Hmmm... you mentioned that you didn't get Call Colossus or Call of Death at Debir or Scarlet. At impossible difficulty, any class would be hard pressed at Bolo or Rusty without it. I myself had to stop playing my initial impossible warrior game simply because I was stuck at Bolo; I stopped that game even though I had 3 AKs in shops via KBScanner and already had an additional 3 AKs via duplicate navi maps and chest digs, and that was just Debir-Scarlet-Bolo! Granted, going back to Bolo via Debir-Bolo-Verona is only 1 hour more than Debir-Verona, but that only counts the travel time. Then you have to run around Bolo to clear up what you failed to do on the first run, and that would definitely add more time.
Don't worry, according to other players it gets easier for mages by early mid game due to higher magic and the use of solo unit tactics, notably black dragons. So you could go back to some serious AK digging then.
