> Actually, when I said "faster" I was talking about the big picture and at the higher levels after agility was maxed out and AC was pretty high. With using spells sparingly and relying on the RESTORE spell during and after combat I could deal with a lot more monsters and get a lot more experience in a single trip. By that time I had already had plenty of cash saved up in case of an untimely demise.

I don't think I understand, then. I *was* talking about high-level strategy, particularly when you have so many HP and SP that you can go on multiple Murkon-hunting expeditions without worrying about ever running out of SP or needing to cast RESTORE at all.

Just getting more experience per trip doesn't mean you're progressing faster. If you get twice as much experience in a trip that takes twice as long, your progress is equally fast (disregarding time spent between trips in town). On the other hand, if you need to conserve SP to have enough to get to Murkon, then yes, I can see what you mean. Because of the massive amount of experience you get from Murkon, it's a lot more time efficient to conserve enough SP to reach and defeat Murkon before returning to town, even if the battles beforehand take a bit longer on average.

> I was curious about the frequency of spell failure. It happened to me a few times in various games. It involved the HOME spell and happened when an assassin, wizard, or druid (useless) tried to cast it after a combat. Any thoughts?
>
> drbug

Doesn't seem too frequent to me. I think it's happened to me less than a dozen times in the three times I've played through the game. I've never even worried about it enough to leave a safety net of enough SP to cast HOME twice, hedging against one failure.