Lucky me...I seem to find all the weirdness. Anyfoofoo, I'm using my level 45 elf mage, almost at the end, and get Velorien's blessing. So far so good. I look on my character sheet and I appear to be close to Master in both Melee and Dodge (only a small sliver left) now, so I truck on over to the Dodge Master and ask him to train me. He says I have insufficient skill to become a Master. So I put 2 cps into Dodge and the bar does not move. Still not skilled enough. The one thing I noticed before adding cps is it said I needed 9 DX to up the skill. After upping, it said 15. Are the bonuses Velorien adds to skills *cosmetic*? I mean, it's no big deal if I don't become Master at melee and dodge at this point, since I wasn't really building the character that way, but it'd be an awful nasty surprise to find out those are phantom points. In other amusing bug news, I did the thieves' underground quest for the kree idol after doing the altar there and now there's a weird graphic on my map in the section leading to the altar. It's a small square made up of pink and purple alternating stripes with what looks like "Bad er!" written in the middle in red and yellow. Yes, this is patched to 1074. Virgil also now permanently has his action circle under him. He also didn't get dropped in level after his resurrection (the one in Caladon) even though his MA dropped to 9. *sigh*
About Velorien blessing. I'm not too sure what's actually wrong in your opinion (ie what you expected). When you do three circles of offering you loose bonuses from each god upon completing a given circle. When you have 3 circles completed you offer yourself to Velorien and get +100HP and +100Fatigue bonus. Nothing else. As for becoming dodge/melee master you need a full bar obviously. To make it full you'll need 18DX (steps are 9, 12, 15, 18 iirc). Then you can go to respective masters. (Btw it's really good to have DX20.) Check whether you're cursed or perhaps some item lowers your stats. I know of a blade which lowers your DX permanently by 1 whenever you equip it - since it's a bug there's no cure. As for 2nd and 3rd paragraphs those are obivously bugs.
My dex is 17. What meant was, according to the bar for Melee and Dodge, I should be able to train as a Master. I couldn't. Like I said, it seems to be a visual glitch, but it's still annoying. Turns out not to have been important in the end, since I just grabbed Torian Kell's sword, popped my dex up to 20 (or 21...forgot), and just hacked everything up in the Void. Not too shabby for an elf with 7 strength. *snerk*
curse I don't know why you think thats a bug. It's a curse and curses should be bad. It's like if you kill that gypsy with the crystal ball you loss permanent CHA.
It could be you need the DX of 18. Also, the dodge Master will only train you at a full 5 bars, the mele Master will do it at 4 3/4.
That's the problem. Full bar is not the only requirement - you need 18 in a given stat (be it DX, CH or whatever) too.
Re: curse It's a bug because that item is hexed, not cursed. If it was supposed to bestow a curse, the curse would show up on your Curses screen. Besides, the penalties are cumulative, which doesn't make much sense if the item is supposed to be cursed. By the way, isn't it a loss of four Dexterity each time it's equipped? (Or are we thinking of different blades? I'm thinking of the Blackstone Blade.)
Re: curse I never had the blade, I just read about it so I may be wrong. Where can that blade you got be found?
Isn't the blackstone blade in T'seng Ang in the evil wizards chest or am I thinking of something else?
That explains why I never got it. I somehow never actually bothered to enter that part of the sewers. I'll be sure to check them out this time.