Skills:

Each guild (apart from the temples, who have unusual skill sets) is generally configured to one of these three styles, and since advancing in a guild requires one high skill and two lower skills that are relevant, you need to be able to increase three skills from each of the three sets in order to advance. I would advise taking these skills as major or minor skills, but you can also take only one or two, and train the other's up to the neccessary level for advancement.

When creating your class, as well as choosing skills, you have to select two primary attributes and a speciality. Always take luck as one of your attributes, since it very hard to increase under other circumstances. As the other, I normally take agility, strength or intelligence depending on whether I am a thief, fighter or mage. As speciality, take magic if you are primarily magic using, and stealth if you have any stealth skills tagged. Don't bother with combat because the combat skills are very easy to improve. Magic is quite hard to increase, and stealth skills are probably the hardest to use without using exploits. I advise against creating an all round character, since this damages replayability, and also leads to skills that serve the same purpose, making levelling difficult. I would suggest playing once as a fighter / thief, and then as a pure mage.

A final thing to bear in mind: major skills increase quicker than minor skills, and so it is best to place the hard to increase skills as major, and the easy to increase skills as minor. This way, all your skills should increase at about the same rate. 

Note that these skill tables do not include weapon or armour skills, which are discussed in more detail below. Also, when I say 'tag' I mean selecting a skill as a major or minor. It's a Fallout thing...

Magic Skills
Destruction (Willpower)
Destruction is fun, and is a good alternative for marksman, or other weapons, but try to avoid relying on it too much, since you may suddenly run out of spell points, and end up being gradually eaten by a kwama forager. I don’t really have strong opinions about this.

Alteration (Willpower)
Alteration is a great skill. Firstly, it is as good as security for unlocking objects (although it cannot remove traps), and secondly it is a very powerful tool. Burden is good for halting foes, and water breathing, jump and levitate are indispensable for travellers.

Illusion (Personality)
Illusion is also a good magic skill for replacing thief skills. Chameleon and invisibility are great for thieves, and charm and frenzy effectively replace speechcraft, and are better than it because they never fail. Calm spells are very useful for reaching the enchant master, or preventing irate shopkeepers from murdering you.

Conjuration (Intelligence)
A powerful and fun spell school, although bound items can be unbalanced. I did find this very hard to increase, and so have never bothered with taking it to a high level. Summoning beasties is cool, and is also a way to harvest souls for enchantment.

Mysticism (Willpower)
Mysticism is about average. It has four great spells: the two interventions, mark / recall, and soul trap. However, all of these can be cast at a fairly low level of skill, so it is unnecessary to increase it beyond some initial training. If you plan on using telekinesis and reflect as well, it becomes worthwhile as a tag skill. Telekinesis can remove traps.

Restoration (Willpower)
Better before patch 1.2, when the fortify skill spell was still around, and now fairly pointless. The spells can be handy, but they do nothing that simple potions and temples cannot solve. Good if you don’t have alchemy, if only for restore strength spells.

Enchant (Intelligence)
The most fascinating and entertaining skill in the game. You can build your own magic items; what could be better? It is very hard to actually make the items, but a few intelligence and luck potions will be enough to let you build intelligence and luck items, and then you can merrily construct all sorts of devices. Can replace any magic spell you cannot cast yourself, and saves tens, even hundreds, of thousands of drakes by having the skill yourself. Loads of information in the enchanting FAQ section.

Alchemy (Intelligence)
As groovy as enchant, and another of my favorite skills. Has a horrendous exploit which I would try to avoid, but otherwise is easy to increase, powerful, and a good way to make money early on. See the alchemy FAQ section.




Stealth Skills
Security (Intelligence)
Ultimately of little purpose. Alteration is just as good at removing locks, and saves a few pounds of weight as well. The only advantage of security is that it can remove traps, but mysticism can also do this through telekinesis spells.

Sneak (Agility)
Suffers in the same way as security - it is replaced by illusion. The backstabbing is fun, but not that useful, and its advantages for avoiding detection and theft are no better than those offered by illusion. It is also hard to increase at early levels.

Acrobatics (Strength)
Worth taking as a minor skill. It is very easy to increase if you "bunnyhop" everywhere (see levelling and skill increases), and is a great way to increase your strength multiplier over the first few levels. Also good for jumping around rooftops kung-fu style, and for faster travel.

Mercantile (Personality)
I used to have a little debate over the value of this skill. I initially disliked it, and was later convinced of its use by a number of contributors. However, I have discovered that this skill is in fact very bad indeed. The higher your skill, the LESS money you are given for items you sell. This means that increasing mercantile skill is not a good thing, since you will receive less money for items you sell when you have a higher skill, although items you buy will be cheaper. This is a bug, and has not yet been fixed.

Speechcraft (Personality)
Again suffers from the stealth curse: illusion serves the same purpose. Taunting and admiring are very useful, but they fail often, and so are inferior to the guaranteed effects of frenzy and charm. Without illusion, this would be invaluable since you can get cheaper services, and easy solutions to many quests.




Combat Skills
Block (Agility)
Flawed, but useful as a third combat skill for the Fighters’ Guild and imperial legion. Block is hard to increase, but can save you from up to 50% of melee damage (can’t block more than 50% of the time). However, no shield means more damage, so you would be hit less times anyway. Also, you do not need to be using a shield to get its AR or to enchant it, since you can equip a shield even when using a two handed weapon. There is little reason to use block, since it gives no major advantages that cannot be countered by the increased damage and enchantment of two handed weapons.

Armorer (Strength)
Armorer is fairly useless - once your weapon is fairly good, you do not need to repair often, and any good adventurer carries a spare anyway. Also, it is hard to increase, and repairs are cheap anyway. Some may suggest training it up to about twenty points, just so you can do emergency repairs in the wilderness on your own, but it is not worth taking as a tag skill.

Athletics (Speed)
Athletics can be good, since it is easy to increase, and helps rapid travel. However, acrobatics is better on both fronts, and having both tagged makes it harder to increase them both. I would advise taking acrobatics instead, but if for some reason you do not want it, take this instead.