[Zing]

I have tested and decided that Ysharros' strategy is definitely the best (at least through my current level 12). I wanted to see how much of an impact the skills actually had. I figured I have to grind anyway so I took turns maxing out the station skill, the utility skill and the tool skill. It took two levels worth of grinding to switch them all around three times.

The uility and the station skills definitely net you the biggest bang for your buck. The tool skill is alright but (at least at my level 12) all tool skills that raise quality also raise progress. So you end up having to use the utility skill anyway because you can only get at most 1/4 a bar of quality from tool skills. If you max the utility skill you can get all your quality with utility skills and just blow through the tool section with the cheap action that only nets progress.

What I have found is that there is a balance you can reach by experimenting with the number of times you have to click each action. It's hard to explain but since "extra" progress doesn't carry over into new sections it makes sense to have your skills just high enough to utilize ALL the progress you create. So right now I have my station skills at 100%, utility at around 80% and tools at around 50%. This balance makes it so it takes 3 actions to fill up my utility progress and 4 actions to fill up my tools progress. I found that if I min/max my tools and utility it still ends up taking 3 actions to fill up my utility but 5 to fill up my tools. So there is balance you can only find by experimenting. I'm sure the balance changes as you level but if you find that you are typically wasting a whole action to fill up 2% of your bar at the end of some step, it's probably a good idea to bump up the skill governing that step so you fill up the bar without that extra click.

Since I plan on leaving the tool skill low and like Ysharros said the tool skill governs most complication actions, I plan on putting most of my attribute points in problem solving. I figure a high problem solving attribute and good +tools will make up for a low tool skill.

Speaking of attributes though, how does everyone plan on distributing their points and why?