Forgive me for not searching more than I did for this query.
One or two handed melee? It sounds like 2 is better but 2 handers are harder to find. Am I waisting points if I go for both? I may have more stupid questions like this later and I will continue to search the thread for them before asking. Thanks.

Every non mage should know the two handed skills.
In the late game you nearly have to use two handed weapons as no one handed ones are available that would be strong enough. Still it's ok to learn one handed in the beginning as all two handed weapons need queit some strength to wield.

I cannot get over how fast and friendly and helpfull this forum is. :) Thanks! I'm not even close to needing to know this yet as I just started and spent the only 10 points I had on lockpicking just so I could get the recommedation and yadda yadda yadda. Thanks again.

I never use two-handed in any of the Gothic games - they are just too plain slow. While the one-handers do less damage, the increased speed of hits and taking less hits more then makes up for it. Same goes with crossbows - just too slow to be as useful as plain bows.

In the first Gothic I've often partially trained one-handed until I got access to a two-handed trainer and still ended up with enough learning points to max two-handed afterwards.

This is in contrast to Gothic II with the expansion where there are not enough learning points to go around so you really have to decide what you're going to miss out on if you don't want to end up underpowered later on.

I also prefer one handed by far but still in gothic 1 learning two handed is rather impotant for non mages. I'll just say "Wave of Death" and you should know what i'm talking about while those who haven't played it to the end don't. ;)

Gothic I is a little bit odd, in that in the end-game you really don't have a problem in learning everything you want, and both fighting styles are more or less required in the course of the game.

Gothic II changes that, where you really should focus on 1- or 2-handed.

I found range to be a big advantage in gothic games so i would say 2handed weapons. they also do more damage per hit which synergises well with the general attack, block, counter-attack nature of the game. only advantage 1handers have is that they are faster. also there some dex based onehanders which might be very useful to those who like to use ranged weapons.

Can you actually MAX a skill? It sounds like from some of these answers yes. I was being really cautions with my points thinking I should save them for 2 handed but if I know I can beef up both I'd be much more successfull early on. I just finished the Old Mine Crawler mission but left 99% of the killing to NPCs. Shit, with some more ability I can only imagine the points I could have built up, and no I wouldn't mind starting over for that.

Kind of, at least strength and dexterity(with mana i'm not sure) can only be learned till 100 but there are some potions that give a permanent boost so you can get beyond 100 but not by actually investing learnpints.
All "special" skills like hunting, one-/two handed combat, pickpocketing... have only a few levels. So all skills have some limit but you won't be able to maximize everything there aren't enough learnpoints for that without using exploits.
But it is easily enough to maximize strength and still learn many other skills.

So if I go melee I can for sure max 1 and 2 handed? Provided I don't worry about magic and dex and hunting of course. I realize I'm being a pain with these questions but it's only becasue I've become slightly obsessed with this game. :D

If i remember right, yes. :)

I'm at 10% 1 handed and Scatty won't train me anymore, what gives? I'm also high enough to become a guard and get 2 handed training, should I just start going for that? I was hoping to get good at both, which from reading the other post I gathered I could so long as I skip magic and hunting and dexterity stuff.

EDIT: I googled Scatty and found mention of a bug that shows 10% for 1 handed even when you are at 100%. Is this accurate?

In Gothic 1 You will never reach 100%. That is not a bug. The Percentages of the weapon skills are just the chance of a critical hit. An unskilled fighter has 0% chance to do that. At the first skill level you have 5% and at the second skill level 10% (if I remember correctly). And Scatty should have told you that when you learned the skills... So... You might already be at the maximum skill level because the weapon skills in Gothic 1 only have two levels... But you can still train your strenght until you reach 100. Which is probably the most effective way to go...

tinyE,

(Again) I'm a bit late with my answer. Nevertheless, here it is:

Keep in mind that only Lee teaches advanced two-handed weapons (if you wanna go that way), but he requires that you must be skilled in one-handed weapons first. The game notes that you should have mastered one-handed first, while in reality you only need first step (you learn that from Scotty). But that is mandatory, otherwise Lee will refuse to train you.

Cheers.