Wizardry 6: Mapping Out A Min/Max’d Starting Party for A Hardcore Experience

Since I’m taking a break from Diablo 4 and with a few comments on Wizardry 6 here on my blog, my interest in the game has been renewed. I didn’t finish my last run and primarily ended up spinning in a circle by The Forest area next to the locked section under the castle. Eventually, I just grew bored since my characters were in pretty good shape. Then one comment on my blog recently mentioned using a Psionic to convert into a Monk as a starting character. After looking into what that would entail, it started my party crafting mode going again where I would examine a potentially even more optimized party.

Patching the Game

First, let me say that I finally got around to installing the Mad God’s Cosmic Forge editing utility. If you have BaneEdit.exe running, then getting Mad God’s Cosmic Forge editing utility isn’t that much more difficult. In my case, I use a Mac so there’s a few prerequisites such as installing Wine. However, as I discovered, there were a few additional things required, which is why I made a small guide for getting BaneEdit.exe and Wine working on a Mac.

Once you get Wine installed and manage to get BaneEdit.exe working, you can use CosmicForgeU.exe which is located on a Google Drive. Then you just unrar the file and run it with:

bash-3.2$ wine CosmicForgeU.exe

You will see a setup menu where it will ask you for the game installation. Since the editor is made for Dos, you won’t see the typical BSD/Unix style directories. Instead, you’ll see stuff like C:\ or Z:\ drive. Your game installation ought to be under the Z:\ drive. My full path was:

/Applications/Wizardry 6.app/Contents/Resources/game

That is the only thing you will need to configure. If you use the wrong path, the editor won’t load properly and probably quit out on you, forcing you to go through the steps again. In essence though, the editor is searching for the main game files so that it can patch them properly. You might want to create a backup somewhere as well as have backups of your saved games just in case.

Once you get the editor running, the main thing you will want to do is apply some patches. The most important of these is for Attribute Bonus Generation. This one is reversible and mostly ditches all the low end rolls during the character creation process. I highly suggest this patch even though it’s labeled as a “cheat” unless you enjoy suffering through hours of getting bad rolls. But if you really want to create an ideal power fantasy type of party, this is your best option.

Mechanics

To really get a long term party you have to understand a few critical mechanics about the game, some bugs and aspects like how mana regeneration operates. I had discussed a few of these ideas in the past but want to summarize them here as a review.

• Strength and Carrying Capacity (CC) – The game has a “bug” where your Carrying Capacity is determined by your strength only at character creation time. If you don’t use the patch (labeled “Encumbrance” in the patch section of the utility), you will be stuck with that amount for the remainder of the game. If you have say a female Faerie character, you will then end up not being able to carry anything. And since Faeries have numerous gear restrictions, you might consider using a Faerie as a kind of mule character especially for things like quest items or potions as they might have extra bag space. However, Faeries also are penalized by an additional 1/3 CC penalty. So I suggest applying this patch to avoid dealing with this problem.
• Faeries, Vitality and Mana Regeneration – Mana Regeneration also is fixed in this game is determined by the class you start off with. That makes Priests and Mages by far the best classes that allow for pure Mana Regeneration. For most classes, you will only receive 1 point of mana regeneration as a basis. Lizardmen are the worst because they have a -1 mana regeneration penalty, which makes them effectively a race you want to avoid. On the other hand, Faeries receive a +1 mana regeneration bonus so combining one with a Mage, for instance, seems like a natural choice for the best regeneration. Likewise, Vitality (rather than Intelligence and Piety for some reason) also determines your Mana Regeneration. This means you will want your character to have as much Vitality at the start as possible. I believe you need at minimum 16 points of Vitality to receive this bonus. Faeries though have a very low starting Vitality at 6, which means you will need at least 10 dedicated points to get the best bonus possible. Note that you can modify the starting mana regeneration values through the utility but do so at your discretion.
• Best Class Mana Regeneration – As far as I can tell, the best classes for Mana Regeneration are Alchemists, Mages and Priests. Alchemist though will lack Magic regeneration, which will be important at later stages in the game for healing and dealing with Undead and Demons. Of course, Psionics have the best Mental regeneration but only have 2 points in the other spell schools. Bishops only get 3 points for Mental and Magic regeneration while the rest are at 1 point. So one idea in creating an ideal party is to start off with only Alchemists, Mages and/or Priests to get the best Mana Regeneration possible. This does pose a problem if you want to take a Bard, which almost is mandatory to survive the initial half of the game.
• Bards and the Lute – Bards are almost universally praised as a must-have as part of a starting line up. Unfortunately, the Bard like other non-pure magic classes, only receives 1 point of Mana Regeneration. You can offset some of this by taking a Faerie and attempting to have at least 16 points of Vitality. However, my major issue with the Faerie as a starting Bard is that their equipment limitation prevents them from using a lot of armor. Most likely, you’ll position this character in the back possibly in the 5th slot. However, enemies can still strike out at them, making them vulnerable especially with their low hit starting hit points.
  Also, if you choose to swap from say a Mage to a Bard at level 1, you will be missing the all important Lute. As far as I know, the Lute is a random drop that won’t appear until you encounter Miner or Major Dwarves, which comes roughly at the midpoint of the game and have a very low chance to drop this invaluable item. So other guides propose you will want to start with the Bard just to have this item. If you insist on having the most mana regeneration possible along with doing an immediate class change at the start, you will have to cheat and use a utility like BaneEdit.exe to give yourself this item. But this issue becomes a question of ethics than feasibility.
• Class Change to Ninja – Like the Bard, Ninjas have some very rare starting equipment that you won’t find until towards the start of the end game when you begin encountering Ninjas themselves. So unlike a Monk, who will most likely just use common Robes (U/L) and Sandals for armor, which are readily available and sold by Queequeg, the Ninja will be lacking in -3 points of armor which is pretty huge at the start. On the bright side, if you can survive a few levels, your armor will improve naturally where the main other penalty is the higher experience requirements. In that sense, you might consider a Faerie because of their natural -2 to armor at the start as well as having a natural base speed of 14, which can influence armor too. You won’t be able to use most equipment for a while though, not even robes nor sandals.
• Class Change to Samurai – Unlike the Bard and Ninja, the Samurai’s starting equipment can be purchased at Queequeg’s shop (namely the Katana and Wakizashi). Also, the Samurai only start with Robes (U/L) and Sandals, which makes them a lot easier and a good choice to swap early on from say a Mage.
• Dracons and their Breath Weapon – Dracons have an interesting small AoE ability that is like a black dragon’s acid breath. For a starting party, it might be tempting to pick one of these races up (like for a Ninja). However, this ability does not scale into the end game and you won’t be using it for long. So I think this race is a bit of a red herring to start.
• Psionic and the Shadow Cloak – Perhaps, the one remarkable thing about using a Psionic is that they have a Shadow Cloak that they cannot use. Only thieves, ninjas and bards can use this item oddly. In addition, there’s only one other known Shadow Cloak in the game that appears in the later stage of the early game. Because this item only supplies a -1 to armor, I don’t think it’s worth using nor having a Psionic taking a spare spot in the party.
• Automated Core Skill Leveling – As you level up, you will get a certain amount of skill points. I believe that a portion of this pool is automatically pre-allocated to the main skills for your class as long as that skill is under 50 points. For instance, a Ranger will automatically have points placed into Scouting. If you want to level specific skills, you should ensure that the class does not have a core skill that interferes in taking precedence for receiving points, especially useless skills like Scouting.
• Class Changes, Attributes and Hit Points – When you change classes, your attributes drop the minimum need for the new class, your race’s starting points while your hit point gains will only increase by 1 until you exceed your previous level. If you have a wide gap between classes in terms of levels, it may take sometime before seeing any significant gain in your life. This situation makes swapping to simple classes like a Fighter or Mage pointless. It’s better to swap from a simple class into an elite or mid-tier class rather than the other way around since your race will determine the other attributes. On the other hand, you will level quickly so besides the starting part of the game, you should be judicious in choosing when to swap classes. Altering several classes at the same time might feel exciting but you probably will want to reload to ensure that you can maximize the number of attributes, hit points and skill points you receive for the new level. If you do this at the same time as other classes, there’s a high likelihood that the other class may get the shaft and you’ll have to reload and get lucky.

The Party Composition

With some of the main mechanics established above, I would like to dive into the party creation.

• Male Rawulf Priest
• Male Felpurr Mage
• Male Faerie Alchemist
• Female Dwarf Priest
• Female Elf Mage
• Male Mook Mage

This initial party seems fairly easy to create. However, the only character that will retain his class for a while is the Mook Mage. But this group will be able to have some of the highest spell regeneration in the game. Compared to my previous “optimized” party, I ended up changing the Faerie from a Mage to an Alchemist with the intention of converting him into a Ninja. In turn, I swapped the Felpurr from the Alchemist role to a Mage with the intention of turning him into a Samurai. Note that I chose a Female Elf Mage but have no Bard. I will admit that this character will be swapping to a Bard at level one where I will give her a Lute (and maybe some Skulduggery since locking picking and trap disarmament sucks in this game). Otherwise, her max Mana Regeneration will not exceed 2 points for the rest of the game. If you’re more of a purist and don’t want any edits (outside of the patch parts), you can go with the Bard from the start and have slightly less Mana Regeneration.

The early class transition will look like this:

• Male Rawulf Priest -> Lord (lvl 1/2)
• Male Felpurr Mage -> Samurai (lvl 1/2)
• Faerie Male Alchemist -> Ninja (lvl 2)
• Female Dwarf Priest -> Valkyrie (lvl 1)
• Female Elf Mage -> Bard (lvl 1)
• Male Mook Mage (no change)

The only two that are pretty much a must-have in terms of the class change after the start of the game are the Bard and Valkyrie. I would suggest giving a few starting fights a shot before making the class switch to see how your survival is. Part of that will depend on your starting hit points. Before going into a deeper look into the timing of the class transition, I want to first examine the minimum attribute requirements for the classes to be able to make this switch possible.

Male Rawulf Priest -> Lord Requirements

The male Rawulf’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 8
• Int: 6
• Pie: 12
• Vit: 10
• Dex: 8
• Spd: 8
• Per: 10

The Lord class has one of the highest starting attribute requirements in the game. The Lord’s minimum attribute requirements are:

• Str: 12
• Int: 9
• Pie: 12
• Vit: 12
• Dex: 9
• Spd: 9
• Per: 14

The Rawulf is one of the better racial candidates to handle this early transition. But to move from Priest to Lord, you will need the following additions:

• +4 str
• +3 int
• +2 vit
• +1 dex
• +1 spd
• +4 per

+15 min points total.

With the utility, achieving this minimum is much easier. In my case, I had previously rolled a Rawulf Priest without the utility and scored 23 bonus starting points. It is possible but extremely rare. Also, it’s worth noting that you do not need to adjust anything for the Priest side of the class. While creating the Priest class, you should dump everything into Theology and pick up Bless and either Heal or Make Wounds. Since I suggest that the Female Dwarf Priest be the one to immediately change to Valkyrie, you might consider placing this character in the back either for healing, utility or minor offense depending on your starting hit points. Generally though, I think a basic Priest can perform decently especially with the attributes required for a Lord.

Male Felpurr Mage -> Samurai Requirements

A male Felpurr’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 7
• Int: 10
• Pie: 7
• Vit: 7
• Dex: 10
• Spd: 12
• Per: 10

The Samurai class also has fairly high requirements but has a reasonable match with a Felpurr’s base:

• Str: 12
• Int: 11
• Vit: 9
• Dex: 12
• Spd: 14
• Per: 8

The Mage class itself requires a 12 in Int, which is only a single point off from the Samurai. This puts the starting schema as:

• +5 for str
• +2 for int (mage)
• +2 for vit
• +2 for dex
• +2 for spd

+13 min points total

13 points isn’t impossible to achieve even with the base game. Since you would want as much mana regeneration as possible and more hit points, I suggest dump as many points into Vitality and the leftover points into Strength (mostly to deal with the CC bug if you don’t intend to patch the game). Also, I suggest dumping every skill point on creation into Thaumaturgy. In that manner, you’ll continue to accumulate some points as you level in your initial chosen spell schools. For that, I would suggest grabbing Energy Blast and Chilling Touch. You want to be able to cast Fireball and Iceball once they become available as well as have plenty of points to maximize your casts. Gear-wise, you’ll only be missing the starting Katana and Wakizashi. You probably can make a fast run to Queequeg and try to buy those weapons when you decide to swap classes. You will not be able to use the Sword of Striking found in the starting chest though.

One idea here is to rush to Queequeg’s before you swap classes and save near the door (or inside). Then reload/go back and forth outside until you can obtain the Katana and Wakizashi. If you can get those, then do the class swap. Otherwise, consider reaching level 2 before the class swap. You might even be able to obtain Magic Missile and start your Magic Pool development. But you might be careful in deciding whether to swap your Lord first or your Samurai. In this situation, I would probably go for the Lord because of how he can make use of the Sword of Striking immediately (unless you give it to the Valkyrie, which I honestly don’t recommend since she will already have a Quarterstaff, which functions equally well as the Spear except for 1 less point of damage)

Male Faerie Alchemist -> Ninja Requirements

A male Faerie’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 5
• Int: 11
• Pie: 6
• Vit: 6
• Dex: 10
• Spd: 14
• Per: 12

Becoming an Alchemist for a Faerie is quite easy as the Alchemist requirements are:

• Int: 13
• Dex: 13

The Ninja is perhaps one of the hardest starting classes to role as well as being a class that is spread somewhat thin as a starting character. But the minimal requirements are:

• Str: 12
• Int: 10
• Pie: 10
• Vit: 12
• Dex: 12
• Spd: 12

Surprisingly, this disparity actually makes the conversion from a starting male Faerie Alchemist into a Ninja difficult:

• +7 Str
• +2 Int (for alchemist)
• +4 Pie
• +6 Vit
• +3 Dex (for alchemist)

+22 min points total

With such high requirements, one might ask why? In my previous iteration of the party, I did a Felpurr Alchemist into a Ninja. So why the alteration especially with the various gear restrictions and penalties for a Faerie as well as a Ninja? The ultimate goal for this character is to go from a Ninja and move him into the role of a Bishop for the end game. In the previous game, my Faerie Mage ended up as a Ninja, which is still quite strong. But the idea of using a Faerie for a Ninja early on is practical: you have a natural starting bonus of -2 armor. Since you’re giving up your Ninja garb (without saved game modifications), you effectively are naked.

However, a Faerie’s exceptionally high base speed along with the starting armor bonus mitigate some of these issues. Once you start casting spells again, you’ll have excellent mana regeneration. Also, I mentioned that you might consider swapping into a Ninja at level 2. Since the Alchemist experience table is quite low, the idea here is that getting one early level before switching to a Ninja would help by racing your Alchemy skill and hopefully acquiring a level 2 spell like Blinding Flash or increasing your Earth pool with Itching Skin. That will get you a small head start since most of your points early on as a Ninja will automatically be placed into Ninjutsu (which can take a fair amount of time to level). If you want to push things, you might even consider getting to level 3 as an Alchemist and seeing if you can get some higher level spells like Stink Bomb by pushing your Alchemy. Because the attribute requirements are pretty high for this transition, you might be off a few to make the change. So this will be at your discretion and situation.

Female Dwarf Priest -> Valkyrie Requirements

A female dwarf’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 9
• Int: 6
• Pie: 10
• Vit: 12
• Dex: 7
• Spd: 7
• Per: 8

The Priest only requires a Piety of 12, which makes it easy to obtain for a Dwarf. Swapping from a Priest to Valkyrie is actually quite natural when you look at what’s needed here for a Valkyrie:

• Str: 10
• Pie: 11
• Vit: 11
• Dex: 10
• Spd: 11
• Per: 8

Thus, you will need:

• +1 Str
• +2 Pie
• +3 Dex
• +4 Spd

+10 min points total

With only that many points needed, you can dump everything else into Vitality then Strength to really maximize your spell regeneration, hit points and carrying capacity. Priests start with Robes (U/L), Sandals, a Quarterstaff and 3 Lt. Heal potions. Valkyries have more armor but still only have a Spear and Sandals. But the Quarterstaff itself only does one additional point of damage over the starting Spear and still allows the wielder to attack from the 4th slot on. So the transition won’t be as bad compared to a Samurai, which is why you can swap from level 1 here.

Also, because the Valkyrie’s core skill is the Pole & Staff, you’ll be leveling this up as you go. In turn, when you start off as a Priest, you will want to dump all your skill points into Theology and pick up Heal and Bless. Once your Rawulf switches to a Lord and becomes the main tank of the group, your Valkyrie’s secondary job will function as a healer and utility person firing off Bless spells in tougher fights. But you will also have a head start to work on Theology because of the early focus. The only rough spot will be Oratory initially, which is why you probably want to cast Bless periodically to keep Oratory from failing.

Each time you level, you should dump your remaining points into Theology. I think Valkyrie’s can access their magic from level 3 or 4. By that point, you should still be able to increase your base Magic and Mental pools as well as use some healing. Then you probably will want to pick up spells like Cure Lessor Cnd, Divine Trap and Dispel Undead as quickly as possible. Cure Poison to me is the holy grail for Priest spells, but that will take some time.

Gear-wise, I think Queequeg sells a Halberd, which will be your best weapon until you meet Smithy. Also, in having a Valkyrie, you can wait until you find the Stud-Cuir Bra +2 on the second floor if you want to save some gold. There are a few other key spots containing low level gear in the basement. You will be sharing some gear with your Lord character.

Female Elf Mage -> Bard Requirements

A female Elf’s starting attributes are:

• Str: 5
• Int: 10
• Pie: 10
• Vit: 7
• Dex: 9
• Spd: 9
• Per: 9

A Mage only needs an Int of 12. For a Bard though, you need:

• Int: 10
• Dex: 12
• Spd: 8
• Per: 12

With the following adjustments:

• +2 Int (for mage)
• +3 Per

5 min points total (or just 3 for a plain bard)

This makes a female Elf a natural choice for a Bard or a Mage transitioning into a Bard. I provide two options here to point out what is needed if you don’t mind manually adding the Lute to the Mage with BaneEdit.exe or if you’d prefer to remain pure. The other major downside about the swap is that you will lose all your initiative advantages because your speed will only be 9. Of everyone in the party, you want your Bard to dish out those Sleep spells as fast as possible. So it might be worth keeping the Bard class regardless (unless you decide to modify her even more).

If you decide to start with the Bard, you probably will want to boost her Vitality to 16, which means, you need 12 points minimum. Then you’ll probably want to give her as much Speed to start. For her starting skills, I would dump all spare points into Skulduggery. You will be leveling your Music skill all the time by using it exclusively until you get more confidence in the others in your party. While you can level Skulduggery through usage, you simply do not find enough opportunities in the game. And early on many doors and chests have tough traps and locks, so you’ll need all the help you can get. As a Bard, your starting weapon is a Sling, which sucks because you have limited ammo. Don’t bother putting any points into that because it’s a very weak weapon and you’re better off using a round to Hide in Shadows to build up your Ninjutsu when you have a chance. Instead, you’ll want to pick up a Buckler for a little extra defense and a Cutless or Rapier. Heck, go with both if you want to try your hand at dual wielding. But your primary focus for a long time will be Sleeping your foes.

If you choose to start her as a Mage, you should pick up Energy Blast and Chilling Touch to begin building up her Fire and Water spell pools. Also, you’ll want to dump everything into Thaumaturgy. You will level fairly quickly as a Bard but your Music skill might not exceed the 50 point amount to allow you to spread your leveling points more heavily into spells. Also, even if you decide to have a Ninja, you’ll probably want to make your Bard your primary lock picker. As you level early on, you’ll have to make some key choices in terms of dividing your skill points between Thaumaturgy and Skulduggery. I personally suggest just giving her 100 in Skulduggery because of how lame the lock picking system is in the game and be over it. Only do something different if you really want to experience a super hardcore grindfest.

In addition, the idea of taking a female Elf is that the long game will gradually transition her into a Valkyrie for the end game. I think if there were extra character slots (which I wish there was), I could try to shoehorn a second Elf into this party just because I like the idea of having a Ranger that can make use of the Elven Bow. Yes, this character can use the Elven Bow too but it seems redundant compared to the Maenad’s Lance, which is one of the best end game weapons.

Lastly, whether you want to start with a Mage or Bard really depends on how much QoL you want to give yourself vs the true grindfest you can suffer. The thing I’ve noticed in taking a Bard is that I didn’t switch classes again for sometime. The majority of the time, I either was using my Instruments (especially the Lute) and building up her Music skill or trying to Hide in Shadows to avoid damage. Spell regeneration didn’t seem to make as huge of an impact by the time my Bard was starting to cast more spells. Also, once you hit near the end game with the Forest, you’ll be resting multiple times consecutively because the spell drain will get very high while number of foes you encounter pile up. The only real mitigation in any of this is simply to build your spell pools into a ridiculous amount to have enough points and a variety of spells at your disposal. So it really depends on how you want to carve your experience here.

Male Mook Mage Requirements

A Male Mook starts with:

• Str: 10
• Int: 10
• Pie: 6
• Vit: 10
• Dex: 7
• Spd: 7
• Per: 9

While a Mage only needs an Int of 12 making your minimal requirements points a whopping 2. I don’t have another class to change into here because I think it’s better to keep at least one Mage pure until the mid game (level 13 or so). By that point, you should have more options and ideas of how this character can compliment your party. Compared to my previous party, the Male Mook Mage there was used to swap into the Samurai whereas the Faerie had been the Mage.

Using a Mook Mage though, you have better overall Vitality and Strength so you don’t have to put as many points into those attributes. On the other hand, you are much slower than a Faerie and more vulnerable due to not having the natural -2 AC bonus. You will have slightly more access to gear overall in the short term but nothing that is a real game changer. Theoretically, you could still take a Faerie Mage but I dislike the redundancy of having two Faeries in a single party. I think with my previous group, I had swapped the Faerie Mage into a Bishop and raced to push his Theology then eventually swapped to a Ninja for the end game. Since you won’t have a great dedicated healer until mid game possibly, you could plan to swap this character into a Bishop and much later into a Monk. You just won’t have as much regeneration nor AC until you become a Monk. If you go the Bishop route as the follow up class to the Mage, then the final class should either be a Ninja or Monk to avoid redundancy with a Samurai or Lord’s spells as well as gaining access to the prized Ninjutsu skill.

The Game Begins

Once you’re in the starter dungeon, you should race to grab the treasure from the two starter chests. The most important item will be the Sword of Striking. While it’s not the best weapon in the game, the +2 bonus to hit is a major upgrade over a Longsword or the Lord’s starting Broadsword. So this makes me believe that you should change your Rawulf Priest into a Lord immediately to take advantage of this starting weapon. The other major item to acquire is the Amulet of Life found in the opposite treasure chest. Most guides recommend selling this off because it’s only use is to revive dead characters (Resurrection). However, it sells for a lot of gold which means if you can get to Queequeg unscathed, you probably can buy most of your missing starter gear (minus the Lute if you decided to take a Mage rather than a starting Bard). I would try to beef up your Lord and Valkyrie immediately with armor. If you have spare gold, get the Halberd for the Valkyrie. But make sure you can purchase the Katana and Wakizashi for your Felpurr, regardless of swapping to a Samurai.

Your Mage won’t require much additional gear at this stage. You probably will want your Bard in the 5th slot so armor isn’t critical at this stage. There are a few items the Bard can use found in the towers so you’ll want to explore those and hopefully be able to disarm their traps to obtain those items. But don’t hit up the towers until you have some basic gear from Queequeg.

I would handle my first class changes immediately. So at minimal, I would do the Valkyrie, the Lord and possibly the Bard (if I decided to fudge things a little). Having the Lord and Valkyrie immediately means you can have two front line tanks, even though I would use the term “tank” very loosely since neither are well equipped at this stage. Thus, you can rush for Queequeg and try to obtain gear after selling off the Amulet of Life and any irrelevant starting gear from the Priest side. Once you have a few pieces of better armor, you should go back to the main castle level and stay near the curative fountains. There’s a better fountain on the upper level that heals and provides stamina. But at this stage, healing shouldn’t be a problem because of the low health pool. Instead, Stamina will be a bigger issue. Similarly, since you used more “pure” spellcasting classes at the start, your mana regeneration should be fairly quick. You might want to avoid resting for a while too.

Here, I would save the game and simply spin around to start getting random encounters. I would try a few out to test if my party can survive. Most enemies at this level won’t do too much damage but I would be wary of Rogues. Use your Bard’s Lute every single round on the largest group of enemies or the deadliest. When enemies are sleeping, you gain a huge hit and damage advantage. Also, you’ll be building up your Music skill.

My main concern are for those that have lower hit points, which is why you probably will want the Valkyrie temporarily in the 2nd or 3rd slot. Both Mages should cast as frequently as they can to build up their Oratory. You might be a little judicious about spending mana though and should monitor your regenerative abilities here. I would suggest if you see the Felpurr getting hammered hard, then it might be worth class swapping to a Samurai and helping out the melee. Your Faerie Alchemist probably would be the better choice to swap classes between the two early on but I would hold off until level 2 or 3 just to continue building up his Alchemy skill. But changing to a Ninja does mean your Faerie can serve as a potential tank because of his slightly higher natural armor. But Hiding in Shadows will be difficult to do reliably for a while. So in a large fight, focus on melee with the Ninja and Hide in Shadows when you know the others can finish off the remaining opponents.

Another recommendation I’ve read is to avoid the Basement level until level 5 or so. I think it’s because some of the foes are a lot tougher and come in bigger groups. The ones to watch out for are Brigands, Rogue Leaders, Tricksters and some Slimes. I think what I tend to do is grind the area near the starting fountain until about level 3 then make my way into the basement or upper castle floor. The upper floor might get frustrating because of all the locked doors. You can find keys to deal with some of them. I believe some keys can be found off random dead bodies of monsters like from Rogues. Others are relegated to quest items. However, you might want to keep a few to give to the Amazon vendor as a sacrifice later on to avoid problems. But they will take up some space.

Regarding early leveling or any leveling in this game: SAVE ALL THE TIME. I made it a habit to save after each successful combat. It’s not terribly difficult to do on these later versions since you don’t have to deal with a floppy disk. But you will want to save and keep a close eye on your experience points as you near gaining a level. The early stages are probably the worst because of how easy it is to get murdered by the wrong encounter. Also, you will want to save frequently to reload so that you can get more ideal stats as you level.

This will become even more important because of the class change and attribute reset. I would suggest that the minimum number of upgraded attributes per level, at least early on, should be between 3-4. Prioritize speed and vitality since you gain more AC, initiative and hit points. Dexterity helps in this regard too but I would put that attribute under your main stat like Strength, Intelligence or Piety.

Along the way, you should try to acquire any spellbooks from Queequeg and pick up potions once in a while like Cure Posion, Cure Lt Cnd and Healing. It will take sometime before you can do your own Cure Poison so just be careful of that situation. Obviously, you want to prioritize your armor and weapons over healing items (unless you are poisoned but at an early stage you should just reload). But I would continuously stock up on healing items and keep them in my swag section.

The hardest encounters early on are the secret Brigand tavern (Captain Matey), the killer boss rat (Fat Rat) and the Zombie in the tower. Some of those might have extra mobs (especially if you decide to put the game on a harder difficulty). So it might take you a few attempts to down those encounters. Along the way, you can use the Belfry rope spot to get mobs of bats to assault you for early easy XP. I think some people use that area to grind until level 5 or 6 because the encounters are reliable.

Lastly, I did read how some people might even change around level 5 just because it’s very easy to get through the first 5 levels, especially if you use the Belfry trick. The main thing is that if you plan on something like this, once you’ve settled into what your real starting build is, you should not swap simultaneously (outside of the initial entry into the game). Being able to level up separately for each character makes the fine tuning of attribute upgrades much easier. If you save a character or two for a later stage class swap, I would suggest waiting until you’re in the Dwarf Mine so you can grind next to the fountains. For instance, you might consider using that point in time to swap your Mage to Bishop. I would evaluate my situation based on how much healing I’d need at that stage. If my Valkyrie is doing fine in the 4th spot, then I would wait a little longer to do the class swap, possibly switching around level 13 so you can race to get the more powerful spells like Nuclear Blast or Astral Gate, which comes in really handy once you arrive at the River Styx. Just know that once you lose your main Mage, you’ll be limited on the spell level you can cast your spells at. So by then you should make sure your Bard can handle secondary AoE/group attack responsibilities.