Haven't been real successful ending certain spells mainly transformations but also wondering souls or whatever it is called when your spirit wonders about undetected. I believed the older versions used "F8" to end spells but this doesn't seem to work. How to do this?

Also, I prefer not to use walkthroughs as they give away too much info so I'm hoping for a little insight. I have not raised my hashashim score above 11 so am denied entry into Ishtar. Is this game ending/do I have to basically kill everyone to get some essential item or is it just a matter of not getting as many XPs as I could have gotten?

I haven't seen any way to end spells, in the manual or on the 'net. You miss out on XP through the game, since various quests only apply to one 'side' or the other. You can still pick up some of the XP (slaying beasties involved in a particular quest, for example) on your travels.

The situation isn't game ending. You can raise your score if you really want to get into the city, even if you're not going to support that particular God. Do sufficient quests for the Hashashim, and the gates will open.

AFAIK, there's one master skill that can only be learned is Ishtar. Depends if you want to use it or not ☺

Otherwise, let 'er rip and split those suckers in twain.

Edit : It's possible to get into Ishtar by climbing the mountains behind the city and jumping in, though you'll get attacked as soon as a Hashashim sees you.

Regarding Ishtar, all three endings require you to kill Zuben. This basically means you'll be going to war with all of Ishtar regardless of what you do. The main thing to be careful of is if you launch a frontal assault on Ishtar all of the Hashishim remaining will run away once you killed enough of them. If Zuben is among those that run off you'll be stuck. If you don't have peaceful access to Ishtar the best way to approach the situation is to drop down from the cliffs behind Ishtar which puts you right next to Zuben's palace- from there you can easily take him out first, then either finish off the rest of the Hashishim until they run off, or just teleport away.

Wouldn't be surprised if it was fixed in one of the patches (either official or community). I played through the game not too long after release, when there were still a fair number of issues. Definitely good news if the issue has been fixed.

* Spoilers for new players * Yep, checked the readme - it was fixed in CP 1.70

- The following NPCs will now be kept in the game as long as they have quest items in their inventory: Bengerd, Fabio, Markus, Masil, Rakus, King Rhobar, Treslott, Urkrass, Zuben, and the Demon of Gotha.

Yeah, found that out but I landed on the far end of the town from the palace. Used wandering souls to get intel. Although I could teleport out, I instead experimented. They attacked several beasts but for some reason left my bloodfly alone. However, I am now a bloodfly for life, apparently. If there is no way to turn off the spells, transformations are utterly useless. That really sucks, if true.

PS - any community patch modders here? A good thing to look at fixing is the apparent disability of the AI to target you at height. For instance, I picked off an entire ork camp from a cliff top while they kept shooting arrows and fireballs into the cliff bottom even though I was in line of sight.

PS - I did have a save so long ago teleported out.

Orcs and Hashashim will attack if you transform into a 'dangerous animal', according to the CP readme. Have you tried the enter key ?

I think so (tried the enter key). I'll try again to be sure. As for animal attacks, in the prior games, they didn't attack wolves or wargs (which I considered orc dogs) but zapped bloodflies. Seems opposite for some reason in III.

I wonder if orcs still run from - ek, having a mind fart - those cave beasts? Shadowbeasts (it came to me :) ) It was fun to transform into one and chase a terrified shaman down the road.

I got caught up in the game and forgot to check if <enter> works. If this question is marked as answered by you, that'll mean success.

EDIT: Well, I guess I really didn't try <enter> because it works! Thanks.