Are there any merchants in Legend of Grimrock

According to one of the developers the only thing that changes with difficulty is monster behaviour in combat,aka the higher the difficulty the stronger or smarter the enemies get.

Quote:

We have three difficulty settings that scale monster behavior in combat. On top of that there's old school mode which disables the auto map. We are also considering adding the permadeath option in a game update at some point but completing the game with this option would be very, very, VERY difficult I believe.

Source: Legend of Grimrock's official forum

There's a few things at play here.

First of all, you need to discover the rune combination for a certain spell to cast it. In-game, you do this by finding scrolls, but you can also discover combinations via experimentation (or searching the Internet). For instance, I discovered the rune for Fireburst through experimentation before I ever found the scroll. Likewise, I experimented and found that the first earth spell just uses a single earth symbol. I imagine ice and wind do the same thing, but haven't had the skill to try them yet.

However, even if you know the correct rune combination for a spell, you still need to have a high enough skill level in the relevant magic type to cast the spell. That's where the ??? comes in when you're looking at your magic skill levels. Once you've successfully entered the correct rune combo for that spell, the ??? on your skill description will change to the name of the spell.

Regardless of how or when you discover the rune combo for a spell, you can still only cast spells that your skill is high enough to have "unlocked", and your skill text won't tell you what spell it lets you cast until after you've already cast it. It's a bit frustrating, since I took earth magic hoping it would have some a low level healing spell, as many games seem to tie "healing" to "earth". Instead, I discovered through play that the first Earth spells is actually "poison cloud".

So, via in-game means, you'll just have to discover it as you go. If you want to be able to plan ahead where to put your magic points so you can get to certain spells sooner (and for that matter, even know what spells exist), you'll have to look to an external source such as this one.

For reference, here are the available spells:

Air Magic

• Level 4 - Spell Shock - Air
• Level 9 - Enchanted Shock Arrow - Air, Life, Physicality, Death
• Level 14 - Lightning Bolt - Air, Spirituality
• Level 19 - Invisibility - Air, Balance, Death
• Level 22 - Shock Shield - Air, Balance

Earth Magic

• Level 3 - Poison Cloud - Earth
• Level 7 - Poison Bolt - Earth, Air
• Level 11 - Enchanted Poison Arrow - Earth, Life, Physicality, Death
• Level 13 - Poison Shield - Earth, Balance

Fire Magic

• Level 2 - Fire Burst - Fire
• Level 7 - Enchanted Fire Arrow - Fire, Life, Physicality, Death
• Level 13 - Fire Ball - Fire, Physicality, Air
• Level 16 - Fire Shield - Fire, Balance

Ice Magic

• Level 3 - Ice Shards - Ice, Earth
• Level 7 - Enchanted Ice Arrow - Ice, Life, Physicality, Death
• Level 13 - Frostbolt - Ice, Air
• Level 19 - Frost Shield - Ice, Balance

Spellcraft

• Level 5 - Light - Balance, Light
• Level 5 - Darkness - Balance, Darkness