Eschalon question for those who've finished Kuudad

Alrighty, I found the guy that trains lockpicks and I've bought the 8 ranks that he can teach. He killed an acquaintance of mine earlier, so I killed him after learning the one skill he taught that I was interested in. It seems silly that the quest doesn't get completed just because he lived long enough to teach me something, but I can live with that.

My question: I thought this guy would be one of the toughest fights in the game, but he goes down real easy. Are there some tough fights coming up anytime? Did you ever have to reload any battle several times to find a winning strategy? So far, the prospector was my toughest battle and only because I purposely left him alive long enough for him to summon lots of help.

I'm guessing that a melee character will have the more challenging game because they have to allow enemies to get close. Do archers have it as easy as mages? Just curious.

The prospector so far has been my worst battle also, but not to the point of needing to reload/rethink it. The biggest challenge for my ranger has been getting enough gold to keep myself in arrows. As long as I have a good supply, I've never been mobbed or presented with an enemy I couldn't take out, so far anyway. In fact, I've kind of lost interest in the game after getting to Picaroon Island--there really doesn't seem to be anything to do but walk for hours across empty maps trying to find something to give you some XP.

I'm kinda stunned that the lack of enemies wasn't caught in the beta. I know a very small handful of people beta-tested but you still think they would have mentioned the lack of challenge. I also agree on the nearly empty maps. There's little or nothing to do on 90% of the maps. It'd be interesting to count critters/treasure on each map and see what the numbers actually are. I know the dragonel/outlander map has been my fullest outdoor map so far and I think the total creatures there were less than 20.

Still, I have confidence that BW will address some of our concerns in a patch. It doesn't seem like it'd be too hard to add creatures and then bump that challenge about kills up to a 1000. He can tweak XP down on critters if he wants characters to finish in the low 20s. I thought XP was too high for some of the simple kills anyway.

I had a difficult time with the Sewer Boss but the Prospector was very challenging for my Barbarian Fighter/Thief.

On my next build I might try for a Pure Fighter with no Magic use.

Why would a mage need to learn rogue skills? Lockmelt is all you need!!

You get XP for picking locks, you get squat for lockmelting them

But a TRUE mage doesn't care about such things, he just melts the lock!!