Increasing rate of melee skill improvementsFollow

I do enjoy playing this game, when I have the time. I've had Everquest since 2000 but the highest level toon I have is only level 39. I'm in the military, so a good portion of my time away is from deployments, etc. I've tried to stay up with all the changes that go on in this game, but seems new things come along so quickly now, that I've lost knowledge of how to do most trivial things.

For example, I decided to spend time on my warrior (he always gets neglected because of lack of magical abilities). I generally just solo so I have to sit and wait for my HP to go up after a good fight. Nowadays they have decent potions to compensate those 'magic-deprived' classes. I had noticed that in all the time I've worked on my warrior, I've only concentrated on 1H Slashing. He's now level 30, and had almost no skill in 1H Blunt, Piercing, Hand to Hand, or either 2H skill. I've bought some cheap weapons at the bazaar for each style and have been spending an hour here, an hour there, focussing on just those weapons to build up the skills. However, it does take quite a while.

In all the improvements and introductions this game has made, I'm surprised there isn't a way to increase the rate in which skill can be improved. I'm thinking that there has to be, but I'm just clueless as to the method. I was told that if you beef up INT then skill increases faster. I tried that with a few rings but didn't notice any substantial difference. Is this method true, or does anybody know a better way to increase melee skills that won't take forever. Thanks for the assistance to anybody that knows the answer. Happy Journeys to all.

also make sure you buy "training weapons" with as low a delay as possible; more frequent swings means more chances for skill ups.

Use your Veteran Reward Infusion of the Faithful on the warrior to boost his stats; you will max your Dex, and as long as the spell works, your weapon skills will increase significantly (as long as you fight at least dark blue mobs).

To get your rewards on your warrior, log him in and type /veteranreward. You then find them in the AA menu and can make hotbuttons.