Recent fight got half of my party wiped.

Trying to raise any of them, using the raise dead scroll, fails (no caster has level 9). Despite one of the loading messages saying that Tristian and Jhod raise dead for a fee, I do not see how to use the priests to raise those dead. There is no option in dialogues with any of the two about raising dead.

Since all of my heavy-weights are gone, I have a team B with no ortodox fighter class. It's quite tricky to play this team on Difficult. Also, hiring mercenaries got ludicrously expensive. I'm thinking of restarting the game ... in about a year from now.

you need to buy scrolls of raise dead and add tristian and dead people to your party to use them. you need to be in some location other than capital. that's what I'm thinking. never had such situation myself. game is not that hard, but requires optimal builds to play on anything higher than normal. and even normal can be a challenge with meh build.

I think merc price is fine at lvl10 and further when you are swimming in gold. early prices should be lowered considerably. mercs will turn the game into a complete face-roll, though.

Yeah, so that looks like a workaround, but I don't think I can use the raise dead scroll until I level up. Oh, well ...

you can use scrolls as long as you have 1 level in the class with no check.