General

Cribbed from this document

The goal of this game is to retrieve the Sword of Freedom, free the Goddess Irkalla from the Isle of Woe, and then return Namtar to the hells from whence he came.

Levels shouldn’t be too important, surprisingly, since the only benefit from levelling up is 2 skill points to spend.

You can get 5 free skillpoints in the Magan Underworld almost immediately.

a STR score of 18 and a Beast Horn will allow a character to immediately learn Druid Magic 2 (~12 skillpoints. 17 since it bypasses Low Magic.). Most every good weapon has minimum required stats in STR or DEX.

DEX divided by 4 is your base AV (to hit) and DV (dodge). The sweetspot will obviously be dividable by 4. Necessary for everyone in the front row and ranged physical attackers. Secondarily necessary if your frontline gets crushed for your mages..

INT supposedly increases the chance to hit with spells (? nothing misses...) and only has maybe two out of combat uses. This is the dump stat.

SPIRIT and HEALTH. Spirit gives you POWER. POWER is your MP/mana. Health gives you Stun. Your HP are equal to your Stun, and your melee duders need some STUN so they can actually remain in combat. Since AoE damaging spells are fairly common mid to late game, this is probably the only stat that needs to be seriously raised after STR/DEX. Everyone needs some.

AC. AC is reduced from physical damage before it applies to your STUN. This makes wearing armor a good idea. The heavier the armor (unless magical), the more it will lower your AV (Unless it’s magical).

Some of the better nonmagical weapons will *lower* your AV. This gap can be made up for with the applicable weapon skill. (The weapon skill bonus is a 1 to 1 increase in AV, but is invisible. Your calculated AV is (Base +/- weapon modifiers) and your combat skills apply invisibly after that. An example is the Rusty Axe, which has the maximum axe damage outside magical weapons, but lowers your AV by 3.

The game has both random encounters and scripted encounters. Unfortunately, there is no bestiary that I can find anywhere, so testing effective planned encounters for minimal leveling will have to be done by hand.

You cannot Soften Stone the area surrounding the Well of Souls (resurrection place), in Salvation, the Dragon Valley, or the Necropolis.

Bureaucracy and Picklocks will apply the most outside of combat versus almost any other skill. Bureaucracy can be used in a surprising number of situations, but I don’t know exactly how high you need it minimum. I saw somewhere that there is only one lock you need a 7 or 8 in picklock for, and there is a secret door right next to it. Other than that, sources say a 4 in lockpick is probably overkill.