Leveling Question

[another pirate]

Hello maties! Arr.

Now that I got that out of the way. I need some help to understand how you level in this game.

From what I have read, it looks like you get 25 skill points per skill group to customize your pirate. When I start a new pirate, I have 0 skill points available on cutlass and I have 1 dot in hack and in slash.

So, my questions are:
1) If I click on a new skill that becomes available to me, does that use up a skill point?

My guess is that it will...

2) If it does, then if I count the dots on cutlass after I use all my skill points, would I then have 27 dots? 25 for skills I added/upgraded plus the 2 I got for the starter skills at lvl 1?

I think it is important to understand how the skill points come into play before I start taking skills. If taking a new skill does not use a point, then I guess I would take them all. If it does, then I might skip some so I can have more points to upgrade the ones I choose.

Thanks for the help.