Party advice for crystal souls.

[Vexbane]

Hello. I love this little gem of a game (crystal souls). I played escape from the pit and beat it so I am now familiar with the series. I also have avadon 2, which I plan to play after avernum 2. Playing on hard. I love mods for games and saw a graphics and dikoyoba(sp?) mod that looked ok so I installed those fyi.

 

I have read some conflicting guide type info on builds. This does seem like a min/max style game, but I am not too much of a fan of that most of the time. My plan for my party is this:

 

1- Warrior: (prob dual wield) who will serve as the main tank, but could always throw on a shield if needed for fights.

 

2- Warrior/Priest? Seems like a good choice as extra buffs and heals never hurt. How much of the priest spells ability is a good idea? I am going 50/50 on int/str distribution on level ups for now with an end thrown in possibly every few levels. Seems like dual wield is the go to way to build out your melee, but would he do ok as a pole arm wielder? Trying to use different weapons as I know there are a limited supply for the good ones.

 

3- Mage: Standard nuke wizard. Seems pretty straight forward to build.

 

4- Priest: To get all the heals/buffs I can. Since armor does not affect their casting? she will most likely swing a weapon around too. another dual wielder perhaps?

 

From what I read you can train and get a lot of the cave lore and arcane lore. I plan on using tool use as well. I really like to explore as much as I can and it seems foolish to leave these out if escape from the pit taught me anything. What is a good time/ratio to get these skills to help me smooth out my levels?

 

Thanks in advance for any help/advice!

[Edgwyn]

I am not a min/maxer, so this is not a very objective post, but:

1. Dual wield is very effective

2. Warrior/Priest is fine, Level 8 in priest would get you all of the critical spells as far as I am concerned. In my opinion, there are enough good swords that this can be another dual wielder, but my second character has a pole arm.

3. Yes

4. I never used my pure priest to melee, because I would rather put the points in the various cave/arcane/tool use requirements

 

If you really like potion ingredients, then having cave lore 6 before you enter Dark Waters (Chapter 2) will get you a few more potion ingredients. I believe you can get almost everything out of Chapter 2 with tool use 5, with tool use 6 giving you the last remaining item