I didn't mind spell reagents in Ultima games when I player them ages ago, but they were never a strategic, fun part of the game. Same with tents in Final Fantasy, etc. If I was out of X, I had to go grind to find some or get enough gold to buy some. Eventually I had 99 of everything, so they were useless as a game mechanic, merely a matter of needing to top them off occasionally.
I never played Darklands, Underworld or Betrayal at Krondor (though have the latter somewhere).
Larian did not just recently recognize that higher level spells should have a higher cost than low level spells.
Would you waste time after every battle for 10 or 15 minutes so you can use Fire Armageddon the next battle and finish it less than a minute faster than if you had used weaker spells?
You are hardly going to be randomly encountering opponents. You may miss a low level area and come back to it later, but then it is hardly a problem to be able to easily dispatch lower level opponents.
How do you know which encounters are the hardest? If you hit a tough fight, you still don't want to waste your limited use spells, in case there is another, tougher fight after that, so it would be better to use a bunch of potions and make due with regular spells...
