I was just curious which Mage spells are the most useful and/or fun that I may have overlooked.

The most fun to me was the mechanus cannon :)

Missile of Patience is definitely my favorite.

MoP is a good one, but its usefulness is limited since you can't give new party orders while it is active, so you either have to turn on the stupid party AI or cross your fingers.

Personally, I'm partial to Blacksphere; it does decent damage and has a good chance to immobilize the enemy, making them sitting ducks, and since it is of a relatively low level, it can be cast way more often than most of the higher level spells that outdo it.

Yeah I figured MoP was one and I am also digging black sphere. Was just looking for some I might have missed that are fun.

What is the one you learn by fighting Ravel as a wizzie?

You get blacksphere from ravel.

Blackshere is definitely one of the best spells going, especially for only being a level 4 spell.

Surprised no one has said celestial host yet.

Personally im a man of simple tastes and love the ice knife since you get multiple knives as you level up.

Ice Knife is easily one of the worst spells in the entire game. Setting aside the fact that it is bugged to the point that the penalty to THAC0 lasts until the hit character dies (including your party members), it's an attack spell that requires an attack roll in order to hit (which for a mage is generally crap), and even then the target may still shrug off the spell if their resistance is high enough. Force Missiles and Magic Missile are easily superior in terms of damage spells that improve with level.

Celestial Host is an impressive damage spell, but unless you've been doing some serious grinding, you won't be able to use it until the end of the game, if at all, diminishing its usefulness (especially since even then you will be able to case it only once or twice).

As far as I am aware PST is the only AD&D with spell cinematics like that of celestial host, mechanus cannon etc, and I just thought they would be more popular from love of the spell rather than effect.

TBH up until recently I never knew about the THAAC0 loss from ice knife, which kinda sucks, a bit like the constitution loss on familiar death from BG2 then? I guess I never noticed it with TNO as mage as I rarely used him in melee. I found it fun to use against lots of weaker opponents. Not defending it just I liked it :)

Cloudkill is very useful for grinding. Just go to undersigil and cash it (from a safe distance) on a group of larval worms. Odds are you will kill more then half the group most of the time