At the bottom of the top left menu (on the PC) you will find two buttons which will make life easier. If you hold your mouse over them you'll see what the hotkey is for each of those.
One of those turns the AI off. This is useful when you are casting a powerful spell that can hurt your party. If you turn the AI off and ask them to come back, you will find casting a powerful spell more effective. When the AI is off, they will still defend themselves but won't move or pursue unless commanded to. So you can switch it back on later.
The other button is the select all key. Use that to select everyone and concentrate the entire party towards one goal. This can be for movement or if you want everyone to attack one enemy in a group. Of course you can just drag the mouse to select everyone, but this is faster.
When you get a chance, invest some points in the survival skill... preferably in a character you plan to keep throughout. This will help you see enemies on the map before you come across them.
Here is a small example of how I tackled a group of medium level enemies with one high level monster (like an ogre or a powerful mage) in their midst.
* First I'd rely on the passive survival skill with my ranger (my main character) to show my enemies on the map before I made contact.
* Next I'd hit "=" to select my entire party.
* I'd then hit "H" for them to hold positions.
* Then I would select my two mages and cast the
blizzard (by Morrigan) spell, and the
earthquake spell (Wynn from the Mage's tower) at the general area.
* Next I'd cast the
force field spell or the
crushing prison spell on the most powerful enemy. What this will do is hold the victim of this spell for exactly 60 seconds without allowing them any movement. The
force field spell binds the victim for a minute and has a significantly higher chance of success, but at the same time doesn't allow the victim to be damaged either. This is useful to cast on a friendly as well, if they are surrounded and about to die. Since no weapons can damage a victim of the
force field spell, they will become the ultimate shield since the AI normally doesn't realize what's going on and keeps attacking them. Of course they can't move so they can't do any damage either. But I normally used the
force field spell to freeze my most powerful enemies, while I took out the weaker ones.
The
crushing prison is a more powerful version of the same spell, except it does great damage while it acts as a
force field. Unfortunately it isn't always cast successfully, and depends on the mage's magic points.
* Another cool spell that takes out lots of enemies is a combo, and not everyone knows this. First you cast a
grease spell which causes entire mobs of enemies to slip and fall in the grease. Then you cast a
fireball into the grease which sets everything on fire and burns them mofos.
Just keep in mind that whenever you cast any of these high level spells, you should hit "H" to turn AI movement off, and move them to defensive positions. If you want to have your characters using ranged weapons, it is a good idea to go to the tactics menu and set them to automatically switch to melee when they are attacked by melee weapons. Ranged weapons for normal tanks like Sten and Alister are only useful when they are taking out enemy units caught in high level mage spells like Blizzard etc. Without the ranged skill points that the bard chick has, Sten and Alister won't do the same damage as they do with their melee weapons.
If you are going to use the "H" key, remember to hit it again when you want your tanks to start thinking on their own again.
But I really don't feel powerful at all. But I really don't want to start over. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I'm putting my points in willpower, magic, and constitution. But I cast about 6 spells and I'm out of mana. I can't heal worth a shit, and I do crappy damage. It's hard for me and 3 other party members to kill 4 bandits. It's kind of pissing me off. I've tried different tactics, but I think I'm just missing something.
I totally forgot to tell you this...
There is a spell that will make sure you never run out of mana...
The spell is called
death syphon and it is a level 2 spirit spell. When active, it will have your mage suck any corpse for mana... with the amount of enemies that die, you shouldn't have a problem.
Also, invest in something like
frost weapons as well. It will increase the attack level of your entire party.
Remember when your mage dies, they will have to reactive the sustained spells like frost weapons and
death syphon.
One last thing...
death magic is also useful. It works like
death syphon, except it increases health rather than mana.
Oh and there are two walking bomb spells that you will love. Whenever a victim of such a spell dies, their body explodes in a massive fountain of blood and guts, which act as shrapnel, injuring anyone around.
