For things like skill learning, mental saves, spell saves and any other roll tied to intelligence is it worth the effort trying to max out at 20 or 21? Is the bonus that much better than sticking at 18 just for the 2 practices to learn a skill?

Since so many things are affected by INT there is no good reason not to max it out as early as possible.

Spells can be INT checked to work

Everything Masters quicker, Some classes like Invokers shouldn't even ask. All skills have more practice % per point of INT

Saves vs some spells or songs require INT

Help files indicate more ;)'

It's the opportunity cost of either using the trains for intelligence or not, or dedicating a gear slot to boosting intelligence or something else more needed.

Now, I get as a mage you'll definitely want to because mana gains are directly related to intelligence and every little bit extra helps.

The rest that intelligence does is the purpose of my question.

It's very subjective, I know, but I personally don't feel much difference between the learning rates of an 18 int character and a 20 or 21 int character.

As for the saves, I get there are good bonuses for 22+ intelligence characters. But, for all I know, the difference between 18 and 21 intelligence might only be a 2% difference for svs or svm.

If that were the case, I'd probably be better off using those 3 extra trains for hps or using that gear slot to actually boost my saves, or something I find more important.

You get +1 intelligence at middle-age. So it might be worth practicing it only to (max-1) if you think you'll live that long. It's not hard to come up with +1 intelligence from gear, especially if you're a mage given mage gear is more likely to have +int.

The case for only practicing to (max-1) is stronger for strength and wisdom, since you get +1 in each of those when you transition from young to "Mature".

But... if I’m playing a melee class sometimes finding a piece of +int gear can be a challenge if I also want to max out strength, dex, damroll. Not always but mostly as gear with +int tends not to be as useful for the melee classes.

Even those eyeglasses that our Russian friend is talking about can be a waste of a slot for melee classes. I’d rather rock one of those +str masks.

I notice a big difference between 17 and 21 when it comes to spamming up spells and a slight difference when it comes to learning passive abilities such as parry/dodge/weapons. NFC whether that's all in my head or actually in the code.

Anecdotally, I agree with the above. I noticed skill gains much faster on my halfie assassin with 21 int than I ever did with my storm giant characters, who rock only a 17. It’s also important for enemy skills and spells that use contested intelligence, as far as I can tell, such as fighting an stsf warrior, but don’t take that as absolute, because I’m not 100% certain that that is correct.

"Worth the effort" is totally arbitrary.

Why even bother to wear those glasses if the benefit is negligible? Which is what I was asking.

Saying that "worth the effort" is arbitrary. You should define it if you want to have a clear answer. For a skillspam freak like me, every inch of int matters. Matrik - he doesn't even know how to know what int he has.

So once again, "worth the effort" is arbitrary.