Strength: This affects how much weight you can carry, how much damage you deal in melee combat, and how fast some combat skills go up. Not useful for Magicians, since we get Dimensional Pockets/Holes and shouldn't be meleeing much after the mid-teens.

Stamina: Affects how many hit points and stamina points you have, and how long you can hold your breath. Useful after you've maxed out Intelligence.

Agility: Affects how often you're hit in combat, how much damage you take when you are hit, and how quickly you learn some defensive skills. About the same usefulness as Stamina.

Dexterity: Affects how quickly you learn weapon skills, and how often any special effects on your weapon go off. Also, for non-magicians, affects ranged weapon damage and how quickly rogue skills are learned. Not useful for us.

Wisdom: Might have an effect on how well you resist mental spells (charm, etc.), and might have a slight effect on skill success. The mana stat for Priest classes. Don't bother raising this.

Intelligence: Affects how much mana you have, as well as how often your skill levels rise, and your chance of fizzling a spell. The number one statistic for Magicians. Raise this as much as you can, until it reaches 200 (at which point the benefits drop off dramatically).

Charisma: Affects the prices you receive in shops, but the effect is pretty minimal. Worry about this after Intelligence, Stamina, and Agility, but before Strength, Dexterity, or Wisdom.

This list doesn't include craft skills, hand to hand, swimming, sense heading, or alcohol tolerance, which are available to all classes. In short, craft skills can be handy for getting money, hand to hand is useless, swimming is useful, sense heading is invaluable, and alcohol tolerance is useless, but a lot of fun.

Offense, Defense: These are combat skills that will go up naturally with melee combat. They're not too useful beyond the early levels, so don't worry about them. Max: Level*5 (Absolute Max: 140)

Piercing, One Hand Blunt, Two Hand Blunt: Combat skills for wielding weapons. You'll probably want to choose one of these and focus on them at the lower levels, where you can actually do damage to an opponent without getting squashed in melee. We can summon piercing and 2 hand blunt weapons, so that might tip the scales a bit in their favor. Ultimately, it won't matter, because at higher levels you either won't hold any weapons in favor of items like the Black Tome with Silver Runes, or will hold weapons just for the stat bonuses (like the sacrificial dagger). Max: (Level + 1)*3 (Absolute Max: 110)

Throwing: Not too useful, but fun. Since we can summon throwing daggers, it's much less of a money sink for us than for other classes. And it never hurts to be able to do a bit of damage from a distance once you're out of mana. Max: (Level + 1)*3 (Absolute Max: 75)

Bind Wound: Very useful. We can summon our own bandages, instead of dropping 5 silver each for them like other classes. Bandaging doesn't take the place of a cleric, but it lets you survive being poisoned, conserve healer mana, and reduce downtime. Take the time to practice this. You'll likely get enough training just through normal use, but if you feel the need, you can blast yourself down to a sliver of life and bandage yourself back up (and practice your casting skills as well). Max: (Level + 1)*5 (Absolute Max: 100)

Abjuration:Used by our personal shields, personal armor, and fire shield line of spells. Probably won't need to practice it, but if you do feel the need, you can memorize Minor Shielding and cast away. Max: (Level + 1)*5 (Absolute Max: 235)

Alteration: One of our less used schools of magic. Used primarily by Gate, Bind, and Burnout. Since there are no cheap spells to practice this with, it might be worth throwing a few training points into, just to avoid fizzling gates and binds all the time. Max: (Level + 1)*5 (Absolute Max: 235)

Conjuration: Our biggest school. Our summons use it, our pets use it, and some of our direct damage uses it. Don't worry about practicing this, you'll get more than enough practice just from summoning food and water at low levels. Max: (Level + 1)*5 (Absolute Max: 235)

Evocation: Our second biggest school. Most of our direct damage, our bolts, and our area effect spells use it. Will get plenty of practice, except at levels where our primary DD is conjuratoin based (8, 24, 44), but it will catch up soon enough once you reach the next circle. Max: (Level + 1)*5

Divination: Used by a handful of miscellanious spells, like invisibility. Might be worth casting a full mana bar worth of Sense Summoned every once and a while. Max: (Level + 1)*5 (Absolute Max: 235)

Channeling: Affects how often we regain our casting when inturrupted. Will go up plenty fast, since it has a chance with every spell cast. Contrary to popular belief, Dexterity does not affect our chance to recover concentration. Max: (Level + 1)*5 (Absolute Max: 200)

Meditate: At 4th level you will love this skill, by 10th level you will be sick of staring at your spellbook. Will go up fine on its own, you will get more than enough practice. Max: (Level + 1)*5 (Absolute Max: 252)

Research: A real pain, but necessary. You can't train it very far (only 1 point at level 16), but go back each level and put as many points as you can into it, since it's very difficult to find the components to practice it, even with the practice research quest. Max: (Level - 15)*5 (Absolute Max: 200)

Specialization: There are actually 5 specialization skills, one for each school of magic. Your specialization skill can reduce your chance of fizzling, and reduce mana cost of spells for the appropriate school if it successfully checks. It does not, contrary to popular belief, reduce casting time. These should train about as well as the same magic school (ie, easily for conjuration and evocation, poorly for alteration). Keep in mind that only one of the five schools can go above 50, and it can't do that until you've put one practice point into each of them to get them started. You probably want Conjuration or Evocation to be the school that goes above 50. Max: (Level + 1)*5 (Absolute Max: 200 or 50)

Dodge: By the time you get this, you shouldn't be in melee very much. Still, it's nice to have an extra chance to avoid damage and spell interruptions. Probably worth dropping a few practice points into, since hopefully you won't be getting swung at enough for it to go up quickly on its own. Max: (Level + 1)*3 (Absolute Max: 75)