Actually, when I played the first time, I didn't know about the dagger. I only saw the (apparently randomly picked) spellbook you called useless. In my case however, it was the "Fade from sight" spell. I forgot my level when I got it, but it was *way* below the level requirement before you can cast the spell.
Now the nice thing was that my weak and puny mage could do the quests in orc land that you get from the military camp sort of early on. My mage couldn't stand against all those orcs, instead I stacked on mana potions, went Invisible and just kept running and running, placing the bomb and getting the hell out of there. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
