I'm maybe halfwy throguh the game and I'm already looking forward to a Lone Wolf playthrough.
Thinking about a 1H/Bow user for one character, then a multi-elementspell caster. Sound about right? Any tips?
Early game can be rough, I'd suggest not spending your trait point from level 3 until level 5 and getting glass cannon right away. Since you don't have 4 characters, you really want the big AP bonus from it to be able to deal with all the mobs. Other than that, on the mage at least I find CC/support spells more valuable than damage spells in general. Stuff like Boulder Bash is insanely useful if you can get a bunch of mobs grouped up, Blind from well Blind but also from Smokescreen is basically a 3turn disable on ranged mobs(AI seems pretty dumb and doesn't run in melee range to use stuff and even if you stand in melee range if they don't "target" you they just pass their turns). Firefly or Oil+Flare(or any fire source) are also very valuable in creating artificial chokepoints.
Other than that you definitely want like every school at least at one and most of them at 2 to get all the decent early spells, then you pick 2 to max pretty much.
Fire is great for damage, Fireball does solid aoe damage burst, Firefly does good sustained damage and zone denying, Burning Blaze does good single target damage and you get good utility out of Fire Elemental(gets healed when tanking fire damage mobs which makes it insanely good on some fights), Fire Shield(immunity to burning is great and so is fire resist in general) and Smoke Screen(blind, cuts vision, very good to force archers/casters to move closer). Wildfire is kinda nice too but not as much once you have Glass Cannon, movement speed is still great when playing a plate/chain user for the other slot.
Earth has really great summons, Spider is fine if you don't want to level it but wolf is quite a lot better stats wise and earth elemental is super boss, haven't tested the swarm. Other notable spells are Boulder Bash since it's not a projectile so it's very easy to hit what you want and does a very strong knockdown plus explodes if you drop it on fire ground, Earth Shield since you get it very early, while poison immunity is pretty meh, the absorption from the shield is very good, Bless is great early game especially on hard difficulty. Sadly the damage from this school is fairly awful, most of it comes in the form of poison damage which way too many mobs are immune or get healed by and even when they hit they do poor damage.
Water is nice for support obviously, has the strong heals but also gets freeze stuff and freeze is very strong as a disable. It has however a few annoying aspects, for example a frozen mob has +65armor so focusing it with your melee is pointless and spells often leave frozen ground which you can slip on, which is really bad news. The damage is also garbage. Mass slow is super strong but comes way late, single slow is great but being lvl 1 you don't really need to level it. I find this school to be kinda weak, the basic heal is great as it scales with level/int and you can even get the ice elemental with 2points without penalty since it's skill lvl 8, for tanking water stuff.
In the process of leveling air and witchcraft atm to see how they work out. Witchcraft seems really strong as support but the damage is awful, Bloodletting is bad(other than leech procs) and that's kinda the only damage until death punch, but the utility is very high. Air seems fairly well balanced, damage looks good, it has pretty good stuns and a bunch of decent utility. Just need to watch out when using lightning on a mob in melee range of your other chars since it'll often electify their blood which will stun your other char.
I'd say Fire or Air for damage and Earth or Witchcraft for utility and water at 2 for Rain/Heal/Ice ele/Slow.
