Well I am currently around level 19.
K who does everything, Merchants, ID's, Disarms , Perceptions and Repairs --Not bad at melee either
P extra healing and starts with Spirit , has Mind , less for the druid to do .. should develop into fair fighter
D extra healing (body) has around 10 water and 8 Fire 4 Earth which she started with
S 10 Fire , 8 Air those are the only schools she has for now, will get Light for Destroy undead and maybe create food

So back to ... how important is dark Magic REALLY
I know about Shrap metal, dragons breath and so forth BUT devilishly expensive.

At the moment I am getting exceptional results with Meteor Shower, Starburst and regularly get around 60-90 damage with Ice bolt etc.
Through shopping at better guilds and enchanting items I have a couple "OF" items Water , Fire which give 50% extra in that realm so my Druid (at the moment) is casting at 15x water etc...
This should improve even more ...as the levels go up so my Sorcerer with say 20 In Fire and air (without having to add points into Dark) should be fairly potent .

If anyone would like to comment I would appreciate it , before I get much further into it.

Cheers

The high damage Dark spells can be useful, but they aren't necessary. Light magic also isn't necessary, but can be very helpful.

My favorite Dark spell would be Day of Protection to get a lot of the utility spells up in one casting. Likewise, Day of the Gods and Hour of Power from Light magic are very useful. Armaggedon is my second favorite Dark magic spell for clearing outdoor maps (watch out for your reputation!). You may not have the ability to straight up clear some of the harder maps without a second dark magic caster, though.

In short: Dark magic has some useful spells and some not so useful spells, just like every other school. You don't need it to beat the game.

You are only level 19 and only halfway through I am guessing. I finished my first Might And Magic VI game at about level 90.

There will be a whole lot of gold later on. In fact, there are ways to legitimately harvest infinite gold late in the game, so don't worry about money. As for Dark Magic, it is totally worth the investment. That being said, in my first game, I did like you did, I had between 12 to 18 to my Body, Mind, Spirit, Elemental, Light and Dark magic (which I used only for Day of Protection), and I did fine, the endgame was tough and optional challenges like Q or the last difficulty level of the Arena were impossible, but I finished the game just fine. I also had no idea how useful the hirelings are to buff magic skills. And I wasn't aware you could stack rings of X magic with artifacts of X magic to gain a 125% bonus to your magic skills, as opposed to a mere 50% when you use only the rings or only the artifacts.

The second playthrough, where I dumped most of my skill points into Light and Dark magic and where I used every possible legit tricks to improve my magic skills was, to keep spoilers to a minimum, very different.

There are those that claim in MMVI, Light and Dark Magic are not needed. The Elementals are more than enough till the end game with Blasters. When it comes to attack -- when I read the post--- I thought it was a pretty good argument. However, Light and Dark have protection spells that are powerful. So I would say "Yes" get them. Besides I like Toxic Cloud.

You don't need Dark Magic. Getting both Light and Dark feels rather like an exploit for powergamers than an intended option.

Exploit for powergamers? But Might and Magic games ARE for powergamers :))

On side note, this is one of problems I have with Might and Magic VII. But at least they moved "Day of Protection" to Light Magic.

Well I am level 35 now, kept the S at 12 fire master and 12 air master and saved all the extra points to try the other magic(s).
Got Light 1st up to 7 Master, that's as high as it needs go , getting good buffs with Day of the Gods and easily took care of Ethric and his mob ( at L22)

So bought Dark magic 7 Expert at the moment .... regrettable decision .. should have pumped Fire and Air more.
To place the last statue (and to try Shrapmetal) moseyed over to Dragosphere and ran into all those dragons
Ran up close and personal (read that Shrapmetal is the most potent that way) fired of 1/2 dozen salvos and got the dragon down to half its hit points.
So beat a strategic retreat and had the Druid casting meteor shower and the S starburst and took out several groups before I ran out of spell points.

One thing that really surprised me was the druid 12 earth master.
I saw many comments where Mass distortion was much maligned as almost useless but bought it anyway,
Doing the Knight final promotion at the moment, some very tough Dark Knights and Cuisirants and with MD I am regularly doing over 200 points damage ..go figure, I guess some are more susceptible than others.

The other problem I have with Dark magic is the outrageous expense , 2 Dragon breaths and my sorcerer is almost out of ammo.

Maybe if I keep pumping Dark to 12 or more and master it I may change my mind.
The thing I found is that something is always susceptible to SOME type of elemental magic is its all trial and error.

Thanks for all the input people

Cheers

Take a quick look at the damage formulas for the different spells to see the reason for the disparity you are seeing. Just for comparison, assume Master level casting for these examples, and no monster resistance is lowering the damage.

10 Skill Points in relevant magic skill:
Meteor Shower = 16 meteors, each doing 18 damage (8+skill). 288 damage if all meteors damaged the same target. Not all will hit any given target, and only usable outdoors.
Star Burst = 16 stars, each doing 30 damage (20+skill). 480 damage if all stars damaged the same target. Not all will hit any given target, and only usable outdoors.
Mass Distortion = 45% monster's hp (25% + 2% per skill). Depends on monster's hp (higher damage against higher hp targets), though resistances will lower the amount of damage.
Toxic Cloud = 35-125 (25 + 1d10 per skill point) damage on a single target.
Shrapmetal = 7 shards, each doing 16-66 damage. 112-462 total damage if all hit a single target (which is possible). Usable indoors.
Dragon Breath = 10-250 damage in an aoe (1-25 per skill point). Usable indoors.
Finger of Death = 50% chance to kill target. Hit or miss spell, and I'm not sure how monsters resist it.

Now lets look at what 20 skills points does:
Meteor Shower = 16 meteors, each doing 28 damage (8+skill). 448 damage if all meteors damaged the same target. Not all will hit any given target, and only usable outdoors.
Star Burst = 16 stars, each doing 40 damage (20+skill). 640 damage if all stars damaged the same target. Not all will hit any given target, and only usable outdoors.
Mass Distortion = 65% monster's hp (25% + 2% per skill). Depends on monster's hp (higher damage against higher hp targets), though resistances will lower the amount of damage.
Toxic Cloud = 45-225 (25 + 1d10 per skill point) damage on a single target.
Shrapmetal = 7 shards, each doing 26-126 damage. 182-882 total damage if all hit a single target (which can be arranged). Usable indoors.
Dragon Breath = 20-500 damage to every target in an aoe (1-25 per skill point). Usable indoors.
Finger of Death = 100% chance to kill target. Hit or miss spell, and I'm not sure how monsters resist it.

Meteor Shower and Starburst start off strong, but they don't get a whole lot from extra skill points once you hit Master. As you can see, Shrapmetal and Dragon Breath advance rapidly from extra skill points. In game, you were comparing front loaded Master level spells to back loaded Expert level spells, which is hardly fair. As you gain more levels (as someone said, you can expect to get to level 70+ by end game), you'll have a lot more spell points to play with before needing to recharge. Not to mention there are numerous fountains that can recharge your SP without resting (Mist and Blackshire being two of my favorite towns to visit for this).

Also keep in mind what you can get from the utility spells in the appropriate schools. Again, assume master casting.
-At 10 points in Fire magic, Fire Resistance gives you 30 points of Fire resistance.
-At 10 points in Dark magic, Day of Protection gives you 120 points of Fire, Electric, Cold, Poison, and Magic Resistance, AND Feather Fall and Wizard Eye that will probably last until you rest. It costs a lot more MP than casting each spell individually, but you get a lot more protection and spend absurdly fewer skill points getting it.

[ Thanx for the detailed explanation, I never really thought about it in this manner.

Up to L42 now

My S is 14 master in both fire and air and I am clearing out the dragons and Titans with relative ease with just the showers or an occasional acid/ice bolt to do it on the cheap.
Cleaned out the Devils post to get knight nomination, just using Air sparks and ice bolts with occasional mass heal
Fairly easy.
The minatours were mostly showered without problems so its fairly straight forward in handling them so far
I am of to see "Q" shortly to get the thing, should be interesting.

In any case since reading your post all the S extra points will go to Dark magic from now on
Still at expert L10 with Saintly reputation.
Will have to do some of the reputation reducing Quests to become nasty and then I'll master it to see what it does at really high levels

Thank you for the input
Cheers

Uh oh, I'd master Light as soon as possible. Saintly reputation is very hard to maintain, while you can always get Notorious just by shooting people. Don't forget that reputation averages itself over time, so you will lose Saintly just as time passes.

If you don't want to kill people, there are also other ways to lower your reputation. You can lower it back to Neutral by donating money to the Temple of Baa, and lower it from Neutral to Notorious by completing an event in the Superior Temple of Baa. You get your Master Dark magic promotion and then you can re-improve your reputation to Respectable by donating money to any temple.

In any case, MMseries, keep us updated on your progress, when you get high level enough, I'll tell you how my last Might and Magic VI game went through.

Bards can help here also

I agree, but he already said he had Light at Master, so he's good.

Notoroious is pretty easy to achieve: go to a town with peasants, cast Armageddon, heal as needed. Rinse and repeat.