Are your skills not proffing? Has your epic grind on New Banian halted completely? It's possible that you aren't taking control of the Allowance system! This guide is here to help everyone understand what Allowances are, and what they do.

- Allowances are how your skills receive experience:
As a recent change to FFO, and potentially a mechanic to be showcased in Terulia, Experience Points have been replaced with Allowances. Allowances are related to Experience Points, in that when a skill uses Allowance, that much Allowance goes into the action's proficiency much like how one would put Experience into an action in the past. After so many Allowance points, the skill or equipment will increase in proficiency. Basically, Allowances are what allow you to increase your ability and equipment proficiencies.

- There are three categories for Allowances:
Allowances are equally split up into three types - Equipment, Armor, and Abilities. Everything your character does will match up to the Allowance type of the action, and subtract so much Allowance depending on what the action is. For example, attacking something with two swords equipped will subtract Equipment Allowance each time the sword hits, and a third time for dual-wielding. Getting hit while you have a shield equipped will subtract Allowance from Armor and subtract Allowance from Equipment for Shielding. Using a Skill will subtract Allowance from Abilities.

- Proficiencies do not receive Allowance experience if you fall below 0 Allowance:
Everything you do subtracts Allowance, so long as you have a positive amount of Allowance. If an action is done without enough Allowance to commit, then you will fall into a negative amount of Allowance. Also, the skill will not receive the Allowance used as experience. Skills, weapons, and armor only gains Allowance experience if there was enough to not fall below 0.

- Allowances are gained from killing monsters:
For each monster you or your party kills, you gain Allowance to all three types, which can be filled by spawning and killing monsters until it reaches its static maximum. The amount of Allowance given by monsters also has a maximum, and the amount is determined by the user's level compared to the monster's level. Because of this, New Banian monsters will give a lot less Allowance than Irendi monsters would. You receive allowance from your party within a close distance while you are in battle when they kill monsters as well! For this reason, being in a large party typically means you have a higher amount of Allowance overall.

- Skills have a tendency to use a lot more Allowance than weapons do:
Even a simple tier-1 element could use anywhere from double to as much as five times as much as just attacking something with a staff! Some skills can use a large majority of capped Allowance, but this also means they need less uses to increase in proficiency as compared to something with a lower Allowance cost of equal level.

With the Allowance system in place, it is suggested to have a healthy balance between skills and equipment, to maximize your proficiency gains. The faster you level up your skills, the sooner you level up yourself or get better skills, after all!

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Update 2012: There has been an added system of an applied 5% of your Allowance on top of the flat cost of the Skill itself.

What this means in technical terms:

Let's say you have 500 Allowance. Attacking with a Staff costs you 10 Allowance. Before, what this means is that each attack you deal would subtract 10 Allowance overall and that is applied as Experience to Staves. Now, it subtracts the 10 Allowance as well as 5% of your total Allowance and applies it as Experience to Staves. When you have 500 Allowance, that would be an additional 25 Allowance used and applied as Experience. In this scenario, over the course of five attacks, assuming no Allowance gains, it would look like:


Attack #..Allowance Used....Allowance Remaining
0.........0.................500
1.........35(10 + 25).......465 (500 - 35)
2.........33(10 + 23).......432 (465 - 33)
3.........31(10 + 21).......401 (432 - 31)
4.........30(10 + 20).......371 (401 - 30)
5.........28(10 + 18).......343 (371 - 28)


THIS IS PURELY A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION TO SHOWCASE HOW THE 5% WOULD WORK. THE 5% GAINS ONLY APPLY TO SKILLS AS OF A LATER UPDATE.

What this means in tl;dr

More allowance, more profs.

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