expert doesn't cost 85 echoes, it's more around 150 or 160 echoes paying for each level. Lirra's gotten, in total, 13. Getting that skill up through pyres means we need a hell of a lot of dead people to pull from.
So getting a skill up from training takes a long time, and doing it with echoes is time consuming in it's own way. It looks like we're kinda stuck, until you look at our highest level skills. Singing, necromantic lore and grave digging. Lirra didn't lift a finger to train those skills and they cost two people worth of echoes. Two of the most important people she's ever known. Her first crush and her mentor. That's how we get high level skills. If I want Lirra to quickly learn the sword, I don't vote to have her take fencing classes or dig up the great fighters of old. I vote to have her spend lots of time with Furuta until they're best friends, then wait for their dangerous job to kill Furuta and pyre her.
But personally, I don't want to play that way. Lirra's goals here are to make friends, and become strong enough to keep those friends safe. Lirra is an adorable ball of tragedy and determination, which just tugs at my heartstrings and makes me want to help her achieve her dreams. It's why I wanted to meditate on the Echoes of her mentor a few votes back, because if we can learn how to use Echoes more efficiently or remember more from the lives of the dead she pyers, we can help keep her friends safe now. Lirra's life has been a long string of bad luck and raw deals, I'd like for her to take what's she's gained from those hardships to start turning that trend around.
