OK, I'm stumped and the chapter 4 mana is all but used up. How exactly does one kill those dragons? A magician is lucky to have 65 strength even with belts, rings, and amulets (and that providing he learned the language of the ancients and got the stone tablets to enhance plus prayed a lot) and 35 dexterity with the very high cost to improve and circle four magic appears useless. How does a magician defeat these creatures? Also Angar has been useless since I returned his amulet while Cipher and Rod were killed by Orcs. Not enough money for the greedy Biff. No help can be expected. I went into experiment mode by saving and trying things. No damage from the skeletons, stone creature, lightning, or firestorm (to the swamp dragon). Sword (pirate cutlass) and crossbow are useless. What's the trick? Would kill the undead work? Can someone sell me a rocket launcher? :) I don't know, maybe I should urn into a warg or something - the bites might be more then my cutlass and up close, the fire might not strike (like the seekers).

Edit: OK, here's one for the bug list - if a warg has to swim, the game will crash.
2. warg does some damage but takes more. Besides, I fell into the water and had to reboot. I got lots of transformation scrolls. I'll try a fire dragon next.

3. OK, fire lizard was a bust - but - a summoned demon worked great - I suffered minimal damage and Pyrodor is dead. I'd still like to hear suggestions. Not sure a demon would work against the other dragons and they are quite expensive.

Playing the GOG version so, yeah, NotR. I gave up on my first try early but this one seemed to be tough but moving along until now. Bought two more demons but I think that is all there are. I made the kill the undead rune but wish I didn't. It uses, what, 100 mana and the 75 gold scrolls use 5? Well, two demons, two live dragons and one undead dragon - should be hairy but OK.

Thanks; I already used the demons, though. Guess I'll be facing the undead one kind of naked. Interesting that if one creates skeletons and demons at the same time, they fight each other rather then the enemy.

I must have forgot about the choice in game set up - I'm pretty hard-headed and probably just dismissed the idea of playing Gothic 2 without the add-on and then forgot about it. I like a challenge, though.

The ice ring spell will freeze dragons solid, giving you a good 10 seconds or so to do whatever you want to them. As you've already found demons can dish out some good damage, and Rain of Fire absolutely destroys dragons, provided you have the mana for it or have stocked up several scrolls.

None of the chapter 4 mage spells can hurt dragons in NotR, so you need to use scrolls.
Either summon demon or rain of fire scrolls will do the trick, I remember killing the fire dragon with 1 rain of fire scroll, which is pretty laughable.

You get much better spells in chapter 5 and 6, so you shouldn't have the same problems at the end. The end boss just needs 3 rain of fire spells to go down, IIRC.

This is just one of the more glaring balance issues with mages in the game, nothing to be done about it.

I kind of ignored fire rain - in Gothic 1 it didn't seem as good as the prior circle fire spell (same with chain lightning). I seem to remember a few scrolls available. I assume they work for undead dragons too?

An unrelated question - as my first time thru, I'm kind of experimenting - in circle 4, I made runes for both fire and lightning but I find I use mostly lightning. In Gothic 1, fire was needed for ice golems (it seems to have little affect in 2 and those swamp golems seem all but indestructible to me). Is there any reason to make both? Lightning seems more powerful and also seems to be generally affective.

Also, is there a significant threat to finishing the game if Gorn dies? He went charging off against the lizard men and got killed. Without mana, my crossbow bolts were not very helpful so he was overwhelmed. I panicked and went back to a prior save. That issue can be OK though - it causes one to get creative. For one of the dragons (fire, I think - in the old fortress) I transformed into a lizard and went to the far side of the dragon lair, became human again, summoned a demon, got his heart, then transformed again and got out.

One other thing I found interesting, if the chapter 3 shaman by the old south entrance of the castle outer ring is by himself, one can easily kill him by transforming into a warg, running behind him, then attacking him as a warg. This generally works but the warg dies fast if any Orc warriors help the shaman. He wasn't able to even pull his weapon.

Gorn is just one the allies you can take with you for the final dungeon. You don't need him to be alive, since there are many others.

For spells, lightning alone should be enough. The really useful spells for the end, anyway, are rain of fire, summon demon and destroy undead. Those three are way overpowered compared to the rest of the spells.
Rain of fire works on everything, including the two fire dragons, ironically.

And I do agree that the lack of balance for the mage makes things interesting in combat, but it's still a bit annoying when none of your spells can hurt an enemy, and you need to melee it.
Kind of misses the point of playing a mage, really.

It really is frustrating. especially when at level 35 and little does harm.