m25105: Thanks for the reply, a poster on the steam forums recommended I should drop points in alteration (I haven't done it yet, since I'm now farming xp). If I do that then is the last boss still gonna be hard, cause otherwise I'll dump all my points in Ice
I'm sure several paths lead to Rome.
I used alteration a lot for the last stage leading to the last boss (in particular, portal and invisibility) and it made that stage a lot easier (though I think I could have done it without those 2 spells), but for the last boss, 2 high level ice spells really came through and changed the fight from impossible to easy. I would have had to wrack my brain to find a good alternative.
I think I would have found it harder to defeat the final boss without ice magic than I would have found it to finish the final stage without alteration magic. The main thing that alteration magic did was allow me to finish it faster (by bypassing some enemies or sneak up close to their mages to melee-kill them with invisibility and teleport back to where I was before falling if I fell using portal).
For the last stage, my character had about 12 points in fire magic, ice magic, alteration magic, healing magic and 7 points in arcane magic. I had about 10 points in bows, 9 in maces and 10 in polearms, 16 in armor and about 15 in life points. I had 8 points in potions, 5 in daggers and 7 in axes which I ended up not using for the final stage (I ended up not using the orb of rebirth to get rid of the slack). My character was a warrior/mage.
By boosting arcane at least to level 4, you get the spell that allows you to come back from the dead which is nice, but it's icing on the cake. Level 5 will allow you to get the deadly cloud spell which made the pre-final boss a lot easier for me.
By boosting healing high enough to get the basic healing spell, you get unlimited life points as long as you can find a quiet spot to heal (there will be plenty in the last stage) and buy crazy amounts of green powder from the kitchen cook. This greatly simplifies the last stage as you cannot teleport back to heal.