The 4th chapter seems to give Mages the short end of the stick. While Paladins get a bunch of Orc warchiefs to kill and Mercenaries get hoards of Lizardmen and the Dragon Eggs they guard, Mages just get a ‘Find the Possessed’ quest which results in an amulet that protects against stifling. It’s a bit useful, sure, but the Dragon Eggs or combat XP would have been better. All classes get a ton of new spawns in the add-on world (Dragon Snappers, Trolls, Skeletons) and Valley of Mines (Orcs, Dragon Snappers) which combined with the Dragons equals quite a bit of XP to be gained.
Chapter 5 once again seems to give Mages the shaft. Here Paladins and Mercenaries get their best armor while Mages get a potion that gives +5 Str & Dex. I could understand Mage armor having the lowest Weapon/Arrow/Dragon resistances… but it also has the lowest Magic resistance. Respawn-wise there’s only a relative handful of new Seekers wandering the main area, so the XP gained here is rather paltry. My naked stats at the end of this chapter looked like this.
The final chapter takes place in a new area infested with Orcs, Lizardmen, Undead, Seekers, and even a couple Dragons. 4/5-on-one battles here are rather common so if you have access to Fire Rain or Wave of Ice Runes/Scrolls now’s the time to use them. Make sure to save two Wave of Ice castings for the Dragons though. Lots of XP and stat-boosting potions here.
In the end there only really ended up being 3 notably useful spells: Ice Block (incapacitates most things), Ice Wave (incapacitates multiple things at once, even Dragons), and Fire Rain (kills everything around you). There’s no point in spending LP on Runes for any other spells when scrolls will suffice.
I kind of want to try a replay with a Dex-focused Mercenary now, but I think I may wait a bit and instead go right into Gothic 3. I’m a bit worried that there don’t seem to be any comprehensive walkthroughs for it, but unlike with this game it’s supposedly extremely difficult to cripple your character in the 3rd game with unoptimized LP usage… so maybe I’ll be okay doing a ‘blind’ playthrough.