Grimrock

Second play through party:
Plan: Max accuracy for knights and rogue, max alchemy for wizard (wizard gets all skill books), max critical for rogue, remaining points, if any, go in critical for knights. Maybe max air magic for the wizard. No usage of experience necklaces (having to swap them around is a pain, and there are necklaces with effects that are useful during fights).

MostlyHarmless wrote:My second (current) party:

1. Insectoid Fighter
--quick and natural armor.
--i'll max heavy weapons to use the Scythe (which I now want mid-game), 4 in armor, rest in critical and a few in accuracy.
--i think Scythe is probably the best weapon in the game for a warrior with high critical, so i rolled a fighter to use its special frequently.

2. Minotaur Barb
--head hunter and aggressive.
--maxing light weapons to dual wield. i know some guys crap on dual wield, but I want to try it for myself. so far so good. i think the damage per second might be higher than with a heavy weapon of equivalent level, and maybe more efficient for crowd control. i.e. faster cool downs + if the first strike finishes off an enemy, the second can be used on a new enemy, whereas with a 2h weapon there'd be no second strike until cooldown is over. we'll see.

3. Human Alchemist
--fast learner and skilled.
--i'll max alchemy and firearms. i know people say firearms suck, but i want to see for myself. i'll stick with light armor because my alchemist is proabably not strong enough to wear heavy armor + hand cannon + cannon balls. i'm also conserving ammo, and using bow until i run out of arrows or in difficult fights i switch to ammo. not sure how to build the alchemist properly though or about all the special potions, but i keep reading about how alchemists are the shiz so we'll see. if i have enough points i'll try to put enough on water magic to get ice shield.

4. Lizardman Battle Mage
--resistance to elements and immunity to poison
--i'll concentrate on fire magic. basically i wanted a wizard that can wear heavy armor (regular wizard is too weak). also i had plenty of energy potions/ingredients left last time, so i think can just drink more energy potions to make up for the lesser mana pool. early game i would also tank in front if one of my warriors was low on health.

So I did take my alchemist to firearms 5, and firearms sucked as everyone said. in the end i used a console command to switch my firearms skill points to light weapons (went dex based, dual wield), that was much better. also, the scythe wasn't performing so well for my fighter even with Critical at 5, and I ended up using the Meteor Hammer in the final fights. The +20 accuracy bonus from the meteor hammer was just too good to give up. 2h and dual-wield seemed about equivalent for me in practice.

if i do another run, i'd probably use all lizardmen to get resistance to elements and immunity to poison. two barbs, 1 alchemist, 1 battle mage should work fine.

I actually decided to restart fresh. I'm starting wuith this party

Human Fighter Aggressive/Skilled Heavy weapons with Bane being the endgoal
Insectoid Barbarian Chitin Armor/Martial training Heavy weapons with meteor hammer being endgoal
Mino Barbarian Aggressive/Headhunter Throwing and Alchemy
Human Wizard Fire/Air/Dodge

The two humans are a married couple that murdered together, one being a wizard, and the other having a knack for bringing out the special properties in heavy weapons. They eventually got caught by the law. The Insectoid was a warrior for his people, but was taken prisoner when their army surrendered. The minotaur was a hitman, specializing in thrown weapons and alchemy, but he couldn't hide himself very well and got caught .

It's not perfect from a min/maxing perspective, but seems like fun to me. I like having a wizard in the party even though I know a lot of people don't.

Just finished my third run, this time on hard mode with an all lizardman party to get resistance to elements. I went with two barbarians in front row (all dex and strength at character creation), one back row fighter (willpower and dex), and a utility caster alchemist (willpower and dex). The front row guys had martial training as second trait and the fighter and alchemist had fast metabolism.

This party felt weak in the beginning (although could have just been hard mode for first time), probably because I lacked a full caster, and because the my warriors had low strength (since they were lizardmen) and vitality, but towards the end of the game this was my strongest team and I beat both Lindworm and the Island Master on first try without abusing rage potions. Elemental resistances really help in those fights - my whole team was almost immune to fire by that point.

I ignored armor skill almost completely (and just took the negative evasion hit for meteor and crystal sets on my front row barbs) and maxed accuracy and critical instead. The fighter I built to have a large energy pool and fast attack mostly with specials - his endgame weapons of choice were the Scythe and Ancient Claymore - I also gave her both energy tomes, willpower potions, and most of the strength potions to keep her strength up with the barberians. I gave the other barberian some energy gear too so that she could perform Bane's special at least once. The other barb went dual wield. The alchemist put enough points into magic to get fireball and frostbolt, plus those shields, but magic is kind of weak by endgame so I didn't bother taking it further. Of course I gave her Alchemy 5 and also put two points into armor so she could wear the mirror set without evasion penalty. She was supposed to be my bomb thrower, but in the end I didn't use any bombs.

Solo Human Farmer, Hard, Oldschool, Single Use Crystals. (Not Ironman - I don't have the time)

All lizardmen for poison immunity is pretty good. Makes a lot of fights relatively trivial. Being 100% immune to one of the more annoying types of damage from the get go is pretty baller.

I'm not a fan of metabolism. I typically take either the +20 health talent for my front row and +20 energy for my back row.

For my hard/iron/nocrystal run I did 2 barbarians up front. Instead of 4 armor I put 2 points into concentration and 2 into athletics. 2 concentration gives me 20 seconds of +25 prot when I need it, more energy for specials and a force field if I'm feeling sandy. The 40 health was handy. Vit/Str on them to start. I went 1 accuracy/1 heavy to start, then accuracy-accuracy-conc-conc-heavy-heavy-heavy-heavy-crit-crit-crit-athletics-athletics

In the back row was an alchemist that went 2 accuracy, 3 light, 5 crit and 5 alchemy (tomes + xp neck on this one). Bear form shenanigans when needed which wasn't often honestly.

Finally was farmer. With fishing I was able to get to level 11 or so while everybody else was level 4. Farmer is ideal for caster because early game you can get meteor really early making the first 50% of the game fairly trivial. Then late game everybody catches up eventually anyways and farmer isn't much more powerful which is fine because you're abusing 2x barbs up front hitting for 300+ anyways.

2/3 or so through the game. Loving my first party on Hard difficulty. Tough going at first, but really coming into its own in the mid to late game ...

My Frontline:

[MINOTAUR BARBARIAN 11] Head Hunter, Martial Training, Two-Handed Weapons (5), Armor (4), Accuracy (2), Athletics ... hits reasonably hard, can take quite a bit of punishment. Gets decent missile damage from throwing knives.

[LIZARDMAN BATTLEMAGE 11] 3 Resists at 100, Shock Resist 80+, Aura, Endure Elements, Fire (5), Air (3), Water (1), Armor (2), Concentration (2) ... Doubling up on the Wizard's Meteor Storm has proven to be a lethal combo. Queue up 2 of these in a row (for a total of 4 with support from the Wizard) plus a smattering of melee hits from the Barbarian and Farmer and I find most stuff goes down almost instantly even bosses I've fought up to this point. It has taken some patience, but this character's toughness is starting to be reasonable.

My Backline:

[MINOTAUR FARMER 18] Aggressive, Muscular, Light Weapons (5), Armor (2), Accuracy (2), Critical (5), Alchemy (3) ... surprisingly effective back-line fighter. Can be relied on for good damage. Shuriken hit reasonably hard. One more point into alchemy is likely to break the end game, I expect. I have been saving my herbs and potions all game long without really needing 'em. Backstabbing out of the Wizard's Invisibility Spell seems to be a great way to approach fights that look a bit more difficult.

[HUMAN WIZARD 12] Skilled, Aggressive (selected that by mistake actually, wondering now if it's a good pairing with Meteor Storm), Fire (5), Air (3), Water (1), Concentration (4) ... Utility spells are quite helpful, doubling up on the Battlemage's Meteor Storm has proven to be very effective. I gave him "Neck Chain" so I can quickly sleep after using some utility spells to keep his Energy up. Also, this allows him to always have access to his offense after rest. Throwing all of my food into the Farmer means that my Wizard is really the only one who benefits from rest.

~!~!~ Ankhuri ~!~!~

Zehnpai wrote:All lizardmen for poison immunity is pretty good. Makes a lot of fights relatively trivial. Being 100% immune to one of the more annoying types of damage from the get go is pretty baller.

My thinking is you get 50% resistance to poison and all other elements from endure elements, so poison immunity on top of that seems a bit of a waste. You can find 2 serpent bracers to get two members up to 100% resistance and crystal amulet also gives poison immunity, but even without those, most of your lizardmen party members with endure elements are probably going to be around 90% resistant to poison towards the end of the game anyway from vitality, gear, tomes and other bonuses.

That requires slightly more gear swapping/hoarding then I care to do. The +25 air resistance is basically pointless and the frost resistance is also pretty much pointless since a farmer with meteor that early in the game destroys frost ele's. So the choice for me boiled down to 75% poison resist vs. 25% fire/poison resist. It wasn't that difficult. Not having to carry around anti-venoms or anything like that was kind of nice. Poison damage you deal with from the first boss on for pretty much the whole game while fire damage you don't really encounter until much later and you're more prepared to deal with it.

I'm not saying endure elements is a bad trait. Not by any means. But I felt the 25% baseline was more then enough. I wouldn't take endure elements AND poison resist. I went poison immune and +20 hp for my front row and then +20 energy for my back row. Worked out quite well. Having 125 health on my front row barbarians meant I could go a -long- time without needing to rest/heal.

Human Knight - Level 12
Armor 4
Heavy weapons 5
Accuracy 2
Critical 1
Aggressive & Fast Learner

Minotaur Barbarian - Level 11
Armor 4
Heavy weapons 5
Accuracy 2
Aggressive & Skull Collector

Lizard Man Alchemist - Level 11
Alchemy 5
Throwing 5
Accuracy 1
Endure Elements & Fast Metabolism [ I think i wasted point on Fast Metabolism as its a back-row character & not getting damage from melee as well from elements due to Endure Elements so I think next time i go with aggressive or skilled mind ]

Retelling Battle Mage - Level 11 [ I choose battle mage for light armor but now after playing game I think i made a mistake & wizard would be better choice next time with Archmage armor set ]
Concentration 3
Fire 5
Ice 3
Water 2 [ with two knowledge books ]
Mutation & Skilled mind

I think my party is good with two front row melee characters & two back row range characters & they are doing good.