But I'll say right now that if Aura of Protection didn't exist, I would have never made it this far. Early on I had to skimp on my vitality just to be able to equip better equipment. Aura of protection allowed me to do this without being killed every 2 seconds. It was only in my 20's that I began to put more points in vitality. Now with life drain, frost, and heavy armor, Aura of Protection isn't that big of a deal. But early on I will say that I felt that like I had no choice but to use it - much to my annoyance. I could say the exact thing about having to do alchemy to make restoration potions. It was pretty much mandatory early on. And, you guessed it , I don't I should have felt that ANY non warrior skills were mandatory.
I played a warrior and didn't take alchemy or any aura spells. I think it's very possible to survive without even putting down your skillpoints in anything but enchant weapons as a warrior. I did it like this from levels 1-15 for a female warrior on hard mode: First, I dumped all my skillpoints into dexterity every time I level up, and use only longbows. Then, I focused on adding more strength so I could do more damage and use battleaxes. I found (by luck) a battleaxe that does mana drain damage as well as averaging over 50 damage per hit, and with restoration I hadn't much use for potions as I could just right click to restore vitality. Granted, I still died a lot, but I also saved often and was careful. Basically, if you multiclass, you don't have to think as much in fights -- but if you choose to never step outside of your own class's skills, you can still survive.
