Suggested build involves having a party full of caster classes. I suggest running a team consisting of: Sorcerer/Sorcerer/Druid/Druid. The reason for this is you get: 2 healers, 2 Light/Dark users and 4 nukers.

You could sub a Cleric for a Druid or Sorc, but I prefer more offense to defense.

Stat spread:

Sorcs: Lower Personality to minimum, lower Luck to 9, max Intellect at 25.

Druids: Put Int and Per at 20. Leave the rest as is.

You should have around 12 points left, give everyone an extra 3 points each to Endurance.


Skills:

Sorcs: Your add on skills are Air and Water magics. Eventually you'll want: Dagger (Expert or Master), Leather (Master), Bow (Master), Blaster (Normal is fine), All Elemental magics and Light/Dark magic. Have once Sorc focus on Air/Light and another on Water/Dark. Have them switch once they master those skills (keep in mind that AIr mastery involves completing a couple of quests). Then focus on Fire. Earth you can expert and then leave alone, there are only a couple of spells worth using in the Earth spellbook and those are Stone Skin and Stone to Flesh.

Pop a few points when you can into your weapon and armor skills.

Druids: Your add on skills are Body and Spirit magics. Druid builds are very similar to Sorc builds, minus Dark/Light and adding Spirit/Mind/Body. Have one Druid start with Air/Body and the other with Water/Body. Eventually get Fire and your armor and weapon skills. Ignore Earth completely as your Sorcs will cover Earth. Slowly build Spirit and Mind along with Fire. Same as sorcs, put points into armor and weapon skills when you can.

Lastly, for Misc skills, you'll want one person with Disarm Trap (Master), one with Perception (Expert), everyone with Merchant (Normal, skill 1 is fine. You will be money starved early on, but later you'll have more than enough money.), Bodybuilding (Master), Meditation (Master), one person with Repair Item (Master, level 10 should be able to repair everything in the game), and finally at minimum 1 point into Learning, which is an easy 10% boost on all experience learned.

One thing to note, buy Bow skill and bows for everyone ASAP. This will save you magic points as you can snipe enemies for easy damage before needing spells.

Weapons/Armor/Accessories:

There's not really much to this but get the best gear that you can. However there are some modifers that you keep an eye out for:

of The Gods - +10 to all stats
of Darkness - HP Drain and Increased Weapon Speed
of Carnage - Arrows explode like a fireball
of the Dragon - 10-20 points Fire damage and +25 might

Any that give you HP or SP regeneration.

Any that increase a magic school that you use often.

And also there are ones that give you resistances or stat increases. Pick and choose what you want to focus on.

Of course, this doesn't include Artifacts or Relics, which many of them you'll use.

Spells:

Here are the suggested spells you use per school:

Fire: Torchlight, Prot from Fire, Firebolt, Fireball, Haste, Ring of Fire, Fireblast, Meteor Shower, Inferno, Incinerate.

Air: Wizard Eye, Prot from Elec, Sparks, Jump, Shield, Lightning Bolt, Implosion, Fly, Starburst

Water: Awaken, Prot from Water, Cold Beam, Ice Bolt, Enchant Item, Acid Burst, Town Portal, Ice Blast, Lloyd's Beacon

Earth: Proc from Magic, Stone Skin, Stone to Flesh.

Spirit: Bless, Remove Curse, Heroism, Raise Dead, Resurrection

Mind: Remove Fear, Cure Paralysis, Cure Insanity, Psychic Shock, Telekinesis

Body: Cure Weakness, First Aid, Cure Poison, Cure Disease, Flying Fist, Power Cure

Light: Golden Touch (saves time running back to town), Destroy Undead, Day of the Gods, Hour of Power, Sun Ray, Divine Intervention

Dark: Toxic Cloud, Shrapmetal, Day of Protection, Moon Ray, Dragon Breath, Armageddon

First things first, go to the Inn, talk to Andover Potbello and show him the letter to get 1000 gold. Then accept his quests.

Next, run to the well near and use it twice for every character, raising their Luck to 13. Now go to the Stables, and remember to grab the horseshoes as they give 2 skill points when used on a character, and go to Castle Ironfist. Grab two more horseshoes, then goes see Wilbur. Talk to him and accept both of his quests, DO NOT talk to the Prince because if he leaves, you can't get back into the castle to complete quests until you find him and return with him.

Go back to New Sorpigal and then save scum so you can hire a Gate Master and a Wind Master so you have access to Fly and Town Portal. Any left over money should now be put into the Bank.

On the south side of the bank, if you click around you should find a free Fly scroll, keep it for emergencies.



Now go to the north side of Bucaneer's Lair, the building looks like a T. Save and on what would be the window at the top of the building facing north, jump and click, this is a hidden teleport to Dragonsand right in front of the Shrine of the Gods.



RUN as quick as you can into the shrine on the left side. Click on the shrine with each character to get +20 to all stats and turn towards the wall and click. Now you're in secret NWC Headquarters dungeon.

There's a few rooms of interest. Along with random equipment and gold, some of the bookcases and white squares give out items. There's a chest that gives out unlimited gold up to 10000 gold, a desk that gives you empty bottles, a closet that gives you either: 1 food, 2 food, a bottle or diseases you, another closet that gives you: a red/yellow/blue/empty potion in exchange for gold, a desk that gives you reagents and a room guarded by a goblin that gives you +255 to all stats temporary and makes you afraid, but the afraid condition is cured once you leave the room.

Go over to the closet that gives you potions for gold and gather up a bunch of potions. Use these to mix the black stat potions, recipes can be found online. Using 1 of each stat potion on a character ups Luck by 15 points and every other stat by 9. Each stat potion only works once per character.

Then go to the food closet, put your mouse cursor on the white square and then put something heavy on the space bar and walk away for a bit. I suggest building up to 2000 food or so. Then refill your gold at the chest, gather the loot around the office, kill JVC and Trip Hawkins if necessary and save before the door that leads outside.

Click on the door and it takes you right outside the Shrine again, run to the outside left of the shrine and click on the grey wall. There's a secret teleport back to New Sorpigal.



Now you're ready for some questing.

Now that we are powered up a bit, let's gain some easy levels. There are a few quests in this game that you can complete without having to fight any monsters. To run them down, they are:

• Bringing Sulman's Letter to Wilbur Humphrey (Which you should have done already)
  
• Retrieving Lord Kilburn's Shield and returning it to Wilbur Humphrey (The chest is guarded by werewolves and is trapped. You can lure the weres away by flying and then use the flying mechanism to avoid the blast from the trap)
  
• Drinking from the Fountain of Magic and returning to Albert Newton (Promo quest for your Sorcs)
  
• Knight's Nomination from Chadwick and returning to Lord Osric
  
• Repair the Temple Stone in Free Haven by hiring a Stonecutter and Carpenter and bringing them there. Then returning to Lord Stone (I suggest doing this one last as you lose your Wind/Gate Master hirelings)
  
• Fix the price of all stables and return to Lady Fleise (Once you accept this, do it as quick as possible for more gold. Also, remember to grab any horseshoes around the stables.)
  
• Visit the Altar of Sun on solstice or equinox (Druid promotion)
  
• Ending Winter for Lord Stromgald
  
• Return the Statuettes to Sweet Water, Kriegspire, Dragonsands, Mire of the Damned and Bootleg Bay (suggested that you have your own Town Portal and Fly spells handy)

I'm not going to detail how to do these quests as you can easily find out where to go from other guides. I just wanted to point out that you could do these and not have to fight any monsters.

After all of this, you should be able to level up to the mid 20s or so, have enough skill points to master some skill trees and hopefully have some gold left over to buy important spells such as Lloyd's Beacon, Town Portal and Fly. You'll also need gold to expert and then master the skills, but completing some of the early dungeons should help in that regard.


In all, everything here can be done in about 2-3 hours of gameplay depending on how fast you are. However, this saves you at least 8-10 hours of tough, early gameplay when your characters are weak.

I do suggest doing things the hard way the first time, however if you're playing through this game again, this cuts down a lot of the hassle.

Here's a quick rundown of the other classes not mentioned earlier in the guide:

Note: When it comes to Misc skills, Learning, Merchant, Bodybuilding and Meditation (If not a Knight) should be learned at a minimum. Bodybuilding and Meditation mastered.

Knight: The Knight is a big pool of HP and melee damage and that's about it. If you really want a tank character, take a Knight with you. Knights are also great for dumping those Misc skills on so your mages can focus on their magic schools.

Suggested Weapon Skills: Sword/Spear, Bow (Dual wield swords, 2 hand spears)
Suggested Armor Skills: Plate
Misc: Knights are good misc skill dumps. Make him the Repairer, Merchant, etc of the team.


Paladin: A hybrid of the Knight and Cleric. He gets all of the weapon and armor skills and also the Clerical spells. He's a bit less beefy than the Knight, but he can also heal you back up to fighting health in no time.

Suggested Weapon Skills: Sword/Spear, Bow (Dual wield swords, 2 hand spears)
Suggested Armor Skills: Plate


Archer: A hybrid of the Knight and Sorcerer. He gets all of the weapon skills, most of the armor skills and Elemental magic. Just consider the Archer the offensive version of the Paladin. Slightly less beefy, but has more ways to deal damage.

Suggested Weapon Skills: Sword/Spear, Bow (Dual wield swords, 2 hand spears)
Suggested Armor Skills: Chain


Cleric: The other Light/Dark caster besides the Sorcerer. He's the defense to the Sorcerer's offense. If you decide to add a Cleric to your caster team, load him down with as much defensive capablities as possible.

Suggested Weapon Skills: Mace, Bow
Suggested Armor Skills: Chain, Shield




Hirelings provide useful traits and boosts that are really valuable to your team. There are some that are a lot more valuable than others. You can find hirelings in buildings or just walking around towns. Talk to the people to see what they can offer. Hirelings cost money to hire and then take a percentage of all gold you loot, keep that in mind when hiring one.

Hirelings take (Cost/100) percent of your gold that you find.

Suggested Hirelings:

Banker (Takes 10% gold, but gives you a 20% bonus on gold found, a net of 10%)
Bard (Only if you need the extra rep for Light Mastery)
Enchanter (20 point bonus to elemental damage)
Gate Master (Town Portal once per day, great to have until you can cast it at Master level yourself)
Instructor (15% bonus to experience learned)
Master Healer (Pretty much he casts Divine Intervention for you once per day, HOWEVER he costs 50% of your found gold! Expensive, but can be worth it if you are in a jam.)
Mystic (3 point bonus to all spell skills, not bad for 10% of your gold)
Scholar (My favorite, 5% bonus to experience earned AND unlimited Item ID. And he only takes 5% of your gold. A very good value.)
Spell Master (4 point bonus to all spells for 20% of your found gold. Up to you if the extra point is worth double the price of a Mystic)
Teacher (10% bonus to experience earned for only 3% of your gold, quite good)
Wind Master (2 hours of Fly per day, worth the gold until you get expert Fly)

This section is for any hidden items that I come across. If you find any not here, let me know!

Most people know of the torch in the Temple of Baa that gives 5000 gold, but there's other hidden treasures as well.

The below hidden bonus only applies for 1 character and is located in the Dragoon Caverns.