I followed your progression every once in a while to see how you would cope with certain encounters. Very creative, but I personally won't use some of the solutions (such as NPCs in the EDE). All in all, a very nice job and an interesting read.

One question. Does "Insane" really matter over "Core" if you still always use negation spells such as stoneskin, mirror image, protection from magical weapons and protection from elements? I would think that foes almost never hit you, so melee damage doesn't do much and magic and elemental damage is mostly negated as well.

No, it doesn't matter really most of the time. Only to some extent: for instance, if a character with a lot of hit poins(200 or more), wearing the Ring of Fire control, consumes a Potion of Magic shielding after a Purge Magic in the EDE, he will still die on Insane difficulty, while there is a fair good chance that he'll survive on Core difficulty. The 'Insane' difficulty has been set so that it would eliminate any luck factor: for instance, I won't consider it a clean victory if my character takes a lot of damage on Core and still manages to win a tough fight.

Insane difficulty literally means: a second of distraction in an important fight and PC is dead. On Core, things are not that final, there will be a couple of rounds maybe while PC will still be severely hurt, but alive.

I would, however, admit that I leveled up always on easy 'till lvl 10 (for max HP), and also scribed spell scrolls on easy(because of the lack of Int boosting potions).



About that: It wouldn't be a problem to continually refresh 4 spells while being under their permanent effect: SI: A, Impr Alacr, ProMW, Spell Trap, waiting for the Prince to use all of his Purges, but usually, due to low videoram of my machine (8 MB) and high concentration of monsters around my PC, and the fact that all of the Rakshasa start casting Horrid Wilting or Dragon Breath after Purge(additional burdening my low ram), the pause sometimes does not immediately take effect (some sort of a lag), and it takes effect a couple of seconds later. So PC usually dies after 2nd or 3rd Universal Purge Magic.