Platinum coins (pp) are a currency item gained through random events or through the completion of quests, and can be used to pay for the services of trainers to increase your skill potential and to buy new skills.
The player will need to earn a lot of platinum if they actually want to progress beyond the early game. Experienced players will typically begin earning platinum immediately.
Earning coins[]
Most jobs that do not involve escorting are easy ways to earn PP. Low level ($) hunting is rarely harder than a Putit ambush, delivery quests rarely go wrong (but check if you can make it and that the weather is fine), and the "fetch me an item" quests are often easy if it can be purchased from a shop/traded with a named NPC (make sure it's not something valuable). A few other jobs can be easy depending on your stats, but these are universal. See Quests.
You can also earn PP by finding them (they can be randomly generated in towns same way as Lost Wallets and Lost Suitcases, 1 out of 15 chance on every town update), or by casting Wizard's Harvest if you know the spell. Additionally, NPC's may throw these for good Performer (whether the player or NPC bard).
Very rarely, platinum coins can be generated on townsfolk. Pickpocketing them places the coins in your inventory, and dropping and picking them up will add them to your count.
It is possible to wish for platinum:
- "platin" creates 8-12 platinum coins
- "platinum" creates 5 platinum coins and displays "Platinum pieces appear."
There is also a false message in a fortune cookie stating "Platinum coins can be bought with gems." However, this is untrue.
Elona+[]
Worshiping Yacatect of Wealth will eventually earn:
- Goose, a pet that lays platinum after eating
- Yacatect's gem stone of god medal, which can be used to generate 10 platinum coins once a month
Attribute training[]
If you have a maid in your home, you may be visited by guild trainers who will increase the potential of your attributes. You may only train with one house-visiting trainer per month. Trainers of all guilds will visit you if you haven't joined a guild. If you have joined a guild then only trainers from that guild will visit you.
Skill training[]
Trainers may be found in the adventurer hall of any city, and in the three guilds. They can teach you entirely new skills or improve the potential of existing ones.
Learning a new skill[]
Each new skill costs 15 pp plus an additional 3 pp for every subsequent purchase. For instance, the first skill you learn costs 15 pp, the second skill will cost 18 pp, the third costs 21 pp, and so on. In Elona+, the maximum cost of a new skill has been capped at 50pp (15pp in version 1.41). Later versions of Elona+ also reduce the base and scaling values to 5 and 1, respectively (unsure when this change first went in, but likely in 1.41 as well; please edit if you can provide specific numbers).
Skills learned in this manner will be at level 1 with 50% potential.
Training a skill[]
Training a skill increases the potential of that skill. The cost of training in PP is (skill level/5) + 2, rounded down, ie. 2 up to 4.999, 3 up to 9.999, 4 up to 14.999 etc. This means it's probably a good idea to spend a few coins just before skills level up to a multiple of 5.
Training a skill gives more potential when the potential is lower. It appears the formula for the amount you gain is 15 - (current potential) / 15, with a minimum of 2 gained (195% potential and above). This means you get 10% from 75% to 89%, 9% from 90% to 104%, 8% from 105% to 119%, etc.
The following table assumes the rate of learning is the same as that detailed for skill points on Skills. It assumes you pump in PP to make it over 100% each time it levels. The 'time' is based on a unit of time taken to get from level 1 to 2 at 100%, and the table assumes you start at skill 4 and 120% potential as with starting skills. For new skills, you just need to add a bit of extra time and PP at the start to get to this level.
Level | Total time | Time to next | PP spent |
10 | 10.2 | 2.1 | 20 |
15 | 22.6 | 2.9 | 46 |
20 | 38.4 | 3.4 | 78 |
30 | 80.4 | 4.8 | 160 |
40 | 136 | 6.4 | 266 |
50 | 206 | 7.9 | 396 |
60 | 289 | 8.7 | 550 |
70 | 386 | 10 | 728 |
80 | 496 | 11 | 930 |
90 | 621 | 13 | 1156 |
100 | 759 | 14 | 1428 |
150 | 1656 | 21 | 3016 |
200 | 2897 | 28 | 5526 |
You can obviously go to whatever percentage you like after each level. Here's a guide to how much it will cost for some percentages:
Keep potential above | 25% | 50% | 75% | 90% | 100% | 125% | 150% | 175% | 200% | 225% |
Cost factor | 0.20 | 0.41 | 0.65 | 0.83 | 1.0 | 1.45 | 2.2 | 3.3 | 6.6 | 9.5 |
As you can see, higher percentages result in spiraling costs due to the exponential decay of potential.
Training spells (Elona+ only)[]
In Elona+ versions 1.59 and later, you can pay a wizard NPC platinum to train currently known spells without consuming any Spell Stock. See this section of the wizard NPC page for details.