You can wake up a sleeping party member with an adjacent one.

Later during the game lower level spells become completely useless because of the low damage. Once I have reached demons I only used Lightning / Thunder Storm and Frostball. I'm now one level away from Comet Shower.

You can see how much gold and XP the quests give by looking at the active missions in the game log (after you accept the quests from the city trainers)

It's not so much the quest reward, but rather the XP and gold obtained while doing the quest. Wasps are especially annoying because they don't give any money.

What difficulty are you playing on? Have you had any issues with running out of PP? Have you had any serious issues with enemy resistances?

Incidentally, the math favors damage over time effects. For instance, Lightning averages 90 damage (+ stun) for 40 PP. Icy Shards, however, averages 42 damage + 13 per tick, which is 94 after 4 ticks, which happens surprisingly quickly. This becomes even more apparent when enemies have more HP.

By the way, an Arcane Soldier with a strong claymore can do really nice amounts of fire damage and burning with level 1 Flame Strike, and for fire resistant enemies, can use level 1 Icy Strike for good damage.

I recently encountered some fire weak enemies that can't dodge your attack, and Flame Strike was killing them rather quickly. If I were playing on a harder difficulty, they wouldn't have lasted much longer, because the increased HP would allow me to inflect even more burning damage, causing that last bit of HP to burn away even faster.

I'm playing on hardcore. The mage can learn a spell that allows him to drain PP during battle from enemies with remaining PP and refill his own, so it is not needed to use potions very often.

So far I have not meet enemies highly resistant to both electrical and cold damage. Anyway some may be resistant to bleed or wound, so your calculation is correct only if the spell does the full amount of bleed, but as you may have noticed this amount may be reduced for some though monsters.

How do you propose dealing with the 320 PP cost of maxed out Comets Shower? Can you even cast that spell in the first place?

By the way, did you go the Knowledge of Herbs/delay gathering route? Also, did you level up Learning as soon as possible?

Thing is, if the monster resists bleed, I can just use fire instead, which also does damage over time. Flames ends up being the most efficient mage spell (remember that it is a while before you actually learn the PP drain spell) while Fireball (and later Inferno) can be used if you need more damage.

Then again, my Arcane Soldier is doing well with Flame Strike, and she also has Icy Strike. Both skills need only a good weapon (like a claymore) to be effective; no need to level up the skill at all.

By the way, which is more effective against stronger enemies: Freeze or Stun?

At level 39 my mage has about 250-260 PP from memory (I don't have the game on this computer) - but I maxed meditation. Are you sure Comet Shower at Lvl 5 costs 320 PP? I remember that at Lvl 1 is only 70 PP. Anyway you don't need to max all spells, for example I stopped upgrading frostball at level 3, and a lot of cleric spells I only upgraded to level 2 or 3.

No, I didn't delayed gathering herbs until I maxed the skill, I picked them up as soon as I found them. Also I leveled up Learning, but not on every level. The same with main weapon skill - except for fighter, I didn't level it up each level. In general, I didn't follow the min-max route for the skills recommended by powergamers.

About freeze or stun it depends on monster resistances (you can check the bestiary that you can download as pdf), but overall both worked well for me.

I think you are confusing Meteor Shower with Comets Shower. Meteor Shower is learned at level 40 and initially costs 70. Comets Shower is learned at level 50 and initially costs 160. Note that, for almost every 5 level skill, the level 5 version costs double and has triple power.

Did you ever have serious accuracy issues with characters with non-maxed weapon skills?

Also, do you remember when your cleric learned Mass Heal? Was it level 28 or level 38?

What is your party composition anyway?

Are you using the Talisman DLC? If so, what are you using the Talisman for?

There are two issues with the "check the bestiary advice":
1. It is only included with the Deluxe Edition
2. It is missing some enemies, such as the witches

You are right, I was confusing them.

No. But I expect I will have them maxed by level 50 for Gaulen and my front line thief.

It was certainly not level 38 so I guess it's 28. I took one or two levels of Mass Heal but I have never used it. The same I have never used protection from magic or from elements although I have picked several levels just in case. Maybe they will come handy later. The only cleric spells that I used repeatedly in battles were: regeneration, remove bleeding, remove poison and cure wounds. Rarely used (light) heal (mostly in the beginning) and divine armor. However in the tough battles I have used a second healer (herald of Nalaet) since I'm using a divine summoner.

Gaulen - axe, Fighter - axe, Thief - sword, Divine Summoner, Mage, Cleric.

I have used the Talisman only to give an extra skill point to everybody when it filled to 100%. Also the Talisman gives a warning when the cursed hounds are about to attack you, and you have time to teleport to a safe location. Without the talisman, the cursed hounds will attack you out of the blue.

If you are interested, I can post stats for all non-bestiary monsters somewhere here (maybe in another thread and mark it as !Spoiler!). Bestiary doesn't have any of the bosses, as well as couple of creatures, like Devoniaptors.

I was only able to afford 1 skill point when reaching level 16. As a result, my mage's Lightning is still only level 1, and Gaulen skipped both Axes and Knowledge of Herbs. I got two skill points for level 17, however, which I qualify for but have not yet gained.

Found a place where Yotums, which actually drop money (but still give far more XP than money) appear. Actually managed to take down an adult Yotom with the help of wounding (to weaken the enemy) and damage over time. Hammer of the Destroyer is still level 4, but it might be time to max it out now. (I plan on skipping Meteor, since it's expensive for the damage it deals and is no better at wounding than Hammer of the Destroyer.) By the end of the fight, my attacks reached 100% accuracy, and the enemy's full party attack hit only one character.

The mage spell I really want now is Fireball so I can burn multiple enemies at once when there's no back row. But that spell isn't until level 20 (but will be high priority once it shows up).

Edit: One other observation: When fighting the Adult Yotum, the boss fight music played, even though it was just a random encounter. As a side note, why is the boss music so short? Killing a boss in less than 45 seconds real time is rather unlikely (unless the boss is vulnerable to instant death and you get lucky with Requiem).

Looking at the more advanced spells, here is what the situation looks like (figures at level 5):

Lightning (Level 14): 90 damage for 40 pp. Getting a little pricey, and good if you want the stun (but there's the cheaper Shocking Touch). Cost is still what I might consider reasonable (my mage would be able to cast it 3 times).

Meteor (Level 18): 120 damage for 60 pp. It may have a better element than Lightning, but wounds can be done much more cheaply with Hammer of the Destroyer anyway. Also, if an enemy is about to act and you are trying to kill it first, stun is more useful than wound. If the enemy has high hp, you should be using damage over time anyway. Also, still only single target. I would currently have enough pp for only 2 casts. Also, Fireball is only 2 levels later and is more deserving of your skill points.

Fireball (Level 20): 90 damage for 60 pp, but also does average 22.5 burning. After two ticks, has now out-damaged Meteor on the primary target, plus two other enemies might take damage. May be useful for its area effect.

Thunder Storm (Level 28): 120 damage for 80 pp. Maybe use it once (or twice if you put effort into raising the mage's pp). Can't choose targets, but is fortunately a multi-target disable. Fireball will do more damage over the course of the battle, however. Should this spell be left at level 1 for cheaper multi-target stun, or should it be leveled up to 5 for more damage and longer stun?

These spells are all learned before Energy Absorption, and therefore pp is still an issue. Also, some spells end up costing more pp than Energy Absorption can restore.

Finished it with party level 59. Extremely easy and boring towards the end, my party was nigh invulnerable.

http://i.imgur.com/P8vPhqg.jpg