Wow, knowing what I know now, that sounds like an ultimate army setup! And all those items and skills in combination are killer! I can only imagine what it would have been like had you gotten an Equilibrium Sword and build it into a Sword of Darkness. (I've only seen that sword twice.)
That's a lot of Mana for a Warrior. When I didn't know any better, I ended with like 53 Mana, including the Roasted Rats. If I'm not mistaken, can't you get 8 RRs including the Dwarf in the belly of the whale?
That sucks with Bagud! The same thing happened to me in Murock last time, both with Bagud and the hero fight against that priest that seems to be in every game. Must be something buggy with the heroes there.
Goading Haas into Sheeping seems to be pretty easy if you have the right army setup. He did something similar to that with his Mana against my Paladin. That is a huge number of Shamans! I don't think I've ever seen that many. It sounds like you did a great job of using your runes if you ended with none! I've always had some glut leftover, even when I went so far as to count how many I'd get via the Scanner and leveling up my character via the cheat console in the Trial to see how many runes he would get. (I totally planned out my current Warrior that way, too. The game doesn't give nearly enough Mind runes to the Warrior and Mage, imo.) My plan has him with something like 30-40 Might runes leftover at lv 30.
It's interesting that you didn't give your Lina quite the workout level-wise. I didn't know until last time through that you get more crits when the Rage meter is higher, so I've been more lax in using spirits to exploit that in my current game.
I hate it when the game gives a great item like the Gladiator Sword that late. It really should drop all of those X victory items before Karador. I hate having to break down the Pain Skull during those tougher late-game battles when you need the Mana. I've had the game (this time!) put the Pain Skull for sale at the Dwarven Necromancer. I read on the forums that Noric can drop it, but that might be bs.
In my current Undead game, I got the True Faith Banner at King Mark's castle to start, and equipped it in Darion, getting the runes out, and sold it after
since I didn't want that whole-game morale penalty. That Banner is awesome--it's like a baton + a good shield, and all those runes.
Thanks for the report. It's interesting to see how your spirits and troops ended up. Your Demons and Skellies dominated (heh). I've never seen such a high percentage of kills on a unit, let alone two. Did you get Demons early on? I've seen them at the Dragon Tooth Tavern for sale. Early sacrificing would be awesome to get a stack of them going that soon!