I bought this game when it came out and have played the crap out of it. I've tried most party combinations, and dual classes. I play expert ironman. These are my opinions and my way of enjoying the game. Take it with a grain of salt. Use what you can, discard the rest.

I favor defense over offense in this game because Heal All can quite simply outlast the mooks. There is not a situation that I can think of that enough damage can be inflicted fast enough(except instant-kill, which is not reliable)to prevent certain annoying things from happening(death clouds, elemental high damage attacks). When one member of the party dies, it can snowball into TPK(total party kill). Smooth and steady wins this race. With that being said, I prioritize vitality on my fighters and bishops. Fighters, because they get hit all the time, bishops because they have low hit points.

I don't prefer excessive training. Two bishops are the core of most of my teams. One bishop in slot one takes wizardry and psionics. The other bishop in slot 2 takes alchemy and divinity. Why slot 1 and 2? Because after a combat move the initiative is determined by party slot, and you want the casters added to party first so the mooks are disabled before the melee attack(put your member casting haste in slot 1). The alchemy/divinity bishop can have alchemy high enough to start pumping out purple potions in arnika with relatively minor training. The wizardry/psionics bishop beelines x-ray(absolutely critical).

A rogue is the best disarmer because of the bonus which can have them disarm the roughest traps with no training with a thieves shield, thieves dagger and max divine trap. They also do great damage. x2-x4 backstabs with Fang will shred the mobs. Can you get by with another lockpicker? Sure, but training locks is one of the most mind numbing things in this game, and a failed trap on ironman can do a lot of bad things.

So party:(short bus wrecking crew)

3 dwarf fighters, str, vit, dex, sens, polearm, close combat, bow, ranged combat
1 gnome bishop wiz/psi, int, vit, sens, pie, wizardry, psionics, air magic, fire magic, mental magic
1 gnome bishop alch/div, int, vit, pie, sens alchemy, divinity, divine magic, earth magic, water magic
1 hobbit rogue, str, dex, sens, vit, stealth, locks, sword, throwing

Dwarf because damage resistance, gnomes for high vitality. Hobbit for 60 starting points. Don't bother putting any more points than 35-45 into speed. You get 10 from the snake boots and 70 if I recall from level 7 haste which caps you at 125. The thieves shield will give another 10 to the bishops. Never divvy your attribute points. Max one stat at a time to unlock special skills like Power Strike. Put a fighter, a rogue and RFS in front position, a fighter on each flank, and two bishops and Vi in the middle. If needed move the bishops or Vi to the rear when dealing with extended range mobs.

Take Vi and RFS because strength in numbers. Once they join never switch them out. You can run Vi until she is unconscious to get her into the Rift. Bind at trang porter with bishop 1, Bella with bishop 2, and rapax castle with Vi. At bishop level 11 after binding at trang porter, make your way to Bella to grab the dread spears for the three fighters and Vi. Fang and the boomerang shuriken can be looted from the temple without ever fighting anything by combat running from the entrance to behind a post, behind a post to both stairs to the loot, then from behind the stairs on the left to around the corner to the mummies. You will have to fight the mummies, though. Fighters/Vi: Dread Spears, Strong Bow, Seige Arbalest, Lightning Bolts, Mystic Arrows, RFS: Zatoichi Bo or Martial Arts, Shurikens. Rogue: Fang, darts, knives, bombs. Bishops: Staff of Doom, Vampire Chain, Medusa Stones, Wrist Rockets.

On that note you should abuse combat run. It allows you get a visual on mobs without triggering actual combat, and it also allows you to put up an element shield, soul shield, and haste before the mobs can act. Example: stand near an open door that has mobs in the room. Enable combat move and move so where you can just see the mobs arms and not agro them. Disable combat move, renable combat move. Queue Haste, Elemental shield, Soul shield, ranged weapons. Step as little as possible so that combat is engaged when the round is finished. Voila, you now have full magic defense before the mobs can cast anything. This is key to crushing this game.

Is this the most powerful party? No. Is it the most survivable party? No. This is what I consider the best party to plow through expert iron man with minimal training and high survivability.

Just some cents based on quite a number of expert IM runs, incl solos, vanilla and most mods,
actually close to placing the last of the 3 artifacts, CM,
in an IM run to test a mod, 5 mages, 1 bishop and saxx, partially also sparkle.
The 4 travelings spells are limited to combat only and last up to 24 turns
(but hey will "survive" the end of battles),
medium weight class armour has ini and/or sen penalties, hvy also dex, some uber items nerfed.

My basic strategy is glass cannon, dont play pure fighters and rarely care about vit i.e. hp,
only if dex spd sen and str are maxed, i.e. in mods that result in such high lvl.
The terrain almost always allows to approch sneaky and get the surprise.
Else i pull them to a spot that provides such advantage.
Actually my most successful spells in late game were concussion, dehydrate, ceb hem from lyre.
even on scorchers/wings/djinni up to 9 lvl higher than party avg. Total of 8 deaths so far.

I neglect Pie completely (dont play priests), same for vit, and favor spd over Str even on fighter classes,
preferably so high that party wins ini all the time over the whole games "natural" progression
(need felpurr or fairies, elves/hobbits etc are only mostly always faster)
so party can move before enemies act at all, this saved my parties a.. many tmes in current run and before.

Actually at snakespeed 40++ my party can select to run,
and instantly gets the option to move before enemies act,
if i select to cancel the move the charcters will still instantly act before enemies move!
(this way enemies will not run into your spells aoe or melee weapons,
for that you must move a tiny bit to delay party actions)

My bishops learn all 4 schools since ~20y, they are pretty successful, even without grinding,
then you must have a plan how to maximize skill ups by casting which spells, and always stay with it.

My basic charcter inventory, except for bards and gadgies,
is 5 potions of restauration, 5 rez powder, 5 cure para powder, 5 smelling salts
and for this run ofc also 5 nectars and a mana stone, as the latter allows to recharge others.
The idea is everybody can cure every "shut off"ailment on everybody else,
so a minimum of actions by other characters is required,
as the related casters may have to do smth better, like cause dmg.
The potion allows a revived character to get full hp and stamina simultaneously
or to remove multiple debuffs with 1 potion, i use plenty of em.

That said i often train like hell in IM runs, using autohotkey scripts if possible
casting usually already in LM at the 3 roaches, later in Arnika on the 2 jailed thieves,
ranged sometimes a lil on the fish at LM but mostly at the Umpani range whe i can use script,
melee/close behind the huts collapsed roof at Mine Tunnels

Hey, townltu. I was Sirius on the old ign boards and on the +1 boards.

The kwm(kill with magic) parties are quite fun, probably lowest number of rounds to kill all the mooks? They can get in a bind, though if not careful, I found. I think I ran a bard, 2 alchemist, 2 psionicist, 1 bishop party. Bard tank, bishop focusing on wizardry+divinity(buff bot). Was quite devastating.

Piety I think helps with spell pool and divinity raising which I like on my healer. If you could slay all mooks in one round initiative(speed) might matter more to me. But correct me if I am wrong, in the case of death clouds its actually better to be slow on at least someone that can Purify Air so it goes off after the mobs have cast, since the effects take place between rounds.

I used to run my fighters as dps: str,dex,sens,vit. It's definitely better for damage. Probably better for encounters like deathsting apuses, where no matter how fat your tank is, one hit can kill. Not as good on fights like Breeders or the elemental trials in rapax castle.

I find the four school bishop to lag too much for my taste. Have to watch their casting too much starting out so as not to get the schools out of order for training. Realm skills progress too slow. If you don't mind training, it's obviously superior though. Around level 16 on my two bishop setup I start to skill up a third school, generally divinity on the wizardry/psionics, and wizardry on the alchemy/divinity.

Yeah, cure paralysis powder, resurrection powder, smelling salts, superman potions, magic nectar, mana stone. I keep the characters inventory stocked for what you said.

I played gadgeteers and bards less and less because I found they did great at short battles, but longer battles they tended to need to drink too much stamina potion. And it was the longer battles I needed to worry about. Not to mention a backfire at the wrong time can put you in a pickle.

I think hybrids do well in smaller parties(like a 4 person at most) so that they rise in level faster. If I recall critical strike is adjusted based off the characters level vs the mob. Thus, if your character is higher level than the mob it will crit more often. I realize there is some level scaling in the game but not always and I think it eventually stops. Smaller parties allow their multi-class abilities to shine more.

Giant sword: not convinced on this. It seems better on paper than in practice. I don't seem to KO 30% of the time, but I haven't actually parsed, it was just plain noticeable(could be me). Is this adjusted by mob level difference, or are some mobs considered "Fighters" and get a resistance to KO bonus? I know you know a lot about the game code.

I dont use the giant sword, its a stamina vampire even on fighters with st regen,
and a lightning strike can render the samurai uncoonscious.
Hold a broom at one end, horizontally with strtched arm,
then imagine to add a bucket with ~16l water in the middle to get the idea irl :D


Not quite sure about how exactly side effects of weapons work,
i think the 30%KO in case of the GS stands for the chance of a hit that causes damage to inherit the effect,
and if the attack is considered to "contain" the effect
the target then gets a saving throw, for "unconschious" its earth realm, to resist the side effect.

From observation its seems pretty sure that class releated side effects inherited in the attack,
like knockout by fighters or MA, kill by ninja etc from critical strike
take the attackers and targets lvl into account.
Chances inherited in the item appear to be applied after the lvl difference was already taken into account
or at least get a substancially lower penalty form xp lvl difference.

To use Scregs words: "mind you its only a theory"

Personally, I would never play Iron Man.

But, if you choose to, here's some tips:
* Don't use the "re-use last item" (I believe it's Shift-U) with consumables, as using the last one this way will crash the game with an assertion. It's OK to use this shortcut for instruments or gadgets, if you want to keep using it until the spell is cast at a good power level, or if you need to re-cast Heal All or Resturation (the latter being the fastest way to get those last few points of Music).
* Don't cast Remove Curse from the inventory screen. Doing this can result in an assertion crash if the spell backfires, the caster gets hexed by that backfire, and that backfire puts the character's SP into the negatives. Casting the spell from the main screen doesn't have this issue. Also, the problem disappears once you're at the point where Remove Curse can't backfile.
* You might not want to join the Umpani, as doing so requires going through an action sequence where a single mistake can get you crushed.
* Be extra careful around elevators, as they can crush you if you're not careful.
* In the mines, be careful around the mine cart. There's a little piece of wood that is somehow able to crush your whole party when you click on it if you happen to be standing in the wrong spot.
* Don't go out of bounds unless you know what you're doing. If you go too far, you'll fall through the ground and the game will then declare your party to have been crushed. (If you want to play around with out of bounds exploration, don't do it on Iron Man.)
* The save/load trick to bypass practice timers should work on Iron Man. You'll need to quit to the title screen each time, but that will still save the game and allow you to load it.
* If something goes *really* wrong, you might be able to salvage it by force-closing the game, as long as you do so before a party wipe or another auto-save. Notably, the game does not save during battle, even on Iron Man, so you can still re-load a losing battle if you want to. (Although, if you're going to do this, why are you playing Iron Man in the first place?) I believe there is a level comparison, which will affect the chance of the effect working. You are going to have a hard time KOing or instant killing Nessie if you're below her level, for example.

Also worth noting:
* Class effects may depend on level (Fighter) or skill (Ranger)
* If multiple things give chances for the same status effect, they add. (This matters, for example, if a Fighter is using a weapon that can KO, or if a Ranger or Critical Strike character is using a weapon that can Instant Kill.)

By the way, one other word of advice:
* When using an item that can instant kill multiple targets (like the Staff of Doom or the NegatAir), you might want to try to get up Element Shield *first*. (Note that, for Death Cloud, the initiative of the Element Shield caster doesn't matter, since that spell can't kill anyone until the end of the round; that is not true for Asphyxiation or Quicksand, which can kill the moment they're cast.)

Some more:
Keep distance to the 5 segment doors at lower martens bluff bc in rare cases they can pull the party through the ground, resulting in crush at location border.
Every door can crush the party, even if its has "door like" flagged,
If you dont have a portal set somewhere, do not close the 3rd prison cell in Atnia from inside,
or slip behind the closed glass walls of the squisher trap at mortens bluff,
also dont run between them while they are closing.
Dont trigger conversation with Rubble by handing him the IUF card when you meet him the very 1st time.
The Trynnie patrol will push you down if you happen to stand at the wrong spot.


I play self imposed aka honorable IM.
If i only go with the IM restrictions imposed by the game,
i could be running a script which creates an achive of the save every n minutes,
timestamp added to the name takes care that never gets overwritten

@townltu That's been my experience with giant sword as well, I didn't even mention the stamina drain. Mook samurai with max vitality and infinity helm going unconscious with a lightning strike. Also, that makes sense what you said: that the 30% is applied on a second roll. So first you would have to have the effect have a chance to occur, then the 30% is applied to it actually occurring.

@dtgreene. Nice tips. I shied away from iron man for the longest because of game bugs that I believed could end your playthrough. I eventually just played iron man and beat it without a problem. On another iron man run, my party had a TPK by being crushed or falling(can't remember), something like falling off the elevator in trynton to the ground(another bad spot). To my surprise my iron man game was still available to continue. Is this normal behavior or a bug, or did the devs put something in to prevent an iron man run from being ruined from things like that?

If experiencing more bugs than usual, a No-Reload challenge can essentially be an iron man run.

I've had Vi bug and not rejoin party. I have never had RFS bug. Usually I will bind at the huts near Glumph and drop RFS and add Glumph and run him back, then port back and add back RFS.

The coolest multi-class character I made was a Ninja>Ranger. Because critical strike carries over on class change and the ranger crit does not, the character takes ninja until crit is acceptably high then switches to ranger. I had him dual wielding diamond eyes. However, if save scumming, a light sword could definitely be an option as well. The character could crit up close and at (long) range. They share alchemy so there is not need to max it before class change, as well.

Triple shot crossbows are very good but I don't tend to take them anymore except for ranged parties. They chew through too much ammo. Same for doubleshot slings. Ranged parties are quite good, too, but I find like the KWM parties it is best to focus the entire party on it to synergize(same with critical strike parties, this game rewards party synergy IMO). I think my ranged party was ninja>ranger, ranger, ranger, gadgeteer, bishop, bishop. Rangers can do quite well on the flanks with Body of Stone.

As I said elsewhere, I don't consider items that are not reliably available when theorycrafting, as I don't consider them practical to obtain.

Also, if you're the sort of person who plays Iron Man, you're not going to be reloading for an item, particularly since I'm pretty sure you can't do that on Iron Man anyway. It's possible it may be something the devs put in to mitigate the issues of an unfair party wipe due to being crushed. (Or maybe the save deletion only happens if the party wipe happens during combat?)

There's also the assertion case. In this situation, I don't think the game has a chance to delete the save, as it will crash as soon as the assertion fails. This should be easy to test, since some classes can start with an item (Potion of Lt. Heal) that is capable of triggering one of the assertions I know about. Except that sometimes I want to get rid of all that excess ammo that I've been accumulating and that is weighing the party down.

Tripleshot Crossbows are great for raising skill, since more swings means more skill increase checks, but since they're heavy and give extra attacks, they really do tire out the attacker.

Any advice on dealing with level 20 Ensnaring Spiders? Sometimes I kite these nasty things. I'm pretty sure they ended a playthrough one time. The web effect seems to stick higher than I would think it would.

I'm running a level 35 MDP (Magic Damage Party), consisting of six Humans for maximum attribute totals: Bard, Gadgeteer, Priest, Alchemist, Psionic, Mage. I get six flavors of magic, while having the fastest two experience tracks in the game.
I was thinking about the same thing, what am I going to do in the never-ending Mt. Gigas caves? I would guess that everybody would let loose with their strongest magic, attacking the spider's weakest realm if possible. Failing that, Element Shield in Round 1. That way, even if the spider did ensnare a party member or two, it would be crushed in Round 2 by magic from whatever survivors were not ensnared.

It might be one of those cases where burst damage is going to win the day. I would think KWM parties the best at this. Assuming you have the ambush, and cast elemental shield and have max magic screen(these don't seem to help as much as I would think, hence the problem with these mobs), step around the corner and blast them with as much cone damage or aoe as possible.

I try to level all party members up at the same time because of mob level scaling to party average level, but around level 14 or so I push my fighters forward to spawn higher level mobs for more experience which can be a problem in the gigas caves with level 15 bishops and level 17 fighters spawning level 20 spiders. Perhaps its the level difference in the spiders that is causing a greater chance to web my party.

There's also the issue that some levels are more important than others.

For example:
* Once you get past low levels, a Fighter level isn't going to make much of a difference unless the character gets an extra attack or swing.
* Spellcasters have critical levels where they gain access to new spells. Hence, if there's a new spell at the new spell level that you really want (like X-Ray or Set Portal), then taking the level right away is a good idea, provided you are able to learn the spell immediately.
* Otherwise, the new level for a spellcaster will just mean an extra spell pick and higher safe power levels for spells. Note that, for the latter, skill level still matters, and must also be high enough.
.

A couple other points:

Cane of Corpus:
* The Cane of Corpus is *not* a guaranteed drop (though it is highly probable). Therefore, you might not want to build a character around it. (Note that it is more likely to drop than not, however.)
* If you *really* want it, try not finishing the battle before checking the loot. Kill Don Barlone first, then check to see if the Cane of Corpus has dropped. If it hasn't dropped, you can quit out of the game (might need to force kill it) to reload the drop. Since the game will not save during battles, you can do this even on Iron Man.
* Alternatively, you could play without that Faerie Ninja, then once you get the Cane of Corpus, replace one of your characters with a new Faerie Ninja.

Character Replacement:
* A level 1 character is going to be quite vulnerable when you're fighting enemies meant for much higher level characters.
* Guardian Angel provides temporary HP, which is very useful on a low HP character like a new level 1 character, so cast it on your new character at the start of every battle.
* Alternatively, do the character replacement right before a big quest XP award. Then, you can get your new character some quick levels, and they won't be quite as vulnerable.

That's great info on the cane. I made a new party with 3 dwarf fighters, one focusing on str+vit as a tank, the other two on the flanks going str+dex for dps. 2 bishops(same). And a faerie ninja instead of hobbit rogue this time. Took crit, locks, staff and wand; switching staff and wand to alchemy till about 15. Also went int+dex for powercast.

Made it to arnika so the hard part is done. Had a huge battle on the road. 12 modai, 5 rustabouts, 6 seekers, and like 5 bandits. I was in the deep crevice near the house with the umpani porter. I killed em all, but had to use up all my stamina potions and a few heavy heals. Of course it was manageable because I hold my levels at level 4 until I just make it into town to keep the levels on the road lower.

I did a little math on dread spears vs giant swords and it looks like dread spear are more damage(considerably). They are faster and get more swings in. 2 attacks with 1 swing on my test group(sword) vs 2 attacks with 2 swings on dread spear. That's quite a bit more damage; it pretty much ended my debate on them. They come too late, take too much stamina and are just flat out less damage, and the 30% KO doesn't happen as often, and the 50% hex from spears do occur quite often.

I believe the extra swings only matters at some ranges of total fighting ability, and not others. In particular, the spear gets the extra swing sooner, but the sword will get that same extra swing later. Also worth noting that the sword's initiative modifier is -2, which isn't that bad. Get a few more levels or some more skill experience and you'll get the second swing on the sword group, which I expect to happen before the spear's third swing.

While KO may not happen as often as Hex, KO is definitely a better effect, wit an extremely obvious effect. (I'm not actually sure what Hex does to enemies, though it at least appears to do something, unlike, say, drain SP or disease.)

There's also the factor of class. In particular, if you have a Samurai (because you need to cover Mage spells without a Mage or Bishop), then the Giant Sword is the better option, since you get the primary skill bonus with it, whereas you can't use the Dread Spear at all! When the choice is a weapon you get a bonus with versus a weapon you can't use at all, the choice is obvious. (On the other hand, the situation for a Valkyrie is going to be different; Valkyries get the bonus with the Dread Spear, and being able to equip the Giant Sword requires starting out as an apprentice or as a different class.)