How can I maximize my skill points gained in Kingdoms of Amalur?

Solution 1:

First of all, yes, your gear can have skill bonuses on it.

skill bonus gloves

To max out every skill, 90 skill points would be needed.

Every race gets 4 points worth of skills.
By level 40, you'll have earned 40 skill points from leveling.
The highest tier Might-Finesse-Magic destiny gives you +3 to every skill (for effectively 27 skill points).
A trainer will only train you once, and only if your current skill level falls in the range they can train. However, this isn't a big problem because...
You can use a Fateweaver to reset your skill points. This would allow you to get a skill to whatever range it needs to be to use a given trainer. And for the record, resetting your skill points doesn't blow away any training bumps you've purchased.

So, the points from leveling, race, and destiny give you 71 of the 90 skill points you'd need to max everything out, which leaves 19 skill points you'd have to come up with from trainers.

Ignoring skill bonus gear for the moment, that leaves the question... are there 19 different trainers in the game? Yes, there are. In fact, it looks like there are 4 for each skill.

Trainer Locations

Alchemy

(0 to 3) Lyceum Grove in City of Ysa

(0 to 3) Molly Janick in Blue Bear Tavern in Emaire (western Forsaken Plain)

(4 to 6) Scholia Arcana academy in Rathir

(7 to 9) Conni in Seawatch; complete the mission to rebuild Seawatch Castle.

Blacksmithing

(0 to 3) Shieldring Keep

(0 to 3) United Merchants Delegation in City of Ysa

(4 to 6) Efyr Dynnwel at Ironfast Keep in Menetyre; you need to complete A Master's Touch

(7 to 9) Ragnar Senn in Mel Senshir

Detect Hidden

(0 to 3) Gorhart Inn

(0 to 3) Embassy Hall in City of Ysa

(4 to 6) Sun Camp in Detyre; you may locate the trainer there or in the nearby town of Whitestone (Thirsty Wench Tavern), depending on your choices for the Travelers faction missions

(7 to 9) Ney Csalan in Mel Senshir

Dispelling

(0 to 3) Eric Porthe at the Adessa Walls; he may be found in the streets of Adessa or in the Domus Politica

(0 to 3) Trellis in the City of Ysa

(4 to 6) Scholia Arcana academy in Rathir

(7 to 9) Dionaeach in House of Sorrows; requires completion of House of Sorrows entrance trial.

Lockpicking

(0 to 3) Throvald Ulfsson in southeastern Lorca-Rane

(0 to 3) Tefroy Tarion in Tirin's Rest in Galafor; events in Lock and Key must be completed

(4 to 6) Hospitalis Quarters in Adessa Walls

(7 to 9) Elya Madmyr in Caeled Coast, west of Seawatch

Mercantile

(0 to 3) Star Camp in Dalentarth

(0 to 3) Anton Demian in northern Alserund

(4 to 6) Moon Camp in the Plains of Erathell

(7 to 9) Enion Gaius in Mel Senshir

Persuasion

(0 to 3) Ellova in the House of Ballads

(0 to 3) Rathir, Upper City

(4 to 6) Templar Montainel at the Livrarium in Adessa's Isles

(7 to 9) Caradas Hyne in Mel Senshir

Sagecraft

(0 to 3) Viscount Setter the Allseer City of Ysa; gardens or Trellis

(0 to 3) Delving Hall in the City of Ysa

(4 to 6) Scholia Arcana academy in Rathir

(7 to 9) Liordran at Balor's Crossing in The Keening

Stealth

(0 to 3) Star Camp in Dalentarth

(0 to 3) Moon Camp in Plains of Erathell

(4 to 6) Hospitalis Quarters in Adessa Walls

(7 to 9) Tircnerani in Dark Glow Caverns, south of Ariad Camp in Shadow Pass

(Source)

Also, there is one skill book for each skill. Or rather, even if you can find more than one, you can benefit from at most one skill book per skill. There appear to be some fixed locations they can appear in... whether or not they can sometimes appear randomly in other locations seems to be up for debate. Don't worry about reading every single book you find just in case it is a skill book... they're very obviously named as "Skill Book (whatever)". Here is a partial list of their locations... I know for a fact it's incomplete because they only list one Detect Hidden book, but I found at least two while playing:

Book Locations

Alchemy

Plains of Erathell, behind a secret door near Urul Tusk.

Blacksmithing

Hall of Firstsworn Forge room in chest.

Detect Hidden

Quest award for the Traveler's faction mission Going Rogue or a later quest in this line. (This book and the Stealth book appear to be randomly flipped between two quests in the line. For me, it was my first book reward with them.)

Dispelling

Ballads Library

Lockpicking

In a chest in the Orieator's Tomb in Northern Forsaken Plain

Mercantile

On a bookshelf in the house you get if you finish the Motus Mining Outpost questlines, if you fully upgrade your house.

Persuasion

Obtained via the Quest Paper Trail in Adessa

Sagecraft

In the upper left hand corner of Glendara section of Dalentarth, its hidden in the well near St. Hadwyn's Mission

Stealth

Quest reward for the Traveler's faction mission Going Rogue or a later quest in this line. (This book and the Detect Hidden book appear to be randomly flipped between two quests in the line.)

(Source)

Skill Book - Dispelling

One other thing I've discovered is that at the lower levels, when skill points are still tight, you can pretty much ignore the crafting skills (Blacksmithing, Alchemy, Sagecraft) until you actually want to craft the higher level items. When you're ready to craft some awesome gear, drop the money at the Fateweaver on a respec, dump your points into the crafting skills, and do all your crafting at once. Make those potions you want. Combine your shards into higher level shards. Crank out your epic gems. Build yourself some fancy swords. Then respec again to move your points back to where they were. Do this at the same time you're respeccing so you can hit the trainers you missed, and you kill two birds with one stone. It's true that you will miss out on better herb & shard drop rates if you ignore Alchemy and Sagecraft during normal adventuring, but I think putting those points in Detect Hidden or Mercantile more than makes up for it. There's only so many shards or potion components that you really need. And with high Mercantile, you've got plenty of gold to buy whatever you'd like.

Lastly, note that the bonuses you get from the Might-Finesse-Magic destinies, skill boosting gear, and skill boosting potions can all raise you beyond your normal maximum for your level, giving you early access to some of the higher level skill features. For instance, you can get the ability to craft epic gems (which requires rank 8 of Sagecraft) prior to level 16, which is when it normally unlocks, by buying it up to level 7 and then using one the above methods to give you a +1. For example, in the screenshot below I've got +1 to all skills due to the Tier 3 Might-Finesse-Magic destiny. You can see my bonus skill points as the dark green shaded boxes.

Bonus skill points on the skill tree

The important takeaway from this is that so long as you're willing to throw a little gold at the problem (which you're going to need to afford all this training in the first place!), you don't need to stress out about exactly how and when to spend your skill points so that you can maximize trainer usage. The Fateweaver respec lets you get around the problem of trying to fall in the exact range of a skill for a given trainer. Just make a note of trainers you couldn't use, and once the list gets long or you otherwise have a reason to respec, go back and hit them all. If keeping a list is too much work for you, on your World Map, you can also hover over the names of the places you've been to, and it will tell you if there is a trainer there.

Solution 2:

It is possible to max out your character, and you don't even need to be an universalist (the name for the top tier of "jack of all trades", which gives you +3 in everything). Just done it last night.

Let's see:

there are 9 usable skill books on the game (9 skill points);
there are 4 trainers for each skill in the main game (4x9 = 36 skill points);
you start with 4 skill points (4 skill points);
when you reach the level cap, you have 40 points to distribute (40 skill points).

Adding it all, you get 89 points. You need 90 points to level up everything.

Yes, I know Math: there's a missing point! Install the Legend of Dead Kel DLC, and do the Gravehal keep quests. When the "Diplomacy" quest is available, you'll talk to Myfa Rhonwen and send her on diplomatic missions. When you make an alliance with Fort Olghorn, they'll send you a Master Mercantile trainer! So there's your missing point. I was just missing a Mercantile skill point, so I'm not sure if that influenced the trainer that appeared on my keep.

You'll have to be careful with one thing though: every race gets a +2 on a specific skill. You mustn't use the skill book for that skill until AFTER you train with the 2 BASIC trainers for that skill, since unbinding your fate doesn't reset the skill points you get either by reading books or training. If you read the book, you'll be +3 on that skill. Train with a basic trainer, you'll be +4. At this moment it will be impossible to train with the other basic trainer, because it can only train up to level 4.

Hope it didn't get too confusing. Cheers.

EDIT: also, if you really want to get the whole extra 86 points, save found skill books for later use and DO NOT train with advanced or master trainers before doing it with the basic trainers, or you'll probably miss the chance to do so after unbinding your fate (as I've said, skill points gained by training and reading books won't reset). A whole lot of basic trainers are very far from the beginning of the game, so I had already distributed a sh*tload of levelling up skill points before getting there and had to unbind my fate a couple of times.

Solution 3:

I'm not sure ALL the skill books are randomized, I've read in many places about that Sagecraft book in the same well (and I found it too). That would mean there is a finite number, and they are in specific places.

Also to notice, you can temporarily increase skills with potions. So you could theoretically have 7 blacksmith and use a +3 potion (I think that's the biggest you can get, maybe +4) and then have the maxed skill for the small time you're crafting. Same as in Skyrim, I suppose.