a bard would be an interesting solo, and quite probably the easiest, since they level up fast, have an array of item bonuses and a variety of magic to supplement excellent melee ability.

i wouldnt go faerie solo - but then again, i wouldnt go solo anyway! 3-man parties are enough for my aged nerves!

i'm with dplax about rfs. go ahead and keep rfs and see how it goes. once you get a feel for it, you can do a true solo later. that's how i worked my way down to playing 4 person parties, too.

and keep the updates comin!

Bard was a nice solo, though i switched my first one to Samurai at L10 (Bushido was calling my name...) I just finished another solo Bard, this one i switched to Fighter, a little back-and-forth (Bard when i had some PP victims), total Bard levels 15, and 11 Fighter levels (and one Rogue level)
Really noticed the lack of only 2 things: Element Shield, (but i stopped noticing that when i had all the possible magical protection bling-bling stuff) and X-Ray.

Update - not much to report. Finished the Mountain Wilderness and retro dungeon. The only hard part was at first enetering the area against 9 Blistering Scorchers. Fishhawk cast Element Shield 3x and they all failed. Neither she or RFS got killed but reloaded in disgust, vowing to cast a lower lev shield (at 4 yellow instead of 5 orange). That actually was enough. Their resistances are already high. The Death Lord and Vampiric Heads were a snap, so was Nebdar. Fishie has the Helm and RFS has his natural android protections, so mental spells against them are ineffective. They are both lev 20 now. Since this is the smallest party I have tried (previous low was 3), it was surprizing to see over 1.1 M XP when finished off the Neb. Will prob try Rapax next, but still need the third artifact and the Sorceress Temple beckons. May not post again unless something interesting happens.

Dunno if you want to call this a spoiler or a tip, about carrying all 3 Cosmic Artifacts around...
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I highly recommend leaving 2 in a chest and only carrying one at a time into the Peak zone. Carrying 2 triggers the Roadblock and the arrival of the Rapax Army.

I think when I talked to Braffit in the temple in Arnika, the landslide had already happened. I was carrying 2 artifacts, maybe talking to him sets it off? Braffit said he talked to a Rapax and the only way to AP is through the castle. By then it may be too late to stash the artifacts to get to AP early. Would like to know for future games.

Update - we are lev 23 and cruising. Have all artifacts and Fishie's a Templar. Cleaned out the Sorceress Temple as well. Lost the first battle (Death Cloud), won the second going straight at 'em. RFS started a few levs down but now he is ahead in promotions. Fishhawk has all protections and X-ray at high levels. She switched back to Nin at lev 22. Rapax castle was a piece of cake compared to earlier games. Next is the Away Camp quest and on to the peak.

it's not braffit. the trigger is simply getting the second item into your possession. the only viable workaround is to store each one as you get them - never let two be in your inventory at once.

Thanks, sultan. Didn't know the trick...

This might be a n00b-ish question, but from the first two posts here it seems like you can change the race of your characters. How might I do this? I'm just wondering for the future because I'm raising two non-faerie Bishops, two spellbooks each, and I have one Cane of Corpus; if there indeed is a way to change race, when I get Their Most Reverend Excellencies all of their spells (which should be pretty soon actually, as soon as I hit Level 18 and open up the final spell level) I could make one a faerie ninja and give him the cane.

Seems too good to be true though - can you actually change race?

You can't change races, but you can change professions.

I think you are referring to "switching out" a character. While playing you can dismiss one character to bring in another at 1st level (on the inventory screen you click on the character's name like you want to change the name, then IIRC in the lower-left corner is a button to press to 'switch out' (It talks about this in the manual under some topic about if you don't like one of your characters). People use it mostly to get special starting equipment (e.g. if you want a ninja to start the game with a katana, start a samurai in your party then switch him/her for a ninja; you;'ll have to buy your ninja clothes, however).