I like the herb system in this game; everything provides a permanent boost, and finding herbs is a nice reward for exploring and paying attention.

The addition of the herb skill, however, means the player is rewarded for waiting to pick herbs until the herb skill is leveled up, to maximize the benefit. I kinda wish that weren't so. :) If I were to play through again, I'd be sorely tempted to do just that. (Reminds me a little of Gothic 1, where you wanted to max out your Strength/Dexterity before taking your permanent potions.)

In that vein, though, I like how skill books in this game are an immediate reward; there's no reason to wait to use them.

Maybe in a sequel the herb skill could be changed to a foraging skill, that increases the food gathered from food plants?

Another odd reward is for buying all the cheap Prophet rings, amulets, and cloaks you can at the beginning of the game. The versions that come out on later item bases (Diamond rings versus Opal, for instance) are more expensive, but provide no extra benefit: the Prophet bonus is still 5% to experience.

If it went up by say, 1%, per item level, that would be more fun.

I waited till lvl 30 to collect my herbs... And while it was realy rewarding, it turned herb gathering to a tedious hours-long backtracking instead of a continuous side activity. I might totally skip herbs in another playthrough just to avoid that, I'm sure we can play without it (at Veteran at least). Sadly, it's so cheap that it wouldn't even help my Gaulen - a more expensive skill would at least allow an herb-less game to be a viable choice.

The weirdest "reward" for me was the way Curses and Diseases work. I didn't pay to remove them so I got huge free stat bonuses at lvl 24 and 35. Suddenly, +30 resistance to everybody ! That's a strange reward but maybe I'm too stingy and shoud've paid to have them removed.

I didn't mind the lack of high level XP bonus items actually. Having to possibility to equip several +20% XP items would be very hard to balance. I think it's better that way : +XP items are low level and are to be replaced by items with good stats later on (I didn't feel the need to have +5% XP from the point I could have a +3 stats on a "King" item, and it makes more sense that way). It's just frustrating when you have to hope for the marchant to have something nice to sell to you...