Shining Hector

164 = Horn (for summoning Wolf of the Fen as Celts)

Guess just about everyone figured out early that iron was the key resource. Yeah, I started Ukat first for the iron, then Vol for the stone, then Ahriel when I felt like. It makes the most sense to just build the first 3 forts before trying to capture extra mines and then upgrading them ASAP for early resource production. You can even get the second Vol fort without having to fight through anything extra to get there, so that's 5/7 forts in a couple of real time hours once you're ready to leave the starting area.

Yeah, my endgame team was everyone with wands and bows, focus fire on those with lower physical defense with bows, lower magical defense with wands. Positioning, meh, who cares, other than not having one guy get clobbered by every enemy at once.

You still get speed penalties for the medium and heavy armors at 7 smithies, they just soak more damage. Just compare robes and leather armor, tier by tier, and robes are always better, while both have no speed penalty. I did end up with 7 smithies at the endgame, I just found myself constantly having to worry about iron to maintain them, and my reward was being able to keep my fighters in weak leather armor to avoid speed penalties, and only giving the mage a wand, because come on, the fighters are expected to wear armor and not wave a wand around at people. I wouldn't really repeat the same thing again. Even if you never plan on using spells, it's a 5 skill point detour to get Magery and Raw Power, +3 Energy, and unlock Tier 3 Arcane Gear and have everyone rocking those Robes/Vestments/Wands and never being forced to building more than 1 Smithy to install Runes/Augmentations.

I kept trying to make Combat work, but the MC was just better in every way as spellcaster IMO. It's fairly hard to fully build out Smithies for gear plus Barracks and Guard Towers to minimize theft since iron is the scarcest resource. Carpenters and Weavers are no sweat, though. Plus the armor selection stinks. To tank you have to accept speed penalties, and speed is king, while robes generally provide the same physical protection as the lightweight smithy gear of the same tier as well as a bonus to healing/damage and vastly better magic protection.

Wow, I'm surprised Haven's Mercy doesn't get more love. It probably saved my party from a wipe at least once per location on Veteran. It would generally pull someone (or multiple someones) from almost dead to nearly 100%, plus usually remove all their debuffs, which Restoring Rain generally failed at on both counts. It's expensive to cast, but I compensated by grabbing mostly passive abilities and spending all my energy on healing. I waited far too long to respec the MC away from Combat (where I had a lot of abilities I never used to save energy for Haven's Mercy) to Support/Magic for more passive bonuses and extra energy, where he really shined.

Hey, I'm planning another playthrough of Nethergate: Resurrection and I didn't see a complete list of trainers for both Celts and Romans here, so I thought I'd add a complete list of trainers and the level to which they will train you from notes I took the last time. Celts Bituitus - very reasonable woodcraft 4 barter 1 first aid 6 herbcraft 6 hardiness 4 defense 4 Shanti - pretty average melee 5 berserker 3 hardiness 3 defense 3 druidism 5 herbcraft 6 tool use 4 faerie lore 1 Elonna - slightly expensive health circle 5 Shaynee - slightly expensive herbcraft 8 Moira - expensive druidism 4 health circle 2 war circle 2 beast circle 1 craft circle 1 Morden - exhorbitant melee 6 spears 6 javelins 6 slings 6 hardiness 6 defense 6 Romans Gnaeus - extremely cheap woodcraft 4 barter 1 first aid 6 herbcraft 6 tool use 6 hardiness 4 defense 4 Elonna - slightly expensive health circle 5 Shaynee - slightly expensive herbcraft 8 Moira - expensive druidism 4 health circle 2 war circle 2 beast circle 1 craft circle 1 Morden - exhorbitant melee 6 spears 6 javelin 6 sling 6 hardiness 6 defense 6 Shanti - exhorbitant melee 5 defense 5 druidism 5 herbcraft 6 faerie lore 1