Cavalary: Um, that's the first issue with NotR. And I've mentioned it several times in these threads you made recently. Raised an eyebrow when you said recently that you used tablets and what not so early, but assumed you knew what you were doing.
Cost is 1 to 30, 2 to 60, 3 to 90, 4 to 120, then 5, so you must know from the get go how many levels you'll get, somehow, and how far you want to take each skill, and what permanent boosts can be found, and train as far as you need, without using any permanent boosts, so when you'll use all of them you'll get to where you want to be at a low cost. Otherwise it's insane. 80 LP takes you from 10 to 60, but only from 120 to 140, for example.
I knew about the 1 to 30, 2 to 60, 3 to 90, and 4 to 120 and then 5 for attributes (STR-DEX-MANA). What I did NOT know was they had also changed the way skills (1H, 2H, BOW, Crossbow). In original Gothic 2, it always only cost 1 UNTIL one of the two related skills (1H and 2H weapons are "related" as are Bow and Crossbow) got one tier above the other (Three tiers, ROOKIE, FIGHTER, MASTER). So that in original Gothic 2 if your 1H was fighter tier but your 2H was still rookie tier, then it cost you two points to train 1 in 1H skill, BUT the other point wasn't wasted. EXAMPLE: 1H skill is 35 (fighter teir), and 2H ckill is 10 (rookie teir), then if you trained 1H, then it would cost 2LP's, BUT that second LP isn't "wasted" because the result in this example would be 1H=36 and 2H=11, so that even though it cost 2LP's to train 1H, that second LP wasn't wasted as it increased 2H skill.
And the reason I believed it was still this way was because that's exactly how Wulfgar (in the barracks) said in dialogue. It was described exactly as it was in original Gothic 2. So, knowing about the higher costs of ATTRIBUTES, I did in fact save all of my tablets and potions and stew etc regarding STR and DEX (I didn't care about mana because I wasn't playing as a magician). So I did save all of those permanent boosts regarding STR and DEX. BUT, because I thought the skill system was the same as the original, because in dialogue with Wulfgar he said as much, it makes no difference with skills as you still got 1 skill point for each learning point used. The game just sometimes forced you spend 2 LP's, but again, that second LP wasn't wasted as it was applied to the lower related skills.
I guess I'm not able to communicate this clearly, but yes, I knew very well about the huge increase in LP costs regarding attributes (STR-DEX-MANA) but I thought, and in game dialogue said as much, I didn't know that the costs for skills also changed such that as a rookie, it costs 1LP, as a fighter it cost 2LP's, and as a master it cost 3LP's, no matter what tier's the two related skills were. If in fact the game had just changed the costs regarding attributes but left skills the same, then it makes sense to save the permanent boosts for attributes, and it made sense to spend permanent boosts for skills whenever you wanted, so I did.
But that's not the way skill work, despite Wulfgar saying as much in dialogue in game. So, having "wasted" all of my skill permanent boosts at the lowest level (rookie) I knew I was going to be screwed later in game as there just wasn't going to be enough LP's to ever get my skills up to where they need to be.
Part of the problem, and I believe you made this point in one of the other threads, is that because we just don't know (or at least I don't know) a reasonable estimate of how many permanent boosts are available in conjunction with how many LP's we will get as if we knew that, then we could plan accordingly. But I have no idea how many permanent boosts I will end up getting nor even a rough estimate as to how many learning points I will get. Without knowing those, the only possible way to plan is to never use any attribute permanent boosts until your attribute reaches 120 and never use skill permanent boosts until your skill reaches Master. And this game is so unforgiving that I just don't see how you can do that and still progress through the various tasks at hand before that.
For example, if you didn't use any STR permanent boosts until it got to 120, then it would take 290 spent learning points, 29 LEVEL UPs, just to get ONE attribute to 120. And that's just one. Add in the fact that you realistically have to put something in the other attribute (Say you're doing a build that concentrates on STR and 2H weapons, you still don't want to be at 10 DEX late game, or you can forget about any stealth gameplay. And regarding stats, just to get 1 of them to master will cost 80 LP's, 8 more levels. That's 37 levels to get ONE attribute and ONE skill to the point where you start using perma boosts. And that's 37 levels with ZERO LP's left for ANYTHING else (alchemy, forging, animal processing, magic, reading stone tablets, etc.)
There's no way to know how many permanent boosts you'll have even if we can know how many are placed in the world because we still may not find them. AND, I dunno how many levels can be reached by, say Chapter 4, but I'll bet it's not over 30 or so. Playing in the manner I said above (waiting to use perma boosts until they reach the level of maximum cost) results in not even getting there by Chapter 4 AND not having spend ANY POINTS ON ANYTHING ELSE. So... how the fuck do you survive to make it to Chapter 4 unless you do put points in some other things (sneak, pick lock and picklocket are almost absolute necessities given the difficulty curve in NoTR, and you are forced to spend some on animal processing, forging, or alchemy just to advance past Chapter 1 (you must be an apprentice of one of those).
ADDED: Jeex, what a mess and wall of text. Even by my long winded standards this one is long and difficult to understand. I apologize I'm still not being clear. My bad.