What is their purpose?

[Uriah Heep]

Someone enlighten me on these two skills please.

Item ID...Does it offer any bonus to smithing tailoring imbuing, etc? Does it have any value whatsoever?

Taste ID...Does it offer any bonus to cooking, alchemy, poisoning, etc? Does it have any value whatsoever?

If the answer to the above is NO, then I calmly ask...

Why are we still watering down the drop pool of SoTs and SoAs with these useless skills?
Anyone have a reasonable explanation? If they serve no purpose, pull them out of the drop list!

There's quite a few things like this that need cleaned up before we get too involved in adding yet more content and more items and more numbers and stats....

 

[Xalan Dementia]

item ID is mainly only used now to tell you what you will get when unraveling magic items. Taste ID and forensics are still completely useless. Either change/update the skills or just drop them.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

While Taste ID is indeed quite useless, Forensic Eval is very useful if you care to raise Honesty "quickly."

 

[Xalan Dementia]

oh ya, forgot about humility.