It is also dangerous to try and use blasters against a swarm of monsters, particularly in the Control Centre. The autotargetting picks out the nearest monster, and as soon as it gets badly hurt, it will retreat and your attack will switch to a new one that's nearer. This means that you have to damage the whole swarm very badly before any of them start to drop. Meanwhile, in the Control Centre, you have Terminator robots in the swarm that can eradicate a character with one attack. Believe me, your party will not survive a real-time attack on that lot with blasters. Tackle them with Shrapmetal close up and in turn-based mode, and take out the Terminators first.

Personally, I find blasters overrated. Just my opinion.

The way I play, I've never found it necessary to push the skill level of melée weapons much beyond what's necessary for master. That's enough to take out the low- and medium-level monsters, and I use spells for the high-level ones. If you do intend to use hand-to-hand combat a lot, however, don't bother raising the skill level of swords above what is needed for mastery, because all sword mastery does is let you use a sword in the left hand. There's a case for getting the other weapons well up because it adds to damage or to other special properties, but not swords.

The case for getting the Air and Fire Magics up to level 12 is for Meteor Shower and Starburst. This is very useful for combat outside against an opponent with ranged attacks. What you do is fly in to medium range, then enter turn-based mode. You can't move laterally in turn-based play, but youcan bob up and down at will. So when you see a ranged attack coming, you change altitude and let the fireball or whatever pass harmlessly by. Neither Meteor Shower nor Starburst will hurt an opponent which is flying at a decent height, so when you use this technique against, say, dragons, stay close to the ground except when you're actually avoiding fire. Then they'll stay close to the ground, too.

You need mastery in Water Magic to be able to use Town Portal and Lloyd's Beacon to best effect. These spells are incredibly useful, and render you almost independent of the stagecoaches and ships after the first trip to a new location.

Earth magic is probably the least useful school of magic, but it does have some things going for it. Rock Blast is a very useful "grenade" type spell which you can use to attack round corners if there's a convenient surface to bounce the rock off. Similarly, Death Blossom acts as a howitzer type attack outside, and I've had occasional fun with that. However, Earth Magic does contain potentially the most damaging spell in the whole game. Mass Distortion can remove [25 + (skill x 2)]% of an opponent's hit points, so in theory, a caster with a skill level of 17 or more in Earth Magic can kill any opponent at full hit points with one casting. The problems are that (1) this level of damage occurs seldom because of spell resistance, and (2) too many monsters are immune to magic damage. One place it does work well is against the armoured knights in the Warlord's Fortress - it's especially useful against the Cuisinarts.