Grimrock

As a side note: I think the mage's spells are rather weak. Even fireball or lighting bolt. But in a way I like it. THey are good at killing parties of undead and those firefly thingies while quite useless vs an ogre.
The main reason I took a mage and herb in the back is quite simple: THe alchemy/herb dude has created tons of strenght potions for my heavy weapons main fighter ( he does insane damage) and created tons of frostbombs to freeze 1 side of me while concerd. While my mage in the back cast the barrier into the other direction. So nothing basicly will strike my party. I love it.
I think armor and dodge/evasion is quite useless in the game still. Knowing I can cast frostbombs to the left and the barrier to the right. Nothing will basicly hit me.

As another side note: I was hoping to find gear that would boost magic power. Like a necklace that reads stats like: Fire dmg + 25% and +15 energy or so. Or another trinket that will boost damaged on heavyweapon or give it lifedrain., you know give it combo stats.

Anyhows nice game, it starts awesome but I think it ends to fast. After the sewer and big dungeon the rest is rather small.

Magic is definitely weaker this time around (it was a bit overpowered in the first game), but I do like being able to cast every spell in the game. I have a Lizard Alchemist who went full magic, and a Ratling Farmer who also went full magic. Both specializing in different areas (Lizard went Fire and Rat went Water). Earth Magic still sucks but between my 2 backrow mages I can cast Meteor, Frost Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Invisibility, any elemental resist, and barrier as needed. With 2 mages both damage and utility are always at my disposal, and with 2 of my party members alchemists, running out of Energy is virtually a non-issue.

i've now played the game through 5 times - and that's probably it for me until some mods come out... each time I changed my party up a bit or tried different things, here are some observations:

two tanky fighters in the front row that use heavy weapons is probably easiest. they can use crystal and meteor armor sets respectively, and since they use heavy weapons, the other hand is free to wield the crystal or meteor shield to get the set bonus. barberians make good warriors, but i also like the fighter class. you just need to make sure the character has good energy so they can use specials often. the ancient claymore is a good end game weapon for the fighter. (bane is too slow and meteor hammer has crap special for figther, the scythe is interesting, but imo not consistent enough since it relies so heavily on crits). i find knights inferior to barbs and fighters.

for back row i like one thrower and one alchemist caster. for thrower i've tried both barberian and rogue minotaur with head hunting. the barberian is supposed to be better, but the rogue will crit a lot. (barb gets +1 strength/lvl, rogue gets +1% crit/lvl). throwing is powerful because it's strength based and you can throw with both hands once you max the skill, but you don't suffer the 40% penalty of dual wielding. also the special for shuriken is to throw 3 of them, which I used quite a lot. i'm not sure of the damage exactly that each of my characters was dealing last time, but the throwing rogue seemed to finish off the most enemies.

for each of these warrior types I prefer to max dex at character creation and to take either martial training (for extra accuracy) or aggressive (for extra damage, which helps especially at the beginning - good for rattling with high dex since they have such high accuracy anyway but low strength). the rest of the points i put into stength for barb or rogue and into willpower for the fighter (for extra energy). i like to include one minotaur to take advatage of head hunting, one rattling barberian with mutation to eat all the cheese, and for fighter i like insectoid because of the quick trait and good willpower (plus he can eat the prickly fruit). i give the fighter one or both tomes of energy, and the pearl shield in the beginning + some willpower necklace. i've tried a backrow fighter too with light armor only and while he was a big damage dealer in that party, i think he's better delegated to the front row with 4 points in armor. you can still have enough energy left to do 3 or 4 specials, after which the fight is usually over or you just drink an energy potion. for all warrior types (including throwing barb or rogue), i try to get accuracy up to the 50-60 range by endgame, and i like to share strength potions among them since they all do good damage. in my last game i gave one tome of energy to the figther and one to the throwing rogue since i used specials a lot with both. and i gave the backrow rogue (or fighter) the rogue armor set for dex mixed with bear claws and skull to boost strength - i don't want to give the bear stuff to the front row warriors since then i'd lose the set bonus and protection points from the crystal and meteor sets (rogue set has no set bonus as far as i could tell). mirror set might be good too for a backrow warrior, but with rogue set you don't need points in armor and fewer points in accuracy.

so that leaves the 4th party member, the alchemist caster. magic is weak by late game and runes are slow to execute, so i just focus on alchemy and utility spells like forcefield and shields, and bomb throwing. getting air to 3 and concentraion to 2 early is nice so that you can get invisibility which is useful to avoid underwater fights and stuff like that during early game. i also put three points in fire to get fire shield (and firebolt). last i have to decide whether to go higher with fire to get meteor shower, or turn to water for ice shield / icebolt (you need one point here at least for dispel) or whether to just put the extra points in concentration (i think it increases forcefield duration), or you could forgo air and invisibility and just max water magic to get the best icebolt. in any case you cannot get everything. for alchemist race i like a skilled, fast-learning human and i give him or her the experience necklace as well. for armor i go with the archmage set on the caster since you want to use the skill points on magic, not armor + it has decent set bonus. imo, one alchemist is enough - at least i always had much more potions than i needed even on hard difficulty. in addition to healing, energy potions, resurrection, antivenom and strength potions, i would also brew shield, rage and speed potions for difficult fights, and then have warriors down a triplet of those before tough situations - rage potions i especially like because they have such long duration. frost bomb brewing is also supposed to be good although i never used it since i mostly forget to use bombs anyway in fights (at first i keep hoarding them for tough fights, but then forget to use them).

i've also tried an all lizardman party and resistance to elements is nice, but not OP imo. and i'm not a huge farmer fan, although if you know where to get the renewing food and are willing to grind then i think you can build a powerful farmer character. i read about one player who banged out a lot of leavels early on with the farmer to get the meteor shower spell, which made midgame easy for him, but i don't like dealing with the food.

Nice post. Kinda makes me wanna try a frontline Rogue Minotaur wielding a Scythe.

The only part I found lacking was stating that 1 Alchemist is enough. With the games current implementation, 2 should be the minimum, with 3 being ideal. The number of extra stat potions you get with 2-3 Alchemists is just too good to pass up. Plus energy management becomes a non-issue with a constant stream of Energy potions produced by multiple Alchemists.

Fun either way. I'm currently working on the last half of the game with the following party:

1) Mino Barb (throwing) - currently Level 14
2) Mino Alchemist (heavy weapons) - currently Level 14
3) Lizard Alchemist (fire mage) - currently Level 13
4) Rat Farmer (water/air mage) currently Level 20

Few enemies are difficult, I rarely have to use health/energy potions in a single fight against even the toughest enemies (golemns, etc); and the Elementals fall quick (both mages can cast Dispel).

The Level 20 Farmer makes the game a walkthrough, he is spec'd in: 5 Alchemy, 3 Concentration, 5 Air Magic, 5 Water Magic, 1 Earth Magic. Could have gone melee or ranged with him too but I have a personal liking towards casting spells.

the rogue minotaur with scythe wouldn't work - the +1% crit per level is only for missile and throwing weapons (i should have been more clear about it in my post).

i haven't tried more than 1 alchemist, so maybe i'm missing out -- i just figured the extra stat potions they could create wouldn't be that much better than the +1 strength bonus per level a barberian gets --- normally i just brew all strength potions anyway with the crystal flowers. of course if you need extra healing, energy, rage, etc. potions then i see the argument for more alchemists. how many crystal flowers can an alchemist grow in an average game without grinding them out by walking for no reason?

I've read reports of 40+ on a normal playthrough with 3 Alchemists. I am well over 20 with just 2 Alchemists and still have the 2nd half of the game to complete; but keep in mind I pharmed the Herders Den for 3 days in order to get my Farmer to level 20. That involved a bit of extra running in circles so probably not a good measuring stick. I would wager that 15 stat potions per alchemist in a normal playthrough is a reasonable average.

Good post - so many variables - so many choices. Wish I would have done more research before I started.

I think no matter what suggestions you read you find that you've missed something or made a less than optimal choice adding skills, and to a large extent you have to play a while to really begin to grasp the affects of your choices. I am running 3 insects -one Barb and two Battle Mages, and a Rat Alchemist w/missile. I see now that I probably should have chosen throwing vs missile, but with them at L15 I am pretty sure that I won't find enough XP farming to develop throwing as other than spiders in the Mines and the birds and elemental in the River, levels are a long slog....and I left the throwing weapons goodness knows where. I guess that I chose to spell casters because it seems that is what I always used back in the day and wasn't really familiar with the alchemist or farmer. I also don't really have the console-like skills to really maneuver around to get max advantage in melee situations. Additionally, although I restarted three times early in the game, I doubt I would play it again - don't want to have to go through all the time based puzzles again.

Magic is not weak, what is weak is the wizard class. On my second playthrough where I killed the island master my battle mage was a WAAAY better choice then the wizard the first time around. Put him in the front, 4 points in armor, 3 in air and max fire and concentration. 480 energy meteor shooting badass with almost as much protection as my knight when he has shield up. like 3 points shy. His bonus for using a staff is great, he has a ton more hp and hardly any less energy then a wizard. obviously it helps a ton to have an alchemist. who also gave him a ton of willpower potions and he was doing 250 or so damage per meteor spell.

The mistake people make is putting him in the back row and / or trying to have him use a weapon. his magic is his weapon. he's a front row tanking wizard.

just designate him as you'r "tomb guy" and he will be the best early game (cause of magic), slightly behind the knight mid game and then back to the best by time he gets meteor.

just dont waste points on a weapon skill.

Made another party. This time four Minotaur Barbarians.

All of them start out with:

+5 points strength
+5 points vitality
Martial training
Muscular
Heavy weapons
Accuracy

The plan is to specialize all of them in heavy weapons. Since they need accuracy anyway, this won't take away anything from the back row characters. Because the back row characters don't need armor, one of them will handle alchemy and the other will handle magic.

Just finished the first boss in normal, and they're quite brutal. Way too easy.

I was wondering which party would absolutely not work: 4 wizards might do a lot of damage but weak in defense unless they use invisibility and avoid fights. Who has tried the impossible team and succeeded?