What difficulty level do most people play at. I'm trying an expert game and it's slow going. It's taken me 15 game days to get though the lower monastery due to frequent resting and battling those slimes takes forever, doing 2-3 damage can take 10 minutes a slime. I was sticking it out thinking once my stats improved it would balance out. Then I got diseased and my party is losing stats with no way to cure them, my cleric is one level away from cure disease but I've already lost significant stats. So I guess I'll be starting over and was thinking normal difficulty would be less frustrating.

There are 2 major differences between the difficulty levels.
One is that you have more troubles to hit monsters, but they are better in hitting you. The second one is that your skills improve slower with practice. In addition, there may be slightly more respawning monsters. But that number seems to be very random anyway.

If you have trouble hitting the monsters, it looks like you didn't develop your characters properly. But in your case, the main reason is probably your bad equipement. Level 10 in lower monastary, thats way too high.

And thats IMO your real problem (judging from a similar experience yesterday). If you play too slowly, the monsters get meaner. And without the chance to buy spellbooks and better stuff in arnika, you're in for trouble.

All these encounters seem to be very random. I started 2 similar parties yesterday (4 chars, expert + ironman). The first encountered many many mosters, and was ambushed and killed by two large groups of level 6 stalkers when i was level 5. The second run had very few monsters; i was level 3 when i was at Gregor (but avoided him at first).

If this is your first game, i think better play normal.

All depends on your experience level. For me normal became way too boring and expert was the only way to get some challenge in. You might want to go with normal until after Arnika, then your equipment should be alot better and normal might start to seem too easy.

I usually play Expert because normal is really to easy. It also depends on the number of characters you use. A solo game on Expert is much harder than a 3 or 4 men party. It's normal to get problems in monastery on Expert, I change back because otherwise it would take a very long time. Once you are in Arnika Expert should be ok.

I'm with Niob and Gimli. Try playing on normal until Arnika, then switch over.

It also depends on how large your party is.

I've started a bunch of 4-person parties on expert, and boy, is there a difference between similar parties from one game to the next! I battled countless slimes in the lower monastery this time (I hate the games that spawn a gazillion slimes). EVery time I turn a damn corner there's a group of six or more slimes.

I could probably start it over and do better, but once I start I tend to stick with the game. But I'm not above dropping back to normal if it's taking me too long to get through the monastery, though. I'm playing for fun, not to make a lifetime career out of getting out of there! :D

I am wondering if I am hamstringing myself, I am level 10 or so and still in the lower monastery. I have only the basic weapons I started with and spent so much time resting every time I went back in I spent hours fighting the same slimes and spiders over and over. Then I got diseased without a cure and my precious stats kept dropping. By leveling so early in the game did I out pace the monsters by not having the spells (ie cure disease) and better weapons? I must of killed hundreds of slimes. I think I made good character creation choices, building the most important stats and keeping focused on prime skills. My fighters are 70's and 80's in swords 90ish in strength, building dex and spd.
But one battle takes all I've got, and I have three healers!

I would've continued, but the disease/lost stats was too much.

Where did I go wrong?

Thanks!

Well one piece of advice would be to try not to rest as much so as not to spawn so many monsters. Another would be to not take level ups after 5th level or so, this way the type of monster spawned should be easier - and hopefully not the disease-bearing sort. What is your party like? How did you focus on developing them? Might get some good tips from the board there as well.

My two cents is hang in there.

I am also playing on expert setting and spent a long time in monastery building up skills and level. The problem is that the monsters are also tough, especially those pestilent rats. My advice is to change the formation so that you have only one character at the front so that assuming you survive the encounter, you only have one diseased character and I could use the precious cure disease potion I found.

BTW: if you are sticking with expert, you get some major surprises along the way. I've completed the game several times on easy and normal setting but in expert I've been killed by three morax, six wind sprites, two greater picuses! My samurai rips, but it's tragic watching all the monsters ganging up on him.. luckily my ninja now has the cane of corpus so I'm hoping for fewer casualties..

Sounds like others have given you good tips.

I would say dont over level 5 in the upper monastery and all the way to arnika if possible. I would get lvl6 right before a big battle on the Arnika road.

GD