I'm still sticking it out with my solo knight. It's slow going but I'm getting there gradually. I still can't imagine completing the game with it but I wanted to see how far I could get. I swap NPCs frequently according to what I need, but having a limited number of special abilities at any one time can be frustrating. So when I reach the end of my rope I was thinking about trying this: Revive one of my other characters (a sorcerer) and use them for fly and Lloyd's beacon and protective spells etc. But not let them have any offensive spells or weapons. So the knight would still have to do all the fighting, but with a considerable advantage. Of course the other character would suck up half the experience from that point on.Just a thought - wondered what everyone else would think.
Also, I accidentally stumbled across a technique that would probably be useful in only one place. At level 19 (solo knight still) I took the stables to Kriegspire, hit the well and had my gatemaster take me to White Cap. I had picked up a couple of wands of fireball and thought I would take a stab at running past all the archers to Icewind Keep and seeing how I could do. I didn't think I had much of a chance, but wanted to try it.
As it turned out the wands helped a little but not nearly enough. But... I had also picked up a nice vampiric sword. I didn't really think anything about that. After I got to the first gate in the keep and started whacking ogres and stuff through it, I realized I was gaining back my hit points. And a lightbulb went on. What I ended up doing was opening and closing both gates and getting as many mobs as I could on the other side of them and hitting them through it to gain back the hitpoints I lost fighting the couple of mobs chasing me down the halls. I had to do that repeatedly but ended up getting through and getting the keys, with 11 hit points left. And it was 4 o'clock in the morning by then so my gatemaster had refreshed and got me out of there to safety. Very lucky.
