So without giving spoilers, those of you who have beat the game, could you please give some party recommendations?

What would you think of this party:

Minotaur Warrior: 10 dex, rest strength, Axe
Minotaur Warrior: 10 dex, rest strength, Axe
Insectoid Fire Mage
Insectoid Ice Mage


How would that sound? Fun and doable? What would you recommend?

Hey there. I cleared the game yesterday, and that party sucks, for a few reasons.

First, axes. Axes suck. There's really not very many of them to go around either. You generally don't want to double up on a single weapon type, although you could probably get away with it with Swords, since the best and second best swords are both excellent weapons.

Second, you have two Minotaurs. Take one along for Head Hunter and give him all your skulls, and he'll be a valuable member of the party. A second one just eats more food and doesn't get the advantage of the Head Hunter skill. I recommend making him a Rogue, pumping Strength, ignoring Dex, and specializing exclusively in either Missile Weapons or Thrown Weapons. That's your best bet mechanically, and while it seems like a Minotaur Rogue with 6 Dex and a ton of strength using a bow is a stupid idea, it's actually the best way to go for archers.

Third, you have two Mages. Mages use a rather clunky rune based spellcasting system that takes a lot more time and attention to use than physical attacks do. Keeping the spells going from two Mages is a huge hassle, and is generally going to screw you over far more often than it saves you. Take one Mage, and only one.

The party I completed the game with had a Human Fighter with max points in Swords, a Human Rogue with max points in Unarmed Combat, a Minotaur Rogue with max points in Missile Weapons, and a Human Mage with points split between Spellcraft and Ice Magic.

If I had to do it again, I'd swap out the Human Rogue for another Human Fighter, also using Unarmed Combat. Fighters get more hit points but everything else is the same. In any case, putting every point into Unarmed Combat (and pumping Dex like mad, instead of mixing Strength and Dex) made my Rogue a lot more survivable than my Fighter. Everyone should have 14 Vitality, minimum.

I agree with only one mage. Personally I would recommend the mage specialize in fire and spellcasting with a *minor spoiler* little put into air to unlock a spell that will be useful at a certain point *end spoiler*

Rogues can be surprisingly powerful frontline warriors if you put up their evasion then often they will end up one of the last party members standing.

Personally I would recommend getting an archer in the back (so a rogue with a bow or crossbow, I used a crossbow) as they have abilities to allow them to attack often and fire 2 arrows/bolts at once, the problem is that you don't find a lot of arrows/bolts at the start (or even a bow/crossbow for ages) so just give them a spear or something to throw when needed.

That party should work, but why two axe users? It would be a lot better to let one of your warriors use another weapon. Or alternatively, why not have a rogue with high evasion in the front? That should result in less competition for armour.
Using two mages might be a bit hectic, but if you are good at typing in runes fast, then that should not be a big issue.

I agree with having 2 axe warriors not being a good idea, you could have one switch to mace or sword. Other than that, I'd say you should be fine. And don't worry about food consumption, just pick up every piece of food that you find and you should be set for the duration of the game five times over.

I've not yet completed the game, but I'm going to start over because I realised I had wasted my skillpoints and I didn't like the ready-made party.

I've thought about making the following party:
Front-line human fighter with specialisation in swords
Frontline human rogue with specialisation in daggers and dodge
Minotaur rogue with pure specialisation in missile.
Insectoid mage with specialisation in air (mostly), ice and enough spellcraft to get the first improved cast rate.

Now, as for the questions:
Is daggers a viable specialisation for a frontline rogue without putting points in assassination? Will he be able to survive at all? Or deal damage AND survive? Is unarmed better (and then perhaps go with an unarmed fighter instead)?

Is the mage going to work, or will I run out of skill points?

Is heavy armour worth it? Or is it better to let the fighter increase Athletics?

I'm not sure about daggers, but I don't see why they would not be a viable source of damage. Unarmed is also pretty good. I have a whole party of unarmed rogues and so far it's been fun. As for frontline rogues, pumping dodge is pretty important or they'll be very easy to squash. Skill points are scarce for any mage, but then they are not really all that important after unlocking the spells you need. Increasing magic skills further only gives some minor damage and some attribute and resistance bonuses. What I do is increase athletics to 5 as soon as possible (level 1 or 2) so I get the +2 vitality for more HP on subsequent levels. But I usually leave it at that, because the rest of the bonuses do not seem to worth it. With a warrior getting armor up to 16 for heavy armor is pretty important, I think, unless you are willing to manually dodge much more attacks later on.

Awesome, thanks for the detailed answer! I asked because it seems that in order to get daggers up to a useful damage output, I would have to let go of lots of dodge. So the question should perhaps rather be "is daggers a viable skill while allowing the rogue to survive the front line?"

First, I would say not to overly worry about the party, because I think (on normal difficulty at least) any type of party is capable of beating the game without too much trouble. So mostly I would go for what seems fun, and once you beat the game you can try out other party combinations as well for fun or as a challenge.


I'm messing around with a 2 rogue, 2 mage party and it seems to be working very well. In fact it is working much better than my original 2 fighter, 1 rogue, 1 mage party. Maybe the races I chose could be optimized, but whatever.

- 1 Human rogue (front)
- 1 Lizardman rogue (front)
- 1 Insectoid Fire Mage (back)
- 1 Insectoid Air Mage (back)

Just so you know, I can't really delve into why I chose those classes without a few spoilers about gear, abilities and whatnot.

The rogues can evade most attacks (minus magic), plus they have the backstab bonus. I should note my rogues can't even backstab yet but are still perfectly viable as melee fighters. Daggers seem to be a pretty good weapon in general, and there's enough to go around for two rogues. To deal with magic, use traits and items to increase magic resistance. My human rogue is 50% resistant to 3 types of magic, and I believe my other rogue is 50% resistant to 2.

The game's magic loot favors fire magic, plus the fire spells work well against almost every enemy. Same for air magic. I usually also have my fire mage learn the first ice magic spell as well, especially sense you can hit multiple enemies at a time with it.

One of my mages also carries a spear for when he doesn't have enough energy to cast spells anymore, and the other carries a torch.

for any type of party creation 1 simple rule needs to apply, never share weapon type, there is only 1 good weapon of eatch kind. as for how well eatch weapon type does? everyone has its pros and cons, axes in omst cases for later stages has more pros then cons, more str = more stuff for puzzles.
swords are a mix, my perception in most cases actually not worth it untill u get the ultimate sword but thats it since it can stun an opponent for 1 sec.
maces... if u want alot of vitality.. sure but otherwise it is kinda bad since ull end up lacking str and they weight more then axes wich gives you str.
and lastly unarmed this is actually (as ive started to feel after being told to try it) one of the better ones overall, esp as a front rogue. since you gain alot of str and dex + some evation to go with it.
starting dex doesnt matter, for any fighter/rogue you want to max STR and then choice what helps the most statswise. why? carry capacity, you need alot of it for later and the more stuff you gather the more you need it to be there. you dont want to be caught limping around cause one of your chars is carrying too mutch.
mages.... do i have to tell you? however i have to say as a pointer for the later levels, energy will go dry.... ALOT i went fire + sagecraft 16 points in fire and 46 in sage, spamming fireballs on stuff that wasnt immune was frustrating and your basic regen.... well sucks if you start to sleep there at the later stages it could take 3-4 mins of sleep to get his full energy bar while it would take 20 secs to get everyones health up. i was kinda thinking to myself if i should have jus ignored fireshield and gone full 50 points into sagecraft instead for the halved spell cost.

There are two good swords. This is also bad advice. Each point of Dex contributes two points of Evasion and gives Fire and Lightning resistance as well. Carry capacity is not that important unless you plan on wearing heavy armor. You can deal with carry capacity simply by managing your inventory properly and dropping the old crap you won't need. If you're overloaded it's because you did something stupid, but no amount of good planning will give you the resistances and evasion that Dex does. High Strength contributes very little toward your attack power and basically just gives you more leeway to be bad at managing your inventory. The streak of bad advice continues. More points in Fire (or whatever element) means you don't have to cast as many spells to kill something. More Sagecraft isn't the solution to your problem; too much Sagecraft at the expense of your element of choice is the reason you're having energy problems in the first place. Get enough points in Sagecraft to get the 50% faster cast speed, then put the rest in your element of choice.

Have to agree with this, carry capacity really isn't that important. Actively managing your inventory is more than enough (which you will have to do either way). On my current playthrough I have no high strength characters and have had no issues with inventory and I know that I won't (second playthrough). Basically just dump the junk and you will be fine.

Well im going threw my own experience there, im trying a runthrew where i have an avg less str but more in other stats and im having issues carrying stuff around at levels 4 and 5 already where i didnt have issues before lvl 7 8 with a decent max str group i did last time. sure it was norma but i always ran with planning ahead 2-3 levels of surviving and what gear to use, only reason to use dex that you pointed out would be the extra resist really, evasion only really applies to the front avoid char not really anny other char since you wont get that .
weapon wise there really is only 1 top tier for eatch weapon, swords jus have the close 2nd witch is suppossedly same dmg, but before those areas its going to be annoying to actually gain a sword for both users if you run duo sword users wich the referance was pointed at.
and for mage... no matter how u play it you WILL run outof energy bigger hitting or having more casts and with the scarce ammount of manapots avail it will still be an issue.

and as i pointed out in my first post... my pointers are in my own experienced view, diffrent ppl prefer diffrent aproaches. mine might be harder on avg but it works for me