Unless you use spells, your ability to gather experience will dwindle exponentially as you continue to level. If you are purposefully sacrificing the universal spells - and have methods to succeed without them - then all is well. For the rest of us who would like supplemental help to increase experience efficiency there is an answer: pay attention to the universal spells, no matter which class you are specializing in.

The universal spells are those that benefit everyone, usually because they tend to make experience gathering more efficient. The universal spells are: armor, shield, displacement, sanctuary, healing spells, detect invisibility, fly and invisibility. Some of these help you gain experience faster directly with a defensive approach while others help you to walk safely to places where you need to go.

Armor, shield and displacement are artificial armor spells. They protect the user by directly lowering armor class (ac). Armor affects ac by -20, shield affects ac by -30 and displacement affects ac by -40. Armor costs 8 mana, shield costs 18 mana and displacement costs 24 mana. Armor is a cleric spell(level 7) while shield and displacement are both mage spells(level 12 and 20, respectively). These spells all have a long duration. Also remember that while armor and displacement can be cast on others, shield cannot be. These spells are the most important universal spells because they are so useful at every level. They are just as useful to lower-level characters as they are for high-level characters.

Players should allow their characters to practice armor, shield and displacement as soon as they can. Obviously a warrior/thief will find practicing displacement difficult because it is a level 20 mage spell, but the general rule of thumb is to get them as soon as possible. The better your armor class the less time you have to spend regenerating hitpoints.

Sanctuary and stone skin are protection spells that decrease damage inflicted to the character affected by the spell. Sanctuary halves all damage done while stone skin only decreases damage from physical (not magical) attacks. Both of these spells can be cast on others. Stone skin is not a universal spell because it requires the caster to be level 25 mage to cast it. Sanctuary is a universal spell because of its usefulness and because it requires its caster to only have at least 13 cleric levels. Cutting half of all damage done to you is an incredible advantage. Its limitations are its cost to cast (75 mana) and its short duration (18 minutes).

Since sanctuary has these limitations other things must be considered before spending practices on it. Low-level characters using sanctuary can be overkill. If a character is not getting hit too hard in battle and is gaining a good amount of experience then sanctuary might not be necessary. Those who use offensive spells to do damage for experience may find that the loss of 75 mana before battle is not worth the benefits. It is tough to make generalizations about this spell, but here are some guidelines anyway: Lower-level warriors and thieves tend to benefit more from sanctuary than mages and clerics who need their mana for doing spell damage. But sanctuary is one of the most powerful spells in the game. Why? Because its usefulness increases as your levels do. In many cases lower-level characters will benefit more from cure spells.

Take this example: You are killing some mobs without sanctuary. You began with 300hp 250m 150mv. You come out of the battle with 200hp 100m 100mv (you used some damage spells). Had you used sanctuary you would have ended up with 250hp 25m 100mv. But instead you are a wiser newbie and you cast heal at the end of battle (this is just an example to show an example with numbers, most likely some other cure spell would be used because heal is a high level cleric spell). You have 300hp 50m 100mv. You increased 50hp and saved 25 mana.

And now a high level example: You do not practice sanctuary ever because you read my example above and did not want to read anymore. You start your killing with 600hp 500m 230mv. When you are done you have 200hp 200m 190mv. You cast heal 4 times sending you to 600hp 0m 190mv. Had you cast sanctuary at the beginning it would have gone like this: 600hp 500m 230mv -> 400hp 125m 190mv (mana for sanctuary and mana used to kill the mobs) -> (2 heals) 600hp 25m 190mv. Again this is not a real example but only to show simple numbers. Real scenarios of this type actually tend to be more dramatic than saving only 25 mana.

Cure spells are spells that restore hitpoints. They may be cast on yourself or others. They are clerical spells that must be learned in progression. So although these spells are generally useful for every character to have, there are exceptions. These exceptions tend to be characters that made cleric their fourth or third class.

The cure spells are cure light, cure serious, cure critical and heal. Cure critical is the spell that is most universal. It is level 15 cleric, costs 28 mana and restores a good amount of hitpoints. The major downside is that because these spells must be practiced in progression it means that cure light and cure serious must be practiced first. So you can expect to spend 6 practices on cure critical. But most likely you will find that it is worth it.

Why decrease mana to increase hitpoints? Well there is one obvious answer to this and another not-so-obvious answer. The obvious answer is so that you do not die when you are fighting, or so you can restore enough hitpoints to continue without dying. The less obvious answer is that as your levels increase in most cases you start to regenerate more mana than hitpoints, especially if you are a cleric or mage. In effect you can increase your hitpoint regeneration rate by casting a heal spell. Of course having heal is not an excuse to ignore protection spells. See my example for sanctuary if you do not believe me!

Fly is not a necessity unless you need to travel through rooms where you could fall, or rooms that you need fly. What makes fly universal is its broad range of usefulness and its relatively low casting level (level 16 mage, 22 cleric). As already noted this spell is useful for walking through air-rooms, but there are other uses this spell has hidden too. The user can also levitate over water, eliminating the need for a boat. Another added advantage to this spell is that movement costs are decreased when the spell is in use. This makes walking great distances easy.

Invisibility cannot be learned without knowing detect invisibility. Invisibility is an important spell mid- to high-level spell. There are just some areas that you cannot survive in without it. They are the areas that have lots of mobs that attack you on sight. It saves much time and frustration if you can make your form invisible. What they can't see can't hurt you. Invisibility is level 22 mage and costs 45 mana.