For a limited time, GOG (Good Old Games) is offering huge discounts on game bundles between Monday, April 25th and Sunday, May 1st. Discounts so far range from 60% to a staggering 87%!
Some bundles are Build-Your-Own -- you can select from various games, and receive a discount on all selected games -- Such as the Nightmare Avenue bundle where you can choose up to 10 games at 80% off.
For a limited time, GOG (Good Old Games) is offering huge discounts on game bundles between Monday, April 25th and Sunday, May 1st. Discounts so far range from 60% to a staggering 87%!
Some bundles are Build-Your-Own -- you can select from various games, and receive a discount on all selected games -- Such as the Nightmare Avenue bundle where you can choose up to 10 games at 80% off.
Game Review: Island Experimentver: Rel4.0224.1142 a00302 Score: FAIL I actually like Island Experiment for many reasons. As a smartphone game meant to encourage you to spend money to avoid grind, it is obviously a very inconvenient game if you are hoping to make quick progress. However, where it fails is in math versus our expectations. Here are a couple of examples:
Farming:
The basic farm provides 6 food for 25 coin, or 4.16 gold per food.
A level 2 farm provides 24 food for 64 coin, or 2.67 gold per food. You get both the ability to "bank" food on your farm better, as well as a better price per unit.
A level 3 farm provides 40 food for 130 coin.
Huh? Now the ratio is worsened to 3.25 coin per food!
Sure you get to bank more food on each farm, but when you harvest, it goes into your warehouse, so banking it passively also blocks you from using your farm to make food.
Water:
Your first water source in the early game is a pond that provides 1 unit of water and 2 units of XP if you spend 3 units of food to draw that water.
Later you are asked to build a well. The basic well provides 3 units of water if you spend 30 coins and 4 food.
Huh? Suppose we use the level 1 farm coin-food ratio. 30 coins is 7.2 food. Plus 4 food, the cost for 3 units of water is 11.2, or 3.73 food per unit of water.
Not only does it cost MORE food to use your well, you also lose out on the 2 XP per unit of water you get when you draw it from the pond.
Considering that they haven't really thought things out properly, I don't really have much faith in the rest of the game and don't see myself wanting to trust them to tell me a good story for my time. Hopefully a future update will tidy things up!
Game Review: Island Experimentver: Rel4.0224.1142 a00302 Score: FAIL I actually like Island Experiment for many reasons. As a smartphone game meant to encourage you to spend money to avoid grind, it is obviously a very inconvenient game if you are hoping to make quick progress. However, where it fails is in math versus our expectations. Here are a couple of examples:
Farming:
The basic farm provides 6 food for 25 coin, or 4.16 gold per food.
A level 2 farm provides 24 food for 64 coin, or 2.67 gold per food. You get both the ability to "bank" food on your farm better, as well as a better price per unit.
A level 3 farm provides 40 food for 130 coin.
Huh? Now the ratio is worsened to 3.25 coin per food!
Sure you get to bank more food on each farm, but when you harvest, it goes into your warehouse, so banking it passively also blocks you from using your farm to make food.
Water:
Your first water source in the early game is a pond that provides 1 unit of water and 2 units of XP if you spend 3 units of food to draw that water.
Later you are asked to build a well. The basic well provides 3 units of water if you spend 30 coins and 4 food.
Huh? Suppose we use the level 1 farm coin-food ratio. 30 coins is 7.2 food. Plus 4 food, the cost for 3 units of water is 11.2, or 3.73 food per unit of water.
Not only does it cost MORE food to use your well, you also lose out on the 2 XP per unit of water you get when you draw it from the pond.
Considering that they haven't really thought things out properly, I don't really have much faith in the rest of the game and don't see myself wanting to trust them to tell me a good story for my time. Hopefully a future update will tidy things up!
There are five character slots and you get two for free. Create one character and raise them to level 5, when they receive daily kill quests.
Each day you can receive one quest per character, but you can complete the kill counts for the quests with any character at any time.
For example, suppose a Mage character has a quest to kill 50 Skeleton Archers, and a Warrior character has a quest to kill 10 Elite monsters. If in a session with the Mage you kill 10 Skeleton Archers and 1 Elite monster, the Warrior's quest will advance by 1/10 Elites killed. You can then switch to playing the Warrior if you like to continue advancing the quests.
The quests become easier if more than one character has the same quest. For example, if both your Mage and your Warrior characters have a quest to kill 10 Elites, you only need to kill a total of 10 Elites because each time one is killed, both quests advance by +1/10.
You can therefore focus on one character and have them complete everyone's quests, and not even bother to play the others.
Each daily quest gives 20 Gems, so
You have a lot of time to complete a quest: If you Start one, you can finish it whenever. On the day you finish it, if you haven't picked up the daily quest for that day, you will be prompted to start another daily quest for that day. So, theoretically you only need to play once every two days since you can complete two daily quests for the same character on the same day, as long as you have already begun one quest and have it ongoing.
Since each daily quest gives 20 Gems, you can calculate when you will break even on the cost to unlock a slot. If you aren't going to complete at least 25 days of daily quests for your 4th character, there's no point unlocking that slot.
Gear
Don't bother buying gear at low levels -- reserve your gold for upgrading abilities instead. Besides, the loot you get will quickly make your gear obsolete. When you have money to burn much later and levelling is slower, start considering the Store, but don't spend Gems unless you have already unlocked everything you can with Gems.
Don't bother Crafting gear unless you can control the attribute gained. For example, if you have three pieces of gear all with the Life on Hit ability (which shows up as a magical ability later in the game), the gear created will have that ability.
If you use gear of the same type you are crafting, the level of the gear crafted gets a bonus. But this is less important than targeting a specific magical ability on the gear.
Abilities
Since every upgrade level of an ability adds to your Synergy count and gets you stat bonuses at various milestones, no upgrade is ever truly obsolete, so make sure you are always upgrading something, even if you don't use it.
Upgrades are not limited by your character level, so if you are too busy to actually play, you can simply set your character to upgrade something while you are offline. The higher-level upgrades can literally take days (level 10 takes 3 days).
If you do not have multiple ability slots yet, remember that you can pause the game by going to your character screen and, if your ability is not in cooldown, swap it out with something else.
Attacks
Fireball
For much of the game you can get by with this attack, especially once you unlock the area of effect, which is particularly good when combined with Healer Eileen's Vortex.
The area effect will affect targets behind barriers if they are close enough.
Frost Nova
Anything that RELIABLY temporarily disables the target is gold. Once you hit dangerous bosses and healer mobs, this will really help you in those attrition fights as well as to hold enemies still and pour on a devastating barrage of abilities from you and your team. This said, you mostly get player-controlled ones from your team (Warrior Marcus's Charge, Healer Eileen's Vortex).
Arc Lightning
Really cheesy and useful later on, especially as a two-finger-tap attack.
When you attack with two fingers, your character does NOT move. In this way, you can launch attacks into the fog of war (and Arc Lightning has good range to do this). Once you hit something, auto-targeting takes over. And Arc Lightning can push enemies back, so that helps to keep them far away in the fog of war and/or off-screen.
Super cheesy: You can attack through barriers. This not only avoids the irritating tendency of auto-targeting to not realize your ranged attack will hit a barrier. It also lets you get a lot of free attacks on targets that must walk a long way to you.
Since you can attack through barriers, it's great for avoiding ranged attacks by ducking behind a barrier. Combine with "Life on Hit" items to heal while you are hiding from them and still attacking.
Great for sniping, which makes killing Liches and enemy Healers a lot easier since you don't have to tear through their follower meat shields.
If you don't have this, another way to target them is Eileen's Vortex plus Fireball and preferably with a pile of area effect attacks to quickly kill them. Temporarily disabling them really helps because it stops their powers from bringing more defenses (shields, healing, or summoned enemies to block your attacks).
Team
If you are not in combat, you can swap in and out team members.
Friends
Don't bother annoying people to recruit them for Gems. You can easily find friend codes to get a few. Overall it is easier to just farm for them (see below).
My friend code is KIMO GEJI WARO 0979. Put yours in the comments below and I'll add you.
There are five character slots and you get two for free. Create one character and raise them to level 5, when they receive daily kill quests.
Each day you can receive one quest per character, but you can complete the kill counts for the quests with any character at any time.
For example, suppose a Mage character has a quest to kill 50 Skeleton Archers, and a Warrior character has a quest to kill 10 Elite monsters. If in a session with the Mage you kill 10 Skeleton Archers and 1 Elite monster, the Warrior's quest will advance by 1/10 Elites killed. You can then switch to playing the Warrior if you like to continue advancing the quests.
The quests become easier if more than one character has the same quest. For example, if both your Mage and your Warrior characters have a quest to kill 10 Elites, you only need to kill a total of 10 Elites because each time one is killed, both quests advance by +1/10.
You can therefore focus on one character and have them complete everyone's quests, and not even bother to play the others.
Each daily quest gives 20 Gems, so
You have a lot of time to complete a quest: If you Start one, you can finish it whenever. On the day you finish it, if you haven't picked up the daily quest for that day, you will be prompted to start another daily quest for that day. So, theoretically you only need to play once every two days since you can complete two daily quests for the same character on the same day, as long as you have already begun one quest and have it ongoing.
Since each daily quest gives 20 Gems, you can calculate when you will break even on the cost to unlock a slot. If you aren't going to complete at least 25 days of daily quests for your 4th character, there's no point unlocking that slot.
Gear
Don't bother buying gear at low levels -- reserve your gold for upgrading abilities instead. Besides, the loot you get will quickly make your gear obsolete. When you have money to burn much later and levelling is slower, start considering the Store, but don't spend Gems unless you have already unlocked everything you can with Gems.
Don't bother Crafting gear unless you can control the attribute gained. For example, if you have three pieces of gear all with the Life on Hit ability (which shows up as a magical ability later in the game), the gear created will have that ability.
If you use gear of the same type you are crafting, the level of the gear crafted gets a bonus. But this is less important than targeting a specific magical ability on the gear.
Abilities
Since every upgrade level of an ability adds to your Synergy count and gets you stat bonuses at various milestones, no upgrade is ever truly obsolete, so make sure you are always upgrading something, even if you don't use it.
Upgrades are not limited by your character level, so if you are too busy to actually play, you can simply set your character to upgrade something while you are offline. The higher-level upgrades can literally take days (level 10 takes 3 days).
If you do not have multiple ability slots yet, remember that you can pause the game by going to your character screen and, if your ability is not in cooldown, swap it out with something else.
Attacks
Fireball
For much of the game you can get by with this attack, especially once you unlock the area of effect, which is particularly good when combined with Healer Eileen's Vortex.
The area effect will affect targets behind barriers if they are close enough.
Frost Nova
Anything that RELIABLY temporarily disables the target is gold. Once you hit dangerous bosses and healer mobs, this will really help you in those attrition fights as well as to hold enemies still and pour on a devastating barrage of abilities from you and your team. This said, you mostly get player-controlled ones from your team (Warrior Marcus's Charge, Healer Eileen's Vortex).
Arc Lightning
Really cheesy and useful later on, especially as a two-finger-tap attack.
When you attack with two fingers, your character does NOT move. In this way, you can launch attacks into the fog of war (and Arc Lightning has good range to do this). Once you hit something, auto-targeting takes over. And Arc Lightning can push enemies back, so that helps to keep them far away in the fog of war and/or off-screen.
Super cheesy: You can attack through barriers. This not only avoids the irritating tendency of auto-targeting to not realize your ranged attack will hit a barrier. It also lets you get a lot of free attacks on targets that must walk a long way to you.
Since you can attack through barriers, it's great for avoiding ranged attacks by ducking behind a barrier. Combine with "Life on Hit" items to heal while you are hiding from them and still attacking.
Great for sniping, which makes killing Liches and enemy Healers a lot easier since you don't have to tear through their follower meat shields.
If you don't have this, another way to target them is Eileen's Vortex plus Fireball and preferably with a pile of area effect attacks to quickly kill them. Temporarily disabling them really helps because it stops their powers from bringing more defenses (shields, healing, or summoned enemies to block your attacks).
Team
If you are not in combat, you can swap in and out team members.
Friends
Don't bother annoying people to recruit them for Gems. You can easily find friend codes to get a few. Overall it is easier to just farm for them (see below).
My friend code is KIMO GEJI WARO 0979. Put yours in the comments below and I'll add you.
I've been scouring Google Play for a decent game for my smartphone. Most of the ones out there are clones of each other. Various styles of play but generally focussed on addicting your time so that you end up spending money for convenience. Mage and Minions is one of the very few that feels very different, and for very specific reasons I highly recommend it. MARVEL Avengers Academy shares a lot of the traits I really like.
The game basically plays like one of the Sims games: Characters have generic actions, and through a combination of "appropriate" generic actions you complete tasks that advance the story. The story happens offstage and and you get conversations that update you on what happen, and thereby advance the storylines. You are therefore really only playing for various storylines, and getting characters to do things to accumulate resources and pass time. There's a little more to that, but this is the core of the gameplay. There are occasional special events like the recent time-limited opportunity to recruit Blue Hulk and Red Hulk. And there are various triggered events that encourage you to spend money to recruit certain characters.
The game starts quite slowly, but once you have more characters and therefore a better ability to complete tasks, things start to get busier. TIP: If there is a task on the mission board that takes a long time, you can click the small trashcan at the upper left to delete the task and get another one after a 20-minute refresh time. ++Great as a truly "casual game". It's single player and you really can put it down at any time without worry. Unless there's a special time-limited event, there's just no urgency. +Unlimited play. You can play as much as you like without having to wait for "energy" to recharge. You are waiting for characters to finish tasks, though, and so it's not really conducive to a sit-down session unless you want to spend money to get Crystals to accelerate things. This is really a casual game for people who don't have a lot of concentrated time or just want to check in once in a while when they get a few spare minutes. +Low demand on your time. There are no Daily Quests or any of that to addict you to checking in every day. +You don't feel like you are missing out when you don't play. But do check in, in case there is a special event. Typically, however, you play at your own pace. +Single Player. Not only are you not competing with anyone (so you can't "fall behind"), but no one is attacking you so there's no urgency to advance quickly or feel worried you will lose resources. +Decent graphics! A bit simple, but character animations are pretty good. -Inane. Sometimes the stories are inane. You really have to get into the these-are-teens mindset. There's nothing serious going on here. Humour is also sort of weak. Nothing laugh-out-loud so far. -Poor return for purchase. You can buy all sorts of buildings but the spread of characters actually using those buildings for Missions that award something is very weak. For example, I have the Maverick Dorm, but I have yet to see any mission using it. -Decisions that seem stupid or that make no sense. Examples:
During the Guardians of the Galaxy limited event, Gamora can train her combat skills either in the Quad or at Club A -- but why not at the Cosmic Combat Simulator they got you to build? DUH.
There's a "Hone Deathblows" action for the "Club Life, Pt. 2" Mission -- and again, instead of the Cosmic Combat Simulator, they have Gamora doing that at the PUNCHING BAG in Avengers Dorm. DUH.
I've been scouring Google Play for a decent game for my smartphone. Most of the ones out there are clones of each other. Various styles of play but generally focussed on addicting your time so that you end up spending money for convenience. Mage and Minions is one of the very few that feels very different, and for very specific reasons I highly recommend it. MARVEL Avengers Academy shares a lot of the traits I really like.
The game basically plays like one of the Sims games: Characters have generic actions, and through a combination of "appropriate" generic actions you complete tasks that advance the story. The story happens offstage and and you get conversations that update you on what happen, and thereby advance the storylines. You are therefore really only playing for various storylines, and getting characters to do things to accumulate resources and pass time. There's a little more to that, but this is the core of the gameplay. There are occasional special events like the recent time-limited opportunity to recruit Blue Hulk and Red Hulk. And there are various triggered events that encourage you to spend money to recruit certain characters.
The game starts quite slowly, but once you have more characters and therefore a better ability to complete tasks, things start to get busier. TIP: If there is a task on the mission board that takes a long time, you can click the small trashcan at the upper left to delete the task and get another one after a 20-minute refresh time. ++Great as a truly "casual game". It's single player and you really can put it down at any time without worry. Unless there's a special time-limited event, there's just no urgency. +Unlimited play. You can play as much as you like without having to wait for "energy" to recharge. You are waiting for characters to finish tasks, though, and so it's not really conducive to a sit-down session unless you want to spend money to get Crystals to accelerate things. This is really a casual game for people who don't have a lot of concentrated time or just want to check in once in a while when they get a few spare minutes. +Low demand on your time. There are no Daily Quests or any of that to addict you to checking in every day. +You don't feel like you are missing out when you don't play. But do check in, in case there is a special event. Typically, however, you play at your own pace. +Single Player. Not only are you not competing with anyone (so you can't "fall behind"), but no one is attacking you so there's no urgency to advance quickly or feel worried you will lose resources. +Decent graphics! A bit simple, but character animations are pretty good. -Inane. Sometimes the stories are inane. You really have to get into the these-are-teens mindset. There's nothing serious going on here. Humour is also sort of weak. Nothing laugh-out-loud so far. -Poor return for purchase. You can buy all sorts of buildings but the spread of characters actually using those buildings for Missions that award something is very weak. For example, I have the Maverick Dorm, but I have yet to see any mission using it. -Decisions that seem stupid or that make no sense. Examples:
During the Guardians of the Galaxy limited event, Gamora can train her combat skills either in the Quad or at Club A -- but why not at the Cosmic Combat Simulator they got you to build? DUH.
There's a "Hone Deathblows" action for the "Club Life, Pt. 2" Mission -- and again, instead of the Cosmic Combat Simulator, they have Gamora doing that at the PUNCHING BAG in Avengers Dorm. DUH.
Game Review: Mage and Minionsv1.1.29 Score: +13/-2 I've been scouring Google Play for a decent game for my smartphone. Most of the ones out there are clones of each other. Various styles of play but generally focussed on addicting your time so that you end up spending money for convenience. Mage and Minions is one of the very few that feels very different, and for very specific reasons I highly recommend it. MARVEL Avengers Academy is another great casual game.
There are two types of characters you can play. The titular Mage, and a melee Warrior. For more of a challenge, play the Warrior. ++Great as a truly "casual game". It's single player and you really can put it down at any time without worry, even in the middle of combat. You don't even have to turn off your phone because if you get killed, you can at no penalty or resource cost resurrect nearby. There's just no urgency. +Convenient interface. Tap to move instead of clumsily using a finger "mouse pad". Automatic targeting on new nearby enemies once you have selected a target and it is dead. +Really cool use of drawing symbols to activate skills. +Unlimited play. You can play as much as you like without having to wait for "energy" to recharge. +Low demand on your time. If you don't play for a day, there are only two things you might possibly miss out on: Daily check-in prize (which takes so little time to do anyway) and one daily quest for each character of level 5+. The daily quest is just to kill X number of a type of things, which you can typically do during regular gameplay. And even if you fail to do it, you are only missing out on 20 Gems (which you typically buy with money), so it's not a big deal. ++Convenient daily quests. The Daily Quests are shared by all characters once you start the quest, so if you only have time to play one character today, start all quests for all characters and use your gameplay with the one character to complete them all. Then go back to each character and turn in the reward. If you start one but can't finish it before server reset, you can still finish it, AND pick up the Daily Quest for the new day. +You don't feel like you are missing out when you don't play. In many other games, you have to wait for "energy" to recharge and there is a limit to how much you accumulate. If you don't play regularly you will "waste" it. Here, there's none of that so you don't have to feel like you're missing out on anything. ++Playable offline. Some things still need a connection, such as checking the progress of your skill upgrades, but otherwise the game is completely playable offline whereas most other good games need you to be connected. +Single Player. Not only are you not competing with anyone (so you can't "fall behind"), but no one is attacking you so there's no urgency to advance quickly or feel worried you will lose resources. +Skill Synergy. There are lots of skills and it can take a lot of time to upgrade a skill. But none of it is ever wasted because every level you accumulate goes toward a counter that gives you a stat bonus. Therefore no skill upgrade is ever entirely obsolete. -Scaling. Low-level maps eventually scale up in enemy level, so you can't really grind for loot or do quick casual runs to clear Daily Quests. I feel the scaling goes up way too aggressively. -Inferior graphics. Compared to many games out there now, graphics are inferior with a and "blocky" look because of not enough polygons. But overall not too bad because of the small screens you are seeing it on.
TIP: Start multiple characters, but focus only on one. That way you can collect Daily Quests from the other characters and farm Gems once a day from each. The startup cost to do it increases drastically though: 100 Gems to have a third character and 500 for a fourth means you won't break even for 5 and 25 days respectively.
TIP: Use your Gem-farming characters to re-play the easy levels while they are completing Daily Quests. You can play a map up to five times for a total of 10 Gems after all five runs.
Game Review: Mage and Minionsv1.1.29 Score: +13/-2 I've been scouring Google Play for a decent game for my smartphone. Most of the ones out there are clones of each other. Various styles of play but generally focussed on addicting your time so that you end up spending money for convenience. Mage and Minions is one of the very few that feels very different, and for very specific reasons I highly recommend it. MARVEL Avengers Academy is another great casual game.
There are two types of characters you can play. The titular Mage, and a melee Warrior. For more of a challenge, play the Warrior. ++Great as a truly "casual game". It's single player and you really can put it down at any time without worry, even in the middle of combat. You don't even have to turn off your phone because if you get killed, you can at no penalty or resource cost resurrect nearby. There's just no urgency. +Convenient interface. Tap to move instead of clumsily using a finger "mouse pad". Automatic targeting on new nearby enemies once you have selected a target and it is dead. +Really cool use of drawing symbols to activate skills. +Unlimited play. You can play as much as you like without having to wait for "energy" to recharge. +Low demand on your time. If you don't play for a day, there are only two things you might possibly miss out on: Daily check-in prize (which takes so little time to do anyway) and one daily quest for each character of level 5+. The daily quest is just to kill X number of a type of things, which you can typically do during regular gameplay. And even if you fail to do it, you are only missing out on 20 Gems (which you typically buy with money), so it's not a big deal. ++Convenient daily quests. The Daily Quests are shared by all characters once you start the quest, so if you only have time to play one character today, start all quests for all characters and use your gameplay with the one character to complete them all. Then go back to each character and turn in the reward. If you start one but can't finish it before server reset, you can still finish it, AND pick up the Daily Quest for the new day. +You don't feel like you are missing out when you don't play. In many other games, you have to wait for "energy" to recharge and there is a limit to how much you accumulate. If you don't play regularly you will "waste" it. Here, there's none of that so you don't have to feel like you're missing out on anything. ++Playable offline. Some things still need a connection, such as checking the progress of your skill upgrades, but otherwise the game is completely playable offline whereas most other good games need you to be connected. +Single Player. Not only are you not competing with anyone (so you can't "fall behind"), but no one is attacking you so there's no urgency to advance quickly or feel worried you will lose resources. +Skill Synergy. There are lots of skills and it can take a lot of time to upgrade a skill. But none of it is ever wasted because every level you accumulate goes toward a counter that gives you a stat bonus. Therefore no skill upgrade is ever entirely obsolete. -Scaling. Low-level maps eventually scale up in enemy level, so you can't really grind for loot or do quick casual runs to clear Daily Quests. I feel the scaling goes up way too aggressively. -Inferior graphics. Compared to many games out there now, graphics are inferior with a and "blocky" look because of not enough polygons. But overall not too bad because of the small screens you are seeing it on.
TIP: Start multiple characters, but focus only on one. That way you can collect Daily Quests from the other characters and farm Gems once a day from each. The startup cost to do it increases drastically though: 100 Gems to have a third character and 500 for a fourth means you won't break even for 5 and 25 days respectively.
TIP: Use your Gem-farming characters to re-play the easy levels while they are completing Daily Quests. You can play a map up to five times for a total of 10 Gems after all five runs.
Prices are inferior to those in Arx, so try not to buy or sell here. Buy the Stregum rune first so you can cast Mega Stregum Vitae (Bless) to increase your stats, thereby increasing Intuition to get better prices.
In Rinco's room, if you douse all the lights he does not re-light them, so you can look around and steal safely as long as you are not too close to him.
[20 Iserbius's Room] You can kill the Black Beast by raising the portcullis in the tank (click the handle on top of the tank) and then lowering it again on the creature.
[22 Akbaa] Defeating Akbaa was disappointingly easy for a mage using Life Drain (and potions to keep up Health and Mana). See video below -- SPOILER!
[25-30 Hostile Trolls] Trolls here are hostile if you do not have a Troll's Amulet. Since they contribute nothing to the plot and are hostile, you might as well NOT carry the amulet and kill all the trolls anyway. They all carry an amulet, so cache them somewhere.
[32 Water Goblins] One of the goblins sits and uses a Pole to roast a fish. When he puts down the Pole, if you pick it up and put it in your inventory, they become hostile. If you use a Rope on it to change it into a Fishing Rod, you can safely pick it up. If you kill the Goblin while it is using the Pole, it disappears.
Prices are inferior to those in Arx, so try not to buy or sell here. Buy the Stregum rune first so you can cast Mega Stregum Vitae (Bless) to increase your stats, thereby increasing Intuition to get better prices.
In Rinco's room, if you douse all the lights he does not re-light them, so you can look around and steal safely as long as you are not too close to him.
[20 Iserbius's Room] You can kill the Black Beast by raising the portcullis in the tank (click the handle on top of the tank) and then lowering it again on the creature.
[22 Akbaa] Defeating Akbaa was disappointingly easy for a mage using Life Drain (and potions to keep up Health and Mana). See video below -- SPOILER!
[25-30 Hostile Trolls] Trolls here are hostile if you do not have a Troll's Amulet. Since they contribute nothing to the plot and are hostile, you might as well NOT carry the amulet and kill all the trolls anyway. They all carry an amulet, so cache them somewhere.
[32 Water Goblins] One of the goblins sits and uses a Pole to roast a fish. When he puts down the Pole, if you pick it up and put it in your inventory, they become hostile. If you use a Rope on it to change it into a Fishing Rod, you can safely pick it up. If you kill the Goblin while it is using the Pole, it disappears.
