[Aerich]

1) Keys. Nope, don't keep them once you've moved on to the Temple of the Forgotten God. Same goes with the Symbol of Myrkul. Dump them in a chest, or perhaps sell them to Gerth for the pitiful 1 GP.

2) Yeti pelts. The shopkeepers work on a demand system. Thus, they will no longer keep buying things if they have a large supply already. The price will also go down after you've sold them a few pelts - I usually wait to sell until I've got 16 (the max you can sell from one character) and sell them all at once. That gets the best price.

If you aren't doing so, use the character with the best Charisma to talk to the storekeepers - high Cha may have an effect on how many pelts they'll buy. If not, don't sweat it - there'll be plenty of money eventually, and you can sell yeti pelts to the merchant in the Severed Hand.

3) Trolls. You just have to suffer for a bit - the only merchants that sell fire/acid arrows are in areas after Dragon's Eye. I generally do not use fire or acid arrows until a troll goes down - just use them with one archer to finish off the fallen monsters. Same with the Burning Hands spell or Melf's Acid Arrow. Don't use them to cause general damage, just use them for the killing blow.

One tactic that has served me well here is the Web with Free Actioned (via rings) fighters. If you pay attention to how much damage the trolls have taken, you can bring them all down to "seriously wounded", withdraw the fighters, and finish them with a Fireball - spells like Spike Growth are also good for bringing the trolls' HP down. If you have the 3rd level priest spell Protection From Fire cast on your fighters, you can even cast the Fireball while they're still in there - that's particularly useful if some of the trolls are hurt but not down, and not affected by the Web - they'd chase you if you ran out of the Webbed area where the Fireball will be cast, but by staying in there you can maximize the number you hit while protecting yourself.

You can also use weapons that stun, poison or phase - stunned trolls die normally if they lose the rest of their HP while stunned, poison will finish off trolls when they're down, and phasing acts like poison. Addtionally, you should have at least one "flaming" dagger or sword by now - those can also be used to finish off trolls.

4) The once-locked-house aka the HoW expansion. I usually wait until I'm almost finished Lower Dorn's Deep (near the end of the game, after I have collected all of some certain objects - you'll know what that refers to when you get there). You can go anytime after the average level of your party is lvl 9 or so, but the first area of HoW can be tricky.

Edit: for thoroughness and clarity

[ 10-11-2004, 01:27 AM: Message edited by: Aerich ]