Normally I don't do this, but on my latest playthrough, I've done the save-reload thing with booksheves as well, and basically maxed out like half of my Wizard's skills without spending a skill point.
The catacombs were made easier for me because I found 3 "Elemental Hail" spellbooks in Aleroth.
Honestly though, it's so tedious to do that that I'm not going to do it again. You get like one spellbook per 30 looks at the bookshelves, and duplicates make it so much worse.
I do save/reload for some unique items because good drops are so very hard to find. Example: I wore the same 2 Intelligence/20 Mana leather armor from George's shop all the way to the end of Iona's dungeon because I hadn't found anything better. Basically I want 5 charm slots and 60 Health/60 Mana on all my final gear, if I get that, I'm happy.
I also unpleasantly discovered that even if you identify an item, its stats are not fixed until it is in your inventory, so if you find item X with good stats and save before putting it into your inventory, when you load that save, your item re-rolls.
