How many combat/craft/"passive" skills would an average player take to level 100+?

A recent post by Citan got me thinking about how many skills will an average player "max" or take beyond 80? 90? 100? Most of us won't be able to be masters of everything forever and we will need to start to narrow our skills at some point and specialize because of ability/recipe costs and inventory.

I'm curious what is a reasonable number of skills to take to 50? I probably have 10+ level 50 combat skills. Level 60 I have fewer, maybe 10 combat skills and 10 crafts, all of the "passive" skills like first aid, armor patching, butchering, fishing, skinning... etc. At level 70 I have 3 combat skills, and maybe 2-3, I can't remember, craft skills, and still all of the "passive" skills.


So at 80 should I pick 2 combat skills? and 2 crafting then stick with those until 100? Or am I getting too focused too soon?

Most games have hard restrictions, Project Gorgon has an economic restriction (at the moment), which means as long as you're aggressively playing the game and selling everything, eventually you'll be able to have everything maxed, so arbitrarily defining a point for players to strive for at the moment seems kind of pointless, as it'll vary largely depending on playtime and play-style.

A lot of games get around this by having progression restricted to certain daily events (be it experience limits, reputation gains, or some sort of earn-able/replenishing currency) so players have a predefined limited of what they can achieve in any given day; Project Gorgon rarely does this.

Unfortunately, when skills give bonuses (such as power from alchemy, or health from holistic wellness), any min-max minded player is going to want to focus their attention on those skills above all others, so eventually I'd expect Alchemy, Fishing, and the like, to become core skills to all characters, whereas things like Cheesemaking, Poetry, etc. will become skills that only those with a lot of play time will strive to unlock.

So basically, level up the core skills that give bonuses, then level the rest at your leisure - that's my sort of opinion on it. There'll always be someone who's leveling everything, and will always want a chance to use those niche skills. I'd still prefer some sort of restriction, at least in terms of how quickly you can level up everything, so players don't burnout.

Anyway, that's only for crafting. As for combat skills, I figure if you're leveling skills properly (i.e. not using Animal Handling or some other cheese-method of leveling a skill, such as using high level armour), you'll know by 50 if it's a skill you want to invest in. From there, it's a matter of prioritising skills you like the most, and leveling them up first, and revisiting the others whenever you're bored.

Unless there's a fairly change in design philosophy, I doubt you'll ever need to pick a certain number of skills to focus on exclusively.

I also have only 3 combat skillsets unlocked to 70 because of cash limitations though. I don't have the uninterrupted time or the stamina to make so much cash. My guess is, going further, cash is going to be the gate for combat skillsets.

I am curious about what Citan considers specialization too. I.e. in my books cooking is not a special skill, sushi and ice snacks are. Or sub-branches of blacksmithing, a player levels blacksmithing but could specialize in making wolf armor, weapons or jewels. I'm guessing again, maybe other crafts will have this type of specialization-carpentry now is making materials (wood chips, dowels etc), furniture, containers and weapons, maybe those will become separate trades? It's hard to tell for now since some of the craftskills are in their infancy still (lvl 50 will be considered newbie level when the game is finished).