I played Arx Fatalis and loved it, so I figured I'd try the games that started it all, I just have a few questions:

1) I'm wanting to be a fighter/mage hybrid. Will this work, or do I need to specialize?

2) Do enemies respawn?

3) Are there any skills that are completely useless? I tried for a short while as a ranger and track barely worked.

Thanks in advance!

1) This works. You can maximize attack/defense/casting/mana/lore and a single weapon skill by the end of the game if you really focus on it, although this will come at the cost of having little to no skill of any other type. Magic is much more of a support ability than a blasting one, but that actually synergizes quite nicely with a strong melee component, and the magic skill can substitute for most utility skills (more so in UW2, which has a greater number of spells).

2) Generally not. There are some cases where new creatures (of the same type or of different types) may reappear, or new creatures may appear in an area that didn't have any to start with, but there's always a specific reason for this when it happens.

3) Some skills don't do very much, but none of them are out-and-out useless. Things like Track and Search are very much niche skills and you probably don't want to load up on a lot of those unless it's for theme reasons. Many skills have declining returns and most of the support skills can be replicated to varying degrees with the right spells. (On the other hand, mana is limited, while a skill can be used as much as you want.)

I would avoid thieving skills. There is usually no reason to pick locks when you can just bash them open or find a key. Instead of sneaking you can just use invisbility, or even better, focus on combat skills so you can take out the enemies and get the experience points. In general there is always an alternative to a thieving skill that's more versatile. I don't know about ranged combat, I always used melee weapons. Also, don't distribute you points over different weapn types, each type is its own skill. Instead pick one or two and go with it; I chose swords, which allowed me to use the unbreakable sword Excaliburn. Lore might sound useless and in most RPGs it is, but here it is your only way of identifying magic items and even knowing if they are magic in th first place. In my playthrough I completely missed a ton of magic equipment because i thought the skill was useless.

Hybrid works fine, you'll need a weapon anyway so it's pretty much the only way to go.

Enemy Respawning -
I don't know so much about respawning enemies in Ultima Underworld 1, but in UU2, there are a couple spots where enemies can respawn.

In the gem cavern, you'll know it when you are required to get there early on, you can sleep on the floor and a new enemy will appear there every time(there are a few rare instances where they won't). From a slug to a bat to a liche, you'll always have something to butcher.

Another space seems to be on the island with the stairs leading down to that cavern. Same effect, but I've never really done it there specifically. I've found the rat returned to life a few times, though.

There are enemy spawners in certain areas, especially in the magic accademy

Useless Skills
Tracking is completely useless, though kind of fun for a novelty I guess
Appraise is useless
Charisma is completely useless, though you may get slightly cheaper prices on those very few things you buy.
Acrobat is nearly useless. I don't think a fall will ever kill you, it certainly never has for me.
Traps is nearly useless, there just aren't any of concern.
Stealth is basically worthless. A few enemies won't instantly attack you is the only benefit.
Lockpicking is iffy, but there are a couple points where you can use it.

Acrobatics improves your jumping as well as reducing your fall damage. While you can replicate that with magic, the skill doesn't require constant recasting and can get you to places that are otherwise difficult to reach, as well as occasionally allowing you to knock enemies off of ledges (which can be anywhere from inconvenient to lethal to said enemy).

Granted, a certain ring in UW1 reduces the skill's utility there, but in UW2 it's nice to have. Likewise, while fall damage generally can't kill you in a single drop, there are areas where you may end up bouncing/falling multiple times in succession or take damage from other sources right after landing, and if the fall already left you hurt then you might get killed as a result. Talorus in UW2 is one example. On the whole it's a skill that has diminishing returns: any character benefits from having a few points in it since that greatly cuts down on the incidental damage from dropping off edges as you're navigating the world, but more than that is really only useful if you plan to be an all-the-way specialist.

The same goes for Swimming since you're going to get dunked occasionally and a few points makes a huge difference. (Water Walk is also an option, but it can cause collision/navigation problems in a few of these areas.)

Appraise and Charisma both improve bartering in their own way. This is somewhat useful in the early game of UW1 when you don't have many resources, but it fades out pretty quickly. UW2 starts you off with enough that you probably won't lack purchasing power (although I suppose these cut down on the amount of stuff you need to haul around if you do want to trade).

Stealth, IIRC, is mainly helpful against enemies that have poor eyesight, since they rely on hearing to detect you. Unfortunately, there aren't very many of those. It could potentially allow you to move around near/past a hostile creature without being detected, or creep closer to a ranged enemy before being detected, but this is only occasionally going to be useful in practice. If you want to nab items without provoking powerful creatures that currently own them then it might have some use if you're careful

Lockpicking is best saved for a no-magic character since the Open spell will do just as well and you can generally bash doors open (although this makes a lot of noise, can take a long time, and may damage your weapon). IIRC there are also a few doors that can't be bashed down but can be picked open.

Repair can be duplicated fairly early on in UW2 via a spell and there's a smith in UW1 whom you can pay to do the job (although this can mean a LOT of backtracking). It tends to be more use in UW1, thus, but if you're going for a low/no magic character then it becomes much more important.

Track may be helpful if you're playing blind (not using hint books/forums/etc) and want to avoid surprises. In most cases you can deduce what sort of creatures are likely to be present in a given locale, but occasionally there'll be something unusual.



So in summary: a few points in Acrobatics and Swimming is a reasonable investment for almost any character. Beyond that, these skills are mainly niche/theme ones (except for Repair in UW1, which can save you a lot of time), UNLESS you intend to skip out on magic, in which case both Repair and Lockpicking both become important and Acrobatics also becomes somewhat so.