First, go thru every house and get everything encluding the books. Read and sell them ASAP. You MUST have read certain books before you do certain quests. The quest note will say what prerequisite knowledge is needed before you proceed. You must have knowledge about the monster in your journal before you can successfully complete the quest. The books also provide valuable knowledge of the alchemical ingredients you can harvest from those monsters. These ingredients are usually very important for special potions or other quests.Money IS an issue in the game. The designers wre kind of stingy. Books are expensive. So buy the right book when you need them. Later, when you are laoded you can buy all the books you want, and you should get as many of the books that aren't brown as you can, ready them, and sell them right back. Always keep books you find to sell them back to the Antiquarians in the game.As an example: Read a book about plants so that you can harvest them for potion making when you mediatate and to sell the ingredients. So let's talk about money, ever heard of dice?? Hear's my semi-cheat tip. Find someone to play dice poker with (follow the process from Zoltan). Save your game before you play someone. bet the highest levels. Play until you win, and save when you are done (if you lose, restart from the save and play until you win). Play with everyone you can. Eventually, thye run out money with a couple exceptions. This will help you an your way.Money 2: Picking up weapons for sale. This takes a lot of time, but it must be done. You have to pick up weapons and sell them. if you can't sell them, becasue it's night time, for instance, take them to the innkeeper for storage until you can. Find the weapon values in the game guide and always make sure you keep the most expensive weapons. By the way, the torch is the most expensive overrated thing in the game. Always keep a torch rather than a dagger. Other goodies are illegal swords, most holy swords, steel axes and dwarven axes and hammers.Bottom line, grasshopper: You've got to have books, they are expensive. You have to have money for books. The most important thing to know is to pace this buying with lucrative quests, keeping in mind you must build you warchest of cash to upgrade you armor $5000.00 and swords $1600.00+ each.
Oh, and our wiki also has some info on where to find some sources of information of monsters and herbs if you don't mind being spoiled