Hi guys,
Back in the day I finished G2 as bow ranger and G3 as fireball mage. I dont mind kiting and using terrain to my advantage to snipe out enemies. I dont really like melee.
In Risen 1 is it ok to go pure mage (10/10 one crystal, 200+ mana, some lockpicking and alchemy)?
What is stronger 10/10 bow ( I know there is a bug so only 10/10 bow is ok) or 10/10 fire or magic bullet?
cheers!

If I remember correctly bow's are not really good in Risen 1 .Only use them If you want to draw enemy attention or If you play a melee character ...If you want something long range then fire magic is better and invest points in mana (200+ mana) ...Don't really know about the other magic as I only invested my points in Fire magic (Fire magic at level 10 does insane damage)..For mana potions don't worry you can find a lot of them and they don't cost too much.Or you can make your own if you have the alchemy skill...When I was playing mage I invested in lockpicking...Also don't invest In acrobatics because you can find a ring that gives you that skill...Also there is another ring that gives you the sneak skill so don't invest any points there either.

One important thing to note is: if you want to become a full-fledged mage (not just an inquisition fighter), you not only have to do all the quests in harbor town for the inquisition, but also that Belschwur quest. IIRC it was delivering some soup or healing potion.

you don't want to play as a normal archer in risen 1, bows are not that good. You can play as a warrior with a xbow because they do decent damage and are much easier to use. Strength based warrior using xbow as backup or in certain situations still works ok. After you max your strength if you want you can raise some dex in order for the xbow to punch harder.

Because of how bad melee is in the game I found using the xbow was vastly easier against lower level mobs, and even higher mobs that couldn't reach you. Even a super amazing break the moon strength warrior can literally get smacked around by everything in the game due to the bad melee mechanics.. Oh, im facing away from my enemy again and can't turn? for the 100th time...

So using a nice xbow against basic mobs is soooo much easier than entering melee combat where everything is much faster than you, dodges and smacks you 4 times while your trying to get off 1 swing. With the xbow? Aim and shoot 2 times.. dead wolves, dead birds, dead rats, etc. Buff up that xbow dex rating and you'll do good damage vs higher mobs.

So you can either play as a strength warrior who uses an xbow sometimes, or you can play as a xbow archer (forget bow archer entirely) who packs quite a punch in many situations except against fast mobs.