Hello everyone , my question is as on the title , i have been playing sacred for a wile and i think i am a bit in the game on the story wise , anyways the thing i am wondering is if the horses are worth it at all , combat dont seem to good on them for me , and then everytime i have to pick loot i have to dismount , so not sure if i should spend any points in horse skill if it does not give any good thing apart from being able to cover land quicker :) thanks in advance for any suggestions

Horses are awesome as long as you don't rely on your physical CAs - those cannot be used from horseback.
Whether Riding is worth it or not depends on how much time you plan to spend on horseback. The main point is that you get to ride higher-level mounts with some Riding skill (but for most characters, you can use that skill slot way better).
A tip: turn animations off in the options menu, that way, mounting and dismounting will be much quicker. (Also, I might be wrong, but I think if you use the "Collect all" hotkey, you don't have to dismount.)

I personally use them just for getting from A to B. Some classes like the battle mage can cast spells from horseback, which make it amazing to run around outdoors kiting heaps of enemies and AoE'ing them down.

Also, it is recommended that you use horses as the Wood Elf, because you can shoot from horseback and kite as well.

I played both the battle mage and the wood elf, but in my opinion horses are crap, especially the riding skill!

First you usually wont be faster with horses, because the max speed with and without a horse is 220, you can reach this easily even without a horse (with some bonus to speed). The only exception is that there exist a horse armor that can bypass the max speed a little bit (as far as I remember by 20 to 240).

The res bonus is nice but only for the battle mage, because he is low at this, the wood elf and other classes can learn the armor skill that gives you much better bonus to this.

The mount / dismount stuff is very annoying, to annoying for the little benefit...

Another big problem is that horses are (very) bugged, they can disappear in a manner you wont be able to get them back, sell them or even buy a new one, so that you wont be able to get on a horseback again if this happens to you. If you had skilled the riding skill this means you wasted all points for nothing.

But even if you decide to use a horse, I wouldnt recommend to skill the riding skill, because it is just not necessary to ride most horses (especially the faster ones dont need this skill).