General Beginner Tips

[Jefrach]

I purchased this game over the weekend and spent about 10 hours getting familiar with it. Grimrock 2 is surprisingly interesting and has rekindled some of the enjoyment I use to get from older games that actually require you to think and figure things out.

I'm just curious what tips or strategies you feel are important and wish you knew when you began playing?

[Anurias]

I've played so many games like this that there really wasn't anything that I can think of that I would have liked to have known ahead of time, but here are some general tips for any game of this type.

-rocks (or other small and light objects) are important and your best friend.
-Sometimes puzzles are easy, sometimes hard but rarely are they complex. KISS - Keep It Stupidly Simple.
-A well rounded party has the tools to tackle a variety of challenges in a variety of ways. (In LoG2 starting class has less of an impact than how you choose to skill up your characters)
-Sometimes smashing your face into a wall will break the wall down, but most of the time it'll just give you a headache so don't be too stubborn to walk away and do something else for a bit (even out of game) to let you tackle a problem later with a fresh mind and outlook on the problem.
-Maps (auto or hand drawn, use them and make notes)
-Study your enemies.

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head right now, but those are pretty much the basics.

[Azel]

Tips that were useful for me when I was finally ready to get settled in the game:

1) The Knight/Wizard class can be skipped for now due to current game mechanics

2) Having 2 Alchemist classes makes the game really damn fun (only 1 needs to spec in the Alchemy skill)

3) Heavy Weapons are spectacular

4) Make sure you can cast Dispel even if you dont have a pure "mage"

5) Currently dodge/evade can be disregarded in favor of Protection and good combat tactics

[minmay]

DISCLAIMER: You will probably enjoy the game more if you don't read anything in the first two spoiler tags.

If you end up having trouble with combat (big spoilers about enemies and their AI):

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I gave an overview here.

If you're worried about skill training (minor spoilers about weapon availability and spells):

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Damage/time by weapon class: light weapons > heavy weapons > throwing > missile weapons
If you *don't* backstab, then heavy weapons have better damage/time than light weapons in some cases and better damage/hit in all cases. But if you do backstab, light weapons have much higher damage/time and usually higher damage/hit as well. (You'll want Critical skill whether you go with heavy or light weapons, so skill point expenditure between the two is basically the same.)
I exclude firearms here because they are a peculiar case. First, they don't get a stat modifier to damage, which makes their damage/time difficult to compare. In general the damage/time is lower than missile weapons, but there's one firearm with damage/time that's almost always better than missile weapons...but it has pretty limited ammunition and it's found moderately far into the game. Ammunition for other firearms is plentiful.

Strength-based and dexterity-based light weapons have very similar damage/time if your strength and dexterity are both the same. However, without going into too much detail, strength is much easier to increase than dexterity; unless you never use potions, strength-based weapons are better.

Fire magic has the best damage of the magic schools.
Air magic has damage that is nearly as good, and additionally has the most broken, overpowered spell in the game (invisibility).
Ice magic has poor damage, but one of the spells can freeze (paralyse) monsters, although not reliably and many monsters are immune.
Earth magic has poison bolt, which you get with 1 skill point fewer than other bolts (and it has similar damage), but it has no extra utility like air/ice do.
Concentration is required for invisibility, and is also the only skill used for the second most broken, overpowered spell in the game (force field).

If you're thinking about training armor and dodge, note that you'll never actually be able to "tank" like in many games (except maybe on easy difficulty?).

Finally, alchemy offers overwhelmingly the biggest return on investment of any skill in the game, but it is useless to train it on more than 1 character.

The most convenient party configuration probably includes at least one heavy weapons character, at least one light weapons character, and at least one mage character. (I know I said strength-based light weapons have the highest damage/time, but if you try 3 or 4 such characters at once you'll probably find that the third and fourth have trouble getting good weapons, since you can't really use the same weapon with more than one character at a time. You might also have trouble clicking fast enough.)

General notes on game mechanics (very minor spoilers):

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- Body part injuries do not heal by themselves, you have to use a healing crystal or a healing potion.
- Poison and disease, however, do heal by themselves, although disease lasts for an extremely long time.
- The damage multipliers from weapon skills and dual-wielding apply to the weapon's *base* damage, not the damage you get from the stat bonus. So they are smaller than they sound. The main reason this is important is it means you don't actually lose 40% of your damage by dual-wielding; you lose much less. (You'll still want to train your weapon skill to 5 as soon as possible.)
- The amount of food in the game is actually literally infinite (there are respawns), so don't worry about the possibility of running out of it.

General puzzle solving tips (no real spoilers):

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- Like Anurias said, you have to throw/place items on pressure plates pretty often, so carry around some junk to use for that (ideally throwing weapons/missiles you don't want to use, like rocks).
- Grimrock is designed to always be winnable. To make a puzzle unsolvable or get stuck, you would have to deliberately try.
- Every buried treasure has a hint for its exact location, you don't have to dig all over the game.

[Dr.Disaster]

- each puzzle in the game has it's hints

- make notes on your map (auto- or self-draw) i.e. for a sign, a puzzle or a place you can't make sense off

- when an area seems too tough try another

- when a monster seems too tough try a differnt approach (or later)

- prepare stacks of stuff you don't want to carry all the time at places you can go back to rather easy

- pay attention to dealt damage:
a) while white damage numbers are normal damage a white zero can hint towards an immunity against the used damage type
b) red damage numbers reveal a special vulnerability against the used attack
c) green damage numbers say that your attack did heal your opponent

[Jefrach]

This is all tremendously helpful, so much useful info so far. I'm glad to see there's not one particular race/class/passive setup which is necessary. A few other thoughts/questions:

Is it necessary to go through the spell symbols for each spell for every cast or can you set up casting with one click after discovering the spell?

Following the main story,

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I combined four magic stones into one fire orb. Does this have any use if equipped or is this more like a quest item?

How does "Reach" (two points in accuracy) work. Is there a penalty associated with it or is damage the same as front row characters? I picked this up because I didn't like relying on finding ammo for firearms.

Water is extremely annoying!

[Soaponarope]

Is it necessary to go through the spell symbols for each spell for every cast or can you set up casting with one click after discovering the spell?

You need to do the motion each time but you can turn off the confirm button in the menu with one click casting.

Following the main story, I combined four magic stones into one fire orb. Does this have any use if equipped or is this more like a quest item?

It's a quest item.

How does "Reach" (two points in accuracy) work. Is there a penalty associated with it or is damage the same as front row characters? I picked this up because I didn't like relying on finding ammo for firearms.

Reach is very useful and does full damage.

Water is extremely annoying!

Only at the beginning really, since you have low energy. Once you level more and get a hang of it, it's no problem.

[minmay]

Is it necessary to go through the spell symbols for each spell for every cast

Yes.

Following the main story, I combined four magic stones into one fire orb. Does this have any use if equipped or is this more like a quest item?

Quest item only.

How does "Reach" (two points in accuracy) work. Is there a penalty associated with it or is damage the same as front row characters? I picked this up because I didn't like relying on finding ammo for firearms.

There is no penalty. Attacking from the back row with reach is just like attacking from the front row.

Water is extremely annoying!

Yes.

edit: dammit, beaten by a few seconds...

[Dr.Disaster]

How does "Reach" (two points in accuracy) work.

Melee attacks are usually limited to the front row characters. Now the "Reach" trait enables your back row characters to attack monsters in front of your party with melee weapons. There are even a few weapons around with "Reach" build in.

[Thorham]

1. Pick whatever classes and races you think are fun, but level your characters properly. Don't put skill points all over the place.

2. Pick a weapon type for a character, and stick to it. Don't split skill points between multiple weapon types.

3. Don't pick a farmer for your first play through.

4. You don't need an alchemist. If you have a caster in the back row, a wizard perhaps, you can dual class them. This character should get all the skill books in the game. This character can have max alchemy, max concentration and have the ability to cast the most powerful offensive spell in the game at level 14. Level 13 for humans with the skilled trait.

5. Don't waste your time with the humans' fast learner trait. It's pointless.

6. Don't waste your gold keys on early gold locks. The items you get are certainly useful early in the game, but the items you can get later are more useful later on. Save those keys for later. The items from the early gold locks really should have been made available in a different way.

7. The Hub is very useful for storing items.

Edit: Wrote Hud instead of Hub