does this mean the old research is now dead and all these runes and words etc. I have stockpiled are worthless, or is this in addition to the old research path?
There is a quill for each class as well as a quill for the 3 archetypes of spell casters in the case where a spell is received at the same level by different classes in the same archetype (eg. shield of maelin lvl 64 for all int casters): Arcane = int casters Divine = priests (wis) Knight = hybrids
I'm pretty sure the new research will not make obsolete the old. I thought the new research only made spells that weren't able to be researched before, if that's not true those specific words/pages may not be needed now. But the old research is still the only way to get above 200 research as the lowest triv on the new recipes is 231 iirc.