I have a couple of questions regarding Might and Magic III: Isles of Tera. Being the first Might and Magic game I've attempted to play, it's pretty confusing but I've managed to figure most of this out, save for some things (quite a few things):

1. I have a habit of saving my game at the most unfortunate times, sometimes putting me in a difficult spot for reloading, or even making a game impossible to complete depending on the situation I saved during. What are the files that contain the save information in my game's directory, so that I can back them up when I reach a good mile mark in the game, I'd hate to botch something up and lose all this work.

2. Is there any way to reverse the age modifier? I fought some ghosts and it was about 3 hours in when I noticed my age statistic on several characters was greyed and higher than it should be. That was also when I noticed they "had" an age statistic.

3. Speaking of the age statistic, does anything happen if this gets too high? Do my characters die of old age at some point, or suffer stat penalties for getting older? Do I have to worry about it? Considering how long it took my characters to age to 19 (well, barring their ghostly age spurts) I would have to waste time purposefully for this to be a problem.

4. Is there a time limit in this game? Seeing the time tick away so quickly, and the fact my characters have an age statistic worries me a bit. Should I try to make most of my in game time, or can I dilly dally about? The only time I feel like I should make the most of a day is when I'm buffed up from the temples and places on the world map. I've learned to time grabbing buffs during the morning because buffs seem to disappear at sunrise, regardless how soon I got them (so annoying ._. ).

5. I noticed a certain fountain after completing a certain quest would allow me to spend gold for EXP. I realize this is here for a reason, but I wonder when would be a good time to start forking out the cash for levels. Should I exhaust all possible dungeons and burn all the monster outposts I can before I resort to buying EXP, or should I be splurging when I have the cash? I really want to get my Sorcerer to 17 and it's looking so tempting...

Thanks for the help.

I'd never spend gold for XP. Training at high levels gets very expensive, while you can gain additional XP quite easily. Put your money on the bank, so you have more when you need it.

Aging effects start at the age of 35, mental stats go up, physical stats go down a little. The effects are minimal as long as you're younger than 75 years old.
You have far more time than needed to finish the game, just be careful about certain time trap crystals in the pyramids which let one year pass when you touch them.

Guys, I was in a pyramid in the cold parts, started touching some crystals that advanced my age (there was no warning mentioning that, which is f*** unbelievable) and now my age is like 119 and it is implying that the natural age of my characters are 109!!! Does it can be reversed??? Fountain of youth will only diminish 10 years from my age.

Technically, this isn't actually how it works. The only thing age does is modify your stats (at age 201+, you get -50 to four of your stats, and +50 to two of the others); anything that looks like a death due to old age is really death due to having a stat of 0.

Note that this is not the case in MM2; a character who is 80 or older has a chance of dying every time you rest in that game. (MM1 is probably similar in this regard.)

Incidentally, classic Wizardry games have something called death from "old age", but it was tied to Vitality, not Age; with a bit of too assistance, it's not hard to get a young (<18) elf to die of old age. If you deposit money in the bank, then spend decades working, the interest will drastically increase the money in the bank. Then, if you have a character throw 200 million into the fountain (note that you can't do it all at once, as you can only throw about 100 million into the fountain at a time), you can get enough experience to reach level 200 (the maximum you can train to). I actually saw a speedrun do this; how does level 200 in a speedrun sound to you? (Of course, this is only fast in real time; in the game world it is slow.)

If you only want to reach level 17 for learning spells, you can use temporary level boosts to meet the level requirement. You do not lose the spells when your level returns to normal.