While attempting to discover why the Level: indication is missing from the spell examine window whenever 'tier' > 1, I noticed something that could be either good or bad.
I made a new character, gathered some scrolls, and began. I examined my App I spell (Quick Strike). Then I scribed App II.
Examine, scribe App IV, and so on for Ad I, Ad III, Master I. Unless I'm reading the logfile incorrectly, all 6 spells have the same id. That would mean adding a tier parameter to each spell, but dividing the number of spells by about 6.
Of course there is no reason that we have to follow live exactly, so long as we get the same results.
John, what are your thought about this?

Yah, live uses the same spell ID for all the spells of that tier. I wouldn't mind changing our database to keep only the basic spell information in the spells table and then putting all the spell tier information in the spell_tiers table which links back to the spells table based on spell_id. This new table would need to contain all the spell specific stuff that would change based on tier like power reqs, durations, etc. We would also need to add the tier to the spell_data and spell_display_effects table if we went that route. It would make the system slightly more complicated, but reduce the amount of redundant data considerably. Anyways, it is up to John, but I can make the emu read from whatever structure he wants to use.

We have already discussed "tiers" at length in another thread (maybe it wasn't public) and this was our discovery too; that spell data barely changes between these tiers. In this, I had asked the spells data folks to NOT clone these base records to make additional tiers, but only work on the base spell/art/ability itself until we sorted this concept out.
IMO, the less redundant the data, the better. So yes, I would like a `spells_tier` table to hold specific data that changes with you advance your ability. LE, do you want me to create a table, or let you handle that since it affects much of how the server currently processes spell data?
I will have to change my editor as well. Let me know how you want to proceed.

You can create the table if you want, just try to keep the stuff that doesnt change between tiers in the spells table. Also, could you grab the extra fields from the raw_spells* tables and put them into the table as well? I'll make the emu start reading those fields which should improve the look of spells considerably.

Sure, I'll work on that this morning.

I have submitted some preliminary table redesign to LE for review, so we'll see about getting this stuff split up soon.
Meanwhile another question pops up. Not all spell/arts/abilities have "tiers". Should we set them to a tier = 0 value so the server knows not to bother looking for them? Or should I simply leave them out of the spell_tiers table completely? I see the latter as causing more problems/confusion with data integrity down the line (considering my FK reference work), so maybe having a tier=0 or even just tier=1 for those 'flat' abilities would solve that.
Thoughts?

I would think making it tier=0 for those would be ok.

Cool, that is the premise I am building off of now mostly because I started thinking, to simplify things in the server, I'd rather not have "some stuff there, some stuff not" - so every spell_id will have a spell_tiers record, even if that tier is zero (0) for those without upgradeability.
The other thought (if this is possible) is to allow even that much more flexibility for custom servers who may want to setup upgrades for abilities that otherwise did not. So until someone presents a problem with this, I am populating all spell_tiers with ranges '0-10' - with '0' being not upgradeable.
Keep the ideas coming. LE hasn't changed the server yet, so we have time to strategize.

I think this was the original spell tiers
Apprentice I
Apprentice II
Apprentice III
Apprentice IV
Adept I
Adept II
Adept III
Master I
Master II
so your spell_tier range of 0-10 should cover these