Grimrock

Hi,

I played about half of Grimrock 1 and just got this. I'd say I'm more of a novice player so I'm looking for a good starting party suggestion so I can manage the game on Normal well.

I'm getting hurt pretty bad now in the Twigroot Tunnels (all level 3 chars.) I have the standard party config of Human Fighter, Minotaur Barb, Human Wizard and Ratling Alchemist. These other ratlings keep killing my party so I must be doing something wrong.

Can you suggest the best 4 starting classes and traits/skills I should pickup?

Thanks!

P.S. My Ratling Alchem came with firearms and I can't find a steady supply of ammo so most of the time he's useless and can't attack, and my fighter dies quickly.

Perhaps you should change your fightstyle. Try to avoid us much damage as possible. Dance in circles, walk back when your skills are on cooldown, close doors to heal up and all those little things

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the starting party, and almost any group composition can work; checking out some of the character/party discussions here and in the spoilers forum may help you with that, but odds are that it isn't the party, it's the encounter you're facing. If you have this thread moved to the spoiler forum then we can probably give you specific help with the ratling encounters.

To be clear guys,

I'm asking what traits, races and roles are best for the 4 party members. I feel what I have chosen isn't working out well and would like to start again. I'm assuming I need 2 fighter-types a mage and one other, alchemist perhaps?

I'd appreciate what you suggest here - as will as good skills to pickup to get me through the game. I don't like my current configuration and skillsets - hope that's more clear.

What is a well-rounded and effective team of 4 (best races, roles and skills/traits) that can suit me well to conquer this island on Normal mode. I am gonna start over, as I'm just at the beginning.

Thanks!

So I am on my 3rd play through of the game and this is my current hard mode party. I'm sure this party will absolutely dominate on normal mode. If those classes don't interest you, I had some other good parties that I can post, but this party has really good synergy.

Race: Ratling [Immune to diseases (decent ability for a tank) and +15 carrying capacity]
Class: Knight [+1 Protection per level and 50% reduced armor weight]
Weapon: Any heavy weapon (one-handed or two-handed, once you get heavy weapon skill maxed you can one-hand two-handed weapon and equip a shield in the other hand)
Attributes: Strength & Vitality (though he'll benefit from dexterity for accuracy/evasion and willpower for weapon skills)
Trait: Mutation [+1 to random attribute per level]
Trait: Endurance [+25 carrying capacity and 25% less hunger]
Skill: Heavy Weapon
Skill: Armor
Skill: Athletics
Idea: This character can make use of all four attributes, so the Mutation trait will never give you something you don't need. This also applies to cheese since ratling gets a random attribute point for eating cheese. Also, he'll be able to carry a lot with the +40 carrying capacity and the 50% reduced armor weight. The 25% less hunger will benefit the farmer too (read further down about that)

Race: Insectoid [50% reduced injured parts]
Class: Battle Mage [+10 Protection, +10 Resist All, and 50% reduced armor weight] OR Alchemist [potion ingredients duplicate from steps taken]
Weapon: Staff/orb & Shield
Attributes: willpower and vitality (won't benefit from dexterity or strength)
Trait: Chitin Armor [+10 Protection]
Trait: Natural Armor [+5 Protection]
Skill: Fire Magic
Skill: Lightning Magic
Skill: Concentration
Skill: Armor
Skill: Athletics
Idea: The whole idea is to make a mage that make use of the spell Shield, take a lot of hits, and can still dish out a lot of damage. You'll want 5 points into fire, 3 into lightning, 3 into concentration, and the rest into armor and athletics. The 5 fire and 3 lightning is for the spell meteor and the 3 concentration is for the 3rd level perk and the ability to cast elemental shield. If you pick Alchemist instead of Battle Mage, just keep in mind that you'll need to find a wand first to cast spells instead of casting with your hands. It just all depends if you want the extra protection or the ability to duplicate ingredients (I would say to go with the alchemist though since that is very useful). I would also recommend to give the +25% xp necklace to your mage (when you get it) and all tomes of knowledge too.

Race: Minotaur [+5 Strength, +4 Vitality, +25% food]
Class: Barbarian [+1 Strength per level]
Weapon: dual wielding 2 strength based light handed weapons (most any sword in the game)
Attributes: Strength & Dexterity (won't benefit from Vitality and Willpower a whole lot)
Trait: Head Hunter [+1 Strength per skull, for a total of 9]
Trait: Endurance [-25% hunger to counteract the Minotaur's natural consumption rate. Also +25% carrying capacity]
Skill: Light Weapons [Max this so you can dual wield with any light weapon]
Skill: Accuracy [Get this to level 2 first so you can reach enemies from the back row with melee weapons]
Skill: Critical [You can get your critical up pretty high, also back stabbing is nice]
Idea: This character is going to have insane amount of strength, usually 60+ by end-game. You'll attack fast, hit hard, crit often, and just devastate everything in your path. Also he'll be able to carry an insane amount of items with a huge carrying capacity of 180+

Race: Human [+10% exp]
Class: Farmer [They gain exp from eating food instead of fighting, keep reading, you'll find out why this is amazing]
Weapon: bow and arrow [Guns unfortunately just don't do much damage and have very limited ammo, but you can pick arrows back up]
Trait: Fast Learner [+10% exp]
Trait: Agile [+2 Dexterity]
Attributes: Dexterity
Skill: Missle Weapons
Skill: Alchemy
Skill: Critical
Skill: Accuracy
Skill: Whatever else you want, maybe dabble in firearms once you got all your other skills leveled.
Idea: To gain insane amounts of levels. Since they only get exp from eating food and not fighting, wear the +25% exp necklace on your mage, and when you go to eat on your farming equip it on him real quick. You'll basically get +25% exp on two characters with one item. You'll get a total of +45% exp on your farmer (race, trait, & necklace). There is a lot of places to get food. Enemies respawn and a lot of them drop food, another great way is to catch fish in water.

If you play with an alchemist instead of a mage, you'll want to store your ingredients on your alchemist and craft the potions on your Farmer. This will save your Alchemist from having to spend 5 levels on alchemy (which your mage really won't have the points to do) and since farmer will level up so fast it won't matter spending those 5 levels on him.


Party Summary
In the front row you'll have a tank that will do great damage and survive most any attacks. Most of the best weapons in the game are heavy weapons.
And you'll have a mage that can cast Shield spell, have crazy amount of protection, and can dish out massive damage. The nice thing about spells is that it hits all 4 enemies in a tile, so they are great for crowd control. Especially with freeze and the new cube spell.
In the back row you have an extremely powerful minotaur that will attack about 3-4 times as much as your other classes and overall will out damage everyone else.
Then you have a bow guy which will ignore a portion of enemies armor and the bows you'll be using most of the time have a special attack to shoot two arrows at once.

For what I saw (I'm about to finish my second run) your starting party is balanced, but I guess it didn't fit you play style.
Since I don't know how you handle encounters I can only give you some directions:

Front row:

I highly reccomend a barbarian with Heavy Weapons, mid-late game it can quite litterarly one-shot weaker enemies. Drop a a couple of points in accuracy as you level and aim to heavy armor.

A fighter or another barbarian will be nice for the high hp and damage, you should aim to heavy armor on this one to.
The weapon skill for this one is up to you, just remember:

Heavy weapons= kind of slow, higher damage and more powerful charged attacks. At 5 point you can hold a 2 Handed weapon in one hand allowing to equip a shield.

Light Weapons= fairly quick, mid damage, can be dual-wielded (can attack fron both hands separately) and with enough points in Critical you can backstab enemies for x3 times the normal damage (backstab can crit).

You can choose a Knight if you prefer, but remember it focuses on defence so it won't do much damage early on.

Don't pick a front row rouge until you are a little more familiar with the game, in LoG 2 evasion is more difficult to stack so creating a dodge tank is not as easy as it was in LoG 1.

Back Row

Since you're a relatively new player I suggest to stick with the alchemist, since you can make a better use of firearms and, more importantly, can "duplicate" the Herbs inside its inventory.
Remember to pick a point in Alchemy early on and don't focus only on firearms, but choose another ranged weapon or you can make him melee from the back row with 2 points in Accuracy.

The caster is really up to you since the Wizard and the Battlemage are not that different, just remember that now some spells requires more than one magic school and some rune combinations has been changes so search for the magic scrolls.

Races

All races are viable so it entirely depends on how you want to play the game:

Minotaurs have a lot of health and strength plus the headhunter trait for more damage, making them really good for a barbarian or a fighter, but they have little dexterity and willpower meaning they dodge less, miss a little more and have less energy for charged attacks.

Lizardmen have more elemental defence, since they have a passive +25 to all and can have another +25 from a trait making them optimal knight or even barbarians. They can also pick a trait that make them regenerate faster and double the effet of potions on them.

Ratlings are odd, since the start with low strength and health, but are immune to diseases and can pick the Mutation trait wich makes them gain a +1 to a random attribute every time they level up, potentially making them at par or even superior to other races if you're lucky.

Insectoids are a more magic oriented race (but you can make out good tanks/damge dealers from them if you want) so they can be a good pick for a wizard or battlemage, just keep in mind that the have very little health so try to keep them away from enemies.

Humans are balanced, they don't excel in anything but they don't have any main weakness either. The have a passive + 10% to exp and can choose a trait for another +10%. I think humans can get 1 level more than other races by the end game, but I've not tested it.

On a final note: stay away from the farmer class until you learn a little more about the game.

Hope this will be useful, and sorry if there are some atroucios grammatical and spelling mistake but I'm not a native english and I wrote this on the fly

One other point: make sure you know which races benefit from food perks; if you have the relevant race in your party, it should be the only one eating its racial favorite, and the very first food item you find is one of those!

fwiw, I went with lizard knight (for the resists), mino Barb (simply the heavy hitter), and human alchemist and wizard (figuring the extra xp would be really good on caster types that need multiple skills).

for the most part, I was pleased with the results. The only changes I would make if I had it to do over again, would be making the alchemist a ratling with throwing weapons and the throwing skill instead of human alchemist with firearms, and changing the knight from dual wielding light weps to heavy weps. Don't get me wrong, you can make a perfectly viable front line fighter with light weps, but my play style was far more suited to big slow hits rather than fast clicking everywhere. I really enjoyed breaking 1000 damage on a crit hit with a big 2h weapon like Bane. where 2h weps are weak though, is against loads of small fast enemies like mosquitos. but then, you have your mage and alchemist toss spells and bombs for that.

the best armor in the game for your fighters are both heavy armors, both need shields to complete the sets and get the bonuses. both are very good (crystal set and meteor set), and both are ideally suited to each type of fighter (highly resistant knight, but with lower hps gets the crystal set, and the mino with low fire resist but better hps gets the meteor set).

ok, all that said? the best way to make the game work for you is to make a party YOU feel comfortable playing, and then set the difficulty level to match. if you feel the party you like is getting roflstomped, change the difficulty to easy and start over. no shame in that, IMO, as the combat mechanics in this game are very fast-finger oriented.

you'll get much better at it as things go along, learn tricks to help you survive fights, make sure you have plenty of pots for each character, etc.

basically, I'm saying that sure, the most powerful items in the game might be limited, but that doesn't mean you MUST tailor your party to those items to win.

Ichthyic wrote:alchemist a ratling with throwing weapons

Please dont, the rat gets dex bonus and throwing is str based so take missiles

Chees Party:

Front:
Liz Barb with 50 res (heavy weapons) and Mino Barb heavy hitter (also heavy weapons)

Back:
2x Alchs (tons of heal) One alch missiles and the other one magic.
You can counter the 2 will that you would become when you would choose a wizard.
Just hord the ingredients for the +1 will potions (since you have two alchis you get the "fast").

"Hard" early game (no missiles no magix or heavy weapons)

Thanks guys for all your suggestions!

If I go for a Ratling alchemist for back row, should I use firearms or missles/throwing weapons? A little confused about the suggestions for this one.

Thanks.

Also, do you think a Farmer is a good idea for a first playthrough, due to the crazy XP gain?