my brain forgotted from E 1 and 2

[kelticpete]

so I played E 1 and 2 a long time ago. one thing I figured out, after playing 1, was how to best min/max your points for talents so that you spend them best. I vaguely remember a system for spending the least amount of actual in game leveling points on stuff like cartography.

how did one do that? was it buying it at character creation or waiting and learning it from a PC?

I am probably going with an archer build. I just can't remember what abilties I started with and what I did to upt the secondary skills that are so helpful (wasn't there an identify/lore skill)

I would really appreciate some feedback. thank you to any who take the time to a) read this and b) reply

[KillingMoon]

It's a bit difficult to answer this without giving some minor spoilers, so beware that the following gives some minor spoilers (although nothing too specific):

At your character set-up screen it takes 3 points to learn the first skill point in something, so it's uneconomical to start with many skills, it is like that in the whole series.
To learn from a trainer is best, the first point costs you 100 gold, the second 200, etc.
The question is whether you can wait for a trainer to pop up; if you hold off investing your skill points you might be too weak to reach that trainer. In Book II they were quite easy to reach, also for an unskilled character. In Book III they are somewhat more difficult to reach, especially the ones that will improve your attack skill. Also money is a little less abundant in the early game in Book III (money you would need to pay for training).
Of the weapon trainers the one for the bow is still the easiest to gain access to.

One strategy you could follow is to put points in one good attack skill at the start, you could put lots in bow and know you won't use the bow trainer, or you could start with either Divination or Elemental magick as your given skill. They both give a good attack scroll at the start, so you'd move around easily until meeting the bow trainer, and then you could train in bows as a second proficiency.
Although you don't need more than one well developed ranged proficiency to win the game, ranged is still very powerfull, except for immersion and to get more out of the game I find it personally more fun to develop a range of skills, even if that slows me down.

Remember there are skill books for most things. Don't read them straight away if you want to develop a skill, not if there's a trainer at least, because a trainer is real cheap for the first bunch of levels.

[Vroqren]

Here's a TL;DR of his post:

To most efficiently use your skill points, buy all of your skills from a trainer and as high as you wish. Then read the book before putting any points into the actual skill.

That's actually how I got Jack of All Trades in Book II. I pumped all my starting points into Mercantile, every level until I could abuse every shop owner by selling something I had just bought from them for more. Then, when I had 200,000 coins, I bought every skill you could in the game and read the books for the ones you couldn't.