Type: Imbuement
Strategy: Raising the caster's charisma by a small amount, this spell is actually useless. Most often, you will never know what options could have appeared in the game had your charisma been higher. Since it is nearly impossible to know, it is nearly impossible to cast this spell in advance to reap the rewards.
Importance: None
Grease
Type: Movement hindrance
Strategy: Since grease will affect your party as well as your enemies, it is usually advisable never to use it when your party is in the area. However, one efficient strategy is to cast the spell in the distance and pick off the creatures with range weapons. If this strategy is appealing, however, a spell like web or ensnaring roots is advised.
Importance: Moderate
Identify
Type: Other
Strategy: If you do not like spending the money to pay for identification or have not found the glasses of identification, one cheesy way to get all your items identified is to memorize this spell as many times as possible, rest, identify items, and repeat.
Importance: Moderate
Infravision
Type: Other
Strategy: Turn on group infravision under the options section, and the use of this spell flies out the window faster than cool air on a steamy day.
Importance: None, unless you have a party composed solely of humans
Larloch's Minor Drain
Type: Touch damage
Strategy: The one to four hit-point gain of this spell will be less than the amount of hit points you'll lose for wasting your time casting it. Since the player loses any hit points gained over the maximum after one turn, any practical use would be difficult to find.
Importance: None
Shocking Grasp
Type: Touch damage
Strategy: Grasp yields only a low amount of damage and forces you to bring your mage to the front line. The result is usually not at all pretty. Try to avoid this spell.
Importance: None
The sorcerer Zaxxon casts the most important spell... ever.
Magic Missile
Type: Missile damage
Strategy: This is the bread-and-butter offensive spell for mages. With the amount of missiles increasing as you level up, and the damage staying high at 1d4+1, this spell should occupy most of your level 1 slots. Also, it casts almost instantly to disrupt other mages and do quick damage. There are simply no better all-purpose spells to take up the bulk of your slots.
Importance: Vital
Protection from Evil
Type: Defense
Strategy: This spell will become increasingly more and more useful. Not only is the spell a must for summoning minions, it will also protect you against many of the demons found in the later parts of the game. One particular battle comes to mind where there are hordes of demons, and casting this spell will let you turn the tide of battle from an impossible situation to an easy victory. However, if you happen to have a class like a paladin in your party, he will come with plenty of these as a special ability, so you shouldn't bother memorizing it.
Importance: High or low
Protection from Petrifaction
Type: Defense
Strategy: As the name implies, if there are petrifaction attacks, this will protect you from them. Though there are few times in Baldur's Gate II when enemies will petrify you, you could memorize this and rest once you've stumbled into a useful area. Otherwise, this has no use.
Importance: Low
Reflected Image
Type: Defense
Strategy: Creates a duplicate image that will disappear when attacked. It gives one free hit, but otherwise provides almost no help. Use mirror image instead.
Importance: Low
Shield
Type: Defense
Strategy: Setting the caster's armor class to four versus normal and two versus missile attacks, this is slightly helpful in the earlier parts of the game. Sometimes the best offense is a good defense. However, you'd be better off with a magic missile spell.
Importance: Low
Sleep
Type: Hindrance
Strategy: Sleep is useless. Though in concept, it does put the enemy to sleep, nearly every enemy in Baldur's Gate II resists it. Unless you need, for some reason, to take one gibberling out of combat, this spell will never help.
Importance: None
Spook
Type: Hindrance
Strategy: This is a cheap fear spell and, for the most part, a nice spell to keep your warriors from getting overwhelmed. When the monsters come in, cast this, and the monster must make a save versus fear with penalties or run off in another direction for three rounds. One of these in your memory banks can help. If you have a druid, however, cloak of fear does a much better job.
Importance: Moderate
