Quick advice for us new players

[ccannon995]

Hello all! Like most people here, I recognize many of you from the W&W forums. Also like everyone else, I wanted to run my party by you all (the gurus) and see what your thoughts about it were before I dump 100 hours into it and realize I messed up.

Dracon Fighter
Human Bard (female)
Felpurr Ranger
Dwarf Monk (female)
Mook Priest (or would Bishop be smarter?)
Elven Mage (female)

Does that sound like a fairly smart combination? Thank you all again in advance for your help. Ooops, gotta go clean the house before wife gets home. . .

[Vaprakgruumsh]

Not sure how this will come out, but check this chart:

Human Elf Dwarf Gnome Hobbit Faerie Lizardman Dracon Felpurr Rawulf Mook
Fight 40 25 45 40 40 10 50 60 30 35 40
Lord 20 10 25 5 10 -15 20 25 0 20 -10
Valk 25 15 25 10 15 -10 20 25 5 25 -5
Ranger 25 10 0 30 30 0 -5 15 15 10 40
Samuri 20 10 -5 15 25 10 10 20 15 -5 15
Ninja 20 5 -15 15 30 5 -5 5 20 0 20
Monk 25 35 -15 20 20 35 -30 -15 25 10 0
Rogue 40 40 10 35 60 50 25 25 55 35 25
Gadget. 25 20 10 25 30 20 -15 5 25 5 30
Bard 35 30 0 35 40 25 -5 15 35 15 40
Priest 35 30 50 35 20 10 25 30 10 50 20
Alchem. 35 45 10 45 40 50 10 30 35 15 30
Bishop 20 30 -10 25 15 25 -40 -15 10 15 5
Psionic 35 35 10 40 35 45 0 10 35 25 50
Mage 35 45 10 45 40 50 10 30 35 15 30

[Virgil]

Your party looks really good, and similar to the one I'm currently using. On a few occassions, I've wished my priest was a bishop, both for the automatic remove curse ability, and for the access to a wider range of spells. However, bishops level more slowly, and with fewer points to spend at level up, their skills and levels of spells castable will be somewhat lower. If you don't mind practicing magic skills at every opportunity, go ahead and try the bishop.

The only other pointer is to swap the positions of the ranger and the monk. Only the first three characters can attack with melee attacks, and that is the monks strongest ability. On the other hand, the ranger is best at ranged attacks, and I have mine always use his bow, even when the enemy is within melee range.

Good luck and have fun.

[Vaprakgruumsh]

LOL! Was afraid of that... didn't come out very nice. [img]smile.gif[/img]

You can check my site (URL is in the signature)...

But if ya want the best combo...

Using the classes ya mentioned above, here's the best race for'em...

Draconian - Fighter
Hobbit/Mook - Monk
Mook - Ranger
Elf - Monk
Dwarf/Rawulf - Priest
Faerie - Mage

That'd be the "ultimate" combo for you, using those classes.

However, I can not emphasize enough, go with what you want. It may be more difficult if you don't go with a good "race/class" combo, but it's just as fun! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Virgil]

VaprakGruumsh, you're basing your best race for a class purely on how many bonus points they get on creation. This is fine for a class like a mage, where only intelligence really matters, although all those 25s in strength and vitality drag you down. For a class like a ninja or ranger, most stats are important. Dracon fighters are good, but they start with 30 in Sense, and that skill is important in combat, even though it's not listed as a primary skill for fighters. In my opinion, there is no best race for a particular class. Just play with the numbers, and pick a race/face you enjoy seeing on your screen.

[Vaprakgruumsh]

Aye, I did the above on the point system... but like I said, go with what ya really like. For example, my characters are the furthest thing from the point system (except two of them)...

Lizardman - Lord
Felpurr - Valkyrie
Hobbit - Rogue
Rawulf - Ranger
Faerie - Priest
Elf - Mage

Only the elf/mage and hobbit/rogue make a good combo of the above according to the "point" system. [img]smile.gif[/img]

But the heck with the points, I am having too much fun with my motley crew of would be heroes! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[MaskedFrog]

The most important part of making a party is making sure it fits your style of gaming. I have seen many different combiniations of classes and race each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I personally play a party that does not output a huge amount of raw damage but relies on instant kills and debilitating magic.

Dracon Samurai
Felpur Ninja
Mook Ranger
Human Bishop
Hobbit Gadgeteer
Faerie Psionic

After winning with this group I plan on trying a party with all basic classes to see the difference.

In closing, just play whatever you feel is the best party and with appopriate tactics it will be.

[John Doe]

My first party looked like this:

Human Lord
Human Sanurai
Human Bardess
Felpurr Gadgeteer
Elven Bishopess
Elven Bishopess

I took the Humans because I liked their faces the most [img]smile.gif[/img]
And I had to try the Gadgeteer and the Bardess.
This crew was amazingly easy to play. Around Level 10 knew the bishopesses so many spells (due lots of stolen books) and thus had so many spellpoints, that they practically never ran out of them. This was actually the biggest drwback of this party: The Bardess and the Gadgeteer became pretty much useless after Level 12. I also didn't knew whre to put their skillpoints as they allready reached 75 in their significant skills. The Bardess rocked before Level 10, though.
The Lord wasn't really good as a fighter nor as a priest, neither was the Samurai. My conclusion form this Party was:

If you have at least two potent spell casters in your party, don't wasre any atttribute or skill points on magic for your fighters. Exploiting their special abilities is hard enough without magic.

The Lord doesn't have any real special abilities (like berserk or criticals) which is why I wouldn't use him).

The Fighter rocks because of berserk, just don't forget to put points into senses too or he won't hit too often while berserking.

The Samurai seems to need much more points in senses in order to regulary score a critical hit. So you probably can't put so many many points into strength. He also needs more speed in order to gain more attacks and swings which he needs to maximize the criticals throughput. He's also the only fighter type who can wield a sword in each hand as the only swords for the off hand in this game are for Sumarais exclusively (I hope you don't consider this as a spoiler).

The same counts for Monks and Ninja, it's hard for me to find the correct balance of strength, dexterity, speed and senses.

I really see no reason for choosing the Valkyrie, the fighter is simply superior I'd say. Unless you plan to use her at your flank. She's great in polearms, so most of the time there'll be something to do for her in melee.

I love the ranger because of his searching abilities. He is supposed to score lots of criticals later in the game too. And he is easy to play in terms of point distribution.

But back to my party. The were nice to play, but I felt around level 16 that I could do much better with a different party and I was like I said, bored with my Gadgeteer and the Bardess. So I started from the scratch yesterday. In normal mode, yes I was in novice mode before [img]smile.gif[/img] So far they perform well and all of them will gain an expert skill between level 9 and 12 and most of them a second around level 16. He he, that's planing

This is how they look:

Front line: Lizard Fighter
Felpurr Samurai-ess
Flanks: Mook Ranger
Felpurr Ninje
Centre: Faerie Bishopess
Faerie Bishopess

Yes, the Bishopess I had before were so good that I sticked to them. Only took Faeries this time because of much better point distribution which will result in earlier expert skills.

I changed the Lord for the fighter who allready kicks xxx.

I sticked to the Sumarai just to see if I'll be able to develop him into a decent fighter. I'm still uncertain about this.

The same counts for the Ninja. Both are said to be rather lame till later mid game, though. So we'll see. I also need the Ninja for pick pocketing which I exploit shamelessly.


The composition would have been different, if I wouldn't have known what kind of NPCs are available early in the game. I wonder why nobody mentioned this so far. They can be used to turn a rather dubious party into a hell of crusaders for the Diminae. As I don't want to spoil you, I only say so much that I hired two NPCs who could ditch out lots of damage.

One last word about the Gadgeteer: Most gadgets will be later in the game and thus pretty useless in my eyes as they all resemble spells your spellcasters will already know by then. The Omnigun is cool, but only if you're willing to watch him dealing out insignificant damage until level 14.