How do places of power work?

[Sayers]

What is it and what do they do?

[Ragnarök]

Grant a variety of temporary buffs. A certain skill lets you draw from them I think. I don't know, I barely use them when I play.

[CorrWalon]

they boost youre stats for a certan amount of time

[Vashra]

You run up to it until you can click on it, as if you were looting a mob or harvesting a plant or whatever.

Then you click it and it asks you what you want to do.

You can pick "nothing" which just backs you out of the interface (in case you clicked by mistake, I guess), or you can click "Perform the ritual of magic". You then click *again* to confirm this decision, and it buffs you.

The usual buff I see is +100 to Sign power. I suppose they may grant other buffs in later chapters, not sure.

Additionally, at some point in Chapter II, you will be able to use these places of power as teleportation nodes from the power spot to Kalk's laboratory (possibly to other locations later as well, I'm not sure.) I suppose the most useful thing about them is they can be used in combat to teleport out of a battle that's become a rout. If nothing else, it saves you 5 orens to the ferryman, and pops you into a safe spot where you can meditate sell the *tons* of alchemy sprew you get off Swamp mobs.

If you've enjoyed running around and leveling your critter, you might want/need this buff for a boss fight or two, but that's about it. If you lead-footed it through the quests with minimal mob-whacking, it may be more useful in general.

I haven't tried playing on hard, so maybe it matters more there, but on intermediate, the buff is almost irrelevant except maybe when trying to overcome mobs with a resistance (but not immunity) to stun/knockdown.