You earn an auto-advance point whenever you kill a mob your own age or higher, although this cannot bring you above 100 auto-advance points. You can also earn auto-advance points by completing certain tasks (see ‘help tasks’), and these can take you above 100, although they can only be earned once per task.
Whenever the mud checks for a skill or style increase and fails, one of your auto-advance points will be spent to change that failure into a success. In this way you are able to raise your skills and styles much quicker through tasks and difficult kills than you are from repetitive grinding.
If you have any skill boosts (see ‘help boosts’) then these work exactly like auto-advance points, except that you also earn 100 primal each time a skill boost is spent, as long as your primal is below your primal cap.
Note that skill boosts are spent before auto-advance points as long as your primal is below your primal cap - otherwise, auto-advance will be spent first.