. . . my general approach is to get mastery as quickly as possible for my characters' core skills, expert for the peripherals including learning, and then boost learning so as to get the peripherals up. The core skills for me in an ACSS party are Water for one sorcerer, Air for the other, Body for the cleric, Disarm for the archer, and Bow and a primary weapon skill for all. Considering that the Armour skills all require 10 for mastery in this game, I usually content myself with getting my characters up to expert quickly, and raising them to mastery later. Merchant IMO is not a core skill, but it is one of the most important of the peripherals for one character, and you save a lot of money by getting the basic skill quickly for all your charactersI take a scholar and an instructor, so that I get a fair XP bonus, but I never have to put any points into identify and I don't have to swap things around to identify them. I have to get rid of the first pair to take the carpenter and stonemason into my party to complete the 1st cleric promotion, but I always replace them as soon as the temple is repaired — certainly before I go to get credit for the quest.
That seems to work for me.
